Roger Ingleton, Minor

Talbot Baines Reed (continued 6)

Reading edition

“Madame has not been many years in these parts?” he inquired in his best French.

Madame threw up her shoulders and protested she had lived in those parts from a child, when the dull suburb was once a festive little rustic village, and the great city now gobbling it up once loomed mysteriously in the north, with acres and miles of green fields and woods between.

“But this hotel,” said Roger, “has not stood here so long?”

“Ma foi!” said she, “since I can remember, when I used to visit my good uncle here every Sunday, I remember ‘L’Hôtel Soult.’ Why, when I married my cousin and became Madame l’hôtesse, it was all fields between us and Paris. Yes, and little enough change about the house. We cannot afford, Monsieur, to build and decorate. By a miracle we escaped the German shells. Ah! a merry time was the year of the war! France suffered, alas! but the ‘L’Hôtel Soult’ prospered. ’Twas the year I was left a widow! I had ten waiters then, Monsieur, and two billiard-markers, a chef from the best kitchen in Paris, and stables, and chambrières, and—why, Monsieur, the wages of one week were twenty—twenty-five napoleons!”

“That was after the war?” asked Roger.

“Yes. Before that I had more. But, alas! they left me for the field, and came no more.”

“Were all your waiters Frenchmen?” asked Roger.

Madame stared curiously at the questioner.

“Why do you ask? I have had many kinds. Some English, like Monsieur.”

“A year or two after the war,” said Roger, “there was an Englishman, a relation of mine, who was a waiter in an hotel in one of the suburbs south of Paris. I want to hear of him. I have hunted for weeks. I could hear nothing of him. I came here before I gave it up as a hopeless search, and, as you know, I’ve been laid up ever since. You have been kind to me, Madame; something makes me think I was not kept here for nothing. Can you help me to find my friend?”

The landlady began to have inward misgivings that she had not behaved to this pleasant-spoken young guest of hers as nicely as she might have done, and she secretly resolved to revise the bill in his favour before presenting it.

“Why, Monsieur, I had plenty English in my time. The year after the war I had—let me think—two or three. Your friend—was he the little lame one who waited beautiful at table, but that he cough, cough, till I must send him away?”

“No; that’s not the one.”

“Then it was the fat one?—John Bull, we call him, who eat more than he served, never used a fork when he had his fingers. Ah, he was a dirty one, was your friend!”

“No,” said Roger; “that’s not he. My friend was not much older than I am, and a gentleman.”

“A gentleman—and a waiter!” laughed the landlady. “But tell me, what was his name?”

“He used to call himself Rogers.”

She shook her head.

“No one of that name was here. I had English, one or two—Bardsley, and Jackson, and Smith; he was a gentleman, but he was not young. He was fifty years, Mr Smith—a good servant. Also there was Monsieur Callow.”

“Callot!” exclaimed Roger, starting at the familiar name. “Was he an Englishman?”

“Surely. C-a-l-l-o-w—Callow. Ah! he was a droll one, was Monsieur Callow, and a gentleman too. I never had a billiard-marker like him. He could play any man, and lose by one point; and he could recite and sing; and oh, he eat so little! Every one laughed at him; but he laughed little himself, and thought himself too good for his fellow-waiters.”

“What was he like?” asked Roger, flushing with excitement.

“A fine young man, with long curly hair, and whiskers and a beard. He was afraid of nothing, tall and strong. Ah me! I have seen him knock a man down at a blow. He was a wild, reckless man, was Monsieur Callow; but a good servant, and oh! a beautiful billiard player. He always knew how to lose a game, and oh! it made my table so popular!”

“Had he any friends in Paris?”

“Yes; he went often to see his father—so he told me—an actor who gave lessons. I never saw Monsieur le père.”

“How long did he stay with you?”

“Callow? For five years he served me well. Then there was a fracas, a quarrel; I remember it now. An English officer was here, and played with him, and was beaten. ’Twas the only time I ever knew Callow win a game; but he lost his temper this time, and won. Then Milord called him a cheat, and without a word Monsieur Callow knocked him down. The police came, and Monsieur Callow knocked him down. Then he put on his hat and walked, and I never saw him more. He always said he would go to sea, and I think he would keep his word. Ah, a telegram! ’Tis long since telegrams came to my hotel. Hélas! not for me; for you, Monsieur.”

It was from Armstrong.

“Shall be with you, ten to-morrow morning.”

The three weeks which had passed at Maxfield had been terrible.

The discovery of Captain Oliphant’s body at the foot of the cliff, with the clear traces of a struggle on the brink above, had created a profound sensation at Maxfield and the country round.

For a day the air was full of wild conjectures of suicide, incident, foul play; until the last-named theory was finally confirmed by the discovery in the tightly-clenched hand of the dead man of a fragment of a promissory note bearing the signature of Robert Ratman.

To the tutor, as he held the paper in his hand, everything became startlingly clear. This was the last act of a tragedy which had been going on for months; and now that the curtain had abruptly fallen, he could not help, in the midst of this horror, owning to a sense of thankfulness, for the sake of others, that the troubled career of his rival and enemy had stopped short at a point beyond which nothing but disgrace and scandal and misery awaited it.

From that disgrace it was his business now, by every means in his power, to shield the innocent brother and sisters who still honoured the dead man as their father.

