The Queen of Hearts, Wilkie Collins [freenovel24 TXT] 📗

none. On the contrary, it strengthens my suspicions against Mr. Jay and his confederates, because it suggests a distinct motive for their stealing the money. A gentleman who is going to spend his honeymoon at Richmond wants money; and a gentleman who is in debt to all his tradespeople wants money. Is this an unjustifiable imputation of bad motives? In the name of outraged Morality, I deny it. These men have combined together, and have stolen a woman. Why should they not combine together and steal a cash-box? I take my stand on the logic of rigid Virtue, and I defy all the sophistry of Vice to move me an inch out of my position.

Speaking of virtue, I may add that I have put this view of the case to Mr. and Mrs. Yatman. That accomplished and charming woman found it difficult at first to follow the close chain of my reasoning. I am free to confess that she shook her head, and shed tears, and joined her husband in premature lamentation over the loss of the two hundred pounds. But a little careful explanation on my part, and a little attentive listening on hers, ultimately changed her opinion. She now agrees with me that there is nothing in this unexpected circumstance of the clandestine marriage which absolutely tends to divert suspicion from Mr. Jay, or Mr. “Jack,” or the runaway lady. “Audacious hussy” was the term my fair friend used in speaking of her; but let that pass. It is more to the purpose to record that Mrs. Yatman has not lost confidence in me, and that Mr. Yatman promises to follow her example, and do his best to look hopefully for future results.

I have now, in the new turn that circumstances have taken, to await advice from your office. I pause for fresh orders with all the composure of a man who has got two strings to his bow. When I traced the three confederates from the church door to the railway terminus, I had two motives for doing so. First, I followed them as a matter of official business, believing them still to have been guilty of the robbery. Secondly, I followed them as a matter of private speculation, with a view of discovering the place of refuge to which the runaway couple intended to retreat, and of making my information a marketable commodity to offer to the young lady’s family and friends. Thus, whatever happens, I may congratulate myself beforehand on not having wasted my time. If the office approves of my conduct, I have my plan ready for further proceedings. If the office blames me, I shall take myself off, with my marketable information, to the genteel villa residence in the neighborhood of the Regent’s Park. Anyway, the affair puts money into my pocket, and does credit to my penetration as an uncommonly sharp man.

I have only one word more to add, and it is this: If any individual ventures to assert that Mr. Jay and his confederates are innocent o f all share in the stealing of the cash-box, I, in return, defy that individual—though he may even be Chief Inspector Theakstone himself—to tell me who has committed the robbery at Rutherford Street, Soho.

Strong in that conviction, I have the honor to be your very obedient servant,

MATTHEW SHARPIN.

 

FROM CHIEF INSPECTOR THEAKSTONE TO SERGEANT BULMER.

Birmingham, July 9th.

 

SERGEANT BULMER—That empty-headed puppy, Mr. Matthew Sharpin, has made a mess of the case at Rutherford Street, exactly as I expected he would. Business keeps me in this town, so I write to you to set the matter straight. I inclose with this the pages of feeble scribble-scrabble which the creature Sharpin calls a report. Look them over; and when you have made your way through all the gabble, I think you will agree with me that the conceited booby has looked for the thief in every direction but the right one. You can lay your hand on the guilty person in five minutes, now. Settle the case at once; forward your report to me at this place, and tell Mr. Sharpin that he is suspended till further notice.

Yours, FRANCIS THEAKSTONE.

 

FROM SERGEANT BULMER TO CHIEF INSPECTOR THEAKSTONE.

London, July 10th.

 

INSPECTOR THEAKSTONE—Your letter and inclosure came safe to hand. Wise men, they say, may always learn something even from a fool. By the time I had got through Sharpin’s maundering report of his own folly, I saw my way clear enough to the end of the Rutherford Street case, just as you thought I should. In half an hour’s time I was at the house. The first person I saw there was Mr. Sharpin himself.

“Have you come to help me?” says he.

“Not exactly,” says I. “I’ve come to tell you that you are suspended till further notice.”

“Very good,” says he, not taken down by so much as a single peg in his own estimation. “I thought you would be jealous of me. It’s very natural and I don’t blame you. Walk in, pray, and make yourself at home. I’m off to do a little detective business on my own account, in the neighborhood of the Regent’s Park. Ta—ta, sergeant, ta—ta!”

With those words he took himself out of the way, which was exactly what I wanted him to do.

As soon as the maid-servant had shut the door, I told her to inform her master that I wanted to say a word to him in private. She showed me into the parlor behind the shop, and there was Mr. Yatman all alone, reading the newspaper.

“About this matter of the robbery, sir,” says I.

He cut me short, peevishly enough, being naturally a poor, weak, womanish sort of man.

