Run to Earth by M. E. Braddon

M >> M. E. Braddon >> Run to Earth

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"The fact that you have been cheated by swindlers is no reason why
should insult me," answered Honoria. "I wished to secure your services;
but I cannot continue an interview in which I find my offers met by
insolent objections. There are, no doubt, other people in London who
can assist me in the business I have in hand. I will wish you good
morning."

She rose, and was about to leave the room. Mr. Larkspur began to think
that he had been rather too cautious; and that perhaps, this plainly-
attired lady might be a very good customer.

"You must excuse me, ma'am," he said, "if I'm rather a suspicious old
chap. You see, it's the nature of my business to make a man suspicious.
If you can pay me for my time, I shall be willing to devote myself to
your service; for I'd much rather give my whole mind to one business,
than have ever so many odds and ends of affairs jostling each other in
my brain. But the fact of it is, ladies very seldom have any idea what
business is: however clever they may be in other matters--playing the
piano, working bead-mats and worsted slippers, and such like. Now, I
dare say you'll open your eyes uncommon wide when I tell you that my
business is worth nigh upon sixteen pound a week to me, taking good
with bad; and though you mayn't be aware of it, ma'am, having, no
doubt, given your mind exclusive to Berlin wool, and such like, sixteen
pound a week is eight hundred a year."

Mr. Larkspur, though not much given to surprise, was somewhat
astonished to perceive that his lady-visitor did not open her eyes any
wider on receiving this intelligence.

"If you have earned eight hundred a year by your profession," she
returned, quietly, "I will give you twenty pounds a week for your
exclusive services, and that will be a thousand and forty pounds a
year."

This time, Andrew Larkspur was still more surprised, though he was so
completely master of himself as to conceal the smallest evidence of his
astonishment.

Here was a woman who had not devoted her mind to Berlin wool-work, and
whose arithmetic was irreproachable!

"Humph!" he muttered, too cautious to betray any appearance of
eagerness to accept an advantageous offer. "A thousand a year is very
well in its way; but how long is it to last? If I turn my back upon
this business here, it'll all tumble to pieces, and then, where shall I
be when you have done with me?"

"I will engage you for one year, certain."

"That won't do, ma'am; you must make it three years, certain."

"Very well; I am willing to do that," answered Honoria. "I shall, in
all probability, require your services for three years."

Mr. Larkspur regretted that he had not asked for an engagement of six
years.

"Do you agree to those terms?" asked Honoria.

"Yes," answered the detective, with well-assumed indifference; "I
suppose I may as well accept those terms, though I dare say I might
make more money by leaving myself free to give my attention to anything
that might turn up. And now, how am I to be paid? You see, you're quite
a stranger to me."

"I am aware of that, and I do not ask you to trust me," replied
Honoria. "I will pay you eighty pounds a month."

"Eighty pounds a month of four weeks," interposed the cautious
Larkspur; "eighty pounds for the lunar month. That makes a difference,
you know, and it's just as well to be particular."

"Certainly!" answered Lady Eversleigh, with a half-contemptuous smile.
"You shall not be cheated. You shall receive your payment monthly, in
advance; and if you require security for the future, I can refer you to
my bankers. My name is Mrs. Eden--Harriet Eden, and I bank with Messrs.
Coutts."

The detective rubbed his hands with a air of gratification.

"Nothing could be more straightforward and business-like," he said.
"And when shall you require my services, Mrs. Eden?"

"Immediately. There is an apartment vacant in the house in which I
lodge. I should wish you to occupy that apartment, as you would thus be
always at hand when I had any communication to make to you. Would that
be possible?"

"Well, yes, ma'am, it would certainly be possible," replied Mr.
Larkspur, after the usual pause for reflection; "but I'm afraid I
should be obliged to make that an extra."

"You shall be paid whatever you require."

"Thank you, ma'am. You see, when a person of my age has been accustomed
to live in one place for a long time, it goes against him to change his
habits. However, to oblige you, I'll get together my little traps, and
shift my quarter to the lodging you speak of."