Many a grievous task had been thrown upon the tutor in his day, but none cost him more effort than this, of breaking to the children of his enemy the news of their father’s death. But he went through it manfully and ably.

Rosalind, on whom the blow fell hardest, because on her spirit the burden of her father’s cares had lain heaviest, rose, with a heroine’s courage, to the occasion, and earned the tutor’s boundless gratitude by making his task easy. She said little; she understood everything. She remembered nothing but the father’s love—his old caresses and confidences and kindnesses. The tears she shed blotted out all the anxieties and misgivings and heart-sinkings of recent weeks. All that remained was crowded with love.

Tom, dulled and stunned, took the story in gradually, and got used to it as he went along. He came and slept at night in the tutor’s room, and felt how much worse things might have been had it not been for the stalwart protector who put hope and cheer into him, and filled the blank in his heart with sturdier views of life than the boy had ever harboured there before.

As for Jill, for a week all was blackness and darkness to her. She felt deserted—lost. She cried herself to sleep at night, and by day wandered over the house, peeping into her father’s room, and half expecting to see him back. Then her gentle spirit took courage, and she looked up, and her eyes lit with comfort and hope on Mr Armstrong. Everything could not be lost if he was there; and when he sometimes came, and took her little hand in his, and invited her to be his companion in his rides, or sought her out in her lonely walks and made her teach him the haunts of her favourite flowers or read to him from her favourite books, she began to think there was still some joy left on earth.

“Dear Mr Armstrong,” she said one day when, by invitation, she came to make afternoon tea for him in his room, “you are so awfully kind to me! If I was only as old as Rosalind, I would marry you.”

This rather startling declaration took the tutor considerably aback. He laughed and said—

“You are very nice as you are, Jill.”

“You think I’m silly, I know,” said she, “but I’m not. Would you hate me if I was older?”

“I don’t think I could hate you, not even if you were a hundred.”

“I love you ever so much,” said she. “Please don’t believe what Tom said about the Duke. I don’t like him a millionth part as much as you.”

“Poor Duke!” said the tutor.

“Really and truly. And oh, Mr Armstrong, if you would only wait I would love to marry you some day! How soon shall I be big enough?”

This was getting embarrassing. But the tutor was in a tender mood, and had it not in his heart to thwart the little Leap-year maid. “Time flies fast,” said he; “you’ll be grown up before we know where we all are.”

She sighed.

“I know you’d sooner have Rosalind. But she doesn’t care for you as much as I do. She likes Roger best; but I don’t; I like you fifty thousand times better. Would it be an awful bother, Mr Armstrong?”

“What! to have Jill for my little wife?” said he. “Not a bit. If ever I want one, she’s the first person I mean to ask.”

With this declaration Jill had to rest content. It solaced her sorrow vastly; and even though Rosalind, to whom she confided the compact under a pledge of secrecy, scolded and laughed at her alternately, she felt a new prospect open before her, and set herself resolutely to the task of growing up worthy of Mr

Armstrong’s affection.

But amid all these troubles and hopes at Maxfield, two questions were on every one’s lips: “Where was Roger? Where was Robert Ratman?”

Roger had written once after reaching Paris, a letter full of hope, which had arrived a few days before Captain Oliphant’s death. He had succeeded at last in tracking the man Pantalzar to a low lodging in the city, and from him had ascertained somewhat of the history of the Callot family. They had lodged with him at Long Street in London, where they had given lessons in acting, elocution, and music; and Pantalzar clearly remembered the lad Rogers as a constant visitor at the house, partly in the capacity of a promising student of the dramatic art, and partly as a hopeless lover of his preceptor’s wayward daughter.

After a year, his troubles in the latter capacity were abruptly cut short by the illness and death of the young lady; a blow which staggered the parents and broke up the establishment at Long Street. It failed, however, to drive Rogers from the party, who, with a romantic loyalty, attached himself to the fortunes of the old people, and became like a son to them in their distresses.

Eventually the bereaved family migrated to Paris, whence Pantalzar had once heard from the father, who had found employment as stall manager of a third-rate theatre in one of the fauxbourg. Hither Roger tracked him, and after dogged search, often baffled, sometimes apparently hopeless, discovered some one who remembered the reputed son of the old couple, who, as far as this witness could remember, was thought to have hired himself out as billiard-marker in an hotel in one of the southern suburbs of the city.

Thus far he had succeeded when he wrote home. What transpired subsequently, and how he dropped for a season out of all knowledge, the reader already knows.

The suspense occasioned by his sudden disappearance, as may be imagined, added a new element of wretchedness to the situation at Maxfield. Telegrams, letters, inquiries, alike failed to discover his whereabouts or the secret of his silence. As post after post came and brought neither message nor tidings, the hearts of the watchers grew sick. To the tutor especially, tied as he was to the scene of the tragedy, those three weeks were a period of torture. He urged Dr Brandram to go over to Paris to make inquiries; but the Doctor, after a fortnight of fruitless search, returned empty-handed.

Mr Armstrong thereupon resolved at all hazards to quit his post and go himself. He knew something of Paris. He had old associations with the city, and once, as the reader has heard, possessed acquaintances there. If any one could find the boy, he thought he could; and with such trusty substitutes as the Doctor and Mr Headland, who remained at Yeld, to leave behind, he felt that he might, nay rather that he must, venture on the journey.

