Forbidden by Law: a novel

Front matter

* * * Uniform with " Forbidden by Law," Crown 8vo, Art Linen, Gilt Top, price 6/- each. THE INN BY THE SHORE. By Florence Warden, Author of " The House on the Marsh," etc. (Fourth Edition.) THE POWER OF THE DOG. By Rowland Grey, Author of " By Virtue of his Office," etc. (Second Edition.) BLACK DIAMONDS. By Maurus J6kai, Author of "'Midst llie Wild Carpathians?' " Pretty Michal." ( Third Edition. ) JUD Y, A JIL T. By Mrs. Conney, Author of" Pegg's Perversity" " Gold for Dross," etc. (Second Edition. ) LAD Y JEAN'S SON. By Sarah Tytler, Author of "Lady Jean's Vagaries," etc. (Second Edition. ) COLOUR SERGEANT No. i COMPANY. By Mrs. Leith Adams, Author of "Bonnie Kate," etc. (Second Edition.) THE GREEN BOOK. (Authorised Edition.) By Maurus J6kai. (Fifth Edition.) MY BONNIE LADY. By Leslie Keith, Author of '"Lisbelh," "The Chilcotes," " In Spite of Herself" etc.

THE WINDS OF MARCH. By George Knight, Author of "Dust in the Balance," " The Circle of the Earth," etc. PRETTY MICHAL. (Authorised Edition. ) By Maurus Jokai, Author of "Black Diamonds," " The Green Book," etc. A STRONG NECESSITY. By Isabel Don, Author of " Only Cldrchen" " Zohrat," " The Story of Holland," etc. JABEZ NUTYARD. By Mrs. Edmonds, Author of " Fair Athens," " The Herb of Love," "Amygdala," etc. London : Jarrold & Sons io and ii Warwick Lank E.C. And os all Booksellers. A NOVEL BY Major Arthur Griffiths Author of "The Rome Express" *■ " Memorials of Millbank " "Secrets of the Prison House" "A Prison Princess," etc London: Jarrold & Sons 10 AND II WARWICK LANE E.C. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED I897 CONTENTS. ■ Ol CHAPTER ej.AGE I. At the "Hundred Herrings" ... ... 7 II. A Dying Confession ... ... 12 III.

McVittie Begins ... ... ... 16 IV. Introduces Miss Hepburn ... ... 21 V. Brother and Sister ... ... ... 25 VI. A Happy Old Maid ... ... 28 VII. Hepburn's ... ... ... ... 32 VIII. Mortimer's Ideas ... ... ... 36 IX. A Common Enemy ... ... ... 41 X. The Dalrymples ... ... ... 45 XI. At the Bar of the "Battle Arms" ... 49 XII. Daisy's Trouble ... ... ... 55 XIII. A Visit to Bolt-up Lane ... ... 59 XIV. The Hepburn Highflyer ... ... 63 XV. Janet's Daughter ... ... ... 69 XVI. Auntie's Gift ... ... ... 74 XVII. Paid in Full ... ... ... ... 77 XVIII. AVhat John Dalrymple Said ... S2 XIX. After Many Years ... ... ... 87 XX. Spoiling their Game ... ... 91 XXI. Porteous Appears ... ... ... 95 XXII. McVittie's Late Call ... ... CONTENTS. 4 CHAPTER PAGE XXIII. The "Fraulein" Arrives ... ... 105 XXIV.

Chapter I. At The

"HUNDRED HERRINGS." Ostend has two very distinct aspects ; there are two different, although not exactly separate, towns. One is known to the great and fashionable crowd that throng it in the summer seasons ; visitors from all countries and of all classes, that fill its many palatial villas and first-class hotels. These are they who patrol the Digue, or great sea wall, cover the broad sands at bathing time, and flock into the great Kursaal when the band plays. The other town is purely native, and is inhabited by traders and seafaring folk. It is well-built, with tall, white, prim-looking houses, kept with something of Dutch cleanliness and precision, a labyrinth of narrow streets surrounding the market square and extending from the sand at one side to the wharves of the port at the other. The residents of these parts have their favourite resorts, their special taverns and drinking-shops, and in one of these, at the sign of the " Hundred Herrings," a small party of four was assembled, before them as many tall jugs of ale.

