“The centre of each of the flowers is a bolt but you withdraw certain of them only,” I explained. “This block of marble is balanced on a pulley in such a way that when you pull out the correct combination it will sink and another will rise behind it containing the safe-place.”
“And which are the ones to pull out?”
“Those which are white on that design in your hand,” I answered.
“Devilish clever. Now do it.”
He smiled at me in a way that aroused my suspicions. Did he then know of the possibility that there was a booby-trap?
I was in a dilemma: I could see no way to avoid opening the hiding-place again, but if I did so then there was nothing to prevent him from harming me once he had what he sought.
“I can’t make out the pattern,” I said, clutching at a desperate hope.
He brought out the paste-board and studied it under the lanthorn.
“The top two are white, sure enough,” he exclaimed. “And the bottom two.” Then squinting at it more closely he said: “But I’m damned if I can tell what the middle one is. It could be white or dotted like other parts of the design or even black!”
If he thought the central bolt was white and tried to remove it, then he might trigger the trap. And yet if I were to warn him, then I was surely lost. And why should I risk my life to warn him? The man who had fraudulently used the name of his employer to turn away my mother? Who had been embezzling money from that employer? And who had been paid, I assumed, by my enemies to spy on their behalf?
“White should be safe enough,” he said to himself.
Safe! Then it seemed he did know of the rumour! And yet he had been prepared to force me to brave the lock. He was now engrossed and, seizing my chance, I crept away into the darkness of the room.
“Where are you going?” he said, glancing round as I was almost at the door. “Well, be damned to you if you don’t want your share.”
I knew he believed I had no way to get out of the house, and I suspected that my share would be to be beaten into insensibility — or even worse — and left by the ransacked hiding-place while he secured his escape.
In an instant I was out on the landing, had hastened as silently as I could in the darkness down the stairs and across the hall and was sliding back the bolts of the back-door. Thank heavens, after all, that I had thought to unlock it! Yet I still had no idea of how I would escape from the back-yard as I opened the door and slipped out.
The cold air with its acrid taste of soot and burnt coal rasped in my throat and lungs, and I remembered my first shock at a winter dawn in London. It was bitter now and I had no coat. In a moment I had scrambled over the low and derelict wall between the two back-courts in the hope of finding a way of escaping from the abandoned timber-yard. Once inside, however, I found that the wall surrounding it was about fifteen feet high and topped by tall spikes. Moreover, as I discovered when I ran my hands over it, the brick-work was so smooth that there was nothing to get a hand or a foot-hold on. There was no escape this way. I crossed over the wall back into the yard of the Mompessons’ house.
At that moment I heard a sound like a roll of thunder. Then the silence became absolute. I looked at the rear of the house and saw that candles were being lit on the upper floors. So the hiding-place had indeed had a booby-trap! I had no time to speculate on Mr Assinder’s fate for as a consequence of his having roused the house I was myself in danger of being discovered. At any moment someone might run out to alert Mr Phumphred and the grooms above the coach-house and stables.
Of course! I suddenly knew precisely what I had to do.
I ran across the yard to the door of the coach-house and hammered on the iron-bound oak. When I glanced back I could see that a number of lights were now ablaze in the house and I heard shouts and the ringing of bells. Everything betokened uproar as manifestly as I could wish.
After an agonizing wait, the door opened and Mr Phumphred stood in his night-shirt holding a candle and sleepily gazing at me as he must have gazed at Miss Quilliam all those years ago.
“There’s an alarm in the house,” I cried. “They sent me to wake you.”
“An alarm?” he said and looked up at its windows above us.
“They want all the men inside at once! I’ll go for the grooms,” I cried and made to push past his large figure.
To my relief he moved aside and I ran up the steps to the loft above the coach-house. I found it was partitioned with one half reserved for the hay, and two mattresses on the floor of the other half. Here I could see the two grooms lying fast asleep.
I shook them awake shouting: “Hurry! You’re called for to go to the house quickly. It’s burglars!”
They took some time to wake up, grumbling and cursing all the while. I kept up a constant shout of “Thieves! Robbery! Quick!” and pointed out of window towards the lights in the house.
My pantomime of alarm and the evident disorder within doors convinced them. They pulled on their clothes over their night-shirts and stumbled down the steps still in the dark.
When they had gone I wasted not a moment in sliding open the window that looked into the mews. Then I clambered over the sill and lowered myself from it until I dared to drop the last few feet. My luck held for the watch, drawn by the noise, might have been running thither, but at the moment the mews-lane was deserted.
I made my way cautiously towards the street. At last I was free. I had nearly fifty pounds! I had Jeoffrey Huffam’s final will in my possession! And then it came to me suddenly that it was a few hours into my birthday.
Characters who never appear directly in the narrative are in italics. Those who might possess the estate if Jeoffrey Huffam’s suppressed codicil were in force appear in bold typeface. Those who might possess it if his purloined will were laid before the court are in BOLD CAPITALS.