It was on the morning of his departure, as he was waiting for the trap to carry him to the station, that Roger’s telegram was put in his hand:—

“Come—have been ill—better now—Hotel Soult—no news.”

Twenty-four hours later the tutor was at his pupil’s side, with a heavy weight lifted from his heart, and resolved, come what would, not to quit his post till he had the truant safe back at Maxfield.

The news he brought with him served to drive from Roger’s mind all thoughts of continuing his sojourn a day longer than was necessary to recover his strength.

“It seems pretty certain,” said he, “that my brother, when he left here, returned to England, and probably went to sea very soon after. There is no object in staying here. Look in that room there, Armstrong. That’s the billiard-room in which he spent most of his time, and that’s the very table on which he let himself be beaten regularly for the good of the house.”

The tutor walked across to the folding-doors and surveyed the dingy room with critical interest.

“And that must have been little more than twelve years ago,” said he. “Do you still hold to your theory that Ratman is your brother?”

“I have no theory. I must find my brother, even if he is a—a murderer,” said the boy with a groan. “But, I say, has nothing been heard of him?”

“The police have traced him to London; there the scent ends for the present. He is probably in hiding there, and one may have to wait weeks or months till he gets off his guard and is caught.”

About ten days later they started, by slow stages, on the homeward journey. Whether Madame received all she expected for her hospitality is doubtful. Mr Armstrong undertook the duties of cashier, and used his eye-glass considerably in scrutinising the figures. He craved an interview with Madame in her parlour to discuss her arithmetic, and although he appeared eventually to arrive at a satisfactory understanding with the good lady (so much so, that she shed tears at his departure), he did not complain that her charges were extortionate, as French hotels go.

The home-coming of the heir of Maxfield created a welcome flutter of excitement among the desolate occupants of the manor-house and their neighbours. But the flutter in their hearts was nothing compared with that in the heart of the heir himself as he walked across the park on the day after his return to call at the Vicarage and invite Rosalind to accompany him in a ride. What passed—whether the flutter was contagious, what brought back the deserted colour to Miss Rosalind’s cheeks, why they rode so slow and left so much of their course to the decision of their steeds,—all this and many other matters for wonder, history recordeth not, as is quite proper. But it does record that when, on their return, Mr Armstrong chanced to come out on to the door-step, where the two stood unmounted, Roger said—

“Armstrong, Rosalind has promised to be my wife.”

The tutor flushed a little at this not unexpected announcement; then taking his pupil’s arm, he said—

“It means great happiness for you both. I am glad—very glad.”

But why, if he was so glad, did he slink off to his study forthwith and play a dirge on his piano, and there sit listlessly in his chair for the rest of the morning staring out of the window through his glass, till Jill tripped in and fetched him down to lunch, saying—

“Dear Mr Armstrong, try not to be too awfully sorry. I think no one is as nice as you.”

Chapter Twenty Five.

The Heir of Maxfield comes of Age.

It wanted but a month to Roger’s majority, that important day on which the fate of so many persons was to be decided, when a letter was delivered to the heir of Maxfield as he sat at breakfast.

The weeks that had passed since Captain Oliphant’s sudden death had been uneventful. To Rosalind and Roger the discovery that they loved one another went far to lighten the sorrow which had befallen both—one in the death of a father, the other in what appeared to be the hopeless loss of a brother.

Roger had by no means yet abandoned his search. Twice already had he and Armstrong been up to London to make inquiries, but without avail. The billiard-marker of “L’Hôtel Soult” had vanished as completely as—well, as Mr Ratman.

“You know, of course,” said the tutor once, with the rather unsympathetic drawl in which he was wont to allude to the lost Ingleton—“you know, of course, that if the man you want is Ratman, you are having the assistance of the police in your search. A warrant is out against him, and heaven and earth is being moved to capture him.”

Roger sighed.

“I am looking for no one but my brother,” said he, “Even if he turns out to be this miscreant, I cannot help it.”

“Quite so. Only it is right to remember that to find Ratman means to hang him. That at least is the object the police have in view. But you need not disturb yourself on that score. Roger Ingleton, major, if we find him, may be a villain, but he won’t be the murderer of Miss Oliphant’s father.”

They returned presently, baffled, to Maxfield. No one at the depots, or recruiting head-quarters, or pension offices could tell them a word of a soldier or a sailor named Callot who might have enlisted or gone to sea about twelve years ago. How could they expect it? Nor did the most careful search among the old Squire’s papers lead to the discovery of any record of the supposed report of the lad’s death.

As a matter of fact, if the billiard-marker at “L’Hôtel Soult” was the man, they had already traced him down to a date long subsequent to that of his rumoured death.

Together they ransacked the memories of Dr Brandram, the Vicar, old Hodder, and one or two other inhabitants who might be supposed to know something of the matter. Very few there were who had seen the boy at all. He had spent most of his time at school, and during his occasional holidays had usually found all the amusement he needed in the ample confines of the park.

No one had seen in black and white an announcement of his death. The Squire had told the Doctor that news of it had arrived from abroad; where and when and under what circumstances he never said. Old Hodder remembered the story of the quarrel between father and son, and identified the portrait as that of the missing lad. But, despite his boasted “threescore years and ten,” the old man was absolutely useless in the present inquiry.

