Chapter XIV

"But now with lights reverse the old hours retire, And the last hour is shod with fire from hell. This is the end of every man's desire."

During the four months which had elapsed since Faunce's first visit to Kate Delmaine, alias Mrs. Randall, the detective had contrived to keep an observant eye upon the lady; but he had not succeeded in arriving on a more friendly footing with her, although he had obliged her on several occasions with a small advance on account of the promised reward.

He had called three or four times at the lodging-house in the dingy street near the Thames, and she had received him civilly. He had detected a lurking anxiety under the assumed lightness of her manner--a carking care, that seemed to him of some deeper nature than the need of money, or the sense of having fallen upon evil days. He would not have been surprised to see her depressed and out of spirits; but he was at a loss to understand that ever-present anxiety, and that nervous irritability which seemed allied with fear.

He remarked to her, in a friendly way, on the state of her nerves, and advised her to see a doctor. He urged her to live well, and to take the utmost care of herself, to which end he was liberal with those ten-pound notes on account.

"I want you to look your best when you appear in court," he said, "to show that you are every bit as handsome a woman as Lady Perivale."

"He always said I was," she answered, with a sigh.

"Colonel Rannock? He knew and admired you before he ever saw Lady Perivale, didn't he, now?" asked Faunce, who, for reasons of his own, was very anxious to make her talk of Rannock; but she answered curtly--

"Whether he did or whether he didn't, it's no business of yours."

The gloomy look had come back to her face; and Faunce was more and more convinced that, whatever her anxiety was, it was in some way connected with Colonel Rannock.

He had brought Rannock's name into the conversation whenever he could, and with an artful persistence, and the name had always a depressing influence. She spoke of him reluctantly, and she seldom spoke of him dry-eyed. Once she spoke of him in a past tense. It could be no common fate that had left such aching memories.

Without actually "shadowing" the lady during this interval, he had contrived to keep acquainted with her movements and associations, and he had discovered that almost her only visitor was the man whom he had seen on that first day--the man who had opened the door, glanced into the room, and hurried away at sight of a stranger. Even this person was not a frequent visitor, but he called at irregular hours, which indicated a friendly footing.

It had not taken Faunce very long to identify this person as an individual well-known to the patrons of the prize-ring--a pugilist called Bolisco, who had been one of Sir Hubert Withernsea's _protégés_, and had often sat at meat and drink in the very much mixed society in the Abbey Road. Bolisco had been at the zenith of his renown ten years ago, when Withernsea was burning that brief candle of his days which had guttered into the grave before he was thirty; but the pugilist's reputation had considerably declined since then. He had been beaten ignominiously in three or four public encounters, had seen his star go down before younger and steadier men, and was no longer good for anything better than a glove-fight at a second-rate tavern. One of those glove-fights had ended fatally for Bolisco's opponent; and there had been some among the lookers-on who accused him of brutal roughness towards a weaker man, which had resulted in death. No blame had attached to Bolisco in the opinion of the coroner's jury; but the patrons of the Fancy had given him the cold shoulder since that unlucky accident, which had happened more than a year ago.

In the course of that semi-shadowing Faunce had found out some details of Kate Delmaine's life during the last half-year. He found that she had occupied the shabby first-floor in Selburne Street since the beginning of March, that she had come there straight from "abroad," and that her trunks were covered with foreign labels--Ajaccio, Algiers, Marseilles, Paris, Calais. She had arrived with a great load of personal luggage, fine clothes, and other portable property, the greater part of which had been gradually made away with. She would go out in a cab with a large cardboard box, and come home half an hour afterwards on foot, having left box and contents at a pawnbroker's in the King's Road.

Betsy, the sixteen-year-old maid-of-all-work, from whom Faunce derived most of his information, had been a close observer of the first-floor lodger, and was pleased to impart her knowledge and her impressions to the amiable Faunce.

