The Ashiel Mystery, Mrs. Charles Bryce [e novels to read online .txt] 📗

he is disengaged."

 

With a flourish of his handkerchief he withdrew, shutting the door

behind him.

 

Juliet sat down on a hard chair covered with green leather, and told her

maid to take another. Her spirits were damped. The sight of Mr. Nicol, as

the clerk was named, often had that effect upon persons who saw him for

the first time; indeed he was found to be a very useful check on

troublesome clients, who arrived full of determination to have their own

way, and were often so cowed by their preliminary interview with Nicol as

to feel it a privilege and a relief subsequently to be bullied by Mr.

Ince, or persuaded by Mr. Findlay into the belief that what they had

previously decided on was the last thing advisable to do.

 

Mr. Findlay frequently remarked to Mr. Ince, when his partner's easily

roused temper was more highly tried than usual by some imbecile mistake

of the clerk's, that Nicol might have faults as a clerk and as a man, but

that, as a buffer, he was the nearest approach to perfection obtainable

in this world of makeshifts.

 

To which Mr. Ince would reply with point and fluency that fenders could

be had by the dozen from any shipping warehouse, at a lower cost than one

week's salary of Nicol's would represent, and would be far more efficient

in the office. Still he did not suggest dismissing the man.

 

Juliet, as she sat and looked round the musty little waiting-room, felt

that here was an end of her dreams of the resplendent family she was to

find pining to take her to its heart. She felt certain that she could

never have any feelings in common with people who could employ a firm of

solicitors which in its turn was served by the man who had received her.

Romance and the clerk could never, she thought, meet under one roof. And

such a roof! The room in which she sat was so dark, so gloomy, so bare

and cheerless, that Juliet began to wonder whether she would not have

been wiser not to have come. This was not a place, surely, which fond

parents would choose for a long-deferred meeting with their child, after

years of separation. She walked to the window, but the only view was of a

blank wall, and that so close that she could have touched it by leaning

out. No wonder the room was dark, even at midday in August. The walls

were lined with bookshelves, where heavy volumes, all dealing with the

same subject, that of law, stood shoulder to shoulder in stout bindings

of brown leather.

 

There was a fireplace of cracked and dirty marble with an engraving hung

over it, representing the coronation of Queen Victoria. A gas stove

occupied the grate, and a gas bracket stuck out from the wall on either

side of the picture.

 

On the small round mahogany table that stood in the middle of the room

lay a Bible, and a copy of the _St. James's Gazette_, which was dated a

week back. Juliet took it up and read an account of a cricket match

without much enthusiasm. Then she flung it down and wandered about the

room once more; but she had exhausted all its possibilities; and though

she took a volume entitled _Causes Célèbres_ from the shelf, and turned

its pages hopefully, she put it back with a grimace at its dullness and a

sort of surprise at finding anything drier than the cricket.

 

She had waited half an hour, when the door opened and the face of Nicol

was introduced round the corner of it.

 

"Will you please come this way," he said.

 

Telling her maid to stay where she was, Juliet followed him. He opened

the other door on the landing, and announced her in a loud voice as, with

a quickened pulse, she passed him, and entered the room.

 

There were two men standing by the hearth. One of them came forward to

receive her.

 

"How do you do, Miss Byrne," he said; "I am glad you were able to come.

I am Jeremy Findlay, at your service."

 

Mr. Findlay was a man of moderate height, with a long pointed nose which

he was in the habit of putting down to within an inch or two of his desk

when he was looking for any particular paper, for he was very short

sighted. It rather conveyed the impression that he was poking about with

it, and that he hunted for questionable clauses or illegalities in a

document, much as a pig might hunt for truffles in a wood. For the rest,

he was middle-aged, with hair nearly white, and small grey whiskers. He

beamed at Juliet through gold-rimmed eyeglasses.

 

"Let me introduce my friend," he said, mumbling something.

 

Juliet did not catch the name, but she supposed that this was Mr. Ince.

 

The other man stepped forward and shook hands, but said nothing. He was a

thin, pallid creature, rather above the average height, and had the

drooping shoulders of a scholar. His face, which was long and narrow,

looked pale and emaciated, and though his blue eyes had a kindly twinkle

it seemed to Juliet that they burned with a feverish brightness. His nose

was long and slightly hooked, and beneath it the mouth was hidden by a

heavy red moustache; while his hair, though not of so bright a colour,

had a reddish tinge about it. He appeared to be about fifty years of age,

but this was due to a look of tiredness habitual to his expression, and,

in part, to actual bad health. In reality he was younger.

 

"Pray take this chair, Miss Byrne," Mr. Findlay was saying. "We are

anxious to have a little conversation with you. I am sure you quite

understand that we should not have asked you to come all the way from

Belgium unless your presence was of considerable importance. How

important it is I really hardly know myself, but I repeat that I would

not have urged you to take so long a journey if I had not had serious

reason to think that it was desirable for your own sake that you should

do so. I may say at once that the matter is a family one; but before

going further I must ask your permission to put one or two questions to

you, which I hope you will believe are not prompted by any feeling of

idle curiosity on my part."

 

He paused, and Juliet murmured some words of acquiescence. Mr. Findlay

took off his eyeglasses, glared at them, replaced them, and ran his nose

over the surface of the papers on his writing-table.

