The Mystery of Stephen Claverton & Co. A novel

Prologue

. A few days after the celebration of her Gracious Majesty's Jubilee, two gentlemen were sitting in the smoking-room of the Leeds Conservative Club engaged in conversation. The elder was of tall frame and jovial visage — a magistrate, a man whose name, although it is not material to this history, is a household word in Leeds ; the younger was of much slighter build, with a tawny moustache and thin, sun burnt cheeks, hinting of travel, and the two were alone in the room. In all the circumstances, and especially in view of the fact that our jovial friend had been one of the favoured recipients of a ticket for Westminster Abbey, it is not to be wondered at that the chat turned principally upon the stirring events of the week then drawing to a close. ' It is hardly necessary to say,' said the younger, leaning back in his chair, 'that you found London tolerably full.' ' Full, my boy?

The word doesn't express it. Crammed to the roofs. It was only by the inter vention of a friend that I got stowed away at all.' ' Indeed !' said the other with rather languid interest, for the relation of such experiences had already lost something of the charm of novelty. ' Yes, I tried everywhere — Metropole, Grand, Charing Cross, Golden Cross, every Cross and Crown in the five-mile radius, I believe — no use at all. As well have asked for the freehold of the property. In the end, as I said, by the interven tion of a friend, I got a room, No. 64 on the top floor, in a small private hotel — Stroud's, I think they called it, just off the Strand. Do you know it ?' The younger man had been leaning back during STEPHEN CLAVERTON AND CO. 7 the foregoing, looking rather bored. Now, suddenly, he sat erect with lips apart and widely staring eyes, as though stricken by some strange and unaccountable fear. ' Why, good heaven, man !' said his companion, ' what's the matter ?

You're as white as a ghost. Here, drink some of this.' He did so, half averting his face the while, as though ashamed of his exhibition of feeling. But whatever the cause of disturbance may have been, the effect was not lightly to be set aside, for his voice was husky and harsh when he spoke again. ' What did you say was the number of your room V ' Sixty-four,' replied the old gentleman, still open-mouthed with surprise at the result of his very unsensational announcement. ' I wouldn't have slept in that room for ten thousand pounds.' The intense solemnity of the young man's voice and manner gave a strange force to his commonplace words. His companion grew interested. ' Why ? What do you know about this wonder ful room ?' he said. ' Come, perhaps we may work up a Jubilee ghost story about it, eh ?' trying to resume some of his former gaiety. ' For God's sake, don't chaff about it.

It is no laughing matter to me. I wonder if they have changed the furniture,' he went on slowly, as though he hated the subject but some fascination forced him to follow it. ' Here, let me describe the room to you. Heaven knows, I ought to be able to, for I've had it in my mind day and night for years. See, the window is there,' indicating the wall behind him. ' And the door — there. And there, beneath the window, is a low dressing table, and on the other side a long chest of drawers. The bed stands close to the wall, on the right as you enter, and there is a space of about two feet between the outer wall of the room and the bottom rails of the bed.' ' Yes, yes. That's all right, I remember,' said the old gentleman hastily. ' I left my sponge-bag hanging on those identical rails when I left, and I only got it back last night.' ' In that room,' the other went on slowly, ' a man was killed — murdered.

In that narrow space where your sponge-bag hung he staggered STEPHEN CLA VERTON AND CO. 9 by a dying effort, and held up by the rails of the bed, he bled his life away. In that bed the corpse lay for days — for days. There, in the centre of civilization, in the heart of the great Metropolis — with its judges, magistrates, and police, with all its organizations for dispensing justice and preventing crime — there he was killed, and there he lay till it suited his murderer to take him away. And,' with a bitter laugh, ' but for blind luck — the blindest of luck — not a soul in the wide world would have known that anything had occurred not perfectly regular.' The old gentleman was listening very attentively now. ' I say,' he said, putting his hand on his friend's shoulder, ' this seems to have been a strange busi ness.

