Novelist. MAY HOUSE IN OXFORD TERRACE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2453, 31 March 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

Novelist. MAY HOUSE IN OXFORD TERRACE.

CHAPTER IX. Captain Waltox was shown in. His likeness to James—of which, in "rowing accustomed to James, I had lost remembrance —gave me an unexpected shock. For a minute I felt a blankness and a pain, as if the hard voice and the cold eye were a part of James. lie greeted ]\lr Burns in the deliberate, slightly cynical tone with which he generally spoke, and turning to me, said— "Well, Nelly, you see I have come to be catechised." "Thank you," said I. He sat down with an air of being perfectly at his ease, drew out of his pocket my letter and Mr Burns and laid them before us. " I await my cross-examination," said he. " Then, in the first place," said Mr Burns, " may I ask you whether you recognise that for your handwriting V Captain Walton inspected the re-

ceipt signed with his name and shook his head. " No, that's not my writing," said he. " I begin to sou that there is something at the bottom of all this. What is the. packet, and to whom does it belong V " It belongs to a namesake of yours, a Mr James Walton." " Oh, in that case—well I suppose this is his signature—l fail to see the difficulty." " My clerk declares positively that you were the person to whom he delivered the packet." " And I declare positively that he did no such thing. I suspect that your clerk jumped to a conclusion on the mere resemblance of name. What sort of man is this Mr Walton. " I have never seen him. Miss Dalton can tell us." "Well, Nelly, what is my namesake like ?" " He is tall and dark-haired." " Tall and dark-haired—so far there is a resemblance. And how as to age, now V' " Oh, about four-and-twenty." " And what do you think 1 Gould ho possibly bo taken for me V " He is certainly like you," I answered reluctantly. "The mystery clears. Your clerk is mistaken in the person ; and I presume Mr Walton came for his own packet." " But the papers are not forthcoming," said Mr Burns, " and it is in the highest degree to Mr Walton's interest that they should be forthcoming." " And are you so sure of that ?" asked Captain Walton, slowly and tranquilly. " I gather from my cousin's letter here that this young man professes to have some sort of claim to his father's title. May I ask, by-and-by, whether he is th same Mr Walton who, as I see by this afternoon's paper, has just been taken up for being concerned in the dynamite explosion V Mr Burns nodded. " Do you or my cousin know anything of his character or antecedents 1 I confess it appears to m<i very much as if the whole thing were a trick got up by a clever adventurer trying to entrap an unprotected girl with property. We don't even know that his name is Walton at all," " The likeness is enough to confirm that," said J. " How do you know that it was not the likeness which suggested to him the assumption of the name? Or he may be a relation—a family as old as ours may have many oilshoots, and some of them discreditable. But be that as it may ; let us look at the facts. This man shows you these papers. Wliy should he show them to you rather than to some experienced man of business V I recalled M. Dubois' caution, and remembered that it might be of immense importance to the thief to know whether any such experienced person could be produced. So I replied, " But you don't know that he has not." "iNo, J don't know it, as you say. But if any such person had seen them and found thein genuine, I imagine the claim would long ago have been prosecuted. I presume he represents himself as a grandson of my father's uncle, the last Lord Clavering, who has always been believed never to have married." Faithful to my plan I remained silent, and ho proceeded : " But you had no means of verifying these papers. You took them for granted, and now they are vanished, and their genuineness cannot be tested. It is a charming and romantic position. What young women could refuse to console the persecuted, rightful heir?" Certainly M. Dubois was right; my cousin was ires fort. T did not hasten to reply, partly because I was not so sure as I wished to be of keeping my temper. "I may observe," I said, after a minute, " that before Mr Walton was born this claim was stated by his father in a pamphlet, which may be seen in the British Museum ; it was certainly, therefore, not invented on my account. Now, if the facts there stated are true, and if the proofs were known by you or your father to exist, it was clearly very much to your interests to destroy them." "To our interest, yes, I admit it." "And to my own personal knowledge two attempts have been made to steal them. Then upon this comes the assurance of Mr Burns' clerk that he gave them to you. _ It is not pleasant to say or to think this, but can I help it h" "I think, with your permission," said Mr Burns, "that it would be well to have Dakin in." " If you please," said I. My cousin made no objection. His face was perfectly steady, but it seemed to me almost too steady for innocence. I knew that I myself should have held my face fixed and calm if I had been at a crisis that need all my strength. And then there Hashed upon me a sudden conviction that the arrest of James was no chance error, but part of a whole scheme. I felt an abyss opening before nie. How could I save James from enemies such as these? And yet I could and would save him. A cold, dogged resolution rose within me and made me suddenly feel iny kindred to this calm determined man who was my opponent. He lifted up his eyes, feeling mine upon him, and we looked at each other unflinchingly.

