The Ivory Gate, a new edition

CHAPTER XXX

THE DAY AFTER THE GHOST

When Mr. Dering arrived at his office next morning he observed that his table had not been arranged for him. Imagine the surprise of the housewife should she come down to breakfast and find the ham and the toast and the tea placed upon the table without the decent cloth! With such eyes did Mr. Dering gaze upon the pile of yesterday's letters lying upon his blotting-pad, the pens in disorder, the papers heaped about anyhow, the dust of yesterday everywhere. Such a thing had never happened before in his whole experience of fifty-five years. He touched his bell sharply.

'Why,' he asked, hanging up his coat without turning round, 'why is not my table put in order?' He turned and saw his clerk standing at the open door. – 'Good Heavens! Checkley, what is the matter?'

For the ancient servitor stood with drooping head and melancholy face and bent shoulders. His hands hung down in the attitude of one who waits to serve. But he did not serve. He stood still and he made no reply.

He understood now. Since the apparition of South Square he had had time to reflect. He now understood the whole business from the beginning to the end. One hand there was, and only one, concerned with the case. Now he understood the meaning of the frequent fits of abstraction, the long silences, this strange forgetfulness which made his master mix up days and hours, and caused him to wonder what he had done and where he had been on this and that evening. And somebody else knew. The girl knew. She had told her lover. She had told her brother. That was why the new Partner laughed and defied them. It was on his charge that young Arundel had been forced to leave the country. It was he who declared that he had seen him place the stolen notes in the safe. It was he who had charged young Austin and whispered suspicions into the mind of Sir Samuel. Now the truth would come out, and they would all turn upon him, and his master would have to be told. Who would tell him? How could they tell him? Yet he must be told. And what would be done to the jealous servant? And how could the old lawyer, with such a knowledge about himself, continue to work at his office? All was finished. He would be sent about his business. His master would go home and stay there – with an attendant. How could he continue to live without his work to do? What would he do all day? With whom would he talk? Everything finished and done with. Everything —

He stood, therefore, stricken dumb, humble, waiting for reproof.

'Are you ill, Checkley? asked Mr. Dering. 'You look ill. What is the matter?

'I am not ill,' he replied in a hollow voice, with a dismal shake of the head. 'I am not exactly ill. Yes, I am ill. I tried to put your table in order for you this morning, but I couldn't, I really couldn't. I feel as if I couldn't never do anything for you – never again. After sixty years' service, it's hard to feel like that.'

He moved to the table and began mechanically laying the papers straight.

'No one has touched your table but me for sixty years. It's hard to think that another hand will do this for you – and do it quite as well, you'll think. That's what we get for faithful service.' He put the papers all wrong, because his old eyes were dimmed with unaccustomed moisture. Checkley had long since ceased to weep over the sorrows of others, even in the most moving situations, when, for instance, he himself carried off the sticks instead of the rent. But no man is so old that he cannot weep over his own misfortunes. Checkley's eye was therefore dimmed with the tear of Compassion, which is the sister of Charity.

'I do not understand you this morning, Checkley. Have you had any unpleasantness with Mr. Austin – with any of the people?'

'No – no. Only that I had better go before I am turned out. That's all. That's all' – he repeated the words in despair. 'Nothing but that.'

'Who is going to turn you out? What do you mean, Checkley? What the devil do you mean by going on like this? Am I not master here? Who can turn you out?'

'You can, sir, and you will – and I'd rather, if you'll excuse the liberty, go out of my own accord. I'm a small man – only a very small man – but, thank God! I've got enough to give me a crust of bread and cheese to live upon.'

'I tell you what, Checkley: you had better go home and lie down and rest a little. You are upset. Now, at our age we can't afford to be upset. Go home, and be easy. Old friends don't part quite so easily as you think.' Mr. Dering spoke kindly and gently. One must be patient with so old a servant.

Checkley sobbed and choked. Like a child he sobbed. Like a child of four, Checkley choked and sniffed. 'You don't understand,' he said. 'Oh, no – you can't understand. It's what I saw last night.'

'This is very wonderful. What did you see? A ghost?'

