The Lost Heir

"No. I could not take my oath to it, but I certainly could declare that the symptoms, to my mind, could be attributed to poison only."

"In the case of the abduction of the boy," the lawyer went on, "the only absolute ground for our suspicion is that this man and no one else would have benefited by it; and this theory certainly appears to be, after the discoveries you have made, a very tenable one. It all comes so suddenly on me that I cannot think of giving any opinion as to the best course to be adopted. I shall, in the first place, consult Mr. Farmer, and in the next place shall feel it my duty to take my co-trustee, Colonel Bulstrode, into my confidence, because any action that we may take must, of course, be in our joint names. He called here the other day and stated to me that he regarded the whole matter of Walter's abduction to be suspicious in the extreme. He said he was convinced that John Simcoe was at the bottom of it, his interest in getting the boy out of the way being unquestionable, and that we must move heaven and earth to find the child. He agreed that we can do nothing about carrying out the will until we have found him. I told him of the steps that we have been taking and their want of success. 'By gad, sir,' he said, 'he must be found, if we examine every child in the country.' I ventured to suggest that this would be a very difficult undertaking, to which he only made some remark about the cold-bloodedness of lawyers, and said that if there were no other way he would dress himself up as a costermonger and go into every slum of London. Whether you would find him a judicious assistant in your searches I should scarcely be inclined to say, but you would certainly find him ready to give every assistance in his power."

The next day, at three o'clock, Colonel Bulstrode was announced. He was a short man, of full habit of body. At the present moment his face was even redder than usual.

"My dear Miss Covington," he burst out, as he came into the room, "I have just heard of all this rascality, and what you and your friend Miss Purcell have discovered. By gad, young ladies, I feel ashamed of myself. Here am I, Harry Bulstrode, a man of the world, and, as such, considered that this affair of the man Simcoe being made heir in case of the child's death and the simultaneous disappearance of the boy to have been suspicious in the extreme, and yet I have seen no way of doing anything, and have been so upset that my temper has, as that rascal Andrew, my old servant, had the impudence to tell this morning, become absolutely unbearable. And now I find that you two girls and a doctor fellow have been quietly working the whole thing out, and that not improbably my dear old friend was poisoned, and that the man who did it is not the man he pretended to be, but an infernal impostor, who had of course carried the child away, and may, for anything we know, have murdered him. It has made me feel that I ought to go to school again, for I must be getting into my second childhood. Still, young ladies, if, as is evident, I have no sense to plan, I can at least do all in my power to assist you in your search, and you have only to say to me, 'Colonel Bulstrode, we want an inquiry made in India,' and I am off by the first P. and O."

"Thank you very much, Colonel," Hilda said, trying to repress a smile. "I was quite sure that from your friendship for my dear uncle you would be ready to give us your assistance, but so far there has been no way in which you could have aided us in the inquiries that we have made. Indeed, as Dr. Leeds has impressed upon us, the fewer there are engaged in the matter the better; for if this man knew that we were making all sorts of inquiries about him, he might think it necessary for his safety either to put Walter out of the way altogether, or to send him to some place so distant that there would be practically no hope whatever of our ever discovering him. At present I think that we have fairly satisfied ourselves that this man is an impostor, and that the real John Simcoe was drowned, as supposed, in the ship in which he sailed from India. Who this man is, and how he became acquainted with the fact that John Simcoe saved my uncle's life in India, are mysteries that so far we have no clew to; but these matters are at present of minor importance to us. Before anything else we want to find where Walter is hidden, and to do this we are going to have this man watched. He cannot have carried off Walter by himself, and, no doubt, he meets occasionally the people who helped him, and who are now hiding Walter. It is scarcely probable that they come to his lodgings. He is not likely to put himself into anyone's power, and no doubt goes by night in some disguise to meet them. As, of course, he knows you perfectly well, it would be worse than useless for you to try to follow him. That is going to be done by Tom Roberts."

