The Lost Heir Part 18

"I am sure he will, Netta. Do you think we ought to tell him our suspicions?"

"I should do so unhesitatingly, Hilda. I am sure he will be ready to go through fire and water to avenge his master's death. As aunt is out I think it will be as well to take him into our confidence at once."

Hilda said nothing, but got up and rang the bell. When the footman entered she said, "Tell Roberts that I want to speak to him." When the man came up she went on, "We are quite sure, Tom, that you were most thoroughly devoted to your master, and that you would do anything in your power to get to the bottom of the events that have brought about his death and the carrying off of his grandson."

"That I would, miss; there is not anything that I would not do if you would only set me about it."

"Well, Roberts, I am about to take you into our confidence, relying implicitly upon your silence and on your aid."

"You can do that, miss, safely enough. There is nothing now that I can do for my master; but as for Master Walter, I would walk to China if I thought that there was a chance of finding him there."

"In the first place you must remember, Roberts, that we are acting only upon suspicion; we have only that to go upon, and our object must be to find some proofs to justify those suspicions."

"I understand, miss; you have got an idea, and you want to see if it is right?"

"We ourselves have little doubt of it, Roberts. Now please sit down and listen to me, and don't interrupt me till I have finished."

Then she related the grounds that she had for suspicion that the General's death and Walter's abduction were both the work of John Simcoe, and also her own theory that this man was not the person who had saved the General's life. In spite of her warning not to interrupt, Tom Roberts' exclamations of fury were frequent and strongly worded.

"Well, miss!" he exclaimed, when she had finished and his tongue was untied, "I did not think that there was such a villain upon the face of the earth. Why, if I had suspected this I would have killed him, if I had been hung for it a week after. And to think that he regular took me in! He had always a cheerful word for me, if I happened to open the door for him. 'How are you, Tom?' he would say, 'hearty as usual?' and he would slip a crown into my hand to drink his health. I always keep an account of tips that I receive, and the first thing I do will be to add them up and see how much I have had from him, and I will hand it over to a charity. One don't like setting out to help to bring a man to the gallus when you have got his money in your pocket. I must have been a fool, miss, not to have kept a better watch, but I never thought ill of the man. It seemed to me that he had been a soldier. Sometimes when he was talking with me he would come out with barrack-room sayings, and though he never said that he had served, nor the General neither, I thought that he must have done so. He had a sort of way of carrying his shoulders which you don't often see among men who have not learned the goose-step. I will wait, miss, with your permission, until I have got rid of that money, and then if you say to me, 'Go to that man's rooms and take him by the throat and squeeze the truth out of him,' I am ready to do it."

"We shall not require such prompt measures as that, Tom; we must go about our work carefully and quietly, and I fear that it will be a very long time before we are able to collect facts that we can act upon. We have not decided yet how to begin. I may tell you that the only other person who shares our suspicions is Dr. Leeds. We think it best that even Miss Purcell should know nothing about them. It would only cause her great anxiety, and the matter will, therefore, be kept a close secret among our four selves. In a few days our plans will probably be complete, and I think that your share in the business will be to watch every movement of this man and to ascertain who are his a.s.sociates; many of them, no doubt, are club men, who, of course, will be above suspicion, but it is certain that he must have had accomplices in the abduction of the child. Whether he visits them or they visit him, is a point to find out. There is little chance of their calling during daylight, and it is in the evening that you will have to keep a close eye on him and ascertain who his visitors are."

"All right, miss, I wish he did not know me by sight; but I expect that I can get some sort of a disguise so that he won't recognize me."

"I don't think that there will be any difficulty about that. Of course we are not going to rely only upon you; Miss Purcell and myself are both going to devote ourselves to the search."

"We will run him down between us, miss, never fear. It cannot be meant that such a fellow as this should not be found out in his villainy. I wish that there was something more for me to do. I know several old soldiers like myself, who would join me willingly enough, and we might between us carry him off and keep him shut up somewhere, just as he is doing Master Walter, until he makes a clean breast of it. It is wonderful what the cells and bread and water will do to take a fellow's spirit down. It is bad enough when one knows how long one has got to bear it; but to know that there is no end to it until you choose to speak would get the truth out of Old Nick, begging your pardon for naming him."