I realised in that interchange of mute defiance that the duel between us was of life and death. And yet we wore both very still and quiet. I doubt whether Mr Burns saw anything more in our gaz" than some uncertainty of each other. Dakin came in. He was not to be moved. He would only say, "If it was not Capt. "Walton it must have been someone as like him as a twin brother." He scanned my cousin's garments and said reluctantly tiiat he had worn other 1 clothes. But as to the wearer his conviction was not to be shaken. Captain Walton began to look very angry, and his anger was not a thing to be trifled with. Mr Burns dismissed Dakin, and my cousin with an oatli declared that ho was bribed to persist in his lie. Then Mr Burns asserted himself. " Sir," said he sternly, " you forgot yourself—my clerk has borne an irreproachable character for more years than you have lived in the world. Capt. Walton said gloomily that he begged his pardon. For a moment we all remained silent. 'Then he said, with ice coldness, " Since you have no more questions to ask me, I may, perhaps, be allowed to go. You have uiy address if you wish to prosecute me." Mr Burns bid him good afternoon with unruffled courtesy, and he went away. " What do you think," said I; " what da you think ?" " I think," said Mr Burns, " that it is a complicated matter. But I should like to see the other Mr Walton before I deliver my opinion \s to advice, I strongly advise you to make no further steps at all. I will have your cousin watched by an excellent detective. Diamonds arc comparatively imperishable, and may sometimes be traced, even though burnt papers cannot. But if your Mr Walton is to be convicted of treason felony, it is worth while to take a great deal of trouble over his claims to a title ?" "What do you mean? Because he \voulci be in prison?" " Because a conviction for treason or treason felony causes attainder of blood, and prevents the convict or his lineal descendants from succeeding to a peerage or inheriting estates." " Then," said I, "thisis the meaning of the accusation. They know there are proofs enough without the papers, and so they are trying to make him a convict." " You jump to conclusions, my dear Miss Dalton. But undeniably it is a complicated matter. I shall be present to-morrow at the hearing of the charge before the magistrate, and, perhaps, after that I may see my way more clearly." With this we parted, and I went home to toll my tale to M. Dubois.

CHAPTER X. AN ANONYMOUS LETTER. M. Dubois tolcl me in the evening that James was not to stand alone before the magistrates next day. Franz lieller, a young German who had studied with him in Paris, was also accused , and so were two Italians, Moroni and Lano. Moroni I knew to be the name of my old acquaintance, the model who had fainted on that first day. M. Dubois; and I were, as you may well suppose, very early at the court next morning; but even then we found a good many people, and later it was crowded to suffocation. It was the first time I had ever been in such place, and I thought the surroundings very meagre, sordid, and oppressive. The four accused were brought in. The Italians had a scared, hunted, and angry look; Franz lleller seemed stolid and a little sulky. As for James, he looked rather pale, but his usual calmness had by no means deserted him, and his simple unpretentious bearing stood him in good stead. To be young and handsome and to have the look and manner of a gentleman are points which have their value in any sort of public appearance, and I thought I perceived that they had their effect upon James' audience. Mr Chappel was the first witness, and he was called not by that name, but by the name of Jackson. I saw M. Dubois' eye brighten in a most threatening manner as lie looked at him. James, on the other hand, surveyed him with a calm and curious contempt. I will try to tell what I heard declared against James and his comrades as simply and shortly as I can, putting from me, as far as possible, the devouring indignation which rent me while I listened. Mr Chappel then, answering to the name of Jackson, began by declaring himself a private inquiry agent. ("Moultcard ! Jc vousl'nvais Lien dit," said M. Dubois in my ear). He had, he said, come upon the trace six months previously, of a treasonable plot, hatching in Paris. Many foreigners of different nationalities were engaged in it, and some young Englishmen. The conspirators generally described themselves as art students. The ringleader was the "prisoner Walton." He, Chappel, upon this, sought out James' abode in Loudon, and took lodgings in the same house that he might keep watch upon him. Within a few days a well-known Communist refugee, " the notorious Dubois," had come to live in the house. The two Italians, Moroni and Lano, were frequent

