The Victorian Mystery Megapack (32 page)

“Mr. Denzil Cantercot, I believe!” said Wimp.

Denzil started. He had not sent up his name, merely describing himself as a gentleman.

“That is my name,” he murmured.

“You were one of the witnesses at the inquest on the body of the late Arthur Constant. I have your evidence there.” He pointed to a file. “Why have you come to give fresh evidence?”

Again Denzil started, flushing in addition this time. “I want money,” he said, almost involuntarily.

“Sit down.” Denzil sat. Wimp stood.

Wimp was young and fresh-colored. He had a Roman nose, and was smartly dressed. He had beaten Grodman by discovering the wife Heaven meant for him. He had a bouncing boy, who stole jam out of the pantry without anyone being the wiser. Wimp did what work he could do at home in a secluded study at the top of the house. Outside his chamber of horrors he was the ordinary husband of commerce. He adored his wife, who thought poorly of his intellect, but highly of his heart. In domestic difficulties Wimp was helpless. He could not even tell whether the servant’s “character” was forged or genuine. Probably he could not level himself to such petty problems. He was like the senior wrangler who has forgotten how to do quadratics, and has to solve equations of the second degree by the calculus.

“How much money do you want?” he asked.

“I do not make bargains,” Denzil replied, his calm come back by this time. “I came to tender you a suggestion. It struck me that you might offer me a fiver for my trouble. Should you do so, I shall not refuse it.”

“You shall not refuse it—if you deserve it.”

“Good. I will come to the point at once. My suggestion concerns—Tom Mortlake.”

Denzil threw out the name as if it were a torpedo. Wimp did not move.

“Tom Mortlake,” went on Denzil, looking disappointed, “had a sweetheart.” He paused impressively.

Wimp said “Yes?”

“Where is that sweetheart now?”

“Where, indeed?”

“You know about her disappearance?”

“You have just informed me of it.”

“Yes, she is gone—without a trace. She went about a fortnight before Mr. Constant’s murder.”

“Murder? How do you know it was a murder?”

“Mr. Grodman says so,” said Denzil, startled again.

“H’m! Isn’t that rather a proof that it was suicide? Well, go on.”

“About a fortnight before the suicide, Jessie Dymond disappeared. So they tell me in Stepney Green, where she lodged and worked.”

“What was she?”

“She was a dressmaker. She had a wonderful talent. Quite fashionable ladies got to know of it. One of her dresses was presented at Court. I think the lady forgot to pay for it; so Jessie’s landlady said.”

“Did she live alone?”

“She had no parents, but the house was respectable.”

“Good-looking, I suppose?”

“As a poet’s dream.”

“As yours, for instance?”

“I am a poet; I dream.”

“You dream you are a poet. Well, well! She was engaged to Mortlake?”

“Oh, yes! They made no secret of it. The engagement was an old one. When he was earning 36s. a week as a compositor they were saving up to buy a home. He worked at Railton and Hockes’, who print the
New Pork Herald
. I used to take my ‘copy’ into the comps’ room, and one day the Father of the Chapel told me all about ‘Mortlake and his young woman.’ Ye gods! How times are changed! Two years ago Mortlake had to struggle with my caligraphy—now he is in with all the nobs, and goes to the ‘at homes’ of the aristocracy.”

“Radical M. P.’s,” murmured Wimp, smiling.

“While I am still barred from the dazzling drawing-rooms, where beauty and intellect foregather. A mere artisan! A manual laborer!” Denzil’s eyes flashed angrily. He rose with excitement. “They say he always was a jabberer in the composing-room, and he has jabbered himself right out of it and into a pretty good thing. He didn’t have much to say about the crimes of capital when he was set up to second the toast of ‘Railton and Hockes’ at the beanfeast.”

“Toast and butter, toast and butter,” said Wimp genially. “I shouldn’t blame a man for serving the two together, Mr. Cantercot.”