"Well, we shall see, Roberts. That would certainly be a last resource, and I fear that it would not be so effectual as you think. If he told us that if he did not pay his usual visit to the boy it would be absolutely certain we should never see him alive again, we should not dare retain him."

"Well, miss, whatever you decide on I will do. I have lost as a good master as ever a man had, and there is nothing that I would not do to bring that fellow to justice."

The girls waited impatiently for the next visit of Dr. Leeds. It was four days before he came.

"I hoped to have been here before," he said, "but I have been so busy that it has not been possible for me to manage it. Of course this business has always been in my mind, and it seems to me that the first step to be taken is to endeavor to ascertain whether this fellow is really, as you believe, Miss Covington, an impostor. Have you ever heard him say in what part of the country he formerly resided?"

"Yes; he lived at Stowmarket. I know that some months ago he introduced to uncle a gentleman who was manager at a bank there, and had known him from boyhood. He was up for a few days staying with him."

"That is certainly rather against your surmise, Miss Covington; however, it is as well to clear that matter up before we attempt anything else."

"I will go down and make inquiries, doctor," Netta said quietly. "I am half a head shorter than Hilda, and altogether different in face; therefore, if he learns that any inquiries have been made, he will be sure that whoever made them was not Hilda."

"We might send down a detective, Miss Purcell."

"No; I want to be useful," she said, "and I flatter myself that I shall be able to do quite as well as a detective. We could hardly take a detective into our confidence in a matter of this kind, and not knowing everything, he might miss points that would give us a clew to the truth.

I will start to-morrow. I shall tell my aunt that I am going away for a day or two to follow up some clew we have obtained that may lead to Walter's discovery. In a week you shall know whether this man is really what he claims to be."

"Very well, Miss Purcell; then we will leave this matter in your hands."

"By the way, doctor," Hilda Covington said, "we have taken Roberts into our confidence. We know that we can rely upon his discretion implicitly, and it seemed to us that we must have somebody we can trust absolutely to watch this man."

"I don't think that you could have done better," he said. "I was going to suggest that it would be well to obtain his a.s.sistance. From what I have heard, very few of these private detectives can be absolutely relied upon. I do not mean that they are necessarily rogues, who would take money from both sides, but that, if after trying for some time they consider the matter hopeless, they will go on running up expenses and making charges when they have in reality given up the search. What do you propose that he shall do?"

"I should say that, in the first place, he should watch every evening the house where Simcoe lives, and follow up everyone who comes out and ascertain who they are. No doubt the great majority of them will be clubmen, but it is likely that he will be occasionally visited by some of his confederates."

"I think that is an excellent plan. He will, of course, also follow him when he goes out, for it is much more likely that he will visit these fellows than that they should come to him. In a case like this he would a.s.suredly use every precaution, and would scarcely let them know who he is and where he resides."

"No doubt that is so, doctor, and it would make Roberts' work all the easier, for even if they came to the man's lodgings he might be away, following up the track of someone who had called before him."

Netta returned at the end of four days.

"I have not succeeded," she said, in answer to Hilda's inquiring look as she came in. "The man is certainly well known at Stowmarket as John Simcoe; but that does not prove that he is the man, and just as he deceived your uncle he may have deceived the people down there. Now I will go upstairs and take off my things, and then give you a full account of my proceedings.

"My first step," she began on her return, "was, of course, to find out what members of the Simcoe family lived there. After engaging a room at the hotel, which I can a.s.sure you was the most unpleasant part of the business, for they seemed to be altogether unaccustomed to the arrival of young ladies unattended, I went into the town. It is not much of a place, and after making some little purchases and inquiring at several places, I heard of a maiden lady of that name. The woman who told me of her was communicative. 'She has just had a great piece of luck,' she said. 'About ten months back a nephew, whom everyone had supposed to have been lost at sea, came home with a great fortune, and they say that he has behaved most handsomely to her. She has always bought her Berlin wool and such things here, and she has spent three or four times as much since he came home as she did before, and I know from a neighbor, of whom she is a customer, that the yards and yards of flannel that she buys for making up into petticoats for poor children is wonderful. Do you know her, miss?' I said that I did not know her personally, but that some friends of mine, knowing that I was going to Stowmarket, had asked me to inquire if Miss Simcoe was still alive. I said casually that I might call and see her, and so got her address.

