One Of Them

“And is it nothing to cost me open shame and ignominy? Is it nothing that, instead of one man, two now have read the dark tracings of my degraded heart? Oh, father, even you might feel for the misery of exposure!”

“But it is not exposure: it is the very opposite; it is, of all things, the most secret and secure. When these letters are burned, what accusation remains against you? The memory of two loose men about town. But who ‘ll believe them, or who cares if they be believed? Bethink you that every one in this world is maligned by somebody, and finds somebody else to credit the scandal. Give me a bishop to blacken to-morrow, and see if I won’t have a public to adopt the libel. No, no, Loo; it’s a small affliction, believe me, that one is able to dispose of with a lucifer-match. Here, girl, give them to me, and never waste another thought on them.”

“No,” said she, resolutely, “I ‘ll not burn them. Whatever I may ask of the world to think of me, I do not mean to play the hypocrite to myself. Lend me your hand, and fetch me a glass of water. I cannot meet these people tonight. You must go over to the inn, and say that I am ill, – call it a headache, – and add that I hope by to-morrow I shall be quite well again.”

“Nay, nay, let them come, dear, and the very exertion will cheer you. You promised that American to sing him one of his nigger melodies, – don’t forget that.”

“Go and tell them that I have been obliged to take to bed, father,” said she, in a hollow voice. “It is no falsehood to call me very ill.”

“My dear Loo,” said he, caressingly, “all this is so unlike yourself. You, that never lacked courage in your life! you, that never knew what it was to be faint-hearted!”

“Well, you see me a coward at last,” said she, in a faint voice. “Go and do as I bade you, father; for this is no whim, believe me.”

The old man muttered out some indistinct grumblings, and left the room on his errand.

She had not been many minutes alone when she heard the sharp sounds of feet on the gravel, and could mark the voices of persons speaking together with rapidity. One she quickly recognized as her father’s, the other she soon knew to be Trover’s. The last words he uttered as he reached the door were, “Arrested at once!”

“Who is to be arrested at once?” cried she, rushing wildly to the door.

“We, if we are caught!” said Holmes. “There’s no time for explanation now. Get your traps together, and let us be off in quick time.”

“It is good counsel he gives you,” said Trover. “The game is up, and nothing but flight can save us. The great question is, which way to go.”

She pressed her hands to her temples for a moment, and then, as if recalled, by the peril, to her old activity of thought and action, said, —

“Let Johann fetch his cousin quickly; they both row well, and the boat is ready at the foot of the garden. We can reach Rorschach in a couple of hours, and make our way over to St. Gall.”

“And then?” asked Trover, peevishly.

“We are, at least, in a mountain region, where there are neither railroads nor telegraphs.”

“She is right. Her plan is a good one, Trover,” broke in Holmes. “Go fetch what things you mean to take with you, and come back at once. We shall be ready by that time.”

“If there be danger, why go back at all?” said she. “Remember, I know nothing of the perils that you speak of, nor do I ask to know till we are on the road out of them. But stay here, and help us to get our pack made.”

“Now you are yourself again! now I know you, Loo,” said Holmes, in a tone of triumph.

In less than half an hoar after they were skimming across the Lake of Constance as fast as a light skiff and strong arms could bear them. The night was still and calm, though dark, and the water without a ripple.

For some time after they left the shore scarcely a word was spoken amongst them. At last Holmes whispered something in his daughter’s ear, and she rejoined aloud, —

“Yes, it is time to tell me now; for, though I have submitted myself to your judgment in this hasty flight, I am not quite sure the peril was as imminent as you believed it What did you mean by talking of an arrest? Who could arrest us? And for what?”

“You shall hear,” said Trover; “and perhaps, when you have heard, you ‘ll agree that I was not exaggerating our danger.”

Not wishing to impose on our reader the minute details into which he entered, and the narrative of which lasted almost till they reached the middle of the lake, we shall give in a few words the substance of his story. While dressing for dinner at the inn, he saw a carriage with four posters arrive, and, in a very few minutes after, heard a loud voice inquiring for Mr. Harvey Winthrop. Suddenly struck by the strangeness of such a demand, he hastened to gain a small room adjoining Winthrop’s, and from which a door communicated, by standing close to which he could overhear all that passed.