I should like to hear all about it.' But the story of this most curious tragedy — a tragedy in which many of the chief actors were familiar figures in the streets of Leeds — is a long one. So, with the reader's permission, we will allow one who was from first to last closely bound up in the events to be narrated to tell the story in his own time, and, as far as may be, in his own words.

Chapter I

After a long sojourn in far-away lands, I found myself quite recently strolling through the rattling, grimy streets of Leeds, and gazing again upon scenes which had once been very familiar to me. I had travelled, on a moderate computation, two thousand miles, in order, so I had told myself, to look up old friends, to revive ancient recollections, and to visit places where my footstep was once well known. Yet, perhaps, if I were quite candid, I should be driven to admit that one motive above all others had led me to leave my sunny home, and all that now meant life for me, and to cross those many miles of land and sea — a motive so trivial and childish that I am almost ashamed to allude to it. In a comparatively quiet street abutting upon Park Square, there stands a row of lofty buildings, tall, black, and eminently respectable.

On the door of one of these, the words ' Stephen Claverton and Co., Leather, Hide, and Bark Factors,' used to be inscribed upon a huge brass plate. Was that plate, bearing the old name, still to be found in its accustomed place ? To ascertain this, to gaze again at those old blank upper windows from which I remember wondering if anybody ever looked out, to repeople in imagination those dingy old offices with the beings who were once my daily companions, I came to England. I remember it was a bright summer's day when I first made the acquaintance of that brass plate. For some months previously the name which it bore had been haunting me with almost fiendish persistence. ' Stephen Claverton and Co.,' like a gloomy shadow, had fallen between myself and my old free country life, and I had come to regard it as a term of such dark and ominous import that I recollect feeling quite surprised when I first saw it looking so bright and radiant on the plate of the old door.

From my earliest childhood I had lived in the country. For me, the word ' home ' was so bound up with the idea of waving trees, long hedge-rows and broad acres, that I contemplated life in a town with the same sense of approaching expa triation which may be supposed to possess a domesticated and socially disposed Russian when circumstances compel him to look forward to a residence in the mines of Siberia. An old friend of our family, one Mr. Hilyard, was connected with this firm of Claverton and Co. As in the case of the fly in amber, the problem as to how the devil he had got there had long formed a theme of speculation for the curious. For, of a truth, Fitzgerald Hilyard, with his erect military carriage and huge grizzly moustache, was not of a type which one usually connects with business.

I believe few knew the real story of his life. Even to us, with whom he had long been on intimate terms, many incidents in his earlier career were shrouded in gloom, and by tacit understanding were never touched upon by any of us. We knew on reliable authority that he was descended from an old Irish family, certain members of which, we were led to understand, had enjoyed the distinction of being hanged, drawn and quartered for the active part they had taken during the rebellion ; that he had entered the army when quite young, and had served her Majesty in various unpleasant climates with much credit to himself; that in India he had married a wife, the daughter of a brother officer, and had had several children. So far we had got on bravely, but from this point the mists of doubt began to gather round the life of Fitzgerald Hilyard.

Vague rumours had reached us that at this period he had been forced to resign his commission ; that his reckless Irish blood had let him into divers indiscretions, heavy gambling transactions and what not, and that he had reached the shores of Old Albion a beggar. That, in view of the needs of those dependent upon him, he had been induced to go into trade, a species of Tom Tiddler's ground, by the way, to so many of the British aristocracy, upon which, if a gentleman can only forget his native dignity, and make the necessary sacrifice, the filthy lucre is always to be picked up. That with the assistance of Mrs. Hilyard's family he had entered the old firm, at that time conducted solely by Mr. Claverton, though in what capacity we knew not. That Captain Hilyard had then shaken himself down into his new character as best he could, had abandoned all pretensions to military rank and title, had selected ' Fitzgerald ' out of some half-dozen of his Christian names to be used exclusively, as being most business-like and unpretentious, and had gone in for trade with the heavy consciousness hanging over his soul that he must never, on any account, smoke during office hours.