Mrs. Randall was very down-hearted, Betsy told him, and would sit and cry for the hour together. Did she drink? Well, only a brandy-and-soda now and then, but she used to stick a needle into her arm that made her sleepy, and she would lie on the sofa all the afternoon and evening sometimes, like a dead thing. The girl had heard her moan and groan in her sleep when she took her a cup of tea in the morning, and she would wake with a frightened look, and stare about her "wild-like," as if she didn't know where she was.

Had she many visitors?

None, except the dark gentleman with the broken nose; and he did not come very often, or stay long. They had words sometimes--very high words--and once, in one of their quarrels, she went into hysterics, and was "regular bad," and screamed at him like a lunatic. The missus had been obliged to go upstairs to her, and tell her she wouldn't stand such goings-on any longer. She'd have to clear out if she couldn't behave like a lady.

All this to hear did Mr. Faunce seriously incline; and he now began to do a little shadowing on Mr. Bolisco's account.

He knew that in all probability he was wasting his time; but the old hunter's instinct of the Scotland Yard days was upon him, and he wanted to know what ailed Kate Delmaine over and above the natural depression of a woman of her class out of luck.

He had provided for her comfort, had been to her as a guardian angel, as the time for her appearance in Court drew near. He had advised her how to dress the part, and had ascertained what Lady Perivale was going to wear, in order that Mrs. Randall's costume should in some degree resemble hers. He had gone to Regent Street on the day before the case came on, and bought a fur toque, after the fashion of Lady Perivale's sable.

"It is only a paltry bit of skunk," Mrs. Randall declared contemptuously, after she had blown the fur about and examined it with a depreciatory scrutiny; but when she put it on before the cloudy looking-glass in her parlour she owned to being pleased with herself.

"I wonder if you believe I was once a handsome woman," she said to Faunce.

"I know you are a handsome woman now, and that you've only to take a little more care of yourself to be as handsome as ever you were," he answered gravely, being a kind-hearted man and really sorry for her.

"That's skittles!" she answered. "I've come to the end of my tether. I've nothing to live for, and I'm sick of wishing I was dead, for it don't come off. And I don't want to kill myself; that's too cheap. I hate the idea of an inquest, and 'The deceased was once known as this,' and 'The deceased was once t'other.' I'm a lady, Mr. Faunce, and I loathe being magged about in the newspapers."

* * * * *

Now that Lady Perivale's action had ceased to be a nine days' wonder, and the lady herself was a happy wife, travelling by easy stages towards the land of ancient monuments and modern amusements, pyramids and golf links, Sphinxes and croquet, colossal sepulchres of unknown Pharaohs, and monster hotels with unknown tariffs; now that he had accomplished his task and had been handsomely rewarded, it might seem that John Faunce's interest in Grace Perivale's double would cease and determine. Strange to say that interest grew rather than diminished, and he contrived to see his little friend, the lodging-house slavey, once or twice a week, and so to be informed of all Mrs. Randall's proceedings; indeed, his love of detail led him to ask Betsy for an old blotting-book of the first-floor lodger's, which had been flung upon the dustheap, and which the girl had retrieved from that foul receptacle for the sake of its picture cover.

"Most people collect something," he told Betsy; "my fancy is old blotting-paper."

"Well, I never did!" exclaimed the damsel. "I know many as collecks postage-stamps, but I never heerd as blotting-paper was valuable!"

"It is, Betsy--sometimes," in token of which Mr. Faunce gave her a crown piece for the ragged book, with its inky impress of Mrs. Randall's sprawling penmanship.

Faunce had paid his witness the balance of the promised reward, £120, in bank-notes, the evening after the trial, and he was prepared to hear she had taken wing.

Surely with a sum of money in hand she would leave that dismal street, and hurry away to some more attractive locality. To Paris, perhaps, to buy fine clothes, and flaunt her recovered beauty in the Bois; or to Monte Carlo, to try her luck at the tables. It was in the character of such a woman to squander her last hundred pounds as freely as if she had an unlimited capital behind it.