And so, thwarted at every turn, not knowing what to hope for, too proud to own himself beaten, Roger abandoned the search, and awaited his majority very much as a debtor awaits his bankruptcy.

Mr Armstrong, who chanced to look up at the moment when Raffles delivered the letter, concluded at once from the startled look on the lad’s face that it was a missive of no common importance.

It was from Ratman, and bore on its envelope the London post-mark:—

“Dear Brother,—For the last time I claim your help. I know quite well that I am being hunted to death by you and those you employ. Without a shred of evidence you are willing to believe me a murderer. I suppose I have no right to complain. It would be convenient to you to have me out of the way, and the best way of getting rid of me is to get up this cry against me. A nice brotherly act, and worthy of an Ingleton! It is no use my telling you that I am innocent—that till I had been two days here I never so much as heard of Oliphant’s death. You would not believe it. Nor, I fancy, is it much use telling you that the scoundrel owed me money, that I was shielding him from the consequences of an old felony for which he might have had penal servitude, and that the little he did pay me was stolen from your property. Of course you wouldn’t believe it. It is only about your brother, who has been a slung stone all his life, who never had a friend, never knew a kind look from any one, that you are ready to believe evil. I am nearly at the end of my tether here. In a day or two you will probably hear that I am arrested, and then you will have your revenge on me for daring to be your flesh and blood; and you will have no difficulty in convincing a judge and jury that I have committed any crime you and your saintly tutor choose to concoct between you. Pleasant to be rich and influential! I could escape if I had money. Fifty pounds would rid you of me almost as effectively as the gallows. But it would cost you something; therefore it is absurd to imagine it possible. When, three days hence, I make my last call at the General Post Office, and hear once more that there is nothing for me, not even a message of brotherly pity (which costs nothing), I shall know my last hope is gone. And you, in the lap of luxury, counting your thousands, and monarch of all you survey, will be able to breathe again. Either you will hear of my arrest, or, if my courage befriends me, you may read in an obscure corner of the paper of a wretch, hounded to death, who escaped his pursuers after all, and preferred to die by his own hand rather than that of his brother. Good-bye till then.

“Your brother,—

“Roger Ingleton.

“P.S.—The Post Office know me, or my messenger, as ‘Richard Redfern.’ No doubt you will show this letter to your tutor, who should have no difficulty in using the information I am obliged to give as to my whereabouts to run me down.”

The flush on Roger’s face had died down into pallor by the time he reached the end of this savage yet dismal letter. Till he came to the postscript he had reckoned on demanding Armstrong’s advice as to its contents. Now, somehow, his hands seemed tied. Here was a man, claiming to be his brother, practically placing his life in his hands. Whether the story were true or false, the writer had calculated astutely on the quixotic temper of his correspondent. The appeal, insultingly as it was made, was one which Roger Ingleton, minor, could not resist.

“I have had a letter from Ratman,” said he when the two friends were alone together.

“I am not surprised,” said the tutor. “He wants money, of course?”

“I can’t show you the letter, simply because it contains a vague clue as to his whereabouts, which you would feel bound to follow up.”

“I undoubtedly should,” said Mr Armstrong. “Shall not you?”

“No. He gives it in confidence, in the hope I shall send him money. I don’t intend to do that, but it would hardly be fair to use this letter against him.”

“He is Captain Oliphant’s murderer.”

“He denies it, and once more calls himself my brother.”

The tutor shrugged his shoulders.

“As you please. Burn the letter. It probably does not tell more than the police know already.”

Roger dismally obeyed. Had he felt sure that this man was his brother, he would have, at all risk and in spite of all, tried to help him. Even so, to help him with one hand would mean to ruin him with the other. If he found him, it would be to hand him over to the police. If he procured his escape, it would be to oust him irrevocably from his inheritance.

There seemed nothing for it but to do nothing and wait.

In other quarters the policy of inaction found little favour. Mr Headland called up the same evening at Maxfield and demanded an interview with the tutor.

“Wal, young man,” said he, “I calculate those two hundred-pound notes of mine didn’t travel so far astray after all.”

“You have traced them, then?”

“I’ve been three weeks doing it, but I have so.”

“And with what conclusion?”

“Just this, that Captain E. Oliphant fell over that cliff just about the right time, sir. Yes, sir, my notes are lying snug at the English Bank at this present moment, and I know their pedigree. Number 90,356 came there from a bank in Fleet Street. The bank in Fleet Street received it from a hotel. The hotel received it from a gentleman who slept in bedroom Number 36, and that gentleman’s name was Ratman. Number 90,357 came to the bank later from Amsterdam. Amsterdam had it from an English diamond merchant, the diamond merchant had it from a stock jobber, and the stock jobber had it from a sporting club, who had it from a temporary member in December last in payment of a gambling debt, and that temporary member’s name was Ratman. That’s not all, sir. My letter was posted in America, November 9. On November 17 the post-master at Yeld, an intelligent man, sir, received a letter with an American stamp, sir, addressed to Roger Ingleton, senior, at Maxfield. A Yankee stamp was a novelty to your intelligent post-master, and he took a note of date, and sent it up here for delivery. It was delivered here November 17, and your footman remembers giving it to your colleague. Three days after, Mr Ratman visited his friend Captain E. Oliphant here. Two days later he reached the hotel in London with a Yeld label on his trunk. A week after that he passed note Number 90,356 to settle his bill. There, sir; the Americans are born explorers. I flatter myself there’s not much more to know about my two notes.”

