"Thank you," she said. "So good of you. Of course, they aren't of the faintest interest to anybody. I can have them, then—when?"
Brent rose to his feet.
"When I was taught my business," he said, with a dry smile, "I'd a motto drummed into my head day in and day out. DO IT NOW! So I guess I'll just go round to my cousin's old rooms and get you that cabinet at once."
Mrs. Saumarez smiled. It was a smile that would have thrilled most men. But Brent merely got a deepened impression of her prettiness.
"I like your way of doing things," she said. "That's business. You ought to stop here, Mr. Brent, and take up your cousin's work."
"It would be a fitting tribute to his memory, wouldn't it?" answered Brent. "Well, I don't know. But this letter business is the thing to do now. I'll be back in ten minutes, Mrs. Saumarez."
"Let yourself in, and come straight here," she said. "I'll wait for you."
Wallingford's old rooms were close at hand—only round the corner, in fact—and Brent went straight to them and into the bedroom. He found the cedar cabinet at once; he had, in fact, seen it the day before, but finding it locked had made no attempt to open it. He carried it back to Mrs. Saumarez, set it on her desk, and laid beside it a bunch of keys.
"I suppose you'll find this key amongst those," he said. "They're all the private keys of his that I have anyway."
"Perhaps you will find it?" she suggested. "I'm a bad hand at that sort of thing."
Brent had little difficulty in finding the right key. Unthinkingly, he raised the lid of the cabinet—and quickly closed it again. In that momentary glimpse of the contents it seemed to him that he had unearthed a dead man's secret. For in addition to a pile of letters he had seen a woman's glove; a knot of ribbon; some faded flowers.
"That's it," he said hurriedly, shutting down the lid and affecting to have seen nothing. "I'll take the key off the bunch."
Mrs. Saumarez took the key from him in silence, relocked the cabinet, and carried it over to a safe let in to the wall of the room.
"Thank you, Mr. Brent," she said. "I'm glad to have those letters."
Brent made as if to leave. But he suddenly turned on her.
"You know a lot," he remarked brusquely. "What's your opinion about my cousin's murder?"
Mrs. Saumarez remained silent so long that he spoke again.
"Do you think, from what you've seen of things in this town, that it was what we may call political?" he asked. "A—removal?"
He was watching her closely, and he saw the violet eyes grow sombre, and a certain hardness settle about the lines of the well-shaped mouth and chin.
"It's this!" she said suddenly. "I told you just now that this town is rotten—rotten and corrupt, as so many of these little old-world English boroughs are! He knew it, poor fellow; he's steadily been finding it out ever since he came here. I dare say you, coming from London, a great city, wouldn't understand, but it's this way: this town is run by a gang, the members of which manœuvre everything for their own and their friends' benefit, their friends and their hangers-on, their associates, their toadies. They–"
"Do you mean the Town Trustees?" asked Brent.
"Not wholly," replied Mrs. Saumarez. "But all that Epplewhite said to-day about the Town Trustees is true. The three men control the financial affairs of the borough. Wallingford, by long and patient investigation, had come to know how they controlled them, and how utterly corrupt and rotten the whole financial administration is. If you could see some of the letters of his which I have in that safe–"
"Wouldn't it be well to produce them?" suggested Brent.
"Not yet anyway," she said. "I'll consider that—much of it's general statement, not particular accusation. But the Town Trustees question is not all. Until very recently, when a Reform party gradually got into being and increased steadily—though it's still in a minority—the whole representation and administration of the borough was hopelessly bad and unprincipled. For what do you suppose men went into the Town Council? To represent the ratepayer, the townspeople? No, but to look after their own interests; to safeguard themselves; to get what they could out of it: the whole policy of the old councils was one of—there's only one word for it, Mr. Brent, and that's only just becoming Anglicized—Graft! Now, the Corporation of a town is supposed to exist for the good, the welfare, the protection of a town, but the whole idea of these Hathelsborough men, in the past, has been to use their power and privileges as administrators, for their own ends. So here you've had, on the one hand, the unfortunate ratepayer and, on the other, a close Corporation, a privileged band of pirates, battening on them. In plain words, there are about a hundred men in Hathelsborough who have used the seven or eight thousand other folk as a means to their own ends. The town has been a helpless, defenceless thing, from which these harpies have picked whatever they could lay their talons on!"
"That's the conclusion he'd come to?" asked Brent.