He had but reached the room and locked the door, when he heard the sounds of a hearty welcome and recognition exchanged within. The stranger spoke with an American accent, and very soon placed the question of his nationality beyond a doubt.

“You would not believe,” said he, “that I have been in pursuit of you for a matter of more than three thousand miles. I went down to Norfolk and to St Louis, and was in full chase into the Far West, when I found I was on the wrong tack; so I ‘wore ship’ and came over to Europe.” After satisfying, in some degree, the astonishment this declaration excited, he went on to tell how he, through a chance acquaintance at first, and afterwards a close friendship with the Laytons, came to the knowledge of the story of the Jersey murder, and the bequest of the dying man on his daughter’s behalf, his interest being all the more strongly engaged because every one of the localities was familiar to him, and his own brother a tenant on the very land. All the arts he had deployed to trace out the girl’s claim, and all the efforts, with the aid of the Laytons, he had made to find out Winthrop himself, he patiently recounted, mentioning his accidental companionship with Trover, and the furtive mode in which that man had escaped him. It was, however, by that very flight Trevor confirmed the suspicion he had attached to him, and so the stranger continued to show that from the hour of his escape they had never “lost the track.” How they had crossed the Atlantic he next recorded, – all their days spent in discussing the one theme; no other incident or event ever occupying a moment’s attention. “We were certain of two things,” said he: “there was a deep snare, and that girl was its victim.” He confessed that if to himself the inquiry possessed a deep interest, with old Layton it had become a passion.

“At last,” continued Trover, “he began to confess that their hopes fell, and each day’s discomfiture served to chill the ardor that had sustained them, when a strange and most unlooked-for light broke in upon them by the discovery of a few lines of a note written by you to Dr. Layton himself years before, and, being produced, was at once recognized as the handwriting of Mrs. Penthony Morris.”

“Written by me! How could I have written to him? I never heard of him,” broke she in.

“Yes, he was the doctor who attended Hawke in his last illness, and it appeared you wrote to beg he would cut off a lock of hair for you, and bring it to you.”

“I remember that,” said she, in a hollow voice, “though I never remembered his name was Layton. And he has this note still?”

“You shall hear. No sooner had his son – ”

“You cannot mean Alfred Layton?”

“Yes; the same. No sooner had he declared that he knew the hand, than they immediately traced you in Mrs. Penthony Morris, and knowing that Stocmar had become the girl’s guardian, they lost no time in finding him out. I was too much flurried and terrified at this moment to collect clearly what followed, but I gathered that the elder Layton held over him some threat which, if pushed to execution, might ruin him. By means of this menace, they made Stocmar confess everything. He told who Clara was, how he had gained possession of her, under what name she went, and where she was then living. Through some influence which I cannot trace, they interested a secretary of state in their case, and started for the Continent with strong letters from the English authorities, and a detective officer specially engaged to communicate with the foreign officials, and permit, when the proofs might justify, of an arrest.”

“How much do they know, then?” asked she, calmly.

“They know everything. They know of the forged will, the false certificate of death, and Winthrop has confirmed the knowledge. Fortunately, I have secured the more important document I hastened to his room while they were yet talking, opened his desk, and carried away the will. As to the certificate, the Laytons and the detective had set off for Meisner the moment after reaching Bregenz, to establish its forged character.”

“Who cares for that?” said she, carelessly. “It is a trifling offence. Where is the other, – the will?”

“I have it here,” said he, pointing to his breast-pocket

“Let us make a bonfire, then,” said she, “for I, too, have some inconvenient records to get rid of. I thought of keeping them as memories, but I suspect I shall need no reminders.”

While Trover tore the forged will in pieces, she did the like by the letters, and, a match being applied to the fragments, the flames rose up, and in a few seconds the blackened remnants were carried away by the winds, and lost.

“So, then, Mr. Trover,” said she, at length, “Norfolk Island has been defrauded of your society for this time. By the way, papa, is not this Dr. Layton your friend as well as mine?”

“Yes, Loo, he is the man of ozone and vulcanized zinc, and I don’t know what else. I hoped he had died ere this.”

“No, papa, they don’t die. If you remark, you ‘ll see that the people whose mission it is to torment are wonderfully long-lived, and if I were an assurance agent, I ‘d take far more account of men’s tempers than their gout tendencies and dropsies. Was there any allusion to papa, Mr. Trover?”

