The Talleyrand Maxim, J. S. Fletcher [books to read fiction TXT] 📗
- Author: J. S. Fletcher
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Book online «The Talleyrand Maxim, J. S. Fletcher [books to read fiction TXT] 📗». Author J. S. Fletcher
The lad turned to a book which stood with others in a rack over the
chimney-piece, and tapped it with his finger.
“Yes, sir—because Mr. Bartle gave orders when I first came here that a
register of every letter sent out was to be kept—I’ve always entered
them in this book.”
“And this letter you’re talking about—to whom was it addressed?”
“Miss Mallathorpe, Normandale Grange, sir.”
“You went and posted it at once?”
“That very minute, sir.”
“Was it soon afterwards that Mr. Bartle went out?”
“He went out as soon as I came back, sir.”
“And you never saw him again?”
Jabey shook his head.
“Not alive, sir,” he answered. “I saw him when they brought him back.”
“How long had he been out when you heard he was dead?”
“About an hour, sir—just after six it was when they told Mrs. Clough
and me. He went out at ten minutes past five.”
Collingwood got up. He gave the lad’s shoulder a friendly squeeze.
“All right!” he said. “Now you seem a smart, intelligent lad—don’t
mention a word to any one of what we’ve been talking about. You have not
mentioned it before, I suppose? Not a word? That’s right—don’t. Come in
again tomorrow morning to see if I want you to be here as usual. I’m
going to put a manager into this shop.”
When the boy had gone Collingwood locked up the shop from the house
side, put the key in his pocket, and went into the kitchen.
“Mrs. Clough,” he said. “I want to see the clothes which my grandfather
was wearing when he was brought home last night. Where are they?”
“They’re in that little room aside of his bed-chamber, Mestur
Collingwood,” replied the housekeeper. “I laid ‘em all there, on the
clothes-press, just as they were taken off of him, by Lawyer Eldrick’s
orders—he said they hadn’t been examined, and wasn’t to be, till you
came. Nobody whatever’s touched ‘em since.”
Collingwood went upstairs and into the little room—a sort of box-room
opening out of that in which the old man lay. There were the clothes; he
went through the pockets of every garment. He found such things as keys,
a purse, loose money, a memorandum book, a bookseller’s catalogue or
two, two or three letters of a business sort—but there was no big
folded paper, covered with writing, such as Jabey Naylor had described.
The mention of that paper had excited Collingwood’s curiosity. He
rapidly summed up what he had learned. His grandfather had found a
paper, closely written upon, in a book which had been the property of
John Mallathorpe, deceased. The discovery had surprised him, for he had
given voice to an exclamation of what was evidently astonishment. He had
put the paper in his pocket. Then he had written a letter—to Mrs.
Mallathorpe of Normandale Grange. When his shop-boy had posted that
letter, he himself had gone out—to his solicitor. What, asked
Collingwood, was the reasonable presumption? The old man had gone to
Eldrick to show him the paper which he had found.
He lingered in the little room for a few minutes, thinking. No one but
Pratt had been with Antony Bartle at the time of his seizure and sudden
death. What sort of a fellow was Pratt? Was he honest? Was his word to
be trusted? Had he told the precise truth about the old man’s death? He
was evidently a suave, polite, obliging sort of fellow, this clerk, but
it was a curious thing that if Antony Bartle had that paper, whatever it
was—in his pocket when he went to Eldrick’s office it should not be in
his pocket still—if his clothing had really remained untouched. Already
suspicion was in Collingwood’s mind—vague and indefinable, but there.
He was half inclined to go straight back to Eldrick & Pascoe’s and tell
Eldrick what Jabey Naylor had just told him. But he reflected that while
Naylor went out to post the letter, the old bookseller might have put
the paper elsewhere; locked it up in his safe, perhaps. One thing,
however, he, Collingwood, could do at once—he could ask Mrs.
Mallathorpe if the letter referred to the paper. He was fully acquainted
with all the facts of the Mallathorpe history; old Bartle, knowing they
would interest his grandson, had sent him the local newspaper accounts
of its various episodes. It was only twelve miles to Normandale
Grange—a motorcar would carry him there within the hour. He glanced at
his watch—just ten o ‘clock.
An hour later, Collingwood found himself standing in a fine oak-panelled
room, the windows of which looked out on a romantic valley whose thickly
wooded sides were still bright with the red and yellow tints of autumn.
A door opened—he turned, expecting to see Mrs. Mallathorpe. Instead, he
found himself looking at a girl, who glanced inquiringly at him, and
from him to the card which he had sent in on his arrival.
THE FORTUNATE POSSESSORS
Collingwood at once realized that he was in the presence of one of the
two fortunate young people who had succeeded so suddenly—and, according
to popular opinion, so unexpectedly—to John Mallathorpe’s wealth. This
was evidently Miss Nesta Mallathorpe, of whom he had heard, but whom he
had never seen. She, however, was looking at him as if she knew him, and
she smiled a little as she acknowledged his bow.
“My mother is out in the grounds, with my brother,” she said, motioning
Collingwood towards a chair. “Won’t you sit down, please?—I’ve sent for
her; she will be here in a few minutes.”
Collingwood sat down; Nesta Mallathorpe sat down, too, and as they
looked at each other she smiled again.
“I have seen you before, Mr. Collingwood,” she said. “I knew it must be
you when they brought up your card.”