"He couldn't come to any other after many years of patient investigation," declared Mrs. Saumarez. "And he was the sort of man who had an inborn hatred of abuses and shams and hypocrisy! And now put it to yourself—when a man stands up against vested interests, such as exist here, and says plainly that he's never going to rest, nor leave a stone unturned, until he's made a radical and thorough reformation, do you think he's going to have a primrose path of it? Bah! But he knew! He knew his danger."
"But—murder?" said Brent. "Murder!"
Mrs. Saumarez shook her head.
"Yes," she answered. "But there are men in this place who wouldn't stick at even that! You don't know. If Wallingford had done all the things he'd vowed to do, there would have been such an exposure of affairs here as would have made the whole country agape. And some men would have been ruined—literally. I know! And things will come out and be tracked down, if no red herrings are drawn across the trail. You're going to get at the truth?"
"By God, yes!" exclaimed Brent, with sudden fervour. "I am so!"
"Look for his murderers amongst the men he intended to show up, then!" she said, with a certain fierce intensity. "And look closely—and secretly! There's no other way!"
Brent presently left her and went off wondering about the contents of the little cabinet. He would have wondered still more if he had been able to look back into the cosy room which he had just left. For when he had gone, Mrs. Saumarez took the cabinet from the safe and carefully emptied the whole of its contents into the glowing heart of the fire. She stood watching as the flames licked round them, and until there was nothing left there but black ash.
CHAPTER IX
THE RIGHT TO INTERVENE
Brent went back to his hotel to find the Town Clerk of Hathelsborough waiting for him in his private sitting-room. His visitor, a sharp-eyed man whose profession was suggested in every look and movement, greeted him with a suavity of manner which set Brent on his guard.
"I am here, Mr. Brent," he said, with an almost deprecating smile, "as—well, as a sort of informal deputation—informal."
"Deputations represent somebody or something," retorted Brent, in his brusquest fashion. "Whom do you represent?"
"The borough authorities," replied the Town Clerk, with another smile. "That is to say–"
"You'll excuse me for interrupting," said Brent. "I'm a man of plain speech. I take it that by borough authorities you mean, say, Mr. Simon Crood and his fellow Town Trustees? That so?"
"Well, perhaps so," admitted the Town Clerk. "Mr. Alderman Crood, to be sure, is Deputy-Mayor. And he and his brother Town Trustees are certainly men of authority."
"What do you want?" demanded Brent.
The Town Clerk lowered his voice—quite unnecessarily in Brent's opinion. His suave tones became dulcet and mollifying.
"My dear sir," he said, leaning forward, "to-morrow you—you have the sad task of interring your cousin, our late greatly respected Mayor."
"Going to bury him to-morrow," responded Brent. "Just so—well?"
"There is a rumour in the town that you intend the—er—ceremony to be absolutely private," continued the Town Clerk.
"I do," assented Brent. "And it will be!"
The Town Clerk made a little expostulatory sound.
"My dear sir," he said soothingly, "the late Mr. Wallingford was Mayor of Hathelsborough! The four hundred and eighty-first Mayor of Hathelsborough, Mr. Brent!"
Brent, who was leaning against the mantelpiece, looked fixedly at his visitor.
"Supposing he was the nine hundred and ninety-ninth Mayor of Hathelsborough," he asked quietly, "what then?"
"He should have a public funeral," declared the Town Clerk promptly. "My dear sir, to inter a Mayor of Hathelsborough—and the four hundred and eighty-first holder of the ancient and most dignified office—privately, as if he were a—a mere nobody, a common townsman, is—oh, really, it's unheard of!"
"That the notion of the men who sent you here?" asked Brent grimly.
"The notion, as you call it, of the gentlemen who sent me here, Mr. Brent, is that your cousin's funeral obsequies should be of a public nature," answered the Town Clerk. "According to precedent, of course. During my term of office as Town Clerk two Mayors have died during their year of Mayoralty. On such occasions the Corporation has been present in state."
"In state?" said Brent. "What's that amount to? Sort of procession?"
"A duly marshalled one," answered the Town Clerk. "The beadle with his mace; the Deputy-Mayor; the Recorder—the Recorder and Town Clerk, of course, in wigs and gowns—the Aldermen in their furred robes; the Councillors in their violet gowns—a very stately procession, Mr. Brent, preceding the funeral cortège to St. Hathelswide's Church, where the Vicar, as Mayor's Chaplain, would deliver a funeral oration. The procession would return subsequently to the Moot Hall, for wine and cake."
Brent rubbed his square chin, staring hard at his visitor.
"Um!" he said at last. "Well, there isn't going to be anything of that sort to-morrow. I'm just going to bury my cousin quietly and privately, without maces and furred robes and violet gowns. So you can just tell 'em politely—nothing doing!"