“Quite so,” said the tutor. “You have done a great deal in three weeks. What reparation can be made you?”

“Sir, you are an honest young man. You believe in shielding the memory of a dead enemy. You are right. Continue on that tack and you’ll do yourself credit. As executor of my late kinsman, I will trouble you to place this cheque for £200 to the credit of the estate, and never to say a word about the sum that was lost. Notes get lost every day; at least they do in America.”

Mr Armstrong’s gratitude was beyond words. He had set his heart, for the sake of the children of his late colleague, and even for Roger’s sake, on covering with a cloak of oblivion the crime of which chance had made him the detector. This American had it in his power to aid or thwart him, and had chosen the former course; and a great weight was lifted off the tutor’s mind in consequence.

On the following day he was calling at the Yeld bank to transact some business (part of which was to pay in Mr Headland’s cheque), when the manager invited him into his parlour. This functionary was a respectable, middle-aged person, who had held his appointment for five or six years, keeping pretty much to himself, and, as is the lot of bank managers, being made a great deal of by clients who chanced to be, or desired to be, under obligations to his bank.

“Mr Armstrong,” said he, “you will pardon me, but there’s a little matter—”

“Hullo!” thought the tutor, “has the bank stopped payment, or the Maxfield securities been robbed?”

“Well, sir?”

“It’s a private matter, and I should not mention it if it were not for the talk which is going to and fro about young Mr Ingleton’s lost brother. I understand there’s a claimant for the title, and not a very eligible one.”

“On the contrary, most ineligible,” said the tutor. “And it seems likely that he will, under present circumstances, keep far enough away from these parts?”

“Naturally. The coroner’s jury have given him a pressing invitation, which he feels compelled to decline.”

“Well, about this lost boy. You’ll think me impertinent, but I think I can tell you something about him.”

The tutor started, and looked hard at the speaker. “Yes,” said the latter mildly. “As you know, I’ve not been here long. My predecessor, Mr Morris, was a friend of the family. I remember his once mentioning an elder son of the Squire who had been reported dead, and that was all I ever heard of the matter from him or anybody else. But only last week, in a bundle of documents relating to Mr Morris’s own affairs, which, as his executor, it was my duty to examine, I came upon a letter which, though evidently private at the time, seems as if it ought at least to be seen by you and your ward now. It proves that ten years ago the elder son was alive, and being in his handwriting, it may be important evidence if you have to deal with the claim of an impostor.”

The tutor expressed considerable discomfort at this new complication, and regarded the document in the banker’s hand as if it were an infernal machine.

“It’s private, you say. Would it not be better to regard it as such?”

“I think it should be seen. If you prefer I will submit it to Mr Pottinger.”

This settled the business. The tutor stretched out his hand for the letter. It was dated from on board the ship “Cyclops,” off Havana, ten years ago, and, by the unsteady character of the handwriting, which rendered some words almost illegible, had evidently been written in a high sea. Mr Armstrong could scarcely help smiling at the banker’s naïve suggestion as to the use of the document as evidence of handwriting.

The note was as follows:—

“Dear Mr Morris,—I write to you in strictest confidence. My father probably has given me up for dead. I hope so. On no account must he know that I have written to you. My object is to enclose a twenty-five dollar note which I owe him. Once, before we quarrelled, he lent me five pounds. I want to pay it back without any one knowing of it, because I’m determined not to owe anything to anybody, especially to one who has told me I’m not honest. Please put it into his bank account. He probably will never notice it; anyhow, please, whatever you do, don’t tell him or any one alive where it came from, or that you ever heard a word from me or of me. I trust you as a gentleman.

“Yours truly,—

“Roger Ingleton.”

“Well, sir,” said the banker, who had watched the reading curiously, “does it not seem an important letter?”

“I think so. It appears to be genuine, too, on the face of it. If you will allow me I should like my ward to see it. It will interest him.”

The tutor was not wrong. With this strange missive in his hand all Roger’s yearnings towards his lost brother returned in full force. The object of his search seemed suddenly to stand within measurable reach. Ten years appeared nothing beside the twenty which only a few months back had divided them. If he could but postpone his majority another year! Then came the miserable doubt about Ratman. If, after all, his unlikely, discredited story should prove to have a grain of truth at the bottom of it! But he dismissed the doubt for the hope.

“Armstrong, I must go to town to find out about the ‘Cyclops.’ Come with me, there’s a good fellow. In three weeks it will be too late.”

The tutor was prepared for this decision.

“By all means,” said he. “We will go to-morrow to inquire after a passenger or sailor who was on board a sailing-vessel, nationality unknown, which happened to be off Havana in a heavy sea on October 20, ten years ago.”

“I know it’s absurd,” said Roger, “but I can’t help it. I never seemed so near my brother before. I should despise myself if I sat idle here.”