They were all well-to-do men, apparently of substance and respectability, yet they were discussing a business of a peculiar, not to say nefarious, kind, in which they had been long engaged. It was profitable, although full of risks and liable to many mischances. Just lately those who fol lowed it had fallen upon evil times. " I say, give it all a rest," said one of the four. His name was Abram Kickpoo, a little, foxy, ferrety-faced sailor man of evidently nervous con stitution, who was likely to advocate caution. " The luck has been against us. Better wait for a turn of the tide." " Yah ! " interrupted a great, heavy, plethoric looking Fleming, Gottlieb Birnbaum, with an overgrown, Dutch-built carcase, and a fat, bloated face. " Yah ! you always were a cur, Abram Kickpoo, and I wonder why we let you into the game."

"Well, ask the others — ask Nopenny, here, or Van Stirke. They agree with me," protested Kickpoo, and the two appealed to, silent, stolid boors, mariners and seafaring in aspect, nodded their heads slowly in assent. Whereupon Birnbaum raged with a sudden gust of passion, which convulsed his whole corpulent frame till it shook like a jelly. " Curs, cowards, idiots, asses, fools ! " he roared. " You would stop now and lose everything ; now, when by striking out afresh we might recover all." " The trade has sailed us. It will never be the same again," said Kickpoo. " It's well for you to talk, Herr Gottlieb. Are you so very brave your self?" " We, too, have lost much money, and we have risked far more," said Nopenny. "Aye, our liberty! We are no curs," grunted Van Stirke. "God above us! but I would disappoint you, dolts and dunderheads that you are.

I would leave you, only I do not dare." AT THE "HUNDRED HERRINGS.'1 9 " Aha ! are you so very brave ? " "Leave you, because you would sell me some way, if I went on with the business alone." " Come, comrade, fair words," protested Kickpoo. "What is your stake to mine? — your loss to what I may lose? Three-fourths of that last cargo run to Cleethorpes was paid for by my money. It cost me many thousand marks. Your ventures, all of you together, did not make as many hundreds." " Yes ; but we took the stuff across. It was our boat, the Fraulein Anna, and she might have been seized, with us aboard. You were safe on this side, on shore, sleeping on both ears." "Yes; it is we who would have gone to the English gaol, not you, Gottlieb," said Nopenny, with a sententious nod. " I have seen the inside of one, once when I was taken up for brawling in the streets of Hull, and I liked neither the great staircase nor the small food," added Van Stirke, with a shudder.

The suggestion was not pleasing to Birnbaum, although he tried to look stolid and unmoved. But he braced himself up to speak bravely. " See, now, all this is idle talk — mere words. Come, I will one proposition make. Join me once again ; one other venture let us share. I will take the same risks as you do — even more. I will pre cede you, will go first to England and await there." " You, Gottlieb ! You, the greatest cow Well, well, I will not miscall you. But it is too much to believe. You would never go." " It must be done, Kickpoo. The trade is failing us, as you say, and can only be revived by bold measures. The present is an opening too good to throw away." "What! It pleases you? You believe in it?" asked Nopenny, incredulous. " I will tell you why I believe in it. Because I have seen myself, with my own two eyes, what can be done.

I have already been to England." The phlegmatic Flemings jumped to their feet and shouted almost simultaneously — "You have gone to England? It is impos sible ! " " I went at the invitation of that young man. I was not at first disposed the business to enter ; the reasons you will understand. But he was so pressing, and the case so straightly stated that I agreed to further examine. I am but just returned from England." " And what have you found ? " asked Hans Nopenny. "Found all what that young man has said. There is all we need. A snug landing-place ; a river mouth, with deep water enough at high tide to float the Fraulein Anna. It is quiet and un watched, only two days' sail from where we stand, and not very far north of Cleethorpes. The stuff can be easily and safely landed there." " And what's to happen to it afterwards ?