All this, and much more to the same effect, said rumour. For ourselves, the only knowledge of which we had positive assurance was that he had settled down in a detached villa at Head ingley, not far from the more imposing mansion of Mr. Claverton ; that death had soon become busy in his home, cutting down the still young wife and three ofthe children in rapid succession ; and that his fiftieth birthday had found him a still hale and powerful man, erect and soldier-like as of yore, living still in his villa, the solitude of which was now alone broken by the presence of his only surviving child, a son of some sixteen or seventeen years of age, and by a stony-hearted old house keeper of preternaturally cleanly habits. This old housekeeper, by the way, whose name was Mrs. Dix, had commenced her career as a chambermaid, when doubtlessly her hatred of dirt and untidiness in any and every shape was a most estimable quality ; but unfortunately she had made cleanliness a speciality, and like most specialists had neglected every other branch of virtue and of knowledge in favour of it.

This peculiarity brought her in constant collision with Master Gilbert, the heir of the house, who, being a youth of artistic temperament and somewhat indolent habits, had come to be regarded by Mrs. Dix as the sworn foe to all the decencies and proprieties of social life. In the eyes of the less severe critics, however, Gilbert Hilyard was an inoffensive young fellow enough. Physically the very antithesis of his father, the two were bound together by the closest and most curious of ties. They seemed to look upon one another rather as old and intimate friends than in any other light. The easy equality of their intercourse, the simple bon camarade air which pervaded all their dealings together, was apt to strike strangers rather oddly, but it worked remarkably well, and the pair spent most of their time in uncon strained companionship.

Perhaps one explanation of their familiarity might have been found in the fact that Gilbert had been left from his babyhood — and a most fractious, ailing babyhood it had been — almost entirely in the hands of Fitzgerald Hilyard. It was he who had nursed and tended the mother less child through every variety and combination of complaint which the infantile flesh is heir to — for it was one peculiarity of Master Gilbert, a peculiarity which he strongly developed in after life, to contract, in one form or another, almost every disease known to the College of Surgeons — it was he who provided amusements for the lad when amusements, suited to his age, could not otherwise, owing to his ill-health, have fallen in his way ; it was he who conducted him, as he grew older, on various little bird-nesting and fishing expeditions, and thus the bonds oi friendship, so rarely met with even between the most affectionate of parents and the most dutiful of sons, had grown in consequence.

And perhaps another link of brotherhood not commonly found in families had bound this man and boy together. They had been driven to form a kind of defensive alliance against their common enemy, Mrs. Dix, who, save for the united front thus presented, would in all probability have swept them both long ago from the sight of men, as mere useless obstructions in the path of the great cause of cleanliness, and thus entirely changed the course of the present narrative.

Chapter II

How well I remember the day when it was first mooted, at Mr. Hilyard's instance, that I— then a lad of seventeen — should enter the firm of Claverton and Co. I didn't regard the scheme with very warm feelings of delight at first, but in the end I fell in with the family view and the matter was finally determined upon. It was further arranged that in preference to living in lodgings I should take up my abode with Mr. Hilyard at Headingley. Therefore it was that on a certain never-to-be-forgotten morning I found myself— Mr. Hilyard and I the sole occupants of a smoking compartment — being whirled along in the direction of the scene of my new duties. For a long time I abandoned myself to the mournful task of tracing the silver thread of the river which ran for some miles parallel with the rails — now losing it as it dived into a huge over hanging mass of verdure, now catching a glimpse of it again as it crept glistening out into the open, until at length an envious cutting shut it finally from my gaze.