"But my dear sir, my good Mr. Brent!" expostulated the visitor. "The Mayor of Hathelsborough! The oldest borough in the country! Why, our charter of incorporation dates from–"
"I'm not particularly interested in archæology, just now anyway," interrupted Brent. "And it's nothing to me in connection with this matter if your old charter was signed by William the Conqueror or Edward the Confessor. I say—nothing doing!"
"But your reasons, my dear sir, your reasons!" exclaimed the Town Clerk. "Such a breaking with established custom and precedent! I really don't know what the neighbouring boroughs will say of us!"
"Let 'em say!" retorted Brent. He laughed contemptuously. But suddenly his mood changed, and he turned on his visitor with what the Town Clerk afterwards described as a very ugly look. "But if you want to know," he added, "I'll tell you why I won't have any Corporation processing after my cousin's dead body! It's because I believe that his murderer's one of 'em! See?"
The Town Clerk, a rosy-cheeked man, turned pale. His gloves lay on the table at his elbow, and his fingers trembled a little as he picked them up and began fitting them on with meticulous precision.
"My dear sir!" he said, in a tone that suggested his profession more strongly than ever. "That's very grave language. As a solicitor, I should advise you–"
"When I say murderer," continued Brent, "I'm perhaps wrong. I might—and no doubt ought to—use the plural. Murderers! I believe that more than one of your rascally Corporation conspired to murder my cousin! And I'm going to have no blood-stained hypocrites processing after his coffin! You tell 'em to keep away!"
"I had better withdraw," said the Town Clerk.
"No hurry," observed Brent, changing to geniality. He laid his hand on the bell. "Have a whisky-and-soda and a cigar? We've finished our business, and I guess you're a man as well as a lawyer?"
But the visitor was unable to disassociate his personal identity from his office, and he bowed himself out. Brent laughed when he had gone.
"Got the weight of four hundred and eighty-one years of incorporation on him!" he said. "Lord! it's like living with generation after generation of your grandfathers slung round you! Four hundred and eighty-one years! Must have been in the bad old days when this mouldy town got its charter!"
Next morning Brent buried the dead Mayor in St. Hathelswide's Churchyard, privately and quietly. He stayed by the grave until the sexton and his assistants had laid the green turf over it; that done, he went round to the Abbey House and sought out Mrs. Saumarez. After his characteristic fashion he spoke out what was in his mind.
"I've pretty well fixed up, in myself, to do what you suggested last night," he said, giving her one of his direct glances. "You know what I mean—to go on with his work."
Mrs. Saumarez's eyes sparkled.
"That would be splendid!" she exclaimed. "But, if he had opposition, you'll have it a hundred-fold! You're not afraid?"
"Afraid of nothing," said Brent carelessly. "But I just don't know how I'd get any right to do it. I'm not a townsman—I've no locus standi. But, then he wasn't, to begin with."
"I'd forgotten that," said Mrs. Saumarez. "And you'd have to give up your work in London—journalism, isn't it?"
"I've thought of that," said Brent. "Well, I've had a pretty good spell at it, and I'm not so keen about keeping on it any longer. There's other work—literary work—I'd prefer. And I'm not dependent on it any way—I've got means of my own, and now Wallingford's left me a good lot of money. No; I guess I wouldn't mind coming here and going on with the job he'd set himself to; I'd like to do it But, then, how to get a footing in the place?"
Mrs. Saumarez considered for a while. Suddenly her face lighted up.
"You've got money," she said. "Why don't you buy a bit of property in the town—a piece of real estate? Then–"
Brent picked up his hat.
"That's a good notion," he said. "I'll step round and see Tansley about it."
Tansley had been one of the very few men whom Brent had invited to be present at his cousin's interment. He had just changed his mourning garments for those of everyday life and was settling down to his professional business when Brent was shown into his private office.
"Busy?" demanded Brent in his usual laconic fashion.
"Give you whatever time you want," answered the solicitor, who knew his man by that time. "What is it now?"
"I've concluded to take up my abode in this old town," said Brent, with something of a sheepish smile. "Seems queer, no doubt, but my mind's fixed. And so, look here, you don't know anybody that's got a bit of real estate to sell—nice little house, or something of that sort? If so–"
Tansley thrust his letters and papers aside, pushed an open box of cigars in his visitor's direction, and lighting one himself became inquisitively attentive.
"What's the game?" he asked.
Brent lighted a cigar and took two or three meditative puffs at it before answering this direct question.
