Chapter Twelve
Mr Richard Dawson
I confess that I was longing for the appearance of this one-eyed Englishman of whom Mabel Blair was evidently so terrified, in order to judge him for myself.
What I had gathered concerning him was, up to the present, by no means satisfactory. That, in common with the monk, he held the secret of the dead man’s past seemed practically certain, and perhaps Mabel feared some unwelcome revelation concerning her father’s actions and the source of his wealth. This was the thought which occurred to me when, having raised the alarm which brought the faithful companion, Mrs Percival, I was assisting to apply restoratives to the insensible girl.
As she lay, her head pillowed upon a cushion of daffodil silk, Mrs Percival knelt beside her, and, being in ignorance, held me, I think, in considerable suspicion. She inquired rather sharply the reason of Mabel’s unconsciousness, but I merely replied that she had been seized with a sudden faintness, and attributed it to the overheating of the room.
Presently, when she came to, she asked Mrs Percival and her maid Bowers to leave us alone, and after the door had shut she inquired, pale-faced and anxious —
“When is this man Dawson to come here?”
“When Mr Leighton gives him notice of the clause in your father’s will.”
“He can come here,” she said determinedly, “but before he crosses this threshold, I shall leave the house. He may act just as he thinks proper, but I will not reside under the same roof with him, nor will I have any communication with him whatsoever.”
“I quite understand your feelings, Mabel,” I said. “But is such a course a judicious one? Will it not be best to wait and watch the fellow’s movements?”
“Ah! but you don’t know him!” she cried. “You don’t suspect what I know to be the truth!”
“What’s that?”
“No,” she said in a low hoarse voice, “I may not tell you. You will discover all ere long, and then you will not be surprised that I abhor the very name of the man.”
“But why on earth did your father insert such a clause in his will?”
“Because he was compelled,” she answered hoarsely. “He could not help himself.”
“And if he had refused – refused to place you in the power of such a person – what then?”
“It would have meant his ruin,” she answered. “I suspected it all the instant I heard that a mysterious man was to be my secretary and to have control of my affairs. Your discovery in Italy has only confirmed my suspicions.”
“But you will take my advice, Mabel, and bear with him at first,” I urged, wondering within my heart whether her hatred of the man was because she knew that he was her father’s assassin. She entertained some violent dislike of him, but for what reason I entirely failed to discover.
She shook her head at my argument, saying – “I regret that I am not sufficiently diplomatic to be able to conceal my antipathy in that manner. We women are clever in many ways, but we must always exhibit our dislikes,” she added.
“Well,” I remarked, “it will be a very great pity to treat him with open hostility, for it may upset all our future chances of success in discovering the truth regarding your poor father’s death, and the theft of his secret. My strong advice is to remain quite silent, apathetic even, and yet with a keen, watchful eye. Sooner or later this man, if he really is your enemy, must betray himself. Then will be time enough for us to act firmly, and, in the end, you will triumph. For my own part I consider that the sooner Leighton gives the fellow notice of his appointment the better.”
“But is there no way by which this can be avoided?” she cried, dismayed. “Surely my poor father’s death is sufficiently painful without this second misfortune!”
She spoke to me as frankly as she would have done to a brother, and I recognised by her intense manner how, now that her suspicions were confirmed, she had become absolutely desperate. Amid all the luxury and splendour of that splendid place she was a wan and lonely figure, her young heart torn by grief at her father’s death and by a terror which she dare not divulge.
There is an old and oft-repeated saying that wealth does not bring happiness, and surely there is often a greater peace of mind and pure enjoyment of life in the cottage than in the mansion. The poor are apt to regard the rich with envy, yet it should be remembered that many a man and many a woman lolling in a luxurious carriage and served by liveried servants looks forth upon those toilers in the streets, well knowing that the hurrying millions of what they term “the masses” are really far happier than they. Many a disappointed, world-weary woman of title, often young and beautiful, would to-day gladly exchange places with the daughter of the people, whose life, if hard, is nevertheless full of harmless pleasures and as much happiness as can to obtained in this our workaday world. This allegation may sound strange, but I nevertheless declare it to be true. The possession of money may bring luxury and renown; it may enable men and women to outshine their fellows; it may bring honour, esteem and even popularity. But what are they all? Ask the great landowner; ask the wealthy peer; ask the millionaire. If they speak the truth they will tell you in confidence that they are not in their hearts half so happy, nor do they enjoy life so much, as the small man of independent means, the man who is subject to an abatement upon his income-tax.