Denzil forced a laugh. “Yes; but consistency’s my motto. I like to see the royal soul immaculate, unchanging, immovable by fortune. Anyhow, when better times came for Mortlake the engagement still dragged on. He did not visit her so much. This last autumn he saw very little of her.”

“How do you know?”

“I—I was often in Stepney Green. My business took me past the house of an evening. Sometimes there was no light in her room. That meant she was downstairs gossiping with the landlady.”

“She might have been out with Tom?”

“No, sir; I knew Tom was on the platform somewhere or other. He was working up to all hours organizing the eight hours working movement.”

“A very good reason for relaxing his sweethearting.”

“It was. He never went to Stepney Green on a week night.”

“But you always did.”

“No—not every night.”

“You didn’t go in?”

“Never. She wouldn’t permit my visits. She was a girl of strong character. She always reminded me of Flora Macdonald.”

“Another lady of your acquaintance?”

“A lady I know better than the shadows who surround me; who is more real to me than the women who pester me for the price for apartments. Jessie Dymond, too, was of the race of heroines. Her eyes were clear blue, two wells with Truth at the bottom of each. When I looked into those eyes my own were dazzled. They were the only eyes I could never make dreamy.” He waved his hand as if making a pass with it. “It was she who had the influence over me.”

“You knew her then?”

“Oh, yes. I knew Tom from the old
New Pork Herald
days, and when I first met him with Jessie hanging on his arm he was quite proud to introduce her to a poet. When he got on he tried to shake me off.”

“You should have repaid him what you borrowed.”

“It—it—was only a trifle,” stammered Denzil.

“Yes, but the world turns on trifles,” said the wise Wimp.

“The world is itself a trifle,” said the pensive poet. “The Beautiful alone is deserving of our regard.”

“And when the Beautiful was not gossiping with her landlady, did she gossip with you as you passed the door?”

“Alas, no! She sat in her room reading, and cast a shadow—”

“On your life?”

“No; on the blind.”

“Always one shadow?”

“No, sir. Once or twice, two.”

“Ah, you had been drinking.”

“On my life, not. I have sworn off the treacherous wine-cup.”

“That’s right. Beer is bad for poets. It makes their feet shaky. Whose was the second shadow?”

“A man’s.”

“Naturally. Mortlake’s, perhaps?”

“Impossible. He was still striking eight hours.”

“You found out whose? You didn’t leave it a shadow of doubt?”

“No; I waited till the substance came out.”

“It was Arthur Constant.”

“You are a magician! You—you terrify me. Yes, it was he.”

“Only once or twice, you say?”

“I didn’t keep watch over them.”

“No, no, of course not. You only passed casually. I understand you thoroughly.”

Denzil did not feel comfortable at the assertion.

“What did he go there for?” Wimp went on.

“I don’t know. I’d stake my soul on Jessie’s honor.”

“You might double your stake without risk.”

“Yes, I might! I would! You see her with my eyes.”

“For the moment they are the only ones available. When was the last time you saw the two together?”

“About the middle of November.”

“Mortlake knew nothing of their meetings?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he did. Mr. Constant had probably enlisted her in his social mission work. I knew she was one of the attendants at the big children’s tea in the Great Assembly Hall early in November. He treated her quite like a lady. She was the only attendant who worked with her hands.”

“The others carried the cups on their feet, I suppose?”

“No; how could that be? My meaning is that all the other attendants were real ladies, and Jessie was only an amateur, so to speak. There was no novelty for her in handing kids cups of tea. I daresay she had helped her landlady often enough at that—there’s quite a bushel of brats below stairs. It’s almost as bad as at friend Crowl’s. Jessie was a real brick. But perhaps Tom didn’t know her value. Perhaps he didn’t like Constant to call on her, and it led to a quarrel. Anyhow, she’s disappeared, like the snowfall on the river. There’s not a trace. The landlady, who was such a friend of hers that Jessie used to make up her stuff into dresses for nothing, tells me that she’s dreadfully annoyed at not having been left the slightest clue to her late tenant’s whereabouts.”