Collingwood used his glance of polite inquiry to make a closer
inspection of his hostess. He decided that Nesta Mallathorpe was not so
much pretty as eminently attractive—a tall, well-developed,
warm-coloured young woman, whose clear grey eyes and red lips and
general bearing indicated the possession of good health and spirits. And
he was quite certain that if he had ever seen her before he would not
have forgotten it.
“Where have you seen me?” he asked, smiling back at her.
“Have you forgotten the mock-trial—year before last?” she asked.
Collingwood remembered what she was alluding to. He had taken part, in
company with various other law students, in a mock-trial, a breach of
promise case, for the benefit of a certain London hospital, to him had
fallen one of the principal parts, that of counsel for the plaintiff.
“When I saw your name, I remembered it at once,” she went on. “I was
there—I was a probationer at St. Chad’s Hospital at that time.”
“Dear me!” said Collingwood, “I should have thought our histrionic
efforts would have been forgotten. I’m afraid I don’t remember much
about them, except that we had a lot of fun out of the affair. So you
were at St. Chad’s?” he continued, with a reminiscence of the
surroundings of the institution they were talking of. “Very different to
Normandale!”
“Yes,” she replied. “Very—very different to Normandale. But when I was
at St. Chad’s, I didn’t know that I—that we should ever come to
Normandale.”
“And now that you are here?” he asked.
The girl looked out through the big window on the valley which lay in
front of the old house, and she shook her head a little.
“It’s very beautiful,” she answered, “but I sometimes wish I was back at
St. Chad’s—with something to do. Here—there’s nothing to do but to do
nothing.” Collingwood realized that this was not the complaint of the
well-to-do young woman who finds time hang heavy—it was rather
indicative of a desire for action.
“I understand!” he said. “I think I should feel like that. One wants—I
suppose—is it action, movement, what is it?”
“Better call it occupation—that’s a plain term,” she answered. “We’re
both suffering from lack of occupation here, my brother and I. And it’s
bad for us—especially for him.”
Before Collingwood could think of any suitable reply to this remarkably
fresh and candid statement, the door opened, and Mrs. Mallathorpe came
in, followed by her son. And the visitor suddenly and immediately
noticed the force and meaning of Nesta Mallathorpe’s last remark. Harper
Mallathorpe, a good-looking, but not remarkably intelligent appearing
young man, of about Collingwood’s own age, gave him the instant
impression of being bored to death; the lack-lustre eye, the aimless
lounge, the hands thrust into the pockets of his Norfolk jacket as if
they took refuge there from sheer idleness—all these things told their
tale. Here, thought Collingwood, was a fine example of how riches can be
a curse—relieved of the necessity of having to earn his daily bread by
labour, Harper Mallathorpe was finding life itself laborious.
But there was nothing of aimlessness, idleness, or lack of vigour in
Mrs. Mallathorpe. She was a woman of character, energy, of
brains—Collingwood saw all that at one glance. A little, neat-figured,
compact sort of woman, still very good-looking, still on the right side
of fifty, with quick movements and sharp glances out of a pair of shrewd
eyes: this, he thought, was one of those women who will readily
undertake the control and management of big affairs. He felt, as Mrs.
Mallathorpe turned inquiring looks on him, that as long as she was in
charge of them the Mallathorpe family fortunes would be safe.
“Mother,” said Nesta, handing Collingwood’s card to Mrs. Mallathorpe,
“this gentleman is Mr. Bartle Collingwood. He’s—aren’t you?—yes, a
barrister. He wants to see you. Why, I don’t know. I have seen Mr.
Collingwood before—but he didn’t remember me. Now he’ll tell you what
he wants to see you about.”
“If you’ll allow me to explain why I called on you, Mrs. Mallathorpe,”
said Collingwood, “I don’t suppose you ever heard of me—but you know,
at any rate, the name of my grandfather, Mr. Antony Bartle, the
bookseller, of Barford? My grandfather is dead—he died very suddenly
last night.”
Mrs. Mallathorpe and Nesta murmured words of polite sympathy. Harper
suddenly spoke—as if mere words were some relief to his obvious
boredom.
“I heard that, this morning,” he said, turning to his mother. “Hopkins
told me—he was in town last night. I meant to tell you.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Mallathorpe, glancing at some letters which
stood on a rack above the mantelpiece. “Why—I had a letter from Mr.
Bartle this very morning!”
“It is that letter that I have come to see you about,” said Collingwood.
“I only got down here from London at half-past eight this morning, and
of course, I have made some inquiries about the circumstances of my
grandfather’s sudden death. He died very suddenly indeed at Mr.
Eldrick’s office. He had gone there on some business about which nobody
knows nothing—he died before he could mention it. And according to his
shop-boy, Jabey Naylor, the last thing he did was to write a letter to
you. Now—I have reason for asking—would you mind telling me, Mrs.
Mallathorpe, what that letter was about?” Mrs. Mallathorpe moved over to
the hearth, and took an envelope from the rack. She handed it to
Collingwood, indicating that he could open it. And Collingwood drew out
one of old Bartle’s memorandum forms, and saw a couple of lines in the
familiar crabbed handwriting:
“MRS. MALLATHORPE, Normandale Grange.
“Madam,—If you should drive into town tomorrow, will you kindly
give me a call? I want to see you particularly.
“Respectfully, A. BARTLE.”
Collingwood
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