The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ®. Морис Леблан
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he gave us about make-up, when he was Medhurst the detective, were framed on purpose, so as to mislead and deceive us? And isn’t it possible what he said of his methods at the Seamew’s island that day was similarly designed in order to hoodwink us?”
“That is so obvious, Sey,” my brother-in-law observed, in a most aggrieved tone, “that I should have thought any secretary worth his salt would have arrived at it instantly.”
I abstained from remarking that Charles himself had not arrived at it even now, until I told him. I thought that to say so would serve no good purpose. So I merely went on: “Well, it seems to me likely that when he came as Medhurst, with his hair cut short, he was really wearing his own natural crop, in its simplest form and of its native hue. By now it has had time to grow long and bushy. When he was David Granton, no doubt, he clipped it to an intermediate length, trimmed his beard and moustache, and dyed them all red, to a fine Scotch colour. As the Seer, again, he wore his hair much the same as Elihu’s; only, to suit the character, more combed and fluffy. As the little curate, he darkened it and plastered it down. As Von Lebenstein, he shaved close, but cultivated his moustache to its utmost dimensions, and dyed it black after the Tyrolese fashion. He need never have had a wig; his own natural hair would throughout have been sufficient, allowing for intervals.”
“You’re right, Sey,” my brother-in-law said, growing almost friendly. “I will do you the justice to admit that’s the nearest thing we have yet struck out to an idea for tracking him.”
On the Saturday morning a letter arrived which relieved us a little from our momentary tension. It was from our enemy himself—but most different in tone from his previous bantering communications:—
Saratoga, Friday.
SIR CHARLES VANDRIFT—
Herewith I return your dispatch-box, intact, with the papers untouched. As you will readily observe, it has not even been opened.
You will ask me the reason for this strange conduct. Let me be serious for once, and tell you truthfully.
White Heather and I (for I will stick to Mr. Wentworth’s judicious sobriquet) came over on the Etruria with you, intending, as usual, to make something out of you. We followed you to Lake George—for I had ‘forced a card,’ after my habitual plan, by inducing you to invite us, with the fixed intention of playing a particular trick upon you. It formed no part of our original game to steal your dispatch-box; that I consider a simple and elementary trick unworthy the skill of a practised operator. We persisted in the preparations for our coup, till you pulled my hair out. Then, to my great surprise, I saw you exhibited a degree of regret and genuine compunction with which, till that moment, I could never have credited you. You thought you had hurt my feelings; and you behaved more like a gentleman than I had previously known you to do. You not only apologised, but you also endeavoured voluntarily to make reparation. That produced an effect upon me. You may not believe it, but I desisted accordingly from the trick I had prepared for you.
I might also have accepted your offer to go to South Africa, where I could soon have cleared out, having embezzled thousands. But, then, I should have been in a position of trust and responsibility—and I am not quite rogue enough to rob you under those conditions.
Whatever else I am, however, I am not a hypocrite. I do not pretend to be anything more than a common swindler. If I return you your papers intact, it is only on the same principle as that of the Australian bushranger, who made a lady a present of her own watch because she had sung to him and reminded him of England. In other words, he did not take it from her. In like manner, when I found you had behaved, for once, like a gentleman, contrary to my expectation, I declined to go on with the trick I then meditated. Which does not mean to say I may not hereafter play you some other. That will depend upon your future good behaviour.
Why, then, did I get White Heather to purloin your dispatch-box, with intent to return it? Out of pure lightness of heart? Not so; but in order to let you see I really meant it. If I had gone off with no swag, and then written you this letter, you would not have believed me. You would have thought it was merely another of my failures. But when I have actually got all your papers into my hands, and give them up again of my own free will, you must see that I mean it.
I will end, as I began, seriously. My trade has not quite crushed out of me all germs or relics of better feeling; and when I see a millionaire behave like a man, I feel ashamed to take advantage of that gleam of manliness.
Yours, with a tinge of penitence, but still a rogue,
CUTHBERT CLAY.
The first thing Charles did on receiving this strange communication was to bolt downstairs and inquire for the dispatch-box. It had just arrived by Eagle Express Company. Charles rushed up to our rooms again, opened it feverishly, and counted his documents. When he found them all safe, he turned to me with a hard smile. “This letter,” he said, with quivering lips, “I consider still more insulting than all his previous ones.”
But, for myself, I really thought there was a ring of truth about it. Colonel Clay was a rogue, no doubt—a most unblushing rogue; but even a rogue, I believe, has his better moments.
And the phrase about the “position of trust and responsibility” touched Charles to the quick, I suppose, in re the Slump in Cloetedorp Golcondas. Though, to be sure, it was a hit at me as well, over the ten percent commission.
Colonel Clay in THE EPISODE OF THE GAME OF POKER, by Grant Allen
“Seymour,” my brother-in-law said, with a deep-drawn sigh, as we left Lake George next day by the Rennselaer and Saratoga Railroad, “no more Peter Porter for me, if you please! I’m sick of disguises. Now that we know Colonel Clay is here in America, they serve no good purpose; so I may as well receive the social consideration and proper respect to which my rank and position naturally entitle me.”
“And which they secure for the most part (except from hotel clerks), even in this republican land,” I answered briskly.
For in my humble opinion, for sound copper-bottomed snobbery, registered A1 at Lloyd’s, give me the free-born American citizen.
We travelled through the States, accordingly, for the next four months, from Maine to California, and from Oregon to Florida, under our own true names, “Confirming the churches,” as Charles facetiously put it—or in other words, looking into the management and control of railways, syndicates, mines, and cattle-ranches. We inquired about everything. And the result of our investigations appeared to be, as Charles further remarked, that the Sabeans who so troubled the sons of Job seemed to have migrated in a body to Kansas and Nebraska, and that several thousand head of cattle seemed mysteriously to vanish, à la Colonel Clay, into the pure air of the prairies just before each branding.
However, we were fortunate in avoiding the incursions of the Colonel himself, who must have migrated meanwhile on some enchanted carpet to other happy hunting-grounds.
It was chill October before we found ourselves safe back in New York, en route for England. So long a term of freedom from the Colonel’s depredations (as Charles fondly imagined—but I will not anticipate) had done my brother-in-law’s health and spirits a world of good; he was so lively and cheerful that he began to fancy his tormentor must have succumbed to yellow fever, then raging in New Orleans, or eaten himself ill, as we nearly did ourselves, on a generous mixture of clam-chowder, terrapin, soft-shelled crabs, Jersey peaches, canvas-backed ducks, Catawba wine, winter cherries, brandy cocktails, strawberry-shortcake, ice-creams, corn-dodger, and a judicious brew commonly known as a Colorado corpse-reviver. However that may be, Charles returned to New York in excellent trim; and, dreading in that great city the wiles of his antagonist, he cheerfully accepted the invitation of his brother millionaire, Senator Wrengold of Nevada, to spend a few days before sailing in the Senator’s magnificent and newly-finished palace at the upper end of Fifth Avenue.
“There, at least, I shall be safe, Sey,” he said to me plaintively, with a weary smile. “Wrengold, at any rate, won’t try to take me in—except, of course, in the regular way of business.”
Boss-Nugget Hall (as