Dorothy's Double Volume I Part 6

'"That alters the case altogether," he said quickly; "there may be some other woman who wants to marry the man, or there may be some one who may consider that she will be left in the lurch if this marriage comes off; and either of these might endeavour to make a scandal, or to get up a quarrel that might cause the engagement to be broken off. If you had mentioned about the engagement before, that is the first idea that would have occurred to me. There are very few things a jealous woman will stick at. The case looks more hopeful now, and when I come to know the man's name, I ought very soon to be able to put my finger on the writer of the letter, if it is a woman. At any rate, if there is no other clue, that is the one I should take up first."

'That brought our interview to an end. I paid him a couple of guineas for his advice, and he fully understood that he might, or might not, be called in on some future occasion.'

'It is a confounded nuisance,' Mr. Hawtrey said thoughtfully; 'is the fellow really trustworthy, Danvers?'

'He can be trusted to keep the matter to himself,' the barrister said; 'these men are engaged constantly in delicate business, such as getting up divorce suits, and it would ruin their business altogether were they to allow a word to escape them as to the matter in hand. At any rate, I know enough about Slippen to be able to answer for his discretion.

However, I hope that there will be no occasion to move in the matter at all. Of course you will not do so unless there is a repet.i.tion of the annoyance?'

'I have little hope there will not be, Danvers,' Mr. Hawtrey groaned; 'whoever wrote that letter is certain to follow it up. Whatever effect it was intended to produce he could hardly count on its being effected by a single attack.'

'I own that I am afraid so, too,' Danvers agreed. 'You will, I hope, let me know if it is so.'

'That you may be sure. I am afraid that now you have taken the trouble to aid me in the matter, you will have to go through with it altogether.

This is utterly out of my line; anything connected with poaching or stealing fruit, or drunken a.s.saults, my experience as a county magistrate enables me to treat with something like confidence, but here I am altogether at sea and your experience as a barrister is of the greatest benefit to me. What time do you get to your chambers in the morning?'

'I am almost always there by half-past nine, and between that hour and half past ten you are almost certain to find me; but if you come later my clerk will be able to find me in the courts, and unless I am engaged in a case being tried I can always come out to you.'

'I have been wanting to see you, father,' Miss Hawtrey said, as soon as the latter returned home, 'I expect Lord Halliburn will be here soon after lunch, and cousin Mary and I are going with him to the Botanical.

Had I better tell him about this or not?'

'That is a difficult question to answer, Dorothy, and I should be sorry to offer any advice about it. You know Lord Halliburn a good deal better than I do, and can best judge how he will take a matter like this; he must certainly be told sooner or later, for even if there is no repet.i.tion of this before your marriage there may be afterwards. Many men would laugh at the whole thing, and never give it a moment's thought, while others, although they would not doubt the a.s.sertion of the woman they were engaged to, would still fret and worry over it amazingly.'

'I am sure he would not doubt me for a moment, father, but I should think that he really might worry over it.'

'That is rather my opinion too, Dorothy; still, it is clear that he must be told either by you or me. However, there is no occasion to tell him to-day. A flower show is not the place you would choose for the purpose, even if you had not Mary Daintree with you. We shall see if another letter comes or not; if it does he must be told at once.'

Dorothy looked a little relieved at the necessity for telling Lord Halliburn being postponed for the day.

'It is of no use worrying over it, my dear,' her father said kindly. 'It is an annoyance, there is no denying, but it is nothing to fret over, and as the insinuations are a pack of lies the cloud will blow away before long.'

The next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, Mr. Hawtrey drove to the central post office, where the postal authorities had promised the day before that they would retain any communications of the kind he described. He had been introduced to the official in charge of the department where complaints of stolen letters were investigated and followed up.

'I have an envelope for you, Mr. Hawtrey,' that gentleman said, when he entered, 'and have been more fortunate than I expected, for I can tell you where it was posted; it was dropped into the letter-box at No. 35 Claymore Street, Chelsea. It is a grocer's shop. In tying up the bundles the man's eye fell on this; it struck him at once as being an attempt to annoy or extort money, and he had the good sense to put it into an envelope and send it on here with a line of explanation, so as to leave us the option of detaining it if we thought fit.'