'Worse than a ghost – who cares for a ghost? Ghosts can't turn a man out of his place and bring him to be a laughingstock. No – no. It was a man that I saw, not a ghost.'

'If you can find it possible to talk reasonably' – Mr. Dering took his chair and tore open an envelope – 'when you can find it possible to talk reasonably, I will listen. Meantime, I really think that you had better go home and lie down for an hour or two. Your nerves are shaken; you hardly know what you are saying.'

'I was in Gray's Inn yesterday evening. By accident, at eight.' He spoke in gasps, watching his master curiously. 'By accident – not spying. No – by accident. On my way to my club – at the Salutation. Walking through South Square. Not thinking of anything. Looking about me – careless-like.'

'South Square, Gray's Inn. That is the place where the man Edmund Gray lives: the man we want to find and cannot find.'

'Oh! Lord! Lord!' exclaimed the clerk. 'Is it possible?' He lifted his hand and raised his eyes to heaven and groaned. Then he resumed his narrative.

'Coming through the passage, I looked up to the windows of No. 22 – Mr. Edmund Gray's Chambers, you know.'

'I believe so.' Mr. Dering's face betrayed no emotion at all. 'Go on; I am told so.'

'In the window I saw Mr. Edmund Gray himself – himself.'

'Curious. You have seen him – but why not?'

'The man we've all been so anxious to find. The man who endorsed the cheque and wrote the letters and got the papers – there he was!'

'Question of identity. How did you know him, since you had never seen him before?'

This question Checkley shirked.

'He came down-stairs five minutes afterwards, while I was still looking up at the windows. Came down-stairs, and walked out of the Square – made as if he was going out by way of Raymond's Buildings – much as if he might be going to Bedford Row.'

'These details are unimportant. Again – how did you know him?'

'I asked the Policeman who the gentleman was. He said it was Mr. Edmund Gray. I asked the newspaper boy at the Holborn entrance. He said it was Mr. Edmund Gray, and that everybody knew him.'

'So everybody knows him. Well, Checkley, I see nothing so very remarkable about your seeing a man so well known in the Inn. It adds nothing to our knowledge. That he exists, we know already. What share, if any, he has had in this case of ours remains still a mystery. Unless, that is, you have found out something else.'

Checkley gazed upon his master with a kind of stupor. 'No – no,' he murmured. 'I can't.'

'What did you do, when you found out that it was the man?'

'Nothing.'

'You did nothing. Well – under the circumstances I don't know what you could have done.'

'And he walked away.'

'Oh! He walked away. Very important indeed. – But, Checkley, this story does not in the least account for your strange agitation this morning. Have you anything more to tell me? I see that you have, but you seem to experience more than usual difficulty in getting it out.'

The clerk hesitated. 'Do you,' he asked at last – 'do you – happen – to know Gray's Inn?'

'I daresay I have been there – years ago. Why?'

'Oh! you haven't been there lately, have you?'

'Not lately – not for forty years, or some such inconsiderable period. Why?'

'I thought you might yourself have met Mr. Edmund Gray – been to his Chambers, perhaps.'

Mr. Dering sat upright and laid his hand upon his letters. 'Checkley,' he said, 'I am always willing to make allowance for people in mental distress, but I think I have made allowance enough. Come to the point. Have you lost any money?'

'No – no; not so bad as that – but bad enough. No, I couldn't afford to lose money. I haven't got enough to spare any. But I got a shock – a kind of stroke – partly because of the man I met, and partly because of the person with him.'

'Oh! who was that? Are we arriving at something?'

'I hadn't told you that. The person who was sitting at the open window with him, who came down-stairs with him, and walked out of the Square with him, was no other than your own ward, Miss Elsie Arundel herself!'

'Oh! why not?' asked Mr. Dering carelessly. 'She told me yesterday, was it? that she knows him.'

'If it had been anyone else she was with,' he replied, mixing up his grammar – 'if it had been anyone else who was with her – I wouldn't have been surprised! But to see the two together. That gave me a turn that I can't get over.'

'Still – why not? Miss Elsie Arundel has already told me that she is acquainted with Mr. Edmund Gray.'