PART FIVE
THE MALIPHANTS
SMITHFIELD, NEWGATE AND BLACKFRIARS (Scale: 1″ = 105 yards)
The top of the page is North
The Wrong Hands
CHAPTER 101
How much pleasure it gives me to imagine the discomfiture of Old Corruption! Here are Lady Mompesson and Sir David hastening in their night-attire to the Great Parlour with their servants running around them calling out and bumping into each other. As they enter, the footman, Joseph, is lighting the gas, and then he and the other lower servants are shooed from the room by their employers with orders to run for a surgeon and the watch. At the opposite end of the chamber Mr Thackaberry is bent over something lying on the ground. In the dim light of the single mantle it can be seen that the beautiful Turkey-carpet is being disfigured by a dark, spreading stain.
“See if anything has been taken,” Lady Mompesson says.
Sir David steps over the object on the ground and searches the hiding-place. Then he hurries back to his mother and whispers: “It’s not there!” He adds in horror: “Nothing else seems to be missing!”
“What is not there?” she demands, but reading the dismay on his countenance she looks down at the body. “Search him!” she commands imperiously.
He kneels beside Mr Thackaberry who is pulling open the injured man’s coat and who says: “Oh, leave him to me, sir. Don’t dirty your good linen. The wretched betrayer! First the Hougham rents and now this! He isn’t worth your concern.”
“Get out of my light, you old fool!” Sir David exclaims.
With as much dignity as he can muster in his night-shirt and night-cap, the butler stands up and moves away as his employer goes through the pockets of the injured man.
“It must be here,” he cries after a moment, and starts to search them over again. Again, he finds nothing. Then he leans over the face and says: “What have you done with it?”
Mr Thackaberry looks down at him and then glances at Lady Mompesson: “I beg pardon, your ladyship, sir, but I believe Mr Assinder is …”
“It must be here!” Sir David cries. “He was shot as soon as he opened the hiding-place!”
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“Then he must have had an accomplice,” his mother says.
Sir David stands up and says to the butler: “Assemble all the servants immediately. They must all be searched. Their persons and their boxes.”
“Very good, sir. But if there’s something been taken, I fear it’s too late now. Some of them have left the house to go for assistance.”
“Nevertheless, do as I say. A valuable paper has been removed.”
When the old servant has hurried out, Lady Mompesson says: “Remember, we dare not reveal the nature of the document for no-one must know that it even existed!”
“If it fell into the wrong hands …” her son begins and breaks off with a shudder.
“It won’t. It must have been taken by mistake by one of the servants working in colleague with Assinder. I suspect Vamplew for I have seen them whispering together. When he finds what it is he will destroy it. How should he know its significance?”
“But, Mamma, it appears that that is all that was taken! As if they were looking for it!”
“That is an alarming possibility,” Lady Mompesson concedes. “And it suggests that I was right to suspect Assinder of being in the employ of our opponents. If only the Huffam boy were still alive! For as soon as he is declared to be dead, Silas Clothier inherits.”
“He is old. What will happen if he dies before that happens?”
“Unless we can find the will, then the Maliphant heir will inherit under the codicil.”
A few minutes later the servants are all mustered and not one of them is found to be missing (for no-one recalls the knife-boy). Mr Vamplew is roused indignantly from his bed and subjected to the indignity of being made to assemble with the servants. Then they and their possessions are thoroughly searched by Mr Thackaberry and the watch. (One of the footmen — Edward, I believe — is very drunk and angrily refuses to be searched until the watch restrain him by force.) Although, to the embarrassment of many, numerous small articles — bottles of wine, items of table-silver, clothes — are discovered on the servants and in their boxes, no document is found.
It is long after dawn when one of the scullery-maids suddenly asks where the knife-boy, Dick, is.
CHAPTER 102
While I made my way out of the silent mews I was thinking of nothing but the danger of being pursued. As I went a little further I found that everything was enveloped in the darkly yellow gauze of the freezing fog. I had no idea of the time since the sun was not visible but only present as a faint lightening of the fog whose cold hands seemed to reach under my thin clothes and run clammy fingers down my body. Once clear of the neighbourhood I found myself heading eastwards without reflecting. Then a sudden upsurge of exultation seized me and I rejoiced to think that I had escaped and triumphed. But as soon as I had leisure to consider my situation I realized how disadvantageous it was. Although I at last had the will — and I pressed the package to my side reassuringly, longing to open and read it but not daring to — my possession of it now put me in considerable danger from both the Mompessons and, above all, from Silas Clothier. The latter would do anything to destroy it — and myself along with it.
The obvious course, which was to go to the Digweeds, was barred to me by Joey’s warning that Barney might have someone posted to watch the house. If only I had had time for Joey to do what I had instructed, I could have gone straight to my new lodgings and been assured of my safety. As it was I was literally homeless and penniless. There must be still some hours to go before dawn and in my thin clothes and without a great-coat I was feeling the cold severely.
I had been walking briskly to try to keep warm and by now I had reached Regent-street. There was little traffic at this early hour and not many foot-passengers. I walked down to the Quadrant where there was a baked-potato-seller’s stand on the corner, and I loitered within a few yards of it, deriving some feeble heat from its glowing brazier.