Where will it go ? " " I will see to that. We have excellent and more than sufficient means for its disposal, first in the great cathedral city of Blythchester near by, where we shall have a good friend, and after that, beyond, elsewhere. I shall be on the spot myself." " But where, Herr Gottlieb ? " " In a house I have taken close to the shore, so as to lend you a hand. So you see, my friends, everything is arranged. What do you say ? " There was a long silence, during which the three sailors smoked with much energy, and, no doubt, thought as hard. "Are the terms the same? " one asked at length. " Twenty-five per cent, on the net profits of every cargo run across ; the same as before," replied Birnbaum. AT THE "HUNDRED HERRINGS." 1 1 " It is not enough ; we must have half. Fifty per cent.

You see, we risk so much more than you do, Gottlieb." " God above us ! But that is not true. But you are true thieves. Is it not all my money at stake ? Nothing yours at all, yet you ask so much. I will have nothing more to say to you. It is all finished ; I go." Birnbaum got up, smashed his pipe upon the table in a furious rage, and made for the door. " No, wait, Gottlieb ; say forty — thirty-five — thirty," protested Kickpoo. " Thirty, then, but only if you will start in three days from now. I am expecting the stuff by then. My ship, the FrohlicJie Frau, passed Ushant last week ; she may run in any day. You must go out and meet her. So soon as you have loaded up cross to England. I will mark you a course on the chart, and show you where to lie off. Is that perfectly clear ? " The sailors nodded assent.

" Then you do your part, and I will go ahead to make all smooth. I will take to-night's mail steamer. McVittie shall meet me. I must tele graph him to be prepared." And with that the meeting broke up. The new enterprise was practically decided upon. But before the reader is told how it was undertaken and carried, he must know something of the man called McVittie, who had originated it.

Chapter II

A DYING CONFESSION. Mortimer McVittie entered the Cleethorpes Gaol a poor, broken, downhearted creature, bank rupt alike in character and cash. He left it another man. What had worked this great change in him ? His luck had suddenly turned, and a chance had come to him which would probably rehabilitate him. McVittie, as an old gaol bird, was a good prisoner. The terms are generally synonymous, and in the last three months of his sentence was promoted to the much-coveted post of " hospital cleaner." He became attendant and occasional nurse, waiting on the hospital warder with the medicine basket, administering doses, applying plasters and poultices, and making himself generally useful. He was especially popular with the prisoner patients. A nimble, smooth-voiced, insinuating sort of creature, it was to his own interest to feign devotion, for his place depended on it.

But they were grateful to him, these poor waifs and strays, these pitiable wrecks, battered and maimed in the storms of a misspent life, who found hospital comforts a blissful set-off against sickness and pain. McVittie's attentions won him the gratitude and eventually the intimacy and confidence of one man in particular, Abel Swabey by name, who was A DYING CONFESSION. 13 clearly of superior stamp to his fellows, and in a measure a mystery to them. He was not a criminal in the ordinary sense — not at all a common prisoner. He did not wear the prison dress, but his own clothes, as McVittie could see on the few occasions when the sick man was permitted to sit up for a time. He was under the rules for debtors, which gave him better diet, a place apart in the prison, and now in the hospital a room or ward to himself.

More, Abel Swabey received and sent out many letters ; he saw visitors, too, privately — one visitor, that is to say, who seemed to come and go very much as he chose, and was on terms of great intimacy with the prison authorities, and of whom McVittie got a glimpse now and again, although he was always put out of the way when the visitor came. It was not until Swabey grew much worse, and his life was despaired of, that he gave McVittie his full confidence. He spoke first in the small hours, when a deadly stillness prevailed throughout the prison, when no one else was up and about but the ghostly night watchman making his round noiselessly in slippered feet. " I'm going, McVittie. They've done for me amongst them ; not the prison folk. I don't blame them, for they've been kind enough. The doctor, too, although he couldn't cure me.

It's the men I've served these years who've left me in the lurch to rot and die in gaol. I'd like to No ; I am near my end. 1 will say no more, except that they must have made thousands of pounds, while I have been ruined." " It was a good lay, then ? " suggested McVittie, his little eyes glistening with greed. " Won't you tell me more about it ? What was it exactly ? Who were the swine who sold you over it ? " " A good business, yes ; but dishonest, fraudulent, criminal. I'd rather not talk about it." FORBIDDEN BY LAW. 14 "Come, mate, make a clean breast of it. It can't hurt you to do that. You'll be all the better for it, I'm sure. What was the game ? " "Smuggling. Running cargoes of contraband tobacco across from Belgium." "Tobacco!" cried McVittie, greatly interested. " I was in that trade myself once, and know a good deal about it, but I never heard of profitable con traband."