'I am very pleased to hear it,' Mr. Hawtrey said. 'It is a great thing to know there is at least one point from which we can make a start.'

'It is not much, but it may a.s.sist you. You must remember, however, that it is scarcely likely that the next letter will be posted at the same office; fellows of this kind are generally pretty cautious, and the next letter may come from another part of London altogether. I have sent a note to the man at this post office, telling him that he did right in stopping the letter, and that he is to similarly detain any others of the same kind that may be posted there. I will send them on to you. The men on your round have been already ordered not to deliver any letters of the kind, but to send them back here. I sincerely hope, Mr. Hawtrey, that you may succeed in getting hold of the fellow, but if you do I am afraid it will not be through our department; the chances against detecting a man posting a thing of this kind are almost infinite.'

It was just half past ten when Mr. Hawtrey reached Danvers' chambers. He found that the occupier had not yet gone to the Court.

'There is another of them,' Mr. Hawtrey said, throwing the letter down before him. 'I got it at the central office.' It was in the same handwriting as that on the previous day: 'Unless you agree to my terms your letters will be sent to Lord H----.' 'The post-office people have discovered that this letter was posted at a receiving office at Claymore Street, Chelsea.'

'That would be valuable, Mr. Hawtrey, if there were any probability of the next being posted at the same place. I could make an arrangement to have a boy placed inside by the box so that he could see each letter as it fell in. Then he would only have to run out and follow whoever had posted it. I should probably require some special order from the Postmaster-General for this, but I dare say I could get that. At any rate, we can wait a day or two. If the next letter is posted there we will try that plan; if it is posted elsewhere it will, of course, be useless.'

Mr. Hawtrey next drove to Lord Halliburn's, in Park Lane.

'I have come on very unpleasant business, Halliburn,' he said. 'Dorothy would have told you herself about it yesterday, but I thought it better to let it stand over for a day, especially as she would not have an opportunity of discussing it with you,' and he then laid the two letters before him, and told him the steps he had taken and the conjectures that he and Danvers had formed on the subject of the sender.

Lord Halliburn was a young man of about nine-and-twenty. He somewhat prided himself on his self-possession, and, although generally liked, was regarded, as Danvers had told his friend, as somewhat of a prig. His face expressed some annoyance as he heard the story.

'It is certainly unpleasant,' he said. 'I am, of course, perfectly sure that Dorothy is in no way to blame in the matter. This can be only a malicious attempt to annoy her. Still, I admit it is annoying. Things of this sort are sure to get about somehow. I am certain that everyone who knows Dorothy will see the matter in the same light as we do, but those who do not will conclude that there is something in it. Probably enough ere long there will be a mysterious paragraph in one of those society papers. Altogether it is certainly extremely annoying. The great thing is to find out who sent them. I quite agree with you it cannot be an attempt to extort money; had it been so, the demands would have been sent under seal and not in this manner. I suppose you have no idea of anyone having any special enmity against either you or her?'

'Not the slightest. The man who, as I told you, Danvers consulted without mentioning any names, was of opinion that it might be the work of some woman, and was intended to cause unpleasantness between you and Dorothy. Of course, in that case you might be more able to form an idea as to the writer than I can be.'

'No, indeed, there is no woman in my case,' Lord Halliburn said. 'I have always been perfectly free from entanglements of that kind; nor have I ever had anything like a serious flirtation before I met Miss Hawtrey; indeed, as you know, I have been travelling abroad almost constantly since I left college. I can a.s.sure you, on my honour, that I cannot think of anyone who could have a motive, however slight, for making mischief between us. Of course, it would be out of the question that mischief could be made out of such things as these; they are too contemptible for notice, beyond the fact that they are naturally annoying. I shall see Dorothy this afternoon, and shall tell her not to give the matter a thought, but at the same time I shall be extremely glad if you can put your hand on the sender of these things.'