She had talked of leaving her lodgings, the little handmaiden Betsy told him, but it hadn't come off. She had given a week's notice, and then had cut up rough when the missus took a lady and gentleman to look at the rooms. She wasn't going to be chucked out like a stray dog, she'd go when she wanted, and not before.

"I don't believe she'll never go," Betsy said, with a wise air. "She ain't got it in her to make up her mind about nothink. She sits in the easy-chair all day, smokin' cigarettes and readin' a novel, or lays on the sofa, and seems only half awake. And of a evening she gets dreadful low. She says she hates the house, and won't sleep another night in it, and yet when morning comes she don't offer to go. And then, she's that under his thumb that if he say she's not to leave, go she won't."

"You mean the dark gentleman?" said Faunce.

"Of course I do. There ain't any other as I knows on."

"Do you think she is--attached--to the dark gentleman?"

"I know she's afraid of him. I've seen her turn white at his step on the stairs, and she's always upset after he's been to our place, and sits and cries as if her heart was breaking. There, I do feel sorry for her! She's a real good sort. She give me this here hat," added the slavey, tossing her beplumed and bejewelled head. "It was bought in the Harcade, and it ain't been worn above half a dozen times, only the sea-water damaged it a bit when she was travelling."

So sincere and deep-rooted was Faunce's interest in Mrs. Randall, that he took considerable pains to follow the movements of her friend Mr. Bolisco, whom he tracked to his lair in a sporting public-house at Battersea--an old, tumble-down building in a shabby street close to the river, a house that had once been a respectable roadside inn, and had once been in the country.

Faunce took some note of the famous prize-fighter's habits, which were idle and dissolute, and of his associates, who belonged to the lowest order, the ragged fringe of rascality that hangs upon the edge of the sporting world. It was sad to think that so disreputable an acquaintance could dominate the life of a fine, high-spirited creature like Kate Delmaine. But, much as he was interested in a beautiful woman, who was travelling on that dismal journey which is called "going to the dogs," Mr. Faunce felt that his evening walks with Betsy, and his occasional look in at the Gamecock at Battersea--that sporting rendezvous where Mr. Bolisco had his "diggings,"--were so much dilettante trifling, and mere waste of time. His work in relation to Kate Delmaine was finished; and whatever mystery there might be in her life, mystery involving even a crime, it was no business of his to investigate it.

Somewhat reluctantly, therefore, like a baffled hunter who turns from the dubious trail of the beast he has been pursuing, Mr. Faunce discontinued his visits to Chelsea, and went no more, in his character of a well-to-do idler interested in the prize-ring, to the public-house across Battersea Bridge.

"I must be getting a regular amateur," he told himself, "if I can't have done with a case when my work is finished."

* * * * *

Christmas came as a pleasant diversion, and during that jovial season Faunce deserted his rooms in Essex Street, forgot that he was a detective, and remembered that he was a citizen and a husband. The turkey and beef, the pudding and mince-pies did credit to Mrs. Faunce's judgment, and the skill of an unpretentious cook, who did not scorn to bare her robust arms to the elbow, and hearthstone the doorstep before she fried the morning rasher.

The catering had been Mr. Faunce's own work. It was his falcon glance that had detected the finest Norfolk turkey in a row of eighteen-pounders, the ripest York ham out of a score of good ones. The champagne which he bought for his guests, the ten-year-old Scotch whisky which he drank himself, were all of the best, and the villa at Putney had the air of plenteous comfort in a small space which pervades a well-found ship.

With his wife sitting opposite to him, and an old friend on either side, Faunce enjoyed the harmless pleasures of social intercourse, and cleared his mind of crime and mystery, and did not go back to his office in Essex Street until the general holiday was over, and the flavour of Christmas had faded out of the atmosphere.

It was on the day after his return to everyday life that Faunce received a message from Scotland Yard, bidding him go there immediately on important business, a summons that he made haste to obey, since many of those cases which had afforded him profitable occupation within the last few years had come to him by the recommendation of his old chiefs in the Criminal Investigation Department.