“You have been making inquiries on your own account apparently.”

“Only of the landlady. Jessie never even gave her the week’s notice, but paid her in lieu of it, and left immediately. The landlady told me I could have knocked her down with a feather. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there to do it, for I should certainly have knocked her down for not keeping her eyes open better. She says if she had only had the least suspicion beforehand that the minx (she dared to call Jessie a minx) was going, she’d have known where, or her name would have been somebody else’s. And yet she admits that Jessie was looking ill and worried. Stupid old hag!”

“A woman of character,” murmured the detective.

“Didn’t I tell you so?” cried Denzil eagerly. “Another girl would have let out that she was going. But, no! not a word. She plumped down the money and walked out. The landlady ran upstairs. None of Jessie’s things were there. She must have quietly sold them off, or transferred them to the new place. I never in my life met a girl who so thoroughly knew her own mind or had a mind so worth knowing. She always reminded me of the Maid of Saragossa.”

“Indeed! And when did she leave?”

“On the 19th of November.”

“Mortlake of course knows where she is?”

“I can’t say. Last time I was at the house to inquire—it was at the end of November—he hadn’t been seen there for six weeks. He wrote to her, of course, sometimes—the landlady knew his writing.”

Wimp looked Denzil straight in the eyes, and said, “You mean, of course, to accuse Mortlake of the murder of Mr. Constant?”

“N-n-no, not at all,” stammered Denzil, “only you know what Mr. Grodman wrote to the ‘Pell Mell.’ The more we know about Mr. Constant’s life the more we shall know about the manner of his death. I thought my information would be valuable to you, and I brought it.”

“And why didn’t you take it to Mr. Grodman?”

“Because I thought it wouldn’t be valuable to me.”

“You wrote
Criminals I Have Caught
.”

“How—how do you know that?” Wimp was startling him today with a vengeance.

“Your style, my dear Mr. Cantercot. The unique noble style.”

“Yes, I was afraid it would betray me,” said Denzil. “And since you know, I may tell you that Grodman’s a mean curmudgeon. What does he want with all that money and those houses—a man with no sense of the Beautiful? He’d have taken my information, and given me more kicks than ha’pence for it, so to speak.”

“Yes, he is a shrewd man after all. I don’t see anything valuable in your evidence against Mortlake.”

“No!” said Denzil in a disappointed tone, and fearing he was going to be robbed. “Not when Mortlake was already jealous of Mr. Constant, who was a sort of rival organizer, unpaid! A kind of blackleg doing the work cheaper—nay, for nothing.”

“Did Mortlake tell you he was jealous?” said Wimp, a shade of sarcastic contempt piercing through his tones.

“Oh, yes! He said to me, ‘That man will work mischief. I don’t like your kid-glove philanthropists meddling in matters they don’t understand.’”

“Those were his very words?”

“His
ipsissima verba
.”

“Very well. I have your address in my files. Here is a sovereign for you.”

“Only one sovereign! It’s not the least use to me.”

“Very well. It’s of great use to me. I have a wife to keep.”

“I haven’t,” said Denzil with a sickly smile, “so perhaps I can manage on it after all.” He took his hat and the sovereign.

Outside the door he met a rather pretty servant just bringing in some tea to her master. He nearly upset her tray at sight of her. She seemed more amused at the
rencontre
than he.

“Good afternoon, dear,” she said coquettishly. “You might let me have that sovereign. I do so want a new Sunday bonnet.”

Denzil gave her the sovereign, and slammed the hall door viciously when he got to the bottom of the stairs. He seemed to be walking arm-in-arm with the long arm of coincidence. Wimp did not hear the duologue. He was already busy on his evening’s report to headquarters. The next day Denzil had a body-guard wherever he went. It might have gratified his vanity had he known it. But tonight he was yet unattended, so no one noted that he went to 46 Glover Street, after the early Crowl supper. He could not help going. He wanted to get another sovereign. He also itched to taunt Grodman. Not succeeding in the former object, he felt the road open for the second.