“Yes; old Layton seems to have a warrant, or something of the kind, against him, on a grave charge, but I had no mind to hear what.”

“So that, I suppose,” said she, laughing, “I am the only ‘innocent’ in the company; for you know, Mr. Trover, that I forged nothing, falsified nothing; I was betrayed, by my natural simplicity of character, into believing that a fortune was left me. I never dreamed that Mr. Trover was a villain.”

“I don’t know how you take it so easily. We have escaped transportation, it is true, but we have not escaped public shame and exposure,” said Trover, peevishly.

“She’s right, though, Trover, – she’s right. One never gets in the true frame of mind to meet difficulties till one is able to laugh a little at them.”

“Not to mention,” added she, “that there is a ludicrous side in all troubles. I wonder how poor dear Mr. Winthrop bears his disappointment, worse than mine, in so far that he has travelled three thousand miles to attain it.”

“Oh, he professes to be charmed. I heard him say, ‘Well, Quackinboss, I ‘m better pleased to know that the poor girl is alive than to have a million of dollars left me.

“You don’t say the stranger was Quackinboss, the dear Yankee we were all so fond of long ago at Marlia, and whom I never could make in love with me, though I did my very best? Oh, father, is it not provoking to think of all the old friends we are running away from? Colonel Quackinboss, Dr. Layton, and Alfred! every one of them so linked to us by one tender thought or another. What a charming little dinner we might have had to-morrow; the old doctor would have taken me in, whispering a little doleful word, as we went, about the Hawke’s Nest, and long ago; and you and he would have had your scientific talk afterwards!”

How old Holmes laughed at the pleasant conceit! It was really refreshing to see that good old man so cheery and light of heart; the very boat shook with his jollity.

“Listen! – do listen!” said Trover, in an accent of terror. “I’m certain I heard the sound of oars following us.”

“Stop rowing for a moment,” said she to the boatmen; and as the swift skiff glided noiselessly along, she bent down her head to listen. “Yes,” said she, in a low, quiet voice, “Trover is right; there is a boat in pursuit, and they, too, have ceased pulling now, to trace us. Ha! there they go again, and for Lindau too; they have heard, perhaps, the stroke of oars in that direction.”

“Let our fellows pull manfully, then, and we are safe,” cried Trover, eagerly.

“No, no,” said she, in the same calm, collected tone. “The moon has set, and there will be perfect darkness till the day breaks, full two hours off. We must be still, so long as they are within hearing of us. I know well, Trover, what a tax this imposes on your courage, but it can’t be helped.”

“Just so, Trover,” chimed in Holmes. “She commands here, and there must be no mutiny.”

The wretched man groaned heavily, but uttered no word of reply.

“I wish that great chemical friend of yours, papa, – the wonderful Dr. Layton, – had turned his marvellous mind to the invention of invisible fire. I am dying for a cigar now, and I am afraid to light one.”

“Don’t think of it, for mercy’s sake!” broke in Trover.

“Pray calm yourself, I have not the slightest fancy for being overtaken by this interesting party, nor do I think papa has either, – not that our meeting could have any consequence beyond mere unpleasantness. If they should come up with us, I am as ready to denounce the deceitful Mr. Trover as any of them.”

“This is very poor jesting, I must say,” muttered he, angrily.

“You’ll find it, perhaps, a very serious earnest if we’re caught.”

“Come, come, Loo, forgive him; he certainly meant all for the best. I ‘m sure you did, Trover,” said old Holmes, with the blandest of voices.

“Why, what on earth do you mean?” cried he. “You are just as deep in the plot as I am. But for you, how should I have known about Hawke’s having any property in America, or that he had any heir to it?”

“I am not naturally suspicious, Trover,” said she, with mock gravity, “but I declare I begin to believe you are a bad man, – a very bad man!”

“I hope and trust not, Loo,” said old Holmes, fervently; “I really hope not.”

“It is no common baseness that seeks for its victim the widow and the fatherless. Please to put that rug under my feet, Trover. There are barristers would give their eye-tooth for such an opening for invective. I have one fat friend in my eye would take the brief for mere pleasure of blackguarding you. You know whom I mean, papa.”

“You may push a joke too far, Mrs. Morris, – or Mrs. Hawke, rather,” said Trover, rudely, “for I don’t know by which name you will be pleased to be known in future.”