visitors. Of these two it would be proved that Moroni was a political exile, and that Lano had fled from Italy under suspicion of being concerned in the murder of a Customhouse official, Other members of the Parisian association were received, and twice a week six of them met in different houses in the evening, and remained together on each occasion for three hours. All this Mr Ohappel told very simply and directly, weaving truth and falsehood together in inextricable union. " He is a clever fellow," said Mr Burns afterwards, " he never wastes a lie." Ho admitted frankly that he had made secret visits to .Tames' studio, and declared that he had there read his papers, and learned from them tho progress of the plot. Finding it still unripe he had delayed his action in order to strike the more effectively. Then he had been discovered by M. Dubois ; had pretended to be sleep walking, and had not dared to resume his search. He continued, however, to keep watch on James, but had found out nothing more of a decisive character when the explosion took place. This he knew to form part of the conspirator's programme, and gave information accordingly to the police. Tho papers found in the studio would bo produced. The policc 011 finding them at once arrested the four prisoners. The papers which the police had found in the studio were produced. Some were in cipher, and these were set aside to bo examined by experts. The others were damaging enough. I will not go into thein in detail. I was perfectly convinced that they were forgeries, and forgeries invented by persons of satanic ingenuity. If these letters had been genuine my harmless James would have been the most adroit and unscrupulous of conspirators. As to the secret meetings of six, I knew all about that matter ; these were the meetings of a private class for drawing from the life, attended by six fellow students. The procedure of a court is, I suppose, always slow. There were all sorts of formalities and preliminaries which took up time ; this was all that was brought forward that day, and the hearing was adjourned until Monday. Mr Burns, even after seeing James and Mr Chappel, would not commit himself to a decided opinion; he only repeated that it was a very complicated matter. As for M. Dubois, he was more convinced than ever that the police were at the bottom of it; and he now added to this conviction a belief that the police were in the pay of Captain Walton. He had a scheme of his own, about which, according to his wont, he was very mysterious, for getting hold of some of the minor agents and draw a confession out of them. For my own part I was beginning to grow desperate. The plot against James seemed to become so overwhelming. 'The proportions of it wore so vast, and the details so intricate, that I felt as if I were being crushed and stifled. It was in this frame of mind that Saturday dawned upon me—the Saturday of that eventful . week which had begun on Monday with the fog and the explosion. I was very strong, as I have said before, and my nerves were extremely steady ; but 011 that Saturday I did feel a little shaken, and I could not help noticing when I looked at myself that I had lost my usual country rosiness. M. Dubois went out immediately after breakfast; and I was sitting at home, thinking over all those things and trying to see clearly, when a letter was brought me. This was the letter :— " If you want to know the truth about Captain Walton, come to 17 Amherst-street, Olerkenwell, and ask for Mrs Bowman. There is a dying person there who will tell you the truth, and give you back the diamonds. But you must come alone and at once. The person who brings this will watch and follow you. If you delay you will be too late. If you do not come alone you will not be admitted." I stood a moment, irresolute, with the letter in my hand. M. Dubois was out. I was to decide for myself. I called to Sally, and asked whether anyone was waiting. No ; she had heard a ring, and 011 going to the door found a letter in tho letter-box. I was much disposed to believe that the letter was a mere trap; on the other hand there was the possibility that it offered a genuine chance of helping James. After all, what could happen, at the worst 1 I was never greatly subject to fears on my own account, and had a strong opinion—which my readers may very likely not share—that I was capable of taking care of myself. I wrote, however, by way of precaution a few words to M. Dubois, enclosed the anonymous letter, and bade him stick me if I failed to come home. Then I looked in my map of London for Amherst-street, and set out. I took an omnibus to Gray's Inn-road to Guildford-streot, and turned to the right. I walked on across a waste and desolute-looking part of the town, where there were buildings shut in with high walls and turnings blocked by walls and railway cuttings, until I reached a wide thoroughfare. I forgot now what its name was. Crossing that I came to a region of little green squares and quiet streets of small clean houses. Amherst-street was one of