"Well, my man Andrew might help him," the Colonel said. "Simcoe has often dined with me at the club, but he never came to my chambers. One man cannot be always on the watch, and Andrew can take turns with Roberts. He is an impudent rascal, but he has got a fair share of sense; so, when you are ready, if you will drop me a line, he shall come here and take his instructions from you."

"Thank you very much, Colonel. That certainly would be of assistance. It is only of an evening that he would be wanted, for we are quite agreed that these meetings are sure to take place after dark."

CHAPTER XV.

VERY BAD NEWS

A month passed. Tom Roberts and Andrew watched together in Jermyn Street, the former with a cap pulled well down over his face and very tattered clothes, the latter dressed as a groom, but making no attempt to disguise his face. During that time everyone who called at the house in Jermyn Street was followed, and their names and addresses ascertained, one always remaining in Jermyn Street while the other was away. The man they were watching had gone out every evening, but it was either to one or the other of the clubs to which he belonged, or to the theater or opera.

"You will trace him to the right place presently, Roberts," Hilda said cheerfully, when she saw that he was beginning to be disheartened at the non-success of his search. "You may be sure that he will not go to see these men oftener than he can help. Does he generally wear evening clothes?"

"Always, miss."

"I don't think there is any occasion to follow him in future when he goes out in that dress; I think it certain that when he goes to meet these men he will be in disguise. When you see him come out dressed altogether differently to usual, follow him closely. Even if we only find where he goes it will be a very important step."

On the seventh week after the disappearance of Walter, Mr. Pettigrew came in one morning at eleven o'clock. His air was very grave.

"Have you heard news, Mr. Pettigrew?" Hilda asked.

"I have very bad news. Mr. Comfrey, a lawyer of not the highest standing, who is, I have learnt, acting for this fellow, called upon me. He said, 'I am sorry to say that I have some painful news to give you, Mr. Pettigrew. Yesterday the body of a child, a boy some six or seven years old, was found in the canal at Paddington. It was taken to the lockhouse. The features were entirely unrecognizable, and the police surgeon who examined it said that it had been in the water over a month. Most of its clothing was gone, partly torn off by barges passing over the body; but there still remained a portion of its underclothing, and this bore the letters W. R. The police recognized them as those of the child who has been so largely advertised for, and, as my client, Mr. Simcoe, had offered a thousand pounds reward, and as all information was to be sent to me, a policeman came down, just as I was closing the office, to inform me of the fact.

"'I at once communicated with my client, who was greatly distressed. He went to Paddington the first thing this morning, and he tells me that he has no doubt whatever that the remains are those of Walter Rivington, although he could not swear to his identity, as the features are altogether unrecognizable. As I understand, sir, that you and Miss Covington were the guardians of this unfortunate child, I have driven here at once in order that you may go up and satisfy yourselves on the subject. I understand that an inquest will be held to-morrow.'"

Hilda had not spoken while Mr. Pettigrew was telling his story, but sat speechless with horror.

"It cannot be; surely it cannot be!" she murmured. "Oh, Mr. Pettigrew! say that you cannot believe it."

"I can hardly say that, my dear; the whole affair is such a terrible one that I can place no bounds whatever to the villainy of which this man may be capable. This may be the missing child, but, on the other hand, it may be only a part of the whole plot."

"But who else can it be if it has Walter's clothes on?"

"As to that I can say nothing; but you must remember that this man is an extraordinarily adroit plotter, and would hesitate at nothing to secure this inheritance. There would be no very great difficulty in obtaining from some rascally undertaker the body of a child of the right age, dressing him up in some of our ward's clothes, and dropping the body into the canal, which may have been done seven weeks ago, or may have been done but a month. Of course I do not mean to say that this was so. I only mean to say that it is possible. No. I expressed my opinion, when we talked it over before, that no sensible man would put his neck in a noose if he could carry out his object without doing so; and murder could hardly be perpetrated without running a very great risk, for the people with whom the child was placed would, upon missing it suddenly, be very likely to suspect that it had been made away with, and would either denounce the crime or extort money by holding a threat over his head for years."