'What? She has told you – she has actually told you? Oh! what has she told you? Oh! Lord! Lord! What is a man to say or to do? She told you – what is best to do?' He wrung his hands in his distress and his perplexity.

'I cannot understand, Checkley,' said Mr. Dering with emphasis, 'the reason for this display of excitement. Why should she not tell me or anybody else? Do you suppose that my ward is doing anything clandestine? She has told me that she is acquainted with this man. She asserts further – that we have made a great mistake about him. What she means, I cannot understand. She says, in fact, that this gentleman is a perfectly honourable person. It is possible that he has deceived her. It is also possible that the name of Edmund Gray has been wrongfully used in the papers which belong to the case. Certainly it was an Edmund Gray who endorsed the first cheque; and an Edmund Gray having an address at 22 South Square whose name is connected with the later business. Well, we shall see presently. – When do you take out the warrant for the arrest of this man? By the way, Elsie Arundel implores me not to allow that step. When are you going to do it?'

'This morning, I was going to do it. Everything is ready – but – '

'But what?'

'I can't do it now.'

'The man is clean gone off his head.'

'Leave it till to-morrow – only to-morrow, or Monday. Before then, something is certain to turn up. Oh! certain sure it is. Something must turn up.'

'There is certainly something that you are keeping behind, Checkley. Well – wait till Monday. To-day is Saturday. He can't do very much mischief between this and Monday. – That's enough about Edmund Gray. Now, here is another point, to which I want a direct answer from you. My brother asserts, I believe on your authority, that Athelstan Arundel has been living in a low and profligate manner in some London suburb, and that he was in rags and poverty early this year. What is your authority for this?'

'Why, I heard him confess – or not deny – that he'd been living in Camberwell in bad company. It was at the Salutation I heard it. He didn't see me. I'd got my head behind a paper. He never denied it.'

'Humph! – And about the rags?'

'I don't know anything about the rags.'

'Very likely there is as much foundation for the one charge as for the other. Three or four years ago, he was in America, to my knowledge. He wrote to me from America. I now learn, on the authority of his sister, that he only came back a month ago, and that he has been and is still in the service of an American paper. What have you got to say to that?'

'Nothing. I don't feel as if I could say anything. It's all turned upsy down. That won't do, I suppose, no more than the rest.'

'But, my friend, if that is true, your theory of conspiracy and confederacy, which you took so much pains to build up, falls to the ground as far as Athelstan is concerned.'

'Yes. – Oh! I haven't nothing to say.' It was a mark of the trouble which possessed him that his language reverted to that of his young days, before he had learned the art of correct speech from the copying of legal documents. He preserved the same attitude with bent head and hanging hands, a sad and pitiful object.

'Since Athelstan was not in London during the months of March and April, he could have had no hand in the later forgeries. And it is acknowledged that the same hand was concerned both in the earlier and the later business.'

'Yes – yes – the same hand. Oh! yes – the same hand,' he repeated with pathos unintelligible to his master. 'The same hand – the same hand; yes – yes – the same hand – that's the devil of it – same hand done it all.'

'Then what becomes of your charge against my young Partner? You were extremely fierce about it. So was my brother. You had no proofs – nor had he. If the same hand was in both forgeries, it could not have been the hand of George Austin. What do you say to that?'

'Nothing. I'm never going' – still standing hands hanging – 'to say anything again as long as I live.'

'But you were very fierce about it, Checkley. You must either find more proofs or withdraw your accusation.'

'Oh! if that's all, I withdraw – I withdraw everything.'

'Why did you bring that charge then, Checkley? You've been making yourself very busy over the character of my Partner. You have permitted yourself to say things in the office before the clerks about him. If it turns out that he has had nothing to do with the business, you will be in a very serious position.'

'I withdraw – I withdraw everything,' the old clerk replied, but not meekly. He was prepared to withdraw, but only because he was forced.

'Remember, too, that it was you who brought the charge against young Arundel.'

'I withdraw – I withdraw everything.'

'You went so far as to remember – the other day – having seen him replace the notes in the safe. What do you say to that?'

'I withdraw.'