So it happened that, just when Maxfield was preparing in a quiet way to celebrate the coming of age of the heir; just as the gloom which had followed on Captain Oliphant’s tragic death was beginning to lift a little and allow Tom and Jill decorously to think of football; just as Rosalind was beginning to make up her mind that she was not destined for ever to teach the elements of art and science to the Vicarage children; just when everything seemed to be settling down for the last scene of the drama, Roger and his tutor vanished once more on their familiar wild-goose chase.

Dr Brandram grumbled; the county gentry shook their heads; Mr Pottinger breathed again. No one thought well of the expedition; some went so far as to make a jest of it.

Roger cared nothing for what people thought. With Armstrong to back him, with Rosalind to bid him a brave God-speed, with his own stout heart to buoy him up, and with his lost brother only ten years distant, he could afford to start in good cheer, and let the world think what it liked.

But the cheer was destined to failure. They heard of one or two vessels called the “Cyclops,” but respecting the crew or passengers, of none of them was it possible to glean a word of news. The vessel in question might have been ship, schooner, or barque; she might have been English, American, Indian, or Australian; she might have foundered, or changed her name, or been broken up for lumber. Lloyds knew her not. West India merchants had never heard of her. Of all their quests, this seemed the most vague and hopeless.

Up to the last, Roger stuck doggedly to it. Even if he spent his majority in the London docks he would not turn tail. The tutor backed up loyally, did most of the work, made most of the inquiries, never grumbled or gibed or protested. When Roger looked most like giving in, it was the tutor who put fresh heart into him.

“To-morrow,” said Roger on the eve of his birthday, “I will give it up. But there is a day yet.”

And sure enough, on the last day, a vague ray of light came in the shape of a telegram from the port-master at Havana, to whom, at the tutor’s suggestion, a message of inquiry had been sent:—

“Cyclops known. Writing.”

Writing! A letter would take weeks to come, and they had but a day! They hurried to the telegraph-office and sent an urgent message begging particulars by wire whatever the cost. Late that day, indeed it was nearly midnight, the reply came:—

“Sailed Ceylon, West Indies. Name Ingleton unknown. Ship now here.”

Roger staggered from the office a beaten man. Through the deserted City streets the clocks were booming the hour of midnight and ushering in his majority. His brother! All along he had persuaded himself this quest was to end in victory, that before now he should have met his brother face to face and given him what was his. To-day it was no longer his to give. The race was already over, and the clock had won. His brother was not there.

“Take my arm, dear old fellow,” said Mr Armstrong, “and cheer up.”

Chapter Twenty Six.

Missing Links.

For three hours that night the two friends, arm-in-arm, paced the empty streets, saying little, brooding much, yet gaining courage at every step. The touch of his guardian’s arm thrilled Roger now and again with a sensation of hope and relief in the midst of his dejection which almost surprised him. He had lost his brother; but was not this man as good as a brother to him? Would life be quite brotherless as long as he remained at his side?

The tutor, for his part, experienced a strange emotion too. The opening day had brought a crisis in his life as well as in that of his ward. It was a day to which he had long looked forward, partly with the dread of separation, partly with the joy of a man who has honestly done his work and is about to render up his trust. But was it all over now? No longer now was he a guardian or governor. Was he therefore to lose this gallant comrade, to whom all the brotherhood in his nature went out?

With reflections such as these it is scarcely to be wondered at that little was said during that long aimless walk.

At last Roger shivered.

“Let’s turn in,” said Mr Armstrong.

They were in a street off the Strand, a long way from their hotel, and no cab in sight.

“Any place will do,” said Roger. “Why not this?” and he pointed to the door of a seedy-looking private hotel, over which a lamp burned with the legend—“Night porter in attendance.”

The tutor surveyed the house curiously through his and then said—

“Quite so; I stayed here once before,” and rang the bell.

The door was opened by a person of whose nationality there could be little doubt, particularly when, after a momentary inspection of his belated guests, he uttered an exclamation of joy and accosted the tutor—

“Mon ami! Oh! I am glad to see you, my good friend. Friend of my pauvre père!—friend of my youth! It is you. Ah, Monsieur!” added he, addressing Roger, “for your friend’s sake you are welcome. Entrez!”

“Be quiet now, Gustav,” said the tutor. “Bring us come coffee in the coffee-room, if you can get it made, and light a fire in the bedroom. We will talk in the morning.”

Gustav gesticulated delighted acquiescence in any demand his hero made, and ushered them into the coffee-room.

“What a queer fellow!” said Roger when he had vanished in search of the coffee.

“Queer but good-hearted fellow is Gustav,” said the tutor. “I have known him a long time; to-morrow I’ll tell you— Hullo!”

There was but a single candle in the room, and by its dim light, and that of the half-expired fire, they had not at first been able to see that they were not the sole occupants of the apartment. On the sofa lay curled the figure of a man breathing heavily, and, to judge by the spirit-bottle and glasses on the table at his hand, expiating a carouse by a disturbed and feverished slumber.

The tutor raised the candle so that the light fell more clearly on the sleeper. Something in the figure had struck him. The man lay with his face turned towards them. He was stylishly though cheaply dressed. His age may have been forty, and his features were half obscured by a profuse and unkempt sandy beard. This was not what had struck the tutor. In his frequent turnings and tossings the sleeper had contrived to betray the fact that his hirsute appearance was due not to nature but to art. A wire hook had been displaced from the ear, leaving one side of the wig tilted so as to disclose underneath the smooth cheek of a clean-shaven man.