“Yes, yes, I know,” says he. “You have come to tell me that your wonderfully clever man, who has bored holes in my second floor partition, has made a mistake, and is off the scent of the scoundrel who has stolen my money.”

“Yes, sir,” says I. “That is one of the things I came to tell you. But I have got something else to say besides that.”

“Can you tell me who the thief is?” says he, more pettish than ever.

“Yes, sir,” says I, “I think I can.”

He put down the newspaper, and began to look rather anxious and frightened.

“Not my shopman?” says he. “I hope, for the man’s own sake, it’s not my shopman.”

“Guess again, sir,” says I.

“That idle slut, the maid?” says he.

“She is idle, sir,” says I, “and she is also a slut; my first inquiries about her proved as much as that. But she’s not the thief.”

“Then, in the name of Heaven, who is?” says he.

“Will you please to prepare yourself for a very disagreeable surprise, sir?” says I. “And, in case you lose your temper, will you excuse my remarking that I am the stronger man of the two, and that if you allow yourself to lay hands on me, I may unintentionally hurt you, in pure self-defense.”

He turned as pale as ashes, and pushed his chair two or three feet away from me.

“You have asked me to tell you, sir, who has taken your money,” I went on. “If you insist on my giving you an answer—”

“I do insist,” he said, faintly. “Who has taken it?”

“Your wife has taken it,” I said, very quietly, and very positively at the same time.

He jumped out of the chair as if I had put a knife into him, and struck his fist on the table so heavily that the wood cracked again.

“Steady, sir,” says I. “Flying into a passion won’t help you to the truth.”

“It’s a lie!” says he, with another smack of his fist on the table—“a base, vile, infamous lie! How dare you—”

He stopped, and fell back into the chair again, looked about him in a bewildered way, and ended by bursting out crying.

“When your better sense comes back to you, sir,” says I, “I am sure you will be gentleman enough to make an apology for the language you have just used. In the meantime, please to listen, if you can, to a word of explanation. Mr. Sharpin has sent in a report to our inspector of the most irregular and ridiculous kind, setting down not only all his own foolish doings and sayings, but the doings and sayings of Mrs. Yatman as well. In most cases, such a document would have been fit only for the waste paper basket; but in this particular case it so happens that Mr. Sharpin’s budget of nonsense leads to a certain conclusion, which the simpleton of a writer has been quite innocent of suspecting from the beginning to the end. Of that conclusion I am so sure that I will forfeit my place if it does not turn out that Mrs. Yatman has been practicing upon the folly and conceit of this young man, and that she has tried to shield herself from discovery by purposely encouraging him to suspect the wrong persons. I tell you that confidently; and I will even go further. I will undertake to give a decided opinion as to why Mrs. Yatman took the money, and what she has done with it, or with a part of it. Nobody can look at that lady, sir, without being struck by the great taste and beauty of her dress—”

As I said those last words, the poor man seemed to find his powers of speech again. He cut me short directly as haughtily as if he had been a duke instead of a stationer.

“Try some other means of justifying your vile calumny against my wife,” says he. “Her milliner’s bill for the past year is on my file of receipted accounts at this moment.”

“Excuse me, sir,” says I, “but that proves nothing. Milliners, I must tell you, have a certain rascally custom which comes within the daily experience of our office. A married lady who wishes it can keep two accounts at her dressmaker’s; one is the account which her husband sees and pays; the other is the private account, which contains all the extravagant items, and which the wife pays secretly, by installments, whenever she can. According to our usual experience, these installments are mostly squeezed out of the housekeeping money. In your case, I suspect, no installments have been paid; proceedings have been threatened; Mrs. Yatman, knowing your altered circumstances, has felt herself driven into a corner, and she has paid her private account out of your cash-box.”

“I won’t believe it,” says he. “Every word you speak is an abominable insult to me and to my wife.”

“Are you man enough, sir,” says I, taking him up short, in order to save time and words, “to get that receipted bill you spoke of just now off the file, and come with me at once to the milliner’s shop where Mrs. Yatman deals?”

He turned red in the face at that, got the bill directly, and put on his hat. I took out of my pocketbook the list containing the numbers of the lost notes, and we left the house together immediately.

Arrived at the milliner’s (one of the expensive West-End houses, as I expected), I asked for a private interview, on important business, with the mistress of the concern. It was not the first time that she and I had met over the same delicate investigation. The moment she set eyes on me she sent for her husband. I mentioned who Mr. Yatman was, and what we wanted.

“This is strictly private?” inquires the husband. I nodded my head.

“And confidential?” says the wife. I nodded again.

“Do you see any objection, dear, to obliging the sergeant with a sight of the books?” says the husband.

“None in the world, love, if you