He found one of those chiefs seated in his private room, engaged in conversation with a short, stout gentleman of middle age and pleasing countenance, who looked like a soldier--fair-haired, intelligent, and fussy.

"This is Mr. Faunce, Major Towgood," said the chief.

"Delighted to make your acquaintance, Faunce!" exclaimed the Major, in a breathless way, bouncing up from his chair, wanting to shake hands with Faunce, and suppressing the desire with a backward jerk; "and if Mr. Faunce," turning to the chief, "can do anything to set my poor mother-in-law's mind at rest about that scapegrace of hers, I shall be very grateful--on my wife's account, don't you know. Personally, I shouldn't be sorry to know he had gone under for good."

"Major Towgood is interested in the fate of a Colonel Rannock, his connection by marriage, who has not been heard of for some time."

"Not since last March, early in the month--sold his sticks--and started for the Yukon River," interjected Major Towgood again breathlessly, and with his eyes opened very wide.

"Colonel Rannock's disappearance--if it can be called a disappearance--has caused considerable anxiety to his widowed mother----"

"Women are such forgiving creatures, don't you know," interrupted the Major. "Talk of seventy times seven! There ain't any combination of figures that will express a mother's forgiveness of a prodigal son."

"And I have told Major Towgood," pursued the chief, with a shade of weariness, "that I can highly recommend you for an inquiry of that sort, and that if Colonel Rannock is to be found above ground--or under ground--you will find him."

"I'll do my best, sir."

"And now, my dear Towgood, I don't think I can do any more for you."

Major Towgood jumped up and bustled towards the door. But he wasn't gone yet. His gratitude was overpowering; and the chief had to back him out of the room, politely, but decisively.

"You are just the man we want, Faunce," said the Major, as they walked down a long corridor that led to the staircase. "Your Chief has told me all about you--you were in the Bank of England case, he said, and the Lady Kingsbury case--and--ever so many more sensation trials--and now you're on your own hook--which just suits us. The Chief and I were at Sandhurst together, don't you know, and he'd do anything for me. But he's a busy man, a very busy man; and I always respect a man's business, pull myself up short, don't you know, wouldn't waste his time or bore him, on any account."

"They haven't much time to spare in this building, sir," assented Faunce.

"Of course not. Magnificent building--splendid institution--fine body of men the police--but there ought to be three times as many of 'em. Eh, Faunce, that's your opinion, ain't it?"

"No doubt, sir, there ought to be more of them, if it would run to it."

"But it won't, no, of course it won't. Another penny on the income-tax this year! We shall see it a shilling before we've done with it."

"We should see it half a crown, sir, if everything was done as it ought to be done."

"True, true, Faunce. A social Utopia, and the taxpayer with hardly bread to eat. Well, I want to take you straight to my mother-in-law, who will tell you all about her worthless son--a bad egg, Faunce, a bitter bad egg, and not worth a ha'porth of the anxiety that poor old lady has been feeling about him. She lives at Buckingham Gate. Shall we walk?"

"By all means, sir. May I ask what particular circumstances have caused this uneasiness on Mrs. Rannock's part--and from what period her anxiety dates?"

"Well, you see, Faunce, Rannock left England in March--late in March--to go to Klondyke--a wild-cat scheme, like most of his schemes--and from that day to this nobody who knows him--so far as we can discover--has received any communication from him."

"Is that so strange, sir? I shouldn't think that when a man was digging for gold among a few thousand other adventurers, at the risk of being frozen to death, or murdered if he was lucky, he would be likely to trouble himself much about family correspondence?"

"Well, no doubt it's a rough-and-tumble life, but still, I'm told they do get the mails, and do keep somehow in touch with the civilized world; and, blackguard as Rannock is, he has been in the habit of writing to his mother three or four times a year, and oftener. I believe there is a soft spot in his heart for her. But you'll see the old lady, and she'll tell you her troubles," concluded Major Towgood, "so I needn't say any more about it."

In spite of which remark he talked without intermission all the way to Buckingham Gate.