CHAPTER IV

Mr. Hawtrey's hope that a clue had been obtained was speedily dissipated, for the next letter was posted in the south of London, and the one after it at Brompton. It was clear that the man who sent them did not confine himself to one particular office, and that it would be useless to set a watch on that in Claymore Street, Chelsea. Edward Hampton coming in that afternoon, he relieved his mind by telling what had happened.

'It is a comfort to talk it over with some one, Ned. You were a police-officer for some time out in India, I think, and may be able to see your way through this business. Danvers has been very kind about it, but so far nothing has come of his suggestions.'

'My Indian police experience is not much to the point. I had a police district for a year, but my duties consisted princ.i.p.ally in hunting down criminals. Have you told Lord Halliburn?'

'Yes; as soon as the second letter came I went to him; it was only right that he should know.'

'Certainly. How did he take it, Mr. Hawtrey? if I may ask.'

'He was naturally annoyed at it; though, of course, he agreed with me that it was simply a piece of malice. A detective, to whom Danvers had spoken, without mentioning any name, suggested that it might be the work of some woman who had a grudge against him, or felt herself aggrieved at his engagement. I mentioned this to him, and he a.s.sured me that, so far as he knew, there was no one who had any complaint against him, and that he had never had any entanglement of any kind.'

'It is a horribly annoying thing, Mr. Hawtrey, and I am sure Miss Hawtrey must feel it very much. I thought she was not looking quite herself when I met her at dinner the night before last. Still, there must be some way of getting to the bottom of it. If it is not the work of an enemy, either of Lord Halliburn or of your daughter, it may be the work of one who has an enmity against yourself--one who is striking at you through yours.'

'That is just possible, Ned; but beyond men I have sentenced on the bench I don't know of anyone who would put himself out of his way to annoy me. a.s.suredly this cannot be the work of any Lincolns.h.i.+re rustic.'

'But you have certainly one enemy who is just the sort of man to conceive and carry out such a blackguard business as this--I mean that man who was impertinent to you on the racecourse, and whose history you told us that evening.'

'I had not thought of him. Yes, that suggestion is certainly a probable one. He is evidently deeply impressed with the sense of injury, though, Heaven knows, I did not have the slightest ill-feeling against him, but was driven to do what I did by his own courses, and especially by his father's earnest request that he should not succeed him. There is no doubt as to his malice, and there can be as little as to his unscrupulousness.'

'Danvers and I were both of opinion, Mr. Hawtrey, that by his tone and manner when he spoke to you about payment of debts, that he had already done you some injury or had some distinct plan in his head. At that time your daughter was not engaged to Lord Halliburn, and his ideas may have been vague ones until the public notice of the engagement met his eye, when he may have said to himself, "This is my opportunity for taking my revenge, by annoying both father and daughter."'

'It is possible, Ned. I can hardly bring myself to think that the son of my old friend would be capable of such a dastardly action, but I admit that there is at least a motive in his case, and that I can see none in that of anyone else.'

'At any rate, Mr. Hawtrey, here is a clue worth following, and as I have nothing whatever to do, and my own time hangs rather heavily on my hands, I will, if you will allow me, undertake to follow it up.'

'But with no evidence against him, not a particle, what can you do, Ned?'

'My business will be to get evidence. The first thing is to find out where the fellow lives, and to have him watched and followed, and if possible, caught in the act of posting one of these letters.'

'Remember, Ned, I would above all things avoid publicity, for Dorothy's sake. Nothing is more hateful than for a girl to be talked about, and it is only as a last resource that I would bring a charge against him at the Police Court.'

'I can quite understand that, and will certainly call in no police to my aid until I have previously consulted you and received your sanction to do so. It will be easy enough to find him, for I should know him in an instant, and shall probably meet him at the first racecourse I go to. It is not as if I knew nothing of his habits.'

For the next week Captain Hampton frequented every racecourse within a short distance of London, but without meeting the man he was looking for. Men of the same cla.s.s were there in scores--some boisterous, some oily-mouthed, some unmitigated ruffians, others crafty rogues.

Several times he accosted one of these men, and inquired if he had seen a betting man having the name of Marvel on his hat; each time the response was the same.