Run to Earth, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [epub ebook reader .TXT] 📗
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a very queer business, that is, and I’ve never had leisure to get very
deep into the rights and wrongs of it yet.”
Mr. Larkspur looked up presently, and saw that his visitor’s face had
grown white to the very lips.
“You knew Captain Jernam?” he said.
“No—yes, I knew him slightly; and the idea of his murder is very
shocking to me,” answered Honoria, struggling with her agitation. “Do
you expect to discover the secret of that dreadful crime?”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Andrew Larkspur, with the
careless and business-like tone of a man to whom a murder is an
incident of trade. “You see, when these things have gone by for a long
time, without anything being found out about them, the secret generally
comes out by accident, if it ever comes out at all. There are cases in
which the secret never does come out; but there are not many such
cases. There’s a deal in accident; and a man of my profession must be
always on the look-out for accident, or he’ll lose a great many
chances. You see those red marks stuck here and there, among all that
writing in blue ink. Those red marks are set against the facts that
seem pretty clear and straightforward; the blue marks are set against
facts that seem dark. You see, there’s more blue marks than red. That
means that it’s a dark case.”
Honoria Eversleigh bent over the old man’s shoulder, and read a few
fragmentary lines, here and there, in the page beneath her.
“_Seen at the ‘Jolly Tar’, Ratcliff Highway, a low public-house
frequented by sailors. Seen with two men, Dennis Wayman, landlord of
the ‘Jolly Tar,’ and a man called Milson, or Milsom. The man Milson, or
Milsom, has since disappeared. Is believed to have been transported,
but is not to be heard of abroad._”
A little below these entries was another, which seemed to Honoria
Eversleigh to be inscribed in letters of fire:—
“Valentine Jernam was known to have fallen in love with a girl who
sang at the ‘Jolly Tar’ public-house, and it is supposed that he was
lured to his death by the agency of this girl. She is described as
about seventeen years of age, very handsome, dark eyes, dark hair—”
Mr. Larkspur closed the volume before Lady Eversleigh could read
further. She returned to her seat, still terribly pale, and with a
sickening pain at her heart.
All the shame and anguish of her early life, the unspeakable horror of
her girlhood, had been brought vividly back to her by the perusal of
the memoranda in the detective’s ledger.
“I mean to try my luck yet at getting at the bottom of the mystery,”
said Andrew Larkspur. “Five hundred pounds reward is worth working for.
I—I’ve a notion that I shall lay my hands upon Valentine Jernam’s
murderer sooner or later.”
“Who offers the reward?” asked Honoria.
“Government offers one hundred of it; George Jernam four hundred more.”
“Who is George Jernam?”
“The captain’s younger brother—a merchant-captain himself—the owner
of several vessels, and, I believe, a rich man. He came here,
accompanied by a queer-looking fellow, called Joyce Harker—a kind of
clerk, I believe—who was very much attached to the murdered man.”
“Yes—yes, I know,” murmured Honoria.
She had been so terribly agitated by the mention of Valentine Jernam’s
name, that her presence of mind had entirely abandoned her.
“You knew that humpbacked clerk!” exclaimed Mr. Larkspur.
“I have heard of him,” she faltered.
There was a pause, during which Lady Eversleigh recovered in some
degree from the painful emotion caused by memories so unexpectedly
evoked.
“I may as well give you some preliminary instructions to-day,” she
said, re-assuming her business-like tone, “and I will write you a
cheque for the first month of your service.”
Mr. Larkspur lost no time in providing his visitor with pen and ink.
She took a cheque-book from her pocket, and filled in a cheque for
eighty pounds in Andrew Larkspur’s favour.
The cheque was signed “Harriet Eden.”
“When you present that, you will be able to ascertain that your future
payments will be secure,” she said.
She handed the cheque to Mr. Larkspur, who looked at it with an air of
assumed indifference, and slipped it carelessly into his waistcoat
pocket.
“And now, ma’am,” he said, “I am ready to receive your instructions.”
“In the first place,” said Honoria, “I must beg that you will on no
occasion attempt to pry into my motives, whatever I may require of
you.”
“That, ma’am, is understood. I have nothing to do with the motives of
my employers, and I care nothing about them.”
“I am glad to hear that,” replied Honoria. “The business in which I
require your aid is a very strange one; and the time may come when you
will be half-inclined to believe me mad. But, whatever I do, however
mysterious my actions may be, think always that a deeply rooted purpose
lies beneath them; and that every thought of my brain—every trivial
act of my life, will shape itself to one end.”
“I ask no questions, ma’am.”
“And you will serve me faithfully—blindly?”
“Yes, ma’am; both faithfully and blindly.”