The examination was still in process when Gustav re-entered the room. The clatter with which he put down the cups on the table, aided by the glare of the candle and the tutor’s sharp ejaculation, wakened the sleeper with a start. He was sober enough as he raised his head sharply and sprang to his feet. In doing this the treacherous wig slipped still farther. Before he could raise his hand to replace it Mr Armstrong had stepped forward and torn the mask from his face, disclosing the livid countenance of Mr Robert Ratman!

The surprise on either side was at first beyond reach of words. The miscreant stood staring in a dazed way, first at Armstrong, then at Roger, then at Gustav, who, being a Frenchman, was the first to come to his use of his tongue.

“Mon dieu! Monsieur, this is no bedroom for the gentleman. It is forbidden to sleep all night in the salle à manger.”

“Silence, Gustav! Go for a policeman,” said Armstrong in a tone so strange that the faithful Gustav slunk away like a dog with his tail between his legs.

“Now, sir!” said the tutor as the door closed.

The wretch made one wild effort at escape. He might have known by this time with whom he had to deal. Mr Armstrong held him by the wrist as in a vice.

“It won’t do, Ratman,” said he. “The game is up. The best thing you can do is to stand quietly here till the police come.”

The prisoner sullenly abandoned his struggle, and turned with a bitter sneer to Roger.

“So you’ve run me down, have you? You’ve found your lost brother at last? I expected it. I was a fool to suppose you would lift a finger for me. There’s some chance of escaping from an enemy, but from a brother who has set himself to hound a brother to death, never. Never mind. Your money’s safe now. Have me hung as soon as you like; the sooner the better for me.”

Roger, stupefied and stung to the quick by these taunts, winced as though he and not the speaker were the miscreant. He looked almost appealingly at his accuser, and tried to speak to justify himself, but the words refused to come.

Suddenly he seemed to detect in the prisoner’s eye some new sinister purpose.

“Take care, Armstrong; take care!” he cried, and flung himself between the two.

It was not an instant too soon. With his free hand Ratman had contrived while talking to reach unheeded a pocket, from which he suddenly whipped a pistol, and, pounding on his captor, fired.

The shot was badly and wildly aimed at the tutor’s face. Even at so short a distance it might have missed its mark altogether. Roger’s sudden intervention, however, found it an unexpected target. The lad’s up-flung hand caught the pistol at the moment it went off, and received in its palm the ball which had been intended for his friend.

The sight of this untoward accident completely unnerved the prisoner. He sullenly let the weapon drop from his fingers, and with the air of a gambler who has played and lost his last stake, sank listlessly on the sofa on which not ten minutes before he had been sleeping.

“Luck’s against me,” he said with an oath. “Look to the boy; I shan’t trouble you any more. I’ve done him harm enough without this. I wish I’d never heard of his elder brother.”

The tutor, busy binding up his ward’s hand, only half heard the words; but Roger, amidst all his pain, heard it and looked up.

“Then you are not my brother?” he said faintly.

“Brother? No. And if you hadn’t left the papers about in your room a year ago I should never have known it was worth my while to pretend it.”

When, a few moments later, Gustav entered with two constables, Mr Ratman welcomed the visitors with a sigh almost of relief, and placed himself quietly in their hands. As he passed the chair where Roger sat, half faint with pain and loss of blood, he stopped a moment and said—

“Your brother! No. If I had been I shouldn’t have come to this.”

About ten days later a small party was gathered in Roger’s cosy den at Maxfield.

The young Squire was there, with his hand in a sling, still pale and weak, but able to sit up on the sofa and enjoy for the first time the society of a few choice friends. Among those friends it was not surprising to find Rosalind. That young lady had recently exchanged the duties of governess at the Vicarage for those of temporary sick-nurse at the manor-house, and to-night, in her simple mourning, with a flush of pleasure on her cheek as now and again she turned her eyes to the patient whose recovery did her care such credit she looked—at least Roger, an impartial witness, thought so—more beautiful than ever. But as Roger made the same discovery every time he and his nurse met, the opinion may be regarded as of relative value. Tom was there, enjoying himself as usual, indeed rather more than usual, because in the stable hard by, munching his oats, was a horse (the gift of the Squire) who owned him, Tom, as lord and master. Jill was there too, a little pensive as she looked round for some one who was not there, but trying hard to enjoy herself and seem glad. Besides these intimates there was Mr Headland, feeling like a father to everybody; Dr Brandram, in professional attendance; and the Vicar himself, accidentally present to congratulate his young parishioner on his recovery.

The absentee of the evening was Mr Armstrong, who had gone to London the previous day on matters connected with the approaching assizes.

“I wish Armstrong was here,” said Tom. “Won’t he open his eye when he sees ‘Crocodile’!”

“Crocodile” was the name of the horse before mentioned.

“It hardly seems like a party without him,” said Jill, blushing a little.

“You were telling us about the letter written at sea,” said the vicar. “Of course, you heard nothing of the ship in London?”

“Yes, I did,” said Roger. “After no end of disappointment, Armstrong suggested telegraphing to the post-master at Havana, off which the letter was written, you know, and we heard that there had been a ship called the ‘Cyclops’ ten years ago trading between the West Indies and Ceylon, but that nothing was known of any one of the name of Ingleton.”