"Yes, that may be so!" Hilda exclaimed, rising to her feet. "Let us go and see at once. I will take Netta with me; she knows him as well as I do."

She ran upstairs and in a few words told Netta the news, and in five minutes they came down, ready to start.

"I have told Walter's nurse to come with us," Hilda said. "If anyone can recognize the child she ought to be able to do so. Fortunately, she is still in the house."

"Now, young ladies," the lawyer said before they started, "let me caution you, unless you feel a moderate certainty that this child is Walter Rivington, make no admission whatever that you see any resemblance. If the matter comes to a trial, your evidence and mine cannot but weigh with the court as against that of this man who is interested in proving its identity with Walter. Of course, if there is any sign or mark on the body that you recognize, you will acknowledge it as the body of our ward. We shall then have to fight the case on other grounds. But unless you detect some unmistakable mark, and it is extremely unlikely that you will do so in the state the body must be in, confine yourself to simply stating that you fail to recognize it in any way."

"There never was any mark on the poor child's body," Hilda said. "I have regretted it so much, because, in the absence of any descriptive marks, the chance of his ever being found was, of course, much lessened."

The lawyer had come in a four-wheeled cab, and in this the party all took their places. Not a word was spoken on the way, except that Hilda repeated what Mr. Pettigrew had said to the nurse. It was with very white faces that they entered the lockhouse. The little body was lying on a board supported by two trestles. It was covered by a piece of sailcloth, and the tattered garments that it had had on were placed on a chair beside it. Prepared as she was for something dreadful, the room swam round, and had Hilda not been leaning on Mr. Pettigrew's arm she would have fallen. There was scarce a semblance of humanity in the little figure. The features of the face had been entirely obliterated, possibly by the passage of barges, possibly by the work of simple decay.

"Courage, my dear!" Mr. Pettigrew said. "It is a painful duty, but it must be performed."

The three women stood silent beside the little corpse. Netta was the first to speak.

"I cannot identify the body as that of Walter Rivington," she said. "I don't think that it would be possible for anyone to do so."

"Is the hair of the same color?" the policeman who was in charge of the room asked.

"The hair is rather darker than his," Netta said; "but being so long in the water, and in such dirty water, it might have darkened."

"That was never Master Walter's hair!" the nurse exclaimed. "The darling had long, soft hair, and unless those who murdered him cut it short, it would not be like this. Besides, this hair is stiffer. It is more like the hair of a workhouse child than Master Walter's."

"That is so," Hilda said. "I declare that I not only do not recognize the body as that of my ward, but that I am convinced it is not his."

"Judging only by the hair," Mr. Pettigrew said, "I am entirely of your opinion, Miss Covington. I have stroked the child's head many times, and his hair was like silk. I have nothing else to go by, and am convinced that the body is not Walter Rivington's."

They then looked at the fragments of clothes. In two places they were marked "W. R."

"That is my marking, miss," the nurse said, after closely examining the initials. "I could not swear to the bits of clothes, but I can to the letters. You see, miss, I always work a line above the letters and another below them. I was taught to do it so when I was a girl in our village school, and I have always done it since. But I never saw anyone else mark them so. You see the letters are worked in red silk, and the two lines in white. The old woman who taught us said that it made a proper finish to the work. Yes, Miss Covington, I can swear to these things being Master Walter's."

"You could not swear to their being those in which he went out the morning he was lost, nurse?"

"I can, sir, because there is nothing missing except what he had on. I have all his things properly counted, and everything is there."

At this moment there was a little stir outside, and Hilda glanced down and whispered to Netta:

"Let down your fall; I do not want this man to recognize you."

Just as she did so John Simcoe entered. He bowed to Hilda.

"I am sorry, indeed, to meet you under such painful circumstances."