" It's as dangerous as it's disgraceful ; but the profits you can make are enormous until you're caught, and then you pay back in full." "From Belgium, you said. Were they Belgians who sold you — foreigners of sorts ? " " Flemings, belonging, I believe, to Ostend. One, Birnbaum — Gottlieb Birnbaum — was the prime mover. He is to be heard of at the sign of the ' Hundred Herrings,' Ostend." McVittie drank in these confessions, and tried his best to learn more. " Have none of them offered to pay your fine ? Haven't they come to see you ? " " They ! They were too much afraid of their skins." " Who was that red-faced chap that has been coming here so regularly to visit you ? Isn't he a friend ? " " Friend ! That's Crocker, the Customs detective, who is responsible for my arrest. He only came to try and worm something out of me.

But he never succeeded. Why should I tell of the others, however badly they treated me? It would not have done me any good." When the ice had once been broken, the dying man often returned to the subject, and spoke freely enough to McVittie upon the nefarious transactions that had landed him in a goal. This was how the good luck, as he himself called it, came to McVittie, and how it was that he was so A DYING CONFESSION. 15 jubilant when he issued forth from out of the Clee thorpes Goal. He had no scruples about adopting the business which had served poor Swabey so badly. It was fraud, but a pleasant profitable sort of fraud, for which McVittie felt himself extremely well fitted, both by training and certain fortuitous conditions which will be set forth presently. He was resolved, directly he was set free, to pick up the dropped threads and reorganize the old trade.

Chapter III

McVITTIE BEGINS Until he left Cleethorpes with the special secret knowledge he had extracted from the moribund Swabey, Mortimer McVittie had seemed at the end of his tether. There was no hope for him in the future, nothing but disgrace in the past. Nothing had prospered with him. He had lived many lives, and done well in none ; had drifted from one thing to another, changing continually — sometimes disheartened, sometimes capricious, sometimes because he tired of his occupation, or it was tired of him. Restlessness in early life was an unconquerable vice with him. He had been brought up to the desk and the manipulation of figures. He was a clever accountant, understood book-keeping, knew shorthand, and could make himself useful at anything. At first, although lazy, he ran straight enough ; he sat on a stool in the counting-house of a wholesale chemist, which he left without rhyme or reason for a draper's ; then he went to a tobacconist's in a large way, where he learnt the whole business thoroughly.

Mortimer McVittie could learn any thing he chose. From the tobacconist he passed into the employment of a financial agent, as secretary and assistant, a post which suited him exactly, for many reasons. It was not merely that he could manipulate figures as well as or better than his master ; but he had no McVITTIE BEGINS. 17 sort of scruple, and could be entrusted with the dirtiest work, offering the faintest protest. The place fitted him all the better that the profits for a time were tremendous. It was a period when there was truly corn in Egypt. Money was as plentiful in the city as paving-stones, and much more easily obtained. These were halcyon days with McVittie, when he had a banking account, wore a frock coat, silk hat, and snow-white gaiters, was much appreciated, utilized, even feared as a sharp customer.

When the financial collapse came a few years back, he was ruined utterly, lock, stock, and barrel. Starvation stared him in the face. He joined the great army of the unemployed — one more unit in the terrible array of clerks, all more or less com petent, who could find nothing to do. But the versatile McVittie, more fortunate than a thousand others, at last fell into a new hole, became assistant in a cheap tea-shop, and did well, soon developing into a thriving salesman, whose com mission came to quite a handsome figure. He was not satisfied. City successes had whetted his appetite for gain ; he forgot that where promoter, speculator, manipulator, working on a large scale may rob with impunity, the pilferer of coins from a till is certain, when caught, to be sent to gaol. A sentence of six months followed, and was the starting-point of his decadence.