 

"Ah, here it is!" he exclaimed triumphantly, pouncing on a folded sheet

and lifting it to his eyes. "Just a few notes," he explained.

 

"We wrote you care of Sir Arthur Byrne," he resumed; "are you a member of

his family?"

 

Here was a disturbing question for Juliet. She had imagined, until this

instant, that she was on the point of being told who her family was, and

now this man was asking for information from her. Tears of disappointment

would not be kept from her eyes.

 

"I am a member of Sir Arthur's household," she stammered.

 

"Are you not his daughter, then?" asked Mr. Findlay.

 

"No, I am not really," Juliet replied.

 

"Then may I ask what relation you are to him?" said the lawyer.

 

"I am his adopted daughter," said Juliet. "I have always called him

'Father.'"

 

"Are you not any relation at all?" pursued Mr. Findlay.

 

"I believe not."

 

"Then, Miss Byrne, I hope you will not think it an impertinent question

if I ask, who are you?"

 

"I don't know," acknowledged poor Juliet. "I was hoping you would tell me

that. I thought, I imagined, that that was why you sent for me."

 

"You astonish me," said Mr. Findlay. "Do you mean to say that your family

has never made any attempt to communicate with you?"

 

"No, never."

 

"And that Sir Arthur Byrne has never told you anything as to your birth?

Surely you must have questioned him about it?"

 

"He has told me all he knows," said Juliet, "but that amounts to

nothing."

 

"Indeed; that is very strange. He must have had dealings with the people

you were with before he adopted you. He must at least know their name?"

 

"I don't know," said Juliet. "He doesn't know either, I am sure. It

wasn't Sir Arthur who adopted me. It was the lady he married. A Mrs.

Meredith. She is dead."

 

"But he must have heard about you from her," insisted Mr. Findlay. "He

would not have taken a child into his household without knowing anything

at all about it."

 

"His wife told him that I was the daughter of a friend of hers, and

begged him not to ask her any more about me. He was very devoted to her,

and he did as she wished. He has been most kind to me; but I am sure he

would be as glad as I should be to discover my relations. I am dreadfully

disappointed that you don't know anything about them. We all thought I

was going to find my family at last."

 

Juliet's voice quavered a little. She had built too much on this

interview.

 

"I am really extremely sorry not to be able to give you any information,"

Mr. Findlay said.

 

He turned towards the other man with an interrogative glance, and was met

by a nod of the head, at which he leant back in his chair, crossed his

legs and folded his hands upon them, with the expression of some one who

has played his part in the game, and now retires in favour of another

competitor. The pale man moved his chair a little forward and took up the

conversation.

 

"Are you really quite certain that Sir Arthur Byrne has told you all

he knows?" he said earnestly, fixing on Juliet a look at once grave

and eager.

 

"Yes," she answered. "I can see that he is as puzzled as I am. And he

would be glad enough to find a way to get rid of me," she added bitterly.

 

"I thought you said you were attached to him," said the stranger in

surprise, "and that he had been very kind to you?"

 

"Yes," said Juliet, "he has, and I am as fond of him as possible. But he

has three stepdaughters now; he has married again, you know. And he is

not very well off. I am a great expense, besides being an extra girl. I

don't blame him for thinking I am one too many."

 

There was a long pause, during which Juliet was conscious of being

closely scrutinized.

 

"I think I may be able to give you news of your family," said the pale

man unexpectedly. "That is, if you are the person I think you are

likely to be."

 

"Oh," exclaimed Juliet, "can you really?"

 

"Well, it is possible," admitted the other. "I can't say for

certain yet."

 

"Oh, do, do tell me!" cried the girl.

 

"Out of the question, at present," he replied firmly. "I must first

satisfy myself as to whose child you are, and on that point you appear

able to give me no assistance. You must wait till I can find out

something further about this matter of your adoption. And even then,"

he added, "it is not certain if I can tell you. You must understand

that, though certain family secrets have been placed in my possession,

it does not depend upon myself whether or not I shall ultimately reveal

them to you."

 

Juliet's face fell for a moment, but she refused to allow herself to be

discouraged.

 

"There is a chance for me, anyhow!" she exclaimed. "How I hope you

will be allowed to tell me in the end! But why," she went on, turning

to Mr. Findlay, "did you make me think you knew nothing at all about

I suppose the family secrets your partner speaks of are the

secrets of my family?"

 

"My dear young lady," said Mr. Findlay, "Lord Ashiel is not my partner.

On the contrary, he is an old client of ours, and it was at his request

that we wrote to you as we did. We know no more about your affairs than

you have told us yourself."

 

"Oh," murmured Juliet, confused at her mistake. "I thought you were Mr.

Ince," she apologized; "I am so sorry."

 

"Not very flattering to poor Ince I'm afraid," said Lord Ashiel, smiling

at her. "He's ten years younger than I am, I'm sorry to say, and I would

change places with him very willingly. Now, if you had mistaken me for

Nicol, that undertaker clerk of Findlay's, who always looks as if he's

been burying his grandmother, I should have been decidedly hurt. What in

the world do you keep that fellow in the office for, Findlay? To frighten

away custom?"

 

Mr. Findlay laughed.

 

"He's a more useful person than you imagine," he said.