receive her version of this wonderful mother’s love with a great deal of suspicion. But there can be no doubt of its truth. I remember that the Reporter of the Evening Moon spoke of this, and that it won his admiration, as it could not fail to win the admiration of any person who did not know how wicked is the heart that beats in Mrs. Holdfast’s bosom. Can you reconcile it with your knowledge of her? I cannot. It does not raise the character of the woman in my eyes; it debases it.
In the nursery Mrs. Holdfast gave Fanny a letter, with instructions to deliver it to the gentleman in person, and to wait for an answer.
My dear, this letter was addressed “Mr. Pelham, 147, Buckingham Palace Road.”
Here at once is established the fact of the continuance of the intimacy between Mr. Pelham and Mrs. Holdfast. Is it possible that your father, after you left the country, discovered that his wife was deceiving him, and flew from the shame of her presence? It must be so. What, then, took place between husband and wife, and to whose advantage would it be that he should be made to disappear? I shudder to contemplate the answer. I can find but one; it is horrible to think of.
Fanny received the letter without remark, and went to the address in Buckingham Palace Road. Mr. Pelham was in, and Fanny was desired to walk up-stairs. There, in a handsomely-furnished room, she saw Mr. Pelham, lounging on a sofa, smoking and drinking. “A regular swell,” said Fanny. He tore the letter open, and tossed it away passionately, without reading it.
“You haven’t taken anything out of it?” he cried to Fanny.
“Oh, no, sir,” replied Fanny, “it’s just as Mrs. Holdfast gave it to me. I was to wait for an answer.”
Fanny says he looked as savage as if he had expected to find the envelope full of money, and didn’t find a penny. He drew the letter to him and read it; then rose, and took some paper from a desk, scribbled an answer, which he put carelessly into an envelope and threw over to Fanny, saying, “Give her that!” Fanny states that he is not an agreeable-looking gentleman, and that there is something about him that reminds her of – but here Fanny stopped, and would not finish what she intended to say. She roused my curiosity, but she would not satisfy it.
“Wait a bit,” she said. “I’ve got an idea in my head. If it’s a right one I shall astonish you. If it ain’t, it would be foolish to speak about it.”
I could get nothing more than this out of her, and I let the subject drop, but there is evidently something very weighty on her mind.
She hurried into the street with Mr. Pelham’s answer to Mrs. Holdfast’s note, and getting into a quiet nook, where she was free from observation, asked a girl to read it to her. Mr. Pelham had scarcely wetted the gum, and the envelope was easily unfastened. Fanny endeavoured to commit the letter to memory, but she failed; the girl who read it to her could not quite make out the words. The letter contained a demand for money, and Mr. Pelham said in it that before the week was out he must have a cheque for five hundred pounds. One remark Fanny perfectly remembered. “If you are going to turn niggardly and stingy,” wrote Mr. Pelham, “I shall have to keep the purse myself. Don’t forget that the money is as much mine as yours, more mine than yours indeed, and that I could ruin you with one word.”
Fanny says that when Mrs. Holdfast read the letter (which she delivered properly fastened) and came to those words – of course Fanny could only guess that – Mrs. Holdfast said aloud:
“And yourself, too, Pelham. It would go harder with you than with me.”
For a moment – only for a single moment, as I gather from Fanny – Mrs. Holdfast’s face grew haggard, but she became gay again instantly, and began to sing and talk lightly. Can such a nature as hers really feel?
Again, for the second time this week, Richard Manx has not come to his room in Great Porter Square. I make sure of this by putting the chain on the street door after mid-night. I attach importance to the slightest circumstance now, and do not allow anything to escape me. Do not for a moment let your courage and your hopefulness fail you. We have not yet obtained a tangible link to start from, but it appears to me as if events were coming closer; something will come to light presently which will assist in the discovery of your father’s murderer. You are never absent from my thoughts; you are for ever in my heart. I am yours till death.
CHAPTER XXXV
FANNY DISCOVERS WHO RICHARD MANX IS
MY DARLING – What has occurred to-day must be related with calmness, although my mind is in a whirl of excitement. The presentiment I felt last night that we were on the threshold of an important discovery has come true. A discovery has been made which neither you nor I could ever have dreamt of, and we have to thank Fanny for it. How wonderfully all the circumstances of life seem to be woven into one another! Little did I think, when I first met the poor, hungry little girl, and was kind to her, that she would repay me as she has repaid me, and that we should owe to her, perhaps, the happiness of our lives. I may be mistaken; I may be speaking more out of my heart than my head, more out of my hopes than my reason. But surely what Fanny has discovered will lead to a discovery of greater moment. It is, as yet, the most important link in the chain. We must consider what is best to be done. At noon, Fanny said to me:
“I want a holiday; I’ve got something to do.”
She spoke abruptly, and with great earnestness.
“You don’t intend to run away from me, Fanny,” I said, and immediately repented my words, for Fanny seized my hands, and kissed them, with tears running down her face.
“Run away from you!” she cried. “Never – never – never! How could you think it of me. I would die for you – indeed, indeed I would!”
I quieted her, trying to excuse myself by saying that it was only because she was keeping something secret from me that the words escaped me.
“But I’m doing it for you,” she said. “To-night I’ll tell you everything.”
Now, read how Fanny passed the day. I will relate it as nearly as possible out of her lips.
“When I went into Mr. Pelham’s room, yesterday,” she said, “in Buckingham Palace Road, I didn’t suspect anything at first. I didn’t like his looks, but that was nothing. There are lots of people I don’t like the looks of. I remained there while he threw away the letter, and while he drank and smoked. He was drinking wine, and he emptied three glasses one after another. It wasn’t till he got up and went to his desk that I noticed something – a twitch of his left shoulder upwards, just as a man does when he shrugs his shoulders. But Mr. Pelham did not shrug his two shoulders, he shrugged one – the left one. I only knew one other man who did with his left shoulder what Mr. Pelham did, and I thought it funny. While he was writing his letter he threw away his cigar, and took a cigarette, and the way he put it into his mouth and rolled it between his lips was just the same as the other man who twitched his shoulder as Mr. Pelham did. Well, as I walked back to Mrs. Holdfast’s house, I seemed to see the two men – Mr. Pelham and the other, shrugging their left shoulders, and rolling their cigarettes in their mouths, and what they did was as like as two peas, though they were two different men, though one was poor and the other rich. I couldn’t help calling myself a little fool when the idea came to me that they were not different men at all, and I said to myself, ‘What do they mean by it? No good, that’s certain.’ So I made up my mind to do something, and I did it to-day.
“First, there was Richard Manx. I watched him out of the house. He came down from his garret a little after twelve; I stood in the dark passage, and watched him coming downstairs; he seemed to be out of temper, and he gave the wall a great blow with his hand. I think he would have liked to hear it cry out, so that he might be sure he had hurt it. I thought I shouldn’t like him to strike me in that way – but I don’t suppose he would if any one was looking. He would have hit me as he hit the wall, if he had known what I was up to – that is, if nobody was near.
“He went out of the house, closing the street door, O, so quietly behind him. Have you noticed how quietly he does everything? He walks like a cat – well, so can other people. I waited a minute after he closed the street door, and then I slipped out after him. I looked all ways,