There were two women in bedraggled finery standing near it. One of them shivered and the other laughed mechanically and said:
“I amn’t cold, Sal. My vartue keeps me warm.”
Desperate for the warmth, I hovered nearby as close as I dared. The number of waggons and market-carts trundling towards Covent-garden increased, and herds of sheep and cattle came past on their way to Smithfield. After a time I saw one of the horse-patroles returning from duty in the suburbs around the metropolis. Some working people were passing now, though it was still too early for the clerks walking into the City, as I knew from my memories of my street-trading career.
Only by laying the will before the Court of Chancery could I gain any security, for then there would be less point and more risk in killing me. For at present, unknown, and even believed to be dead, I was very vulnerable. Yet, given my present appearance, I had no chance, as Miss Lydia had pointed out, of getting past the door-keepers of Chancery and I was determined not to give up the document except into the hands of a high official and before witnesses, for I remembered Miss Lydia’s warning that the Mompessons had an agent in the Chancery-office.
However, there was Henry Bellringer, Stephen Maliphant’s half-brother. I had seen him in the Court and I knew he had some kind of connexion with Chancery. He had been kind to me — as kind as his circumstances permitted — and was the friend I had mentioned to Miss Lydia, and so I resolved to go to him.
It was still some hours too early to think of that and so I walked about to keep warm, stepping carefully for the paving-stones were slippery with frozen dew, and watching the metropolis struggling into wakefulness on a raw, foggy winter’s dawn.
Shop-boys awoke from their frozen slumbers beneath the counters and lit the gas-lights which struggled feebly against the growing fog. Then they began to take down the shutters, blowing on their freezing hands which must have been painful against the wood and iron. Now the lamp-lighters set about extinguishing the lamps which were casting tiny amounts of light in the thick fog. People were hurrying to their place of work not from enthusiasm but to keep warm and get in out of the cold. Around Leicester-square I encountered groups of finely-dressed young gentlemen roistering their way home.
CHAPTER 103
I reached Barnards-inn and, wiser now than on my previous visit, I did not declare myself to the porter but waited until his attention was distracted by a gentleman who was giving him some instructions, and then hurried past.
I made my way through the two courtyards and up the stairs to the garret where, finding that the outer door stood open, I knocked on the inner one. After a moment Henry opened it and gazed at me in surprise. He looked exactly as before except that he was wearing a flowered chintz dressing-gown, a velvet night-cap with a gold tassel, and Turkish slippers.
“Do you remember me?” I asked, recalling that it was about two years since he had seen me.
To my relief he looked at me with delight and exclaimed: “Indeed I do, John! You brought me the news of poor Stephen! My dear fellow, I’m very pleased to see you again.”
He ushered me in and closed the door. The room was much more cheerful, for there was a new sopha and a second table, and a bright Turkey-carpet and some pictures. I had interrupted him in the preparation of his breakfast for a frying-pan stood on the hob containing three rashers of bacon and a couple of kidneys. At the sight and — more particularly — the smell of this food, a sharp pain seemed to attack me in the stomach.
Henry must have seen this for he insisted that I sit at the little table from which he cleared a jumble of books, papers, pens, pen-holders and other paraphernalia, and, despite my protests, he served me with his own breakfast.
For some minutes I ate in a greedy, unashamed silence while Henry watched me with a quizzical expression.
“Upon my soul,” he said, “you look as if you haven’t eaten for a week.”
Seeing the ill-concealed expression of regret with which I finished the last of my food, he cut two slices of bread and toasted and buttered them for me, and then made coffee for both of us.
“Am I
keeping you from your business?” I asked as I embarked upon them. “It is still early, isn’t it?”
“It wants five and twenty minutes of eight,” he said, taking from his pocket a rather handsome silver watch.
“I thought it was earlier. I was afraid of waking you if I came too soon.”
“Too soon! By Jove, have you been up all night?”
I nodded, still intent on chewing.
“Indeed? Then I hope I am to learn the reason.”
“I will tell you,” I answered.
Seeing that I had consumed all of his breakfast and was still unsatisfied, he gave me a large piece of pound-cake to eat with my coffee.
“Did you recognise me that time?” I asked. “When I saw you in the Court of Chancery at Westminster?”
“When was that?”
“It was two years ago. Shortly after I last came here, in fact.”
“And what were you doing there?”
“Well that’s a long story. But I want to tell it to you. I need to be able to trust someone.”
“You know you can trust me, old fellow. For poor Stephen’s sake. I only hope I can do more to help you than I could last time. I have often remembered how I let you go off like that without doing anything for you, but I was deuced short of the ready then.”
“I believe you may be able to help me. Do you know anything about Chancery?”
“Indeed I do. I’m articled there.”
This was better than I’d hoped!
“I’m a Sixty-clerk. That means,” he went on, “that I work to one of the Six-clerks. (Of course there ain’t six and sixty.) One day I shall become one, I hope. I don’t suppose any of that means much to you. But look here, what the devil is all this about, old chap? You’re being confoundedly mysterious.”
“I need to sleep,” I said.
I was exhausted and yet my mind felt strangely sharp and almost painfully clear.