As I sat there with the dead man’s daughter, endeavouring to induce her to receive the mysterious individual without open hostility, I could not help noticing the vivid contrast between the luxury of her surroundings and the heavy burden of her heart.
She suggested that the house should be sold and that she should retire to Mayvill and there live quietly in the country with Mrs Percival, but I urged her to wait, at least for the present. It seemed a pity that Burton Blair’s splendid collection of old masters, and the fine tapestries that he had bought in Spain only a few years ago, and the unique collection of early Majolica, should go to the hammer. Among the many treasures in the dining-room was Andrea del Sarto’s “Holy Family,” for which Blair had given sixteen thousand five hundred pounds at Christie’s, and which was considered one of the finest examples of that great master. Again, the Italian Renaissance furniture, the old Montelupo and Savona ware and the magnificent old English plate were each worth a fortune in themselves, and should, I contended, remain Mabel’s property, as they had been all bequeathed to her.
“Yes, I know,” she responded to my argument. “Everything is mine except that little bag containing the sachet, which is yours, and which is so unfortunately missing.”
“You must help me to recover it,” I urged. “It will be to our mutual interests to do so.”
“Of course I will assist you in every way possible, Mr Greenwood,” was her answer. “Since you’ve been away in Italy I have had the house searched from top to bottom, and have myself examined all my father’s dispatch-boxes, his two other safes, and certain places where he sometimes secreted his private papers, in order to discover whether, fearing that an attempt might be made to steal the little bag, he left it at home. But all in vain. It certainly is not in this house.”
I thanked her for her efforts, knowing well that she had acted vigorously on my behalf, but feeling that any search within that house was futile, and that if the secret were ever recovered it would be found in the hands of one or other of Blair’s enemies.
Together we sat for a long time discussing the situation. The reason of her hatred of the man Dawson she would not divulge, but this did not cause me any real surprise, for I saw in her attitude a desire to conceal some secret of her father’s past. Nevertheless, after much persuasion, I induced her to consent to allow the man to be informed of his office, and to receive him without betraying the slightest sign of annoyance or disfavour.
This I considered a triumph of my own diplomacy. Up to a certain point I, as her best friend in those hard, dark days bygone, possessed a complete influence over her. But beyond that, when it became a question involving her father’s honour, I was entirely powerless. She was a girl of strong individuality, and like all such, was quick of penetration, and peculiarly subject to prejudice on account of her high sense of honour.
She flattered me by declaring that she wished that I had been appointed her secretary, whereupon I thanked her for the compliment, but asserted —
“Such a thing could never have been.”
“Why?”
“Because you have told me that this fellow Dawson is coming here as a matter of right. Your father wrote that unfortunate clause in his will under compulsion – which means, because he stood in fear of him.”
“Yes,” she sighed in a low voice. “You are right, Mr Greenwood. Quite right. He held my father’s life in his hands.”
This latter remark struck me as very strange. Could Burton Blair have been guilty of some nameless crime that he should fear this mysterious one-eyed Englishman? Perhaps so. Perhaps the man Dick Dawson, who had for years been passing as an Italian in rural Italy, was the only living witness of an incident which Blair, in his prosperous days, would have gladly given a million to efface. Such, indeed, was one of the many theories which arose within me. Yet when I recollected the bluff, good-natured honesty of Burton Blair, his sterling sincerity, his high-mindedness, and his anonymous charitable works for charity’s sake, I crushed down all such suspicions, and determined only to respect the dead man’s memory.
The next night, just before nine o’clock, as Reggie and I were chatting over our coffee in our cosy little dining-room in Great Russell Street, Glave, our man, tapped, entered, and handed me a card.
I sprang from my chair, as though I had received an electric shock.
“Well! This is funny, old chap,” I cried turning to my friend. “Here’s actually the man Dawson himself.”
“Dawson!” gasped the man against whom the monk had warned me. “Let’s have him in. But, by Gad! we must be careful of what we say, for, if all is true of him, he has the cuteness of Old Nick himself.”
“Leave him to me,” I said. Then turning to Glave, said, “Show the gentleman in.”
And we both waited in breathless expectancy for the appearance of the man who knew the truth concerning the carefully-guarded past of Burton Blair, and who, for some mysterious reason, had concealed himself so long in the guise of an Italian.
A moment later he was ushered in, and bowing to us exclaimed with a smile —
“I suppose, gentlemen, I have to introduce myself. My name is Dawson – Richard Dawson.”
“And mine is Gilbert Greenwood,” I said rather distantly. “While my friend here is Reginald Seton.”