"Well," he said at last, "I don't think that I'm a particularly sentimental sort of person, but all the same I'm not storm-proof against sentiment. And I've just got the conviction that it's up to me to go on with my cousin's job in this place."
Tansley took his cigar from his lips and whistled.
"Tall order, Brent!" he remarked.
"So I reckon," assented Brent. "But I've served an apprenticeship to that sort of thing. And I've always gone through with whatever came in my way."
"Let's be plain," said Tansley. "You mean that you want to settle here in the town, and go on with Wallingford's reform policy?"
"That's just it," replied Brent. "You've got it."
"All I can say is, then, that you're rendering yourself up to—well, not envy, but certainly to hatred, malice and all uncharitableness, as it's phrased in the Prayer Book," declared Tansley. "You'll have a hot old time!"
"Used to 'em!" retorted Brent. "You forget I've been a press-man for some years."
"But you didn't get that sort of thing?" suggested Tansley, half incredulous.
Brent flicked the ash from his cigar and smiled.
"Don't go in for tall talk," he said lazily. "But it was I who tracked down the defaulting directors of the Great Combined Amalgamation affair, and ran to earth that chap who murdered his ward away up in Northumberland, and found the Pembury absconding bank-manager who'd scooted off so cleverly that the detectives couldn't trace even a smile of him! Pretty stiff propositions, all those! And I reckon I can do my bit here in this place, on Wallingford's lines, if I get the right to intervene, as a townsman. That's what I want—locus standi."
"And when you've got it?" asked Tansley.
Brent worked his cigar into the corner of his firm lips and folding his arms stared straight in front of him.
"Well," he said slowly, "I think I've fixed that in my own mind, fixed it all out while the parson was putting him away in that old churchyard this morning—I was thinking hard while he was reading his book. I understand that by my cousin's death there's a vacancy in the Town Council—he sat for some ward or other?"
"He sat for the Castle Ward, as Town Councillor," assented Tansley. "So of course there's a vacancy."
"Well," continued Brent, "I reckon I'll put up for that vacancy. I'll be Mr. Councillor Richard Brent!"
"You're a stranger, man!" laughed Tansley.
"I'll not be in a week's time," retorted Brent. "I'll be known to every householder in that ward! But—this locus standi? If I bought real estate in the town, I'd be a townsman, wouldn't I? A burgess, I reckon. And then—why legally I'd be as much a Hathelsborough man as, say, Simon Crood?"
Tansley took his hands out of his pockets and began to search amongst his papers.
"Well, you're a go-ahead chap, Brent!" he said. "Evidently not the sort to let grass grow under your feet. And if you want to buy a bit of nice property I've the very goods for you. There's a client of mine, John Chillingham, a retired tradesman, who wants to sell his house—he's desirous of quitting this part of the country and going to live on the South Coast. It's a delightful bit of property, just at the back of the Castle, and it's therefore in the Castle Ward. Acacia Lodge, it's called—nice, roomy, old-fashioned house, in splendid condition, modernized, set in a beautiful old garden, with a magnificent cedar tree on the lawn, and a fine view from its front windows. And, for a quick sale, cheap."
"What's the figure?" asked Brent.
"Two thousand guineas," answered Tansley.
Brent reached for his hat.
"Let's go and look at it," he said.
Within a few hours Brent had settled his purchase of Acacia Lodge from the retired tradesman and Tansley was busy with the legal necessities of the conveyance. That done, and in his new character of townsman and property owner, Brent sought out Peppermore, and into that worthy's itching and astonished ears poured out a confession which the editor of the Monitor was to keep secret until next day; after which, retiring to his sitting-room at the Chancellor, he took up pen and paper, and proceeded to write a document which occasioned him more thought than he usually gave to his literary productions. It was not a lengthy document, but it had been rewritten and interlineated and corrected several times before Brent carried it to the Monitor office and the printing-press. Peppermore, reading it over, grinned with malicious satisfaction.
"That'll make 'em open their mouths and their eyes to-morrow morning, Mr. Brent!" he exclaimed. "We'll have it posted all over the town by ten o'clock, sir. And all that the Monitor—powerful organ, Mr. Brent, very powerful organ!—can do on your behalf and in your interest shall be done, sir, it shall be done—con amore, as I believe they say in Italy."
"Thank 'ee!" said Brent. "You're the right stuff."
"Don't mention it, sir," replied Peppermore. "Only too pleased. Egad! I wish I could see Mr. Alderman Crood's face when he reads this poster!"