Rosalind looked up suddenly.

“Ceylon and the West Indies?” exclaimed she. “Roger, did Mr Armstrong never tell you a story he once told me of a shark adventure which happened to him when he was a sailor on a ship trading between Ceylon and the West Indies?”

The sudden silence which followed this inquiry was only broken by a low whistle of wonder from Tom.

Roger, with a flush of colour on his pale cheeks, sat up and said, “What is the story?”

Rosalind told it as nearly as possible in the tutor’s own words.

“He did not tell you the name of the ship?” asked the doctor.

“No.”

“Or the name of the man who was killed?”

“No.”

There was another silence; it seemed as if they were sitting as witnesses to the completion of some curious tunnelling operation, when the party on one side suddenly catches sound of the pick-axe stroke of the party on the other. Step by step the lost Roger Ingleton had been tracked forward to the deck of this West India trading-ship; and backward, step by step, the tutor’s history went, till it almost touched the same point.

“I expect,” said Tom, with a cheerfulness hardly in accord with the spirits of the company generally, “the fellow who was had by the shark was the one, and Armstrong never knew it.”

The profound young man had dropped on the very idea which was present in the minds of each one.

“Wal,” said the American mayor, “it may be so; but the question I’m asking myself is this: If so, it’s singular Mr Armstrong did not mention the coincidence when you got the cablegram.”

“Oh,” said Roger, “at the time I was so cut up to find I’d failed after all, that I didn’t care to talk; and directly after that we met Ratman. He had no chance.”

“I calculate I’d like to ask your tutor one or two pertinent questions,” said the Mayor.

The meeting was fully with him, when Tom broke out again—

“I say, I know. Let’s ask Gustav. He’s no end chummy with Armstrong. He might know a thing or two. He’s the chap I told you about at Christy’s minstrels,” continued Master Tom, warming up at the genial reminiscence.

“Is that the French waiter down-stairs who helped bring you down from London?” asked the doctor.

“Yes. I’m keeping him here as valet for the present. Armstrong mentioned, I remember, that he knew him.”

“Ring him up,” said Tom.

Gustav appeared, all smiles and shrugs and compliments.

“Eh bien! my good gentleman,” said he, “I am ’appy to see you well. I was mortifié for your mishap; but Mademoiselle—ah, Mademoiselle!”—here he raised his fingers gracefully to his lips—“ze angel step in where ze pauvre garçon may not walk. You could not but be well with a nurse so charmante. Ah, my friend, ’ow ’appy will be my good, kind friend when he return!”

“You mean Mr Armstrong. Have you known him long?” asked Roger.

“Pardieu! Ten, fifteen, twenty year; I know not how long. He is brother to me, your kind governor. He is to the pauvre père a son, and to the petite Françoise—ah! quelle est morte!”

“What was the name of your father?” demanded Roger, his hand tightening on Rosalind’s as he spoke.

“Ah, Monsieur! a poor name; he is called like me, Gustav Callot.”

The poor valet was thunderstruck by the sensation which his simple words caused. Surely the English gentlemen and ladies are beautiful listeners; no one ever paid him so much attention in his own country.

The American mayor took up the examination.

“I reckon,” drawled he, “that young man did not go by the name of Armstrong when you knew him.”

“Ah, no! He has many names, my good, kind friend. It was Monsieur Rogers when we knew his finest. Ah! he act the comedy beautiful! Then when to came to cherish the pauvre père in Paris, and mourn with him the death of la petite Françoise, he call himself by our poor name. Ah! gentlemen, he was good to us. All he save at ‘L’Hôtel Soult’ he share with us—and après from the sea he even send us pay.”

“What was his ship, do you remember?”

“Shall I forget? He told us it had but one eye, and called itself ‘Cyclops’ Ah! mes amis,” continued Gustav, delighted with his audience and amazed at his own oratorical gifts, “he was much changed when I saw him next. ’Tis six, seven, eight years since. The beard is all shorn, the curl is cut off, the eye looks through a glass, and the laugh—hélas! gentlemen, the gay laugh of the boy Rogers is turned to the knit brow of the great man Armstrong.”

The company had had enough of elocution for one evening, and dismissed the orator with flattering marks of consideration.

The doctor and the vicar rose to go. Close friends of the family as they were, even they were superfluous at a time like this.

But the American mayor remained.

“I guess,” said he, “my nephew—”

“Oh!” cried Jill, “then you are his uncle—dear, dear Mr Headland!” and the little maid flung herself into the astonished gentleman’s arms and relieved her emotions with a flood of tears.

“Seems to me,” said he, looking down and kindly patting the fair head, “my nephew’s a hundred miles too far away at this minute.”

American mayors are not as a rule endowed with gifts of prophecy, but it seemed as if there was an exception to the rule in the case of Mr Headland; for a moment later the door opened, and the tutor, eye-glass erect, and blissfully unconscious of the interest which his entry excited, strolled jauntily in.

“Ah,” said he, “you’re still up, then. I just caught the last—”

He stopped short, and the glass dropped abruptly from his eye. Roger had staggered to his feet and was standing with face aglow, stretching out his hand.

The tutor comprehended all. He advanced and placed his arm in that of his brother.

“You have found him at last, then, old fellow?”

“Yes, and without your help.”

The End.