“I have heard of you both from our mutual friend, now unfortunately deceased, Burton Blair,” he exclaimed; and sank slowly into the grandfather armchair which I indicated, while I myself stood upon the hearthrug with my back to the fire in order to take a good look at him.
He was in well-made evening clothes, over which he wore a black overcoat, yet there was nothing about him suggestive of the man of strong character. He was of middle height, and his age I judged to be nearly fifty. He wore gold-framed round eye-glasses with thick pebbles, through which he seemed to blink at us like a German professor, and his general aspect was that of a sedate and studious man.
Beneath a patchy mass of grey-brown hair his forehead fell in wrinkled notches over a pair of sunken blue eyes, one of which looked upon the world in speculative wonder, while the other was grey, cloudy, and sightless. Straggling eyebrows wandered in a curiously uncertain manner to their meeting-place above a somewhat fleshy nose. Below the cheeks and beard and moustache blended in a colour-scheme of grey. From the sleeves of his overcoat, as he sat there before us, his lithe, brown fingers shot in and out, twisting and tapping the padded arms of the chair with nervous persistence, and in a manner which indicated the high tension of the man.
“My reason for intruding upon you at this hour,” he said half apologetically, yet with a mysterious smile upon his thick lips, “is because I only arrived back in London this evening and discovered that my friend Blair has, by his will, left in my hands the control of his daughter’s affairs.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed in pretended surprise as though it were news to me. “And who has said this?”
“I have received information privately,” was his evasive answer. “But before proceeding further, I thought it best to call upon you, in order that we might from the outset thoroughly understand each other. I know that both of you have been Blair’s most intimate and kindest friends, while owing to certain somewhat curious circumstances I have been compelled, until to-day, to remain entirely in the background, his friend in secret as it were. I am also well aware of the circumstances in which you met, of your charity to my dead friend and to his daughter – in fact, he told me everything, for he had no secrets from me. Yet you on your part,” he continued, glancing at us from one to the other with that single blue eye, “you must have regarded his sudden wealth as a complete mystery.”
“We certainly have done,” I remarked.
“Ah!” he exclaimed quickly in a tone of ill-concealed satisfaction. “Then he has revealed to you nothing!”
And in an instant I saw that I had inadvertently told the fellow exactly what he most desired to know.
Chapter Thirteen
Burton Blair’s Secret is Revealed
“Whatever Burton Blair told me was in strictest confidence,” I exclaimed, resenting the fellow’s intrusion, yet secretly glad to have that opportunity of meeting him and of endeavouring to ascertain his intentions.
“Of course,” answered Dawson with a smile, his one shining eye blinking at me from behind his gold-rimmed glasses. “But his friendliness and gratitude never led him sufficiently far to reveal to you his secret. No. I think if you will pardon me, Mr Greenwood, it is useless for us to fence in this manner, having regard to the fact that I know rather more of Burton Blair and his past life than you ever have done.”
“Admitted,” I said. “Blair was always very reticent. He set himself to solve some mystery and achieved his object.”
“And by doing so gained over two millions sterling which people still regard as a mystery. There is, however, no mystery about those heaps of securities lying at his banks, nor about the cash with which he purchased them,” he laughed. “It was good Bank of England notes and solid gold coin of the realm. But now he’s dead, poor fellow; it has all come to an end,” he added with a slightly reflective air.
“But his secret still exists,” Reggie remarked. “He has bequeathed it to my friend here.”
“What!” snapped the man with one eye, turning to me in sheer amazement. “He has left his secret with you?”
He seemed utterly staggered by Reggie’s words, and I noted the evil glitter in his glance.
“He has. The secret is now mine,” I answered; although I did not tell him that the mysterious little wash-leather bag was missing.
“But don’t you know what that involves, man?” he cried, and having risen from his chair he now stood before me, his thin fingers twitching with excitement.
“No, I don’t,” I said, laughing in an endeavour to treat his words lightly. “He has left me as a legacy the little bag he always carried, together with certain instructions which I shall endeavour to act upon.”
“Very well,” he snarled. “Do just as you think fit, only I would rather you were left possessor of that secret than me – that’s all.”
His dismay and annoyance apparently knew no bounds. He strove hard to conceal it, but without avail. It was therefore at once plain that there was some very strong motive why the secret should not be allowed to fall into my possession. Yet his belief that the little sachet had already passed into my hands negatived my theory that this mysterious person was in any way connected with Burton Blair’s death.