McVittie dropped from bad to worse. He had now no character as well as no work, and out of sheer necessity he drifted into predatory habits. He had half a dozen convictions against him in as many years, and was recorded in police registers as an habitual criminal. The game had gone entirely against him, and when this story first takes him up he was almost in despair. Then came the new opening just described, and with it news — extremely good news — of something B which he hoped and believed he could work in with his scheme. He heard unexpectedly of a sister long lost sight of, or, rather, neglected. It was just before he nursed Swabey through his last illness. This sister had fallen upon her feet, having found a home and something more in the employment of a lady who owned a large tobacconist's establishment in Blythchester.

Blythchester ? McVittie had to ask the school master where it was. A hundred miles and more from Cleethorpes, and the railway fare six shillings and ninepence. The price of the journey would swallow more than half his available cash. That would be a pity. The McVitties came from the north of Ireland, but were of Scotch extraction — the blend that makes the canny, cautious Ulster man. Directly he was released McVittie set himself to consider how he was to reach his sister without sacrificing his resources, and he found, to his immense satisfaction, that there was occasional communication between the port of Cleethorpes and a place called Blythborough-on-Sea, within a few short miles of Blythchester. The chance that led him to adopt this route turned also to his advantage. He spent three wretched days upon a coasting smack, but he was landed at a place which seemed exactly suited for the ends he had in view.

Blythborough itself was but a poor little place — a sleepy, old-fashioned town with a small haven and a long strip of sandy beach that might some day promote it to the rank of a bathing-place. It stood on the edge of a vast moor, a long dreary waste of lonely common land, heather-clad and gorse-grown, with great wild stretches of sand rolling straight on to the sea. At the far end, two or three miles from Blythborough, a sluggish river McVITTIE BEGINS. 19 wound with many twists and turns till it finally emptied itself into the sea at a half-ruined hamlet of half a dozen cottages surrounding the one tall tower of an ancient church. It was still quite early as McVittie took in all these details from an elevated point just outside Blythborough. He had asked his road, and found that he was a dozen miles from Blythchester.

He did not wish to enter the cathedral city till night fall, so he resolved to spend the day in exploring the neighbourhood. The result was entirely satis factory to him. This quiet, retired spot was just adapted to the work he had in hand. " If the rest can only be arranged ; if all I've heard is true ; if they can only be squared, and I can open up communications with the other side, my fortune's made." The same evening McVittie tramped into Blyth chester. It was his first visit to the grand old cathedral city, and he had strong grounds for not wishing to be seen. His appearance was not such as to inspire confidence in the local police, and whenever he met a constable he was careful to step on one side. A man's honesty is not uncommonly calculated upon the coat he wears. McVittie's tattered, travel-stained suit of old dark "dittos," the closely fitting muffin cap of greasy shepherd's plaid cloth, his broken boots, gave a bad impression of him at first sight.

His face, too, when a glint of strong light fell upon it from one of the now brightly shining gas lamps, looked evil. It was thin and pinched ; all his features were unprepossessing, his straight, sharp nose, his thin closely cut lips, his shifty eyes. As he loafed along with dragging feet and hanging head, looking now to right, now to left, with a frightened, furtive glance, he seemed like some hunted animal, some jackal or pariah dog mortally afraid of man. He did not know his road exactly when once he got into the maze of streets, but he came at length upon a great open square, the name of which he read upon the gas lamps — St. Peter's Plain. It was very crowded : noisy with a great hubbub of people around booths and stalls brilliantly lighted with flaring jets of naphtha. An evening market was in progress, and among the throng he presently picked up a fellow-tramp, whom he had the courage to accost.

" Bolt-up Lane ? Course I knows Bolt-up Lane. Who bees you not to know it? An outland stranger, I guess. Where do you come from ? Wot's your lay ? " McVittie muttered a short, indistinct explanation. " To get to Bolt-up Lane you'd best leave St. Peter's just beyond yon hooded cart, and you'll find yourself in Champing Horse Street. Follow that, and the third to the left is Bolt-up Lane. If you can't find it, ask again ; you've got an English tongue in your head, I suppose ? " The direction was plain enough, and in a very few minutes more McVittie stood in front of a tobacconist's of respectable but unpretending appearance, dimly lighted, having a narrow front and entrance barred with a closed half-door. The place was little frequented ; for, despite the bustle and movement in the streets and market square hard by, there was not a single customer in the shop. Some one, however — a female figure — was seated behind the counter alone, and reading by the light of a green-shaded petroleum lamp.

