Reginald Cruden, Talbot Baines Reed [best black authors txt] 📗

It would be unfair to Samuel Shuckleford to say that he had no compunction whatever in deciding upon a course of action which he knew would involve the ruin of Reginald Cruden.

He did not like it at all. It was a nuisance; it was a complication likely to hamper him. He wished his mother and sister would be less gushing in the friendships they made. What right had they to interfere with his business prospects by tacking themselves on to the family of a man who was afterwards to turn out a swindler?

Yes, it was a nuisance; but for all that it must not be allowed to interfere with the course that lay before the rising lawyer. Business is business after all, and if Cruden is a swindler, whose fault is it if Cruden’s mother breaks her heart? Not S.S.’s, at any rate. But S.S.’s fault it would be if he made a mess of this “big job”! That was a reproach no one should lay at his door.

Samuel may not have been quite the Solomon he was wont to estimate himself. Still, to do him justice once more, he displayed no little ability in tracing out the different frauds of the Select Agency Corporation and establishing Reginald’s guilt conclusively in his own mind.

It all fitted in like a curious puzzle. His sudden mysterious departure from London—his change of name—the selection of Liverpool as headquarters—the distribution of the circulars among unsuspecting schoolmistresses in the south of England—the demand for money to be enclosed with the order—and the fiction of the dispatch of the goods from London. What else could it point to but a deliberate, deeply-laid scheme of fraud? The further Samuel went, the clearer it all appeared, and the less compunction he felt for running to earth such a scoundrel.

But he was going to do nothing in a hurry. S.S. was not the man to dish himself by showing his cards till he was sure he had them all in his hand. Possibly Cruden was not alone in the swindle. He might have accomplices. Even his mother and brother—who can answer for the duplicity of human nature?—might know more of his operations than they professed to know. He might have confederates among his old companions at the Rocket, or even among his old school acquaintances. Yes; there was plenty to go into before Samuel put down his foot, and who knew better how to go into it than S.S.?

So he kept his own counsel, and, except for cautioning his mother and sister to “draw off” from the undesirable connection, and intimidating the maid-of-all-work at Number 6, Dull Street, by most horrible threats of the penalties of the law, to detain and give to him every letter bearing the Liverpool postmark which should from that time forward come to the house, no matter to whom addressed—for in his zeal it was easy to forget that by such a proceeding he was sailing uncommonly close to the wind himself—showed no sign of taking any immediate step either in this or any other matter.

Had he been aware that one Sniff, of the Liverpool detective police, had some days ago arrived, by a series of independent and far more artistic investigations, at as much knowledge as he himself possessed of the doings of the Corporation, Samuel would probably have been content to make the most of the cards he held before the chance of using them at all had slipped by.

It is doubtful, however, whether in any case he would have succeeded in forestalling the wary Mr Sniff. That gentleman had discovered in a few hours what it had taken Samuel days of patient grubbing to unearth. And his discoveries would have decidedly astonished the self-complacent little practitioner. He would have been astonished, for instance, to hear that the Liverpool post-office had received instructions from the Home Office to hand over every letter addressed to Cruden Reginald, 13, Shy Street, to the police. He would also have been astonished if he had known that a detective in plain clothes dined every evening at the Shades, near to the table occupied by Mr Durfy and his friends; that the hall-porter of Weaver’s Hotel was a representative of the police in disguise, and that representatives of the police had called on business at the Rocket office, had brushed up against Blandford at street-corners, and had even taken the trouble to follow him—Samuel Shuckleford—here and there in his evening’s perambulations.

Yes, small job as it was in Mr Sniff’s estimation, he knew the way to go about it, and had a very good notion what was the right scent to go on and what the wrong.

The one thing that did put him out at first was Reginald’s absolutely truthful replies to all the pleasant clergyman’s questions. This really did bother Mr Sniff. For when a swindler is face to face with his victim the very last thing you expect of him is straightforward honesty. So when Reginald had talked about Weaver’s Hotel and Mr John Smith, and had mentioned the number of orders that had arrived, and the account of money that had accompanied them, and had even confided the amount of his own salary, Mr Sniff had closed one of his mental eyes and said to himself, “Yes; we know all about that.”

But when it turned out that, so far from such statements being fabrications to delude him, they were simply true—when the letter Reginald had written to Mr Medlock that very evening lay in his hands and corroborated all he had said—when he himself followed the poor fellow an hour or two later on his errand of mercy, and stood beside him as he spent that precious sixpence over Robinson Crusoe and the Pilgrim’s Progress, Mr Sniff did feel for a moment disconcerted.

But, unusual as it was, he made the bold venture of jumping to the conviction of Reginald’s innocence; and that theory once started, everything went beautifully.

On the evening following Mrs Cruden’s sudden illness, Mr Durfy strolled down in rather a disconsolate frame of mind towards the Shades.

Since his expulsion from the Rocket office things had not been going pleasantly with him. For a day or two he had deemed it expedient to keep in retirement, and when at last he did venture forth, in the vague hope of picking up some employment worthy of his talents, he took care to keep clear of the haunts of his former confederates, whom, after his last failure, he rather dreaded meeting.

It had been during this period that he had made the acquaintance of Shuckleford, and the prospect of revenge which that intimacy opened to him was a welcome diversion to the monotony of his existence.

But prospects of revenge do not fill empty stomachs, and Durfy at the end of a week began to discover that there might be an end even to the private resources of the late overseer of an evening newspaper and the part proprietor of an Agency Corporation. He was, in fact, getting hard up, and therefore, putting his pride in his empty pocket, he strolled down moodily to the Shades, determined at any rate to have a supper at somebody else’s expense.

He had not reckoned without his host, for after about half an hour’s impatient kicking of his heels outside, Mr Medlock and Mr Shanklin appeared on the scene, arm in arm.

They appeared by no means elated at seeing him, but that mattered very little to the hungry Durfy, who followed them into the supper-room and took his seat at the table beside them. If he had been possessed of any sensitiveness, it might have been wounded by the utter indifference, after the first signs of displeasure, they paid to his presence. They continued their conversation as though no third party had been near, and except that Mr Medlock nodded when the waiter said “For three?” seemed to see as