“I think I may trust you,” replied Honoria, very earnestly “And now I
will speak freely. There are two men upon whose lives I desire to place
a spy. I want to know every act of their lives, every word they speak,
every secret of their hearts—I wish to be an unseen witness of their
lonely hours, an impalpable guest at every gathering in which they
mingle. I want to be near them always in spirit, if not in bodily
presence. I want to track them step by step, let their ways be never so
dark and winding. This is the purpose of my life; but I am a woman—
powerless to act freely—bound and fettered as women only are fettered.
Do you begin to understand now what I require of you.”
“I think I do.”
“Mr. Larkspur,” continued Honoria, with energy. “I want you to be my
second self. I want you to be the shadow of these two men. Wherever
they go, you must follow—in some shape or other you must haunt them,
by night and day. It is, of course, a difficult task which I demand of
you. You have to decide whether it is impossible.”
“Impossible! ma’am—not a bit of it. Nothing is impossible to a man who
has served twenty years’ apprenticeship as a Bow Street runner. You
don’t know what we old Bow Street hands can do when we’re on our
mettle. I’ve heard a deal of talk about Fooshay, that was at the head
of Bonaparty’s police—but bless your heart, ma’am, Fooshay was a fool
to us. I’ve done as much and more than what you talk of before to-day.
All you have to do is to give me the names and descriptions of the two
men I am to watch, and leave all the rest to me.”
“One of these two men is Sir Reginald Eversleigh, Baronet, a man of
small fortune—a bachelor, occupying lodgings in Villiers Street. I
have reason to believe that he is dissipated, a gamester, and a
reprobate.”
“Good,” said Mr. Larkspur, who jotted down an occasional note in a
greasy little pocket-book.
“The second person is a medical practitioner, called Victor
Carrington—a Frenchman, but a perfect master of the English language,
and a man whose youth has been spent in England. The two men are firm
friends and constant associates. In keeping watch upon the actions of
one, you cannot fail to see much of the other.
“Very good, ma’am; you may make your mind easy,” answered the
detective, as coolly as if he had just received the most common-place
order.
He escorted Honoria to the door of his chambers, and left her to
descend the dingy staircase as best as she might.
CHAPTER XVI.
WAITING AND WATCHING.
Valentine Jernam’s younger brother, George, had journeyed to and fro on
the high seas five years since the murder of the brave and generous-hearted sea-captain.
Things had gone well with Captain George Jernam, and in the whole of
the trading navy there were few richer men than the owner of the
‘Pizarro’, ‘Stormy Petrel’, and ‘Albatross’.
With these three vessels constantly afloat. George Jernam was on the
high road to fortune.
His life had not been by any means uneventful since the death of his
brother, though that mysterious calamity had taken away the zest from
his success for many a day, and though he no longer cherished the same
visions of a happy home in England, when his circumstances should have
become so prosperous as to enable him to “settle down.” This same
process of settling down was one by no means congenial to George
Jernam’s disposition at any time; and he was far less likely to take to
it kindly now, than when “dear old Val”—as he began to call his
brother in his thoughts once more, when the horror of the murder had
begun to wear off, and the lost friend seemed again familiar—had been
the prospective sharer of the retirement which was to be so tranquil,
so comfortable, and so well-earned. It had no attraction for George at
all; for many a long day after Joyce Harker’s letter had reached him he
never dwelt upon it; he set his face hard against his grief, and worked
on, as men must work, fortunately for them, under all chances and
changes of this mortal life, until the last change of all. At first,
the thirst for revenge upon his brother’s murderers had been hot and
strong upon George Jernam—almost as hot and strong as it had been, and
continued to be, upon Joyce Harker; but the natures of the men differed
materially. George Jernam had neither the dogged persistency nor the
latent fierceness of his dead brother’s friend and prot�g�; and the
long, slow, untiring watching to which Harker devoted himself would
have been a task so uncongenial as to be indeed impossible to the more
open, more congenial temperament of the merchant-captain.
He had responded warmly to Harker’s letters; he had more than
sanctioned the outlay which he had made, in money paid and money
promised, to the skilled detective to whom Harker had entrusted the
investigation of the murder of Valentine Jernam. He had awaited every
communication with anxious interest and suspense, and he had never
landed after a voyage, and received the letters which awaited his
arrival, without a keen revival of the first sharp pang that had smote
him with the tidings of his brother’s fate.
Happily George Jernam was a busy man, and his life was full of variety,
adventure, and incident. In time he began, not to forget, indeed, but
to remember less frequently and less painfully, the manner of his
brother’s death, and to regard the fixed purpose of Joyce Harker’s life
as more or less of a harmless delusion. A practical man in his own way,
George Jernam had very vague ideas concerning the lives of the criminal
classes, and the faculties and facilities of the science of detection;
and the hope of finding out the secret of his brother’s fate had long
ago deserted him.
Only once had he and Joyce Harker met since the murder of Valentine
Jernam. George had landed a cargo at Hamburg, and had given his
brother’s friend rendezvous there. Then the two men had talked of all
that had been done so vainly, and all that remained to be done, Harker
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