"Good. The house in question is No. 90, Percy Street, Tottenham Court
Road."

Mr. Larkspur was surprised to find that a lady who could afford to
offer him more than a thousand a year, was nevertheless contented to
live in such a middle-class situation as Percy Street.

"Can you go to the new lodging to-morrow?" asked Honoria.

"Well, no, ma'am; you must give me a week, if you please. I must wind
up some of the affairs I have been working upon, you see, and hand over
my clients to other people; and I must set my books in order. I've a
few very profitable affairs in hand, I assure you. There's one which
might have turned out a great prize, if I had been only able to carry
it through. But those sort of things all depend on time, you see,
ma'am. They're very slow. I have been about this one, off and on, for
over three years; and very little has come of it yet."

The detective was turning over one of his books mechanically as he said
this. It was a large ledger, filled with entries, in a queer, cramped
handwriting, dotted about, here and there, with mysterious marks in red
and blue ink. Mr. Larkspur stopped suddenly, as he turned the leaves,
his attention arrested by one particular page.

"Here it is," he said; "the very business I was speaking of. Five
hundred pounds for the discovery of the murderer, or murderers, of
Valentine Jernam, captain and owner of the 'Pizarro', whose body was
found in the river, below Wapping, on the third of April, 1836. That's
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 protege; 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
hoped, so effectively. Joyce had never been able to bring his
suspicions concerning Black Milsom to the test of proof. Unwearied
search had been made for the old man who had played the part of
grandfather to the beautiful ballad-singer; but it had been wholly
ineffectual. All that could be ascertained concerning him was, that he
had died in a hospital, in a country town on the great northern road,
and that the girl had wandered away from there, and never more been
heard of. Of Black Milsom, Joyce Harker had never lost sight, until his
career received a temporary check by the sentence of transportation,
which had sent the ruffian out of the country. But all efforts of the
faithful watcher had failed to discover the missing link in the
evidence which connected Black Milsom with Valentine Jernam's death.
All his watching and questioning--all his silent noting of the idle
talk around him--all his eager endeavour to take Dennis Wayman
unawares, failed to enable him to obtain evidence of that one fact of
which he was convinced--the fact that Valentine Jernam had been at the
public-house in Ratcliff Highway on the day of his death.

When the inutility of his endeavours became clear to Joyce Harker, he
gave up his lodging in Wayman's house, and located himself in modest
apartments at Poplar, where he transacted a great deal of business for
George Jernam, and maintained a constant, though unprofitable,
communication with the detective officer to whom he had confided the
task of investigation, and who was no other than Mr. Andrew Larkspur.

In one of the earliest of the numerous letters which George Jernam
addressed to Harker, after the death of Valentine, the merchant-captain
had given his zealous friend and assistant certain instructions
concerning the old aunt to whom the two desolate boys had owed so much
in their ill-treated childhood, and whom they had so well and
constantly requited in their prosperous manhood. These instructions
included a request that Joyce Harker would visit Susan Jernam in
person, and furnish George with details relative to that venerable
lady's requirements, looks, health, and general circumstances.

"I should have seen the good old soul, you know," wrote George, "when I
was to have seen poor Val; but it didn't please God that the one thing
should come off any more than the other, and it can't be helped. But I
should like you to run down to Allanbay and look her up, and let her
know that she is neither neglected nor forgotten by her vagabond
nephew."

So Joyce Harker went down to the Devonshire village, and introduced
himself to George Jernam's aunt. The old lady was much altered since
she had last welcomed a visitor to her pretty, cheerful cottage, and
had listened with simple surprise and pleasure to her nephew
Valentine's tales of the sea, and they had talked together over the
troublous days of his unhappy childhood. The untimely and tragic death
of the merchant-captain had afflicted her deeply, and had filled her
mind with sentiments which, though they differed in degree, closely
resembled in their nature those of Joyce Harker. The determination to
be revenged upon the murderers of "her boy" which Harker expressed,
found a ready echo in the breast of his hearer, and she thanked him
warmly for his devotion to the master he had lost. Strong mutual liking
grew up between these two, and when her visitor left her--after having
carried out all George's wishes in respect to her, on the scale of
liberality which the grateful nephew had dictated--Susan Jernam gave
him a cordial invitation to pass any leisure time he might have at the
cottage, though, as she remarked--

"I am not very lively company, Mr. Harker, for you or anybody, for I
can't talk of anything but George and poor Valentine."