“I am thinking very seriously of taking a new one, Trover, and the gentleman who is to share it with me will probably answer all your inquiries on that and every other subject. I trust, too, that he will meet us to-morrow.”

“Well, if I were Trover, I’d not pester him with questions,” said Holmes, laughingly.

“Don’t you think they might take to their oars again, now?” asked Trover, in a very beseeching tone.

“Poor Mr. Trover!” said she, with a little laugh. “It is really very hard on him! I have a notion that this night’s pleasuring on the Lake of Constance will be one of the least grateful of his recollections.” Then turning to the boatmen, she bade them “give way” with a will, and pull their best for Rorschach.

From this time out nothing was said aloud, but Holmes and his daughter spoke eagerly together in whispers, while Trover sat apart, his head turned towards where the shadow of large mountains indicated the shore of the lake.

“A’n’t you happy now, Mr. Trover?” said she, at length, as the boat glided into a little cove, where a number of fishing-craft lay at anchor. “A’n’t you happy?”

Either smarting under what he felt the sarcasm of her question, or too deeply immersed in his own thoughts, he made no reply whatever, but as the boat grated on the shingly beach he sprang out and gained the land. In another minute the boatmen had drawn the skiff high and dry, on the sand, and assisted the others to disembark.

“How forgetful you are of all gallant attentions!” said she, as Trover stood looking on, and never offering any assistance whatever. “Have you got any silver in your purse, papa?”

“I can’t see what these pieces are,” said Holmes, trying to peer through the darkness.

“Pay these people, Trover,” said she, “and be liberal with them. Remember from what fate they have saved you.” And as she spoke she handed him her purse. “We’ll saunter slowly up to the village, and you can follow us.”

Trover called the men around him, and proceeded to settle their fare, while Holmes and his daughter proceeded at an easy pace inland.

“How much was there in your purse, Loo?” asked Holmes.

“Something under twenty Napoleons, papa; but it will be quite enough.”

“Enough for what, dear?”

“Enough to tempt poor Mr. Trover. We shall never see more of him.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I am certain of it. He was thinking of nothing else than how to make his escape all the time we were crossing the lake, and I, too, had no more pressing anxiety than how to get rid of him. Had I offered him a certain sum, we should have had him for a pensioner as long as he lived, but by making him steal the money I force him to be his own security that he ‘ll never come back again. It was for this that I persisted in acting on his fears in the boat; the more wretched we made him the cheaper he became, and when he heaved that last heavy sigh, I took ten Napoleons off his price.”

Holmes had to stop walking, and hold his hands to his sides with laughter. The device seemed to him about the best practical joke he had ever heard of. Then ceasing suddenly, he said, —

“But what if he were to go back to the others, Loo, and turn approver against us?”

“We are safe enough on that score. He has nothing to tell them that they do not know already. They have got to the bottom of all the mystery, and they don’t want him.”

“Still it seems to me, Loo, that it might have been safer to keep him along with us, – under our eye, as it were.”

“Not at all, papa. It is as in a shipwreck, where the plank that will save two will sink with three. The stratagem that will rescue us would be probably marred by him, and, besides, he’ll provide for his own safety better than we should.”

Thus talking, they entered the little village, where, although not yet daybreak, a small café was open, – one of those humble refreshment-houses frequented by peasants on their way to their daily toil.

“Let us breakfast here,” said she, “while they are getting ready some light carriage to carry us on to St. Grail. I have an old friend there, the prior of the monastery, who used to be very desirous to convert me long ago. I intend to give him a week or ten days’ trial now, papa; and he may also, if he feel so disposed, experiment upon you.”

It was in this easy chit-chat they sat down to their coffee in the little inn at Rorschach. They were soon, however, on the road again, sealed in a little country carriage drawn by a stout mountain pony.

“Strange enough all this adventure seems,” said she, as they ascended the steep mountain on foot, to relieve the weary beast. “Sometimes it appears all like a dream to me, and now, when I look over the lake there, and see the distant spires of Bregenz yonder, I begin to believe that there is reality in it, and that we are acting in a true drama.”

Holmes paid but little attention to her words, wrapped up as he was in some details he was reading in a newspaper he had carried away from the Café.

“What have you found to interest you so much there, papa?” asked she, at last.