these. In many of the front windows were cards announcing that a lapidary, a watch-spring maker, or a diamond-cutter lived here. The name of this last trade made me think that perhaps the letter might contain truth. I found No. 17, and knocked. It was a neat and quiet lookine; little house, with wire blinds and white curtains. The doorstep was .well whitened and the brass handles properly polished. The door was oponed with great promptness by a woman in the cap and apron of a sick nurse. Now that I was embarked on my adventure I felt no alarms ; but I still suspected that my cousin was trying to put me on a false track, and was quite prepared to disbeliovo everything I might hoar. I asked for Mrs l3owman. " Come in, Miss," said the woman in a grave voice. " Will you come upstairs at ouce, please ? You arc only just in time." She led mo to the narrow staircase and into a bedroom. The blinds were down ; I could not see very clearly. She wont towards the bed. I drew nearer ; I could not at all distinguish the face of the sick person, who seemed to be much muffled up. There was a great quietness in the room. I heard the chickens chirping about in some neighbouring garden and the ticking of a clock in the next room. The woman stood back and motioned me forward. I stooped down over the bed. In the same moment there was a rustle among the curtains at the side, and something cold, wot, sweet, and stifiiug was thrown over my face, and held firmly on each side of my mouth. I gasped, I struggled, I put up my hands to try and drag it off. I was conscious, more and more faintly, of someone supporting me, of being laid down, of someone saying, " Unfasten her collar," of gathering together my last shreds of power in the perception that the voice was my cousin's, and then of nothing more. When I recovered consciousness I was lying down, wrapped in an unfamiliar shawl My head ached. I felt sick and dizzy. I could not remember what had happened. I looked stupidly around mo. I was in a very tiny room, which was painted white with little lines and patterns of gold. I was lying on a sort of fixed couch, covered with velvet. There was a round table that was fixed to the floor, and a looking-glass in a gilt frame on the wall. The only tiny window was round too. and was close to the ceiling. I saw only sky through it. Then I heai'd heavy steps overhead, and felt a strange rocking and shaking, and understood all at once that I was in the cabin of some sort of vessel. I rose up instantly and went to the door ; it was locked. I shook and rattled ; no one came. Then I became noisier, struck with my hand on tho door and shrieked. Still, no one came, though I heard steps and voices going on tranqquilly enough above. At last I gave it up and sat down raging inwardly, After a time—which seemed to me very long'—-the woman whom I had soen in Armhorst-stroet came in and brought me some food. I demanded why I was imprisoned in this way. She replied, "It's my orders, Miss," and I could get no more from her. When she went towards the door I did so too, and tried to force my way out; but someone hold the door on the other side, and I was shut in again. At first I f< It a childish, pettish inclination not to touch the food brought mc ; but I reminded myself that I should want all my strength and resolution, and that these things did not accompany fasting. So I ate, in spite of inclination, and smiled in spite of sorrow to find my food cut up and served to me with a spoon and fork instead of a knife. My captors had clearly a great idea of my desperation. But this momentary amusement soon gave way to very serious and tormenting reflections. Who would think and toil and burrow to prove James innocent of the charge against liini ? And all the time the boat went on, carrying me I knew not wither. remained in this vessel, which from its fittings and what I could uess of its size I fancied to be a private yacht, but of which to this day I know neither the name nor the owner, for seven days and nights, I saw no one but the woman whom I had seen in Am-herst-street, and I never succeeded in drawing from her a word of explanation. As to externals I was not ill-treated. Food was brought me regularly, a change of clothes was provided me, no threats were used towards me. My suffering of mind during those days and nights is something of which even now I can scarcely bear to think. Sometimes I will wake at night with a sudden terror upon me and the lapping of water in my ears, and for a moment I am back in that sickening time of powcrlessness. It must have been on Weduesday night in this time of captivity that I heard through the darkness a sound that made me leap up and my heart begin to beat fast —the sound of a church clock striking out an hour. What dreams and hopes I had of coming to land ! ITow resolved I was that no mortal power should again pass that deadening handkerchief over me ; how firmly convinced that none could succeed in carrying 1110 quietly through a town large enough to have such a clock. Imagine then, if you can, the bitterness of my disappointment when we went on our way as before and there was 110 landing.

On and on, through seas that I could make no guess at except indeed by the one token that the air grew cooler rather than hotter, so that I judged we must be travelling northward. And James. Where was James? What had happened in London during all these days ? James, perhaps, was on the way to be convicted of a crime that would condemn him to a life-long punishment, and I, whose evidence would have been so strong to save him, was tossing here in prison. I wondered whether they had told him ; whether his own troubles were augmented by terrors and uncertainties for me. And if they had not told, what must he think when day after day went by and no Helen came or wrote ? Either way he must be suffering terribly, and I could do nothing to help it. My one hope was in M. Dubois, and sometimes the frightful thought would come upon me that tie, too, had probably been carried off. Oil how bitterly I repented my rashness in going to Amherst-street ! How I raged at the thought of my enemies laughing at the case with which I had allowed myself to be trapped. In a constant succession of such thoughts as these I passed that terrible week, and my only consolation was in determining that no power should hold mo if ever again I set my foot on land. (To be continued.)