"And I don't care to talk of much else either, Mrs. Jernam," said
Harker, in reply; "so, you see, we couldn't possibly be better company
for each other."

Thus it happened that a second tie between George Jernam and Joyce
Harker arose, in the person of the sole surviving relative of the
former, and that Joyce had made three visits to the pretty sea-side
village in which the childhood of his dead friend and his living patron
had been passed, before he and George Jernam met again on English
ground.

When at length that long-deferred meeting took place, Valentine
Jernam's murder was a mystery rather more than five years old, and Mr.
Andrew Larkspur had made no progress towards its solution. He had been
obliged to acknowledge to Joyce Harker that he had not struck the right
trail, and to confess that he had begun to despond. The disappearance
of Black Milsom from among the congenial society of thieves and
ruffians which he frequented was, of course, easily accounted for by
Mr. Larkspur, and the absence of any, even the slightest, additional
clue to the fate of Jernam, confirmed that astute person in the
conviction, which he had reached early in the course of his
confabulations with Harker, that the convict was the guilty man. There
was, on this hypothesis, nothing for it but to wait until the worthy
exile should have worked out his time and once more returned to grace
his mother-country, and then to resume the close watch which, though
hitherto ineffectual, might in time bring some of his former deeds to
light.

Such was the state of affairs when Captain Duncombe bought the deserted
house which had had such undesirable tenants, first in the person of
old Screwton, the miser, and, secondly, of Black Milsom. Joyce Harker
was aware of the transaction, and had watched with some interest the
transformation of the dreary, dismal, doomed place, into the cheery,
comfortable, middle-class residence it had now become. If he had known
that the last hours of Valentine Jernam's life had been passed on that
spot, that there his beloved master had met with a violent and cruel
death, with what different feelings he would have watched the work! But
though, as the former dwelling of Black Milsom, the cottage had a
dreary attraction for him, he was far from imagining that within its
walls lay hidden one infallible clue to the secret for which he had
sought so long and so vainly.

The new occupant of River View Cottage was acquainted with Joyce
Harker, and held the solitary old man in some esteem. Captain Joe
Duncombe and the _protege_ of the Jernams had nothing whatever in
common in character, disposition, or manners, and the distance in the
social scale which divided the prosperous merchant-captain from the
poor, though clever, dependent, was considerable, even according to the
not very strict standard of manners observed by persons of their
respective classes. But Joe Duncombe knew and heartily liked George
Jernam. He had been in England at the time of Valentine's murder, and
he had then learned the faithful and active part played by Harker. He
had lost sight of the man for some time, but when he had bought the
cottage, and during the progress of the changes and improvements he had
made in that unprepossessing dwelling, accident had thrown Harker in
his way, and they had found much to discuss in George Jernam's
prosperity, in his generous treatment of Harker, in the general
condition of the merchant service, which the two men declared to be
going to the dogs, after the manner of all professions, trades, and
institutions of every age and every clime, when contemplated from a
conversational point of view; and in the honest captain's plans, hopes,
and prospects concerning his daughter.

Joyce Harker had seen Rosamond Duncombe occasionally, but had not taken
much notice of her. Nor had Miss Duncombe been much impressed by that
gentleman. Joyce was not a lady's man, and Rosamond, who entertained a
rather disrespectful notion of her father's acquaintances in general,
classing them collectively as "old fogies," contented herself with
distinguishing Mr. Harker as the ugliest and grimmest of the lot. Joyce
came and went, not very often indeed, but very freely to River View
Cottage, and there was much confidence and good-fellowship between the
bluff old seaman and the more acute, but not less honest, adventurer.