"I then went to call upon her. She lives in a little place called Myrtle Cottage. I had been a good deal puzzled as to what story I should tell her. I thought at first of giving myself out as the sister of the young lady to whom her nephew was paying his addresses; and as we knew nothing of him except that he was wealthy, and as he had mentioned that he had an aunt at Stowmarket, and as I was coming down there, I had been asked to make inquiries about him. But I thought this might render her so indignant that I should get nothing from her. I thought, therefore, I had better get all she knew voluntarily; so I went to the house, knocked, and asked whether Miss Simcoe was in. I was shown by a little maid into the parlor, a funny, little, old-fas.h.i.+oned room. Presently Miss Simcoe herself came in. She was just the sort of woman I had pictured--a kindly-looking, little old maid.

"'I do not know whether I have done wrong, Miss Simcoe,' I said, 'but I am a stranger here, and having over-worked myself at a picture from which I hope great things, I have been recommended country air; and a friend told me that Stowmarket was a pretty, quiet, country town, just the place for an over-worked Londoner to gain health in, so I came down and made some inquiries for a single lady who would perhaps take me in and give me a comfortable home for two or three months. Your name has been mentioned to me as being just the lady I am seeking."

"'You have been misinformed,' she said, a little primly. 'I do not say that a few months back I might not have been willing to have entertained such an offer, but my circ.u.mstances have changed since then, and now I should not think for a moment of doing so.'

"Rising from my seat with a tired air, I said that I was much obliged to her, but I was very sorry she could not take me in, as I was sure that I should be very comfortable; however, as she could not, of course there was an end of it.

"'Sit down, my dear,' the old lady said. 'I see that you are tired and worn out; my servant shall get you a cup of tea. You see,' she went on, as I murmured my thanks and sat down, 'I cannot very well do what you ask. As I said, a few months ago I should certainly have been very glad to have had a young lady like yourself to stay with me for a time; I think that when a lady gets to my age a little youthful companions.h.i.+p does her good. Besides, I do not mind saying that my means were somewhat straitened, and that a little additional money would have been a great help to me; but everything was changed by the arrival of a nephew of mine. Perhaps you may have heard his name; he is a rich man, and I believe goes out a great deal, and belongs to clubs and so on.'

"I said that I had not heard of him, for I knew nothing about society, nor the sort of men who frequented clubs.

"'No, of course not, my dear,' she said. 'Well, he had been away for twenty years, and everyone thought he was dead. He sailed away in some s.h.i.+p that was never heard of again, and you may guess my surprise when he walked in here and called me aunt.'

"'You must have been indeed surprised, Miss Simcoe,' I said; 'it must have been quite a shock to you. And did you know him at once?'

"'Oh, dear, no! He had been traveling about the world, you see, for a very long time, and naturally in twenty years he was very much changed; but of course I soon knew him when he began to talk.'

"'You recognized his voice, I suppose?' I suggested.

"'No, my dear, no. Of course his voice had changed, just as his appearance had done. He had been what he called knocking about, among all sorts of horrible savages, eating and drinking all kinds of queer things; it made my blood run cold to listen to him. But I never asked any questions about these things; I was afraid he might say that when he was among the cannibals he used to eat human flesh, and I don't think that I could like a man who had done that, even though he was my nephew.'

"'Did he go out quite as a boy, Miss Simcoe?' I asked.

"'Oh, no! He was twenty-four, I think, when he went abroad. He had a situation in the bank here. I know that the manager thought very highly of him, and, indeed, he was everywhere well spoken of. My brother Joshua--his father, you know--died, and he came in for two or three thousand pounds. He had always had a great fancy for travel, and so, instead of looking out for some nice girl and settling down, he threw up his situation and started on his travels.'

"'Had his memory been affected by the hot suns and the hards.h.i.+ps that he had gone through?' I asked.

"'Oh, dear! not at all. He recognized everyone almost whom he had known.

Of course he was a good deal more changed than they were.'

"'They did not recognize him any more than you did?'