“Believe me, Mr Dawson,” I said quite calmly, “I entertain no fear of the result of my friend’s kind generosity. Indeed, I can see no ground for any apprehension. Blair discovered a mystery which, by dint of long patience and almost superhuman effort, he succeeded in solving, and I presume that, possibly from a feeling of some little gratitude for the small help my friend and myself were able to render him, he has left his secret in my keeping.”
The man was silent for several moments with that single irritating eye fixed upon me immovably.
“Ah!” he exclaimed at last with impatience. “I see that you are in utter ignorance. Perhaps it is as well that you should remain so.” Then he added, “But let us talk of another matter – of the future.”
“Well?” I inquired, “and what of the future?”
“I am appointed secretary to Mabel Blair, and the controller of her affairs.”
“And I promised Burton Blair upon his deathbed to guard and protect the young lady’s interests,” I said, in a cold, calm voice.
“Then may I ask, now we are upon the subject, whether you entertain matrimonial intentions towards her?”
“No, you shall not ask me anything of the kind,” I blazed forth. “Your question is a piece of outrageous impertinence, sir.”
“Come, come, Gilbert,” Reggie exclaimed.
“There’s surely no need to quarrel.”
“None whatever,” declared Mr Richard Dawson, with a supercilious air. “The question is quite simple, and one which I, as the future controller of the young lady’s fortune, have a perfect right to ask. I understand,” he added, “that she has grown to be very attractive and popular.”
“Your question is one which I refuse to answer,” I declared with considerable warmth. “I might just as well demand of you the reason why you have been lying low in Italy all these years, or why you received letters addressed to a back street in Florence.”
His jaw dropped, his brows slightly contracted, and I saw my remark caused him some apprehension.
“Oh! and how are you aware that I have lived in Italy?”
But in order to mislead him I smiled mysteriously and replied —
“The man who holds Burton Blair’s secret also holds certain secrets concerning his friends.” Then I added meaningly, “The Ceco is well known in Florence and in Lucca.”
His face blanched, his thin, sinewy fingers moved again, and the twitching at the corners of his mouth showed how intensely excited he had become at that mention of his nickname.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “He has played me false, then, after all – he has told you that – eh? Very well!” And he laughed the strange hollow laugh of a man who contemplates revenge. “Very well, gentlemen. I see my position in this affair is that of an intruder.”
“To tell you the truth, sir, it is,” exclaimed Reggie. “You were unknown until the dead man’s will was read, and I do not anticipate that the young lady will care to be compelled to employ a stranger.”
“A stranger!” he laughed, with a haughty touch of sarcasm. “Dick Dawson a stranger! No, sir, you will find that to her I am no stranger. On the other hand you will, I think, discover that instead of resenting my interference, the young lady will rather welcome it. Wait and see,” he added, with a strangely confident air. “To-morrow I intend to call upon Mr Leighton, and to take up my duties as secretary to the daughter of the late Burton Blair, millionaire,” and laying stress on the final word, he laughed again defiantly in our faces.
He was not a gentleman. I decided that on the instant he had entered the room. Outwardly his bearing was that of one who had mixed with respectable people, but it was only a veneer of polish, for when he grew excited he was just as uncouth as the bluff seafarer who had so suddenly expired. His twang was pronouncedly Cockney, even though it was said he had lived in Italy so many years that he had almost become an Italian. A man who is a real born Londoner can never disguise his nasal “n’s,” even though he live his life at the uttermost ends of the earth. We had both quickly detected that the stranger, though of rather slim built, was unusually muscular. And this was the man who had had those frequent secret interviews with the grave-eyed Capuchin, Fra Antonio.
That he stood in no fear of us had been shown by the bold and open manner in which he had called, and the frankness with which he had spoken. He was entirely confident in his own position, and was inwardly chuckling at our own ignorance.
“You speak of me as a stranger, gentlemen,” he said, buttoning his overcoat after a short pause and taking up his stick. “I suppose I am to-night – but I shall not be so to-morrow. Very soon, I hope, we shall learn to know one another better, then perhaps you will trust me a little further than you do this evening. Recollect that I have for many years been the dead man’s most intimate friend.”
It was on the point of my tongue to remark that the reason of the strange clause in the will was because of poor Burton’s fear of him, and that it had been inserted under compulsion, but I fortunately managed to restrain myself and to wish the fellow “Good-evening” with some show of politeness.
“Well, I’m hanged, Gilbert,” cried Reggie, when the one-eyed man had gone. “The situation grows more interesting and complicated every moment. Leighton has a tough customer to deal with, that’s very evident.”