Still he made no reply, but read on.

“It can scarcely be that you are grown a politician again,” continued she, laughingly, “and pretend to care for Austria or for Italy.”

“This is all about Paten,” said he, eagerly. “There’s the whole account of it.”

“Account of what?” cried she, trying to snatch the paper from him.

“Of his death.”

“His death! Is he dead? Is Paten dead?” She had to clutch his arm as she spoke to support herself, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that she kept her feet. “How was it? Tell me how he came by his death. Was it O’Shea?”

“No, he was killed. The man who did it has given himself up, alleging that it was in an altercation between them; a pistol, aimed at his own breast, discharged its contents in Paten’s.”

She tore the paper from his hand, and, tottering over to a bank on the roadside, bent down to read it. Holmes continued to talk over the event and all the details, but she did not hear what he said. She had but senses for the lines she was perusing.

“I thought at first it was O’Shea in some disguise. But it cannot be; for see, they remark here that this man has been observed loitering about Baden ever since Paten arrived. Oh, here’s the mystery,” cried she. “His name is Collier.”

“That was an old debt between them,” said Holmes.

“I hope there will be no discovery as to Paten’s real name. It would so certainly revive the old scandal.”

“We can scarcely expect such good luck as that, Loo. There is but one thing to do, dear; we must put the sea between us and our calumniators.”

“How did O’Shea come by the letters if he had no hand in it?”

“Perhaps he had; perhaps it was a concerted thing; perhaps he bought up the letters from Collier afterwards. Is it of the least consequence to us how he got them?”

“Yes, Collier might have read them,” said she, in a hollow voice; and as Holmes, startled by the tones, turned round, he saw that she had a sickening faintness over her, and that she trembled violently.

“Where’s your old courage, Loo?” said he, cheeringly. “Paten is gone, Collier has a good chance of being sent after him, and here we are, almost the only actors left of the whole drama.”

“That’s true, papa, very true; and as we shall have to play in the afterpiece, the sooner we get the tragedy out of our heads the better.”

They remounted the carriage, and went on their way. There, where the beech-trees bend across the road, it is there they have just disappeared! The brisk tramp of the pony can be heard even yet; it grows fainter and fainter, and only the light train of dust now marks their passage. They are gone; and we are to see them no more!

CHAPTER VIII. CONSULTATION

Every host has had some experience of the fact that there are guests of whom he takes leave at the drawing-room door, and others who require that he should accompany them to the very frontier of his kingdom, and only part with as they step into their carriage. The characters of a story represent each of these classes. Some make their exit quietly, unobtrusively; they slip away with a little gesture of the hand, or a mere look to say adieu. Others arise with a pretentious dignity from their places, and, in the ruffle of their voluminous plumage, seem to say, “When we spread out our wings for flight, the small birds may flutter away to their nests.” It is needless that we should tell our readers that we have reached that critical moment. The dull roll of carriages to the door, and the clank of the let-down steps tell that the hour of departure has arrived, and that the entertainer will very soon be left all alone, without “One of Them.”

As in the real world, no greater solecism can be committed than to beg the uprising guest to reseat himself, nor is there any measure more certain of disastrous failure; so in fiction, when there is a move in the company, the sooner they all go the better.

While I am painfully impressed with this fact, – while I know and feel that my last words must be very like the leave-takings of that tiresome button-holder who, great-coated and muffled himself, will yet like to detain you in the cold current of a doorway, – I am yet sensible of the deference due to those who have indulgently accompanied me through my story, and would desire to leave no questions unanswered with regard to those who have figured before him.

Mr. Trover, having overheard the dialogue which had such an intimate bearing on his own fortunes, lost no time, as we have seen, in quitting the hotel at Bregenz; and although Winthrop expected to see him at dinner, he was not surprised to hear that he had left a message to say he had gone over to the cottage to dine with Mrs. Hawke. It was with an evident sense of relief that the honest American learned this fact. There was something too repulsive to his nature in the thought of sitting down at the same table in apparent good fellowship with the man whom he knew to be a villain, and whose villany a very few hours would expose to the world; but what was to be done? Quackinboss had insisted on the point; he had made him give a solemn pledge to make no change in his manner towards Trover till such tine as the Laytons had returned with full and incontestable proofs of his guilt.