At five minutes past ten next morning, as he, Mallett and Coppinger came together out of the side-door of the bank, where they had been in close conference since half-past nine, on affairs of their own, Mr. Alderman Crood saw the poster on which was set out Brent's election address to the voters of the Castle Ward. The bill-posting people had pasted a copy of it on a blank wall opposite; the three men, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, gathered round and read. Crood grew purple with anger.
"Impudence!" he exclaimed at last. "Sheer brazen impudence! Him—a stranger! Take up his cousin's work, will he? And what's he mean by saying that he's now a Hathelsborough man?"
"I heard about that last night," answered Coppinger. "Tansley told two or three of us at the club. This fellow Brent has bought that property of old Chillingham's—Acacia Lodge. Freehold, you know; bought it right out. He's a Hathelsborough man now, right enough."
Then they both turned and glanced at Mallett, who was re-reading Brent's election address with brooding eyes and lowering brow.
"Well?" demanded Coppinger. "What do you make of it, Mallett?"
Mallett removed his glasses and sniffed.
"Don't let's deceive ourselves," he said, with a hasty glance round. "This chap's out to make trouble. He's no fool, either. If he gets into the Council we shall have an implacable enemy. And he's every chance. So it's all the more necessary than ever that we should bring off to-morrow what we've been talking over this morning."
"We ought to do that," said Coppinger. "We can count on fourteen sure votes."
"Ay!" said Mallett. "But so can they! The thing is—the three votes neither party can count on. We must get at those three men to-day. If we don't carry our point to-morrow, we shall have Sam Epplewhite or Dr. Wellesley as Mayor, and things'll be as bad as they were under Wallingford."
This conversation referred to an extraordinary meeting of the Town Council which had been convened for the next day, in order to elect a new Mayor of Hathelsborough in succession to John Wallingford, deceased. Brent heard of it that afternoon, from Queenie Crood, in the Castle grounds. He had met Queenie there more than once since their first encountering in those sheltered nooks: already he was not quite sure that he was not looking forward with increasing pleasure to these meetings. For with each Queenie came further out of her shell, the more they met, the more she let him see of herself—and he found her interesting. And they had given up talking of Queenie's stage ambitions—not that she had thrown them over, but that she and Brent had begun to find the discussion of their own personalities more to the immediate point than the canvassing of remote possibilities: each, in fact, was in the stage of finding each other a mine worth exploring. Brent began to see a lot in Queenie and her dark eyes; Queenie was beginning to consider Brent, with his grim jaw, his brusque, off-hand speech, and masterful manner, a curiously fascinating person; besides, he was beginning to do things that only strong men do.
"You're in high disgrace at the Tannery House," she remarked archly when they met that afternoon. "I should think your ears must have burned this dinner-time."
"Why, now?" inquired Brent.
"Uncle Simon brought Mallet and Coppinger home to dinner," continued Queenie. "It was lucky there was a big hot joint!—they're all great eaters and drinkers. And they abused you to their hearts' content. This Town Council business—they say it's infernal impudence for you to put up for election. However, Coppinger says you'll not get in."
"Coppinger is a bad prophet," said Brent. "I'll be Town Councillor in a fortnight. Lay anybody ten to one!"
"Well, they'll do everything they can to keep you out," declared Queenie. "You've got to fight an awful lot of opposition."
"Let 'em all come!" retorted Brent. "I'll represent the Castle Ward, and now that I'm a burgess of Hathelsborough I'll be Mayor some old time."
"Not yet, though," said Queenie. "They're going to elect a new Mayor to-morrow. In place of your cousin of course."
Brent started. Nobody had mentioned that to him. Yet he might have thought of it himself—of course there must be a new Mayor of Hathelsborough.
"Gad! I hope it'll not be one of the old gang!" he muttered. "If it is–"
But by noon next day he heard that the old gang had triumphed. Mr. Alderman Crood was elected Mayor of Hathelsborough by a majority of two votes. A couple of the wobblers on the Council had given way at the last moment and thrown in their lot with the reactionary, let-things-alone party.
"Never mind! I'll win my election," said Brent. "The future is with me."
He set to work, in strenuous fashion, to enlist the favours of the Castle Ward electorate. All day, from early morning until late at night, he was cultivating the acquaintance of the burgesses. He had little time for any other business than this—there were but ten days before the election. But now and then he visited the police station and interviewed Hawthwaite; and at each visit he found the superintendent becoming increasingly reserved and mysterious in manner. Hawthwaite would say nothing definite, but he dropped queer hints about certain things that he had up his sleeve, to be duly produced at the adjourned inquest. As to what they were, he remained resolutely silent, even to Brent.