“Yes,” I sighed. “He has the best of us all round, because Blair evidently took him completely into his confidence.”
“Burton treated us shabbily, that’s my opinion, Greenwood!” blurted forth my friend, selecting a fresh cigar, and biting off the end viciously.
“He left his secret to me remember.”
“He may have destroyed it after making the will,” my friend suggested.
“No, it is either hidden or has been stolen – which is not at all plain. For my own part, I consider that the theory of murder is gradually becoming dispelled. If he had any suspicion that he had been the victim of foul play, he surely would have made some remark to us before he died. Of that I feel absolutely convinced.”
“Very probably,” he remarked, rather dubiously, however. “But what we have now to discover is whether that little bag he wore is still in existence.”
“The man Dawson was evidently in England before poor Blair’s death. It may have passed into his possession,” I suggested.
“He would, in all probability, endeavour to get hold of it,” Reggie agreed. “We must establish where he was and what he was doing on that day when Blair was so mysteriously seized in the train. I don’t like the fellow, apart from his alias and the secrecy of friendship with Blair. He means mischief, old chap – distinct mischief. I saw it in that one eye of his. Remember what he said about Blair giving him away. It struck me that he contemplates revenge upon poor Mabel.”
“He’d better not try to injure her,” I exclaimed fiercely. “I’ve my promise to keep to poor Burton, and I’ll keep it – by Heaven, I will! – to the very letter. She sha’n’t fall into the hands of that adventurer, I’ll take good care.”
“She’s in fear of him already. I wonder why?”
“Unfortunately she won’t tell me. He probably holds some guilty secret of the dead man’s, the truth of which, if exposed, might, for all we know, have the effect of placing Mabel herself outside the pale of good society.”
Seton grunted, lolled back in his chair, and gazed thoughtfully into the fire.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed, after a brief silence. “I wonder whether that is so?”
On the following morning, as we were seated at breakfast, a note from Mabel was brought by a boy-messenger, asking me to come round to Grosvenor Square at once. Therefore without delay I swallowed my coffee, struggled into my overcoat, and a quarter of an hour later entered the bright morning-room where the dead man’s daughter, her face rather flushed by excitement, stood awaiting me.
“What’s the matter?” I inquired quickly as I took her hand, fearing that the man she loathed had already called upon her.
“Nothing serious,” she laughed. “I have only a piece of very good news for you.”
“For me – what?”
Without answering, she placed on the table a small plain silver cigarette-box, upon one corner of the lid of which was engraved the cipher double B, that monogram that was upon all Blair’s plate, carriages, harness and other possessions.
“See what is inside that,” she exclaimed, pointing to the box before her, and smiling sweetly with profound satisfaction.
I eagerly took it in my hands and raising the lid, peered within.
“What!” I cried aloud, almost beside myself with joy. “It can’t really be?”
“Yes,” she laughed. “It is.”
And then, with trembling fingers, I drew forth from the box the actual object that had been bequeathed to me, the little well-worn bag of chamois leather, the small sachet about the size of a man’s palm, attached to which was a thin but very strong golden chain for suspending it around the neck.
“I found it this morning quite accidentally, just as it is, in a secret drawer in the old bureau in my father’s dressing-room,” she explained. “He must have placed it there for security before leaving for Scotland.”
I held it in my hand utterly stupefied, yet with the most profound gratification. Did not the very fact that Blair had taken it off and placed it in that box rather than risk wearing it during that journey to the North prove that he had gone in fear of an attempt being made to obtain its possession? Nevertheless, the curious little object bequeathed to me under such strange conditions was now actually in my hand, a flat, neatly-sewn bag of wash-leather that was black with age and wear, about half-an-inch thick, and containing something flat and hard.
Within was concealed the great secret, the knowledge of which had raised Burton Blair from a homeless seafarer into affluence. What it could be, neither Mabel nor I could for a moment imagine.
Both of us were breathless, equally eager to ascertain the truth. Surely never in the life of any man was there presented a more interesting or a more tantalising problem.
In silence she took up a pair of small buttonhole scissors from the little writing-table in the window and handed them to me.
Then, my hand trembling with excitement, I inserted the point into the end of the leather packet and made a long sharp cut the whole of its length, but what fell out upon the carpet next instant caused us both to utter loud exclamations of surprise.
Burton Blair’s most treasured possession, the Great Secret which he had carried on his person all those years and through all those wanderings, now at last revealed, proved utterly astounding.