Chapter IV. Introduces Miss Hepburn

McVlTTIE stood for some time opposite the shop, but keeping well out of sight in a dark corner of the street. He was anxiously debating his next move. This was his sister Margaret's home, and it was here that he meant to lay the foundations of his future plans, into which she entered very largely. But the matter must be approached with caution. Meg must be treated with circumspection. Her position might easily be jeopardised ; the too abrupt appearance of Mortimer, and his present abject condition, would not redound to Margaret's credit. He must see her, speak to her, for some time, and seriously ; but it must be without putting himself too prominently forward, and when he was quite sure of his ground. As yet he had no positive knowledge that this was his sister who sat alone in there. He could not make out her face or figure in the dim light, so there was nothing for it but to wait patiently, if necessary, even till the next day.

Then all doubts were dispelled by a loud cry that came from a room within and behind the shop. " Margaret ! Margaret McVittie ! " The voice was shrill, unnaturally harsh, and the cry was repeated with monotonous iteration several times. Strange to say, the person called paid no atten tion. The summons could not be one of much importance. Mortimer, satisfied now as to the identity of the person in the shop, was on the point of attracting her attention.when he again paused prudently, for some one else appeared. The door at the back of the shop was opened, and a woman's head protruded through. " Margaret," she said, and the voice was like, yet not quite the same as that which had already been heard so shrilly. " Margaret," she repeated, " don't you hear me ? Is it time to close ? " " Hardly. It's market night, and barely seven.

Did you call me before, Miss Hepburn. I thought it was the parrot." " Sir Anthony, the dear, sweet pet ! He knows when it's bedtime, and he's getting restless. Why not put up the shutters, Margaret ? Nobody's likely to come in. They never do so late as this." "You never know, Miss Hepburn. I'd rather wait a little, if you don't mind. It's bad to turn business away." " I'm sick of business. I'd like to sell it and go away with the birds — Sir Anthqny and the canaries, and you, dear — away to the south, somewhere where it is warm, and there are no red noses and no chapped hands, and the skin grows soft and one's hair does not get out of curl." " Your complexion is improving every day, Miss Hepburn, if you will only persevere with that ointment I made for you." " I am using it regularly, dear.

Now, again, this very night, I shall put it on several times. That is why I am so anxious to close the house now." " Leave it to me, Miss Hepburn. Do not sit up any longer. I will see all safe." " Very well, then. I will first clear the till and lock up the safe." There was a chink of coin, the metallic clang of a heavy safe door, as Miss Hepburn completed the day's business. Throughout the conversation she INTRODUCES MISS HEPBURN. 23 had been in full view of Mortimer, and even in the pale light of the lamp he had made out that she was small in person, and rather fantastically dressed, wearing a soft white dress with a black silk fichu, long black mittens on her hands, a big black bag or reticule on one arm. She wore her bright auburn or chestnut hair of suspiciously fashionable colour in long ringlets under a cap, which was really one enormous alsatian bow.

When she walked off, it was with a slow mincing step, and at the door, before she disappeared, she made her.assistantalow and formal curtsey, saying in execrably bad French — " Bon soir.' The parrot inside took up the words, and shouted " Bon soir " too, then whistled a few bars of " Go to bed, Tom," and, with a succession of loud croaks, dropped off his perch, and, followed by Miss Hepburn, hopped upstairs to the first floor. Any one permitted to penetrate further into the inner recesses of Miss Hepburn's establishment would have seen her arranging on each side of her dressing-table the gilt cages filled with her canaries, to which she spoke as if they were Christians. The parrot found a perch at the foot of the bed, and went straight off to sleep. Then Miss Hepburn sat herself down before her mirror — it was a large one draped with tender rose-coloured muslin — and looked for a long time at her kindly but vacuous old face.