"I beg you not to address me, sir," she said haughtily. "I wish to have no communication with or from you. Your coming here reminds me of the thirty-seventh verse of the nineteenth chapter of St. John. You can look it out, sir, if you happen to have a Bible at home. Fortunately it is not wholly applicable, for we are all absolutely convinced that this poor little body is not that of General Mathieson's grandson."

So saying she stepped out of the little house, followed by the others; leaving John Simcoe white with passion.

"You should not have shown your hand so plainly, Miss Covington."

"I could not help it," the girl said. "He has called a dozen times at the house and has always received the message, 'Not at home,' and he must know that I suspect him of being Walter's abductor."

"What is the verse you referred him to, Hilda?" Netta said. "I confess that I do not know any verse in St. John that seems to be at all applicable to him."

"The quotation is, 'They shall look on Him whom they pierced.'"

Netta could not help smiling. Mr. Pettigrew shook his head.

"You are really too outspoken, Miss Covington, and you will get yourself into trouble. As it is, you have clearly laid yourself open to an action for libel for having practically called the man a murderer. We may think what we like, but we are in no position to prove it."

"I am not afraid of that," she said. "I wish that he would do it; then we should have all the facts brought out in court, and, even if we could not, as you say, prove everything, we could at least let the world know what we think. No, there is no chance of his doing that, Mr. Pettigrew."

"It is fortunate for us, Miss Covington, that our clients are for the most part men. Your sex are so impetuous and so headstrong that we should have a hard time of it indeed if we had to take our instructions from them."

"Mr. Pettigrew, you will please remember that there are three of my sex in this cab, and if you malign us in this way we will at once get out and walk."

The old lawyer smiled indulgently.

"It is quite true, my dear. Women are always passionately certain that they are right, and neither counsel nor entreaty can get them to believe that there can be any other side to a case than that which they take. Talk about men ruining themselves by litigation; the number that do so is as nothing to that of the women who would do so, were they to get as often involved in lawsuits! When Dickens drew the man who haunted the courts he would have been much nearer the mark had he drawn the woman who did so. You can persuade a man that when he has been beaten in every court his case is a lost one; but a woman simply regards a hostile decision as the effect either of great partiality or of incompetence on the part of the judge, and even after being beaten in the House of Lords will attend the courts and pester the judges with applications for the hearing of some new points. It becomes a perfect mania with some of them."

"Very well, Mr. Pettigrew. I would certainly carry my case up to the highest court, and if I were beaten I would not admit that I was in the wrong; still, I do not think that I should pester the poor old judges after that. I suppose we shall all have to come up again to-morrow to the inquest?"

"Certainly. Nurse has recognized the clothes, and I suppose you all recognize the marks, Miss Covington?"

"Yes; I have no doubt whatever that the clothes are Walter's."

"Of course we shall be represented by counsel," Mr. Pettigrew went on. "We must not let the jury find that this is Walter's body if we can possibly prevent it."

"You think that they will do so?"

"I am afraid of it. They will know nothing of the real circumstances of the case; they will only know that the child has been missing for nearly two months, and that, in spite of large rewards, no news has been obtained of him. They will see that this child is about the same age, that the clothes in which it was found are those worn by the missing boy. They will themselves have viewed the body and have seen that identification is almost impossible. This man will give his evidence to the effect that he believes it to be Walter Rivington's body. We shall give it as our opinion that it is not; that opinion being founded upon the fact that the few patches of hair left on the head are shorter and coarser than this was. To us this may appear decisive, but the counsel who will, no doubt, appear for Simcoe, will very legitimately say this fact has no weight, and will point out that no real judgment can be formed upon this. The child was missing – probably stolen for the sake of its clothes. Seeing the description in the handbills and placards, the first step would be to cut off its hair, which disposes of the question of length, and, as he will point out, hair which, when very long, seems soft and silky, will stand up and appear almost bristly when cropped close to the head. I am afraid that, in the face of all that we can say, the coroner's jury will find that the body is Walter's. As to the cause of death they will probably give an open verdict, for even if the surgeon has found any signs of violence upon the body, these may have been inflicted by passing barges long after death."