'But it was a direct statement – the testimony of an eyewitness. Was it true or not? – I don't know you this morning, Checkley. First, you appear shaking and trembling: then you tell me things which seem in no way to warrant so much agitation. Next, you withdraw an accusation which ought never to have been made except with the strongest proof. And now you wish to withdraw an alleged fact.'

Checkley shook his head helplessly.

'I acknowledge that the business remains as mysterious as before. Nothing has been found out. But there remains an evident and savage animosity on your part towards two young gentlemen in succession. Why? What have they done to you?'

Checkley made reply in bold words, but still standing with hanging hands: 'I withdraw the animosity. I withdraw everything. As for young Arundel, he was a supercilious beast. We were dirt beneath his feet. The whole earth belonged to him. He used to imitate my ways of speaking, and he used to make the clerks laugh at me. I hated him then. I hate him still. It was fun to him that an old man, nigh seventy, with no education, shouldn't speak like a young gentleman of Oxford and Cambridge College. He used to stick his hat on the back of his head as if it was a crown, and he'd slam the door after him as if he was a Partner. I hated him. I was never so glad as when he ran away in a rage. He was coming between you and me, too. – Oh! I saw it. Cunning he was. Laying his lines for to come between you and me.'

'Why – you were jealous, Checkley.'

'I was glad when he ran away. And I always thought he'd done it, too. As for seeing him put the cheque back in the safe, I perceive now that I never did see him do it. Yet I seemed to think at the time that I'd remembered seeing him do a kind of a sort of a something like it. I now perceive that I was wrong. He never done it. He hadn't the wits to contrive it. That sort is never half sharp. Too fine gentleman for such a trick. – Oh! I know what you are going to say next. How about the second young fellow? I hate him too. I hate him because he's the same supercilious beast as the other, and because he's been able to get round you. He's carneyed you – no fool like an old fool – and flattered you – till you've made him a Partner. I've worked for you heart and soul for sixty years and more, and this boy comes in and cuts me out in a twelvemonth.'

'Well! but Checkley – hang it! – I couldn't make you a Partner.'

'You didn't want no Partners. You could do your work, and I could do mine and yours too, even if you did want to go asleep of an afternoon.'

'This is grave, however. You hated Mr. Austin, and therefore you bring against him this foul charge. This is very grave, Checkley.'

'No – I thought he was guilty. I did, indeed. Everything pointed that way. And I don't understand about young Arundel, because he came into the Salutation with the Cambridge gentleman who gets drunk there every night, and he said that he lived at Camberwell for eight years with bad company as I wouldn't name to you, sir. I thought he was guilty. I did, indeed.'

'And now?'

'Oh! now it is all over. Everything's upsy down. Nobody's guilty. I know now that he hasn't had anything to do with it. He's a young man of very slow intelligence and inferior parts. He couldn't have had anything to do with it. We ought to have known that.'

'Well – but who has done it, after all?'

'That's it.' Checkley was so troubled that he dropped into a chair in the presence of his master. 'That's it. Who's done it? Don't you know who done it? No – I see you don't so much as suspect. No more don't I. Else – what to do – what to say – Lord only knows!' He turned and ran – he scuttled out of the room, banging the door behind him.

'He's mad,' said Mr. Dering. 'Poor man! Age makes some men forgetful, but it has driven Checkley mad.'

CHAPTER XXXI

THE THREE ACCOMPLICES

On that same evening the three accomplices – probably on the proceeds of their iniquities – were dining together at the Savoy. After dinner they sat on the verandah overlooking the river and the embankment. 'Tis sweet, what time the evening shades prevail, while one is still in the stage of physical comfort and mental peace attendant upon an artistic little banquet, to view from the serene heights of a balcony at that hotel the unquiet figures of those who flit backwards and forwards below. They – alas! – have not dined so well, or they could not walk so fast, or drag their limbs so hopelessly, or lean over the wall so sadly.

Elsie leaned her head upon her hands, looking down upon this scene, though not quite with these thoughts. Young ladies who are quite happy, and are going to be married next week, do not make these comparisons. Happiness is selfish. When one is quite happy, everybody else seems quite happy too – even Lazarus and the leper. We must never be happy if we do not wish to be selfish.