"Will you have it brought forward that Simcoe has an interest in proving the body to be Walter's?"

"I think not. There would be no use in beginning the fight in the coroner's court. It will all have to be gone into when he applies to the higher courts for an order on the trustees of the will to proceed to carry out its provisions. Then our case will be fully gone into. We shall plead that in the first place the will was made under undue influence. We shall point to the singularity of the General's mysterious attack, an attack which one of the doctors who attended him at once put down to poison, and that at the moment of the attack Simcoe was sitting next to him at dinner. We shall point to the extraordinary coincidence that the child who stood between Simcoe and the inheritance disappeared on the evening when the General was in extremis, and, lastly, we shall fire our last shot by declaring that the man is not the John Simcoe named in the will, but is an impostor who assumed his name and traded upon his brave action on the General's behalf.

"But I do not want the fight to begin until we are in a better position than at present to prove what we say. As yet, however satisfactory to us, we have not got beyond the point of conjecture and probabilities, and I trust that, before we have to fight the case, we shall obtain some absolute facts in support of our theory. The man would be able at present to put into court a number of highly respectable witnesses from Stowmarket, and of officers he has met here, who would all testify to his being John Simcoe, and as against their evidence our conjectures would literally go for nothing. No doubt you will all receive notices to attend this evening. The policeman took your names and addresses, and will have told the officer in charge of the case the nature of the evidence you will probably give. And please remember that, in giving evidence, you must carefully abstain from saying anything that would lead the jury to perceive that you have any personal feeling against Simcoe, for they would be likely to put down your declaration of inability to recognize the body as a result of a bias against him. Do not let it be seen that there is any personal feeling in the matter at all."

The summonses arrived that evening and the next morning they drove to the coroner's court, Miss Purcell accompanying them. They found Mr. Pettigrew awaiting them at the door.

"There is another case on before ours," he said, "and I should advise you to take a drive for half an hour, and, when you come back, to sit in the carriage until I come for you. The waiting room is a stuffy little place, and is at present full of witnesses in the case now on, and as that case is one of a man killed in a drunken row, they are not of a class whom it is pleasant to mix with."

When they returned, he again came out. "I have just spoken to the coroner and told him who you are, and he has kindly given permission for you to go up to his own room. The case he has now before him may last another half hour."

It was just about that time when Mr. Pettigrew came up and said that their case was about to commence, and that they must go down and take their places in court. This was now almost empty; a few minutes before it had been crowded by those interested in the proceedings, which had terminated in the finding of manslaughter against four of those concerned in the fray. The discovery of a child's body in the canal was far too common an event to afford any attraction, and with the exception of the witnesses, two counsel seated in the front line facing the coroner, and two or three officials, there was no one in court. As soon as the little stir caused by the return of the jury from viewing the body had ceased, the coroner addressed them.

"We shall now, gentlemen of the jury, proceed to the case of the body of the child said to be that of Walter Rivington, which was found under very strange and suspicious circumstances near this end of the canal. You will hear that the child was missing from his home in Hyde Park Gardens on the 23d of October, and for his discovery, as some of you are doubtless aware, large sums have been offered. The day before yesterday the drags were used for the purpose of discovering whether another child, who was lost, and who had been seen going near the bank, had been drowned. In the course of that search this body was brought up. You have already viewed it, gentlemen. Dr. MacIlvaine will tell you that it has certainly been a month in the water, perhaps two or three weeks longer. Unfortunately the state of the body is such that it is impossible now to ascertain the cause of death, or whether it was alive when it fell in, or was placed in, the water. Fortunately some of its clothes still remain on the body, and one of the witnesses, the nurse of the missing boy, will tell you that the marks upon them were worked by herself, and that she can swear to them. Whether any other matters will come before you in reference to the case, which, from the fact that the child was grandson of the late General Mathieson and heir to his property, has attracted much attention, I cannot say. The first witness you will hear is the lock-keeper, who was present at the finding of the body."