Then I fell to staring blankly at the telegraph wires, and watched them mono tonously rise, and rise, and rise, until they were suddenly stricken down by one of the tall posts, and were forced to begin their wearying ascent all over again. When these exciting occupations had begun somewhat to pall, it occurred to me that I was not making myself very sociable, so I turned to Mr. Hilyard. ' Mr. Hilyard,' I said, by way of being agreeable, ' do you like being in business ?' ' Like it, Philip !' he returned, taking his pipe from his lips, with a somewhat surprised air. ' Well, you see, I was not exactly brought up for it, and that makes a difference. Still — oh yes, of course I like it.' I do not know how it came about — I suppose it was something in Mr. Hilyard's manner which made me feel that he didn't like it; but I fear extreme delicacy of feeling was not my forte as a youth, and I did not hasten to drop what I had sense enough to see was an uncongenial subject. ' Will you let Gilbert go into business when he is older, Mr. Hilyard ?' I asked after a brief pause.

Something like a sudden flush sprang to Mr. Hilyard's face and extended almost as far as the thin line of white hair which was visible beneath his smoking-cap as he answered me. ' Gilbert ! No. What makes you ask ?' he said almost sharply, and then, as though suddenly remembering something, he went on in his usual pleasant way, ' You see, Gilbert is not fitted for a life of that kind. He is such a delicate little fellow for his age. And then you know, Philip, he has a strong taste for drawing and painting. I hope Gilbert may live to be a great artist' After this we travelled for some distance in silence ; then a sudden recollection that Mr. Hilyard had been a great sportsman in his earlier days caused me to address him again. ' I suppose you shot lots of big things, elephants and tigers, when you were in India, Mr. Hilyard?' I remarked.

And then the old soldier brightened up and told me tales, many of which I had heard before, but they always seemed new to me, of his sporting adventures in various parts of the world ; how he had hunted nearly everything, from big-horns in the Rockies to Polar bears in Davis Straits — how he had caught sea-trout in the Hebrides, and salmon in Norway and Iceland — until I was quite carried away by the dazzling visions thus conjured up, and forgot my own misfortunes in the pitying thought that a man with such a glorious past should ever live to be fastened up in a counting house. ' And you know, Philip,' he went on, when he had just finished a desperate encounter with a huge fish which had run every inch of line off his reel, and very nearly broken the line before it was finally disposed of, ' although I am getting an old man, I should be sorry to think the old times were never to be renewed.

If ever occasion should serve — and I hope some day it may — I intend to look up some of my old sporting quarters and to try my luck again. Perhaps you and I may be able to arrange for an expedition together before very long.' This prospect was, of course, so delightful to me that I soon began to forget all my woes, and for the remainder of the journey, which was not a very long one, we chatted pleasantly of all the wonderful deeds w-e would perform on loch and fell when the glorious time should at last really arrive. Enthusiast as I was in such matters, Mr. Hilyard's zeal was at least equal to mine ; and I thought then, as I have thought many times since, how irksome the uncongenial life in a grimy town must oftentimes have been to him, and how gladly he seemed to look forward to the day when he should again wander, gun or rod in hand, in some far-away land with an absolutely smokeless sky above him.

Mr. Hilyard's house was a stone-built detached villa, not large, but standing easily upon its ground, so to speak, and having that appearance of elbow-room about it which went to prove that it had been erected when sites were cheap, and before builders found it necessary to give the maximum of house to the minimum of land. On either side of the door was a wide French window, each of which opened upon a very smooth and well-kept lawn, whereon two upright poles gave promise of tennis. As, too, the whole front of the building was snugly covered with a tangle of ivy, honeysuckle, and Virginian creeper, and as a dense privet hedge encircled the little domain in such a manner as to screen it com pletely from prying eyes, the aspect of my new home was so far from being uninviting that, for the first time in connection with the whole affair, I experienced a gleam of satisfaction.

Just as I was wondering why Gilbert had not put in an appearance to bid me welcome, Mrs. Dix herself emerged from the cellar and greeted me frigidly. After subjecting my boots to a rigid scrutiny, and fortunately finding nothing thereon to justify a request that I should return to the mat, she informed me that it was one of Master Gilbert's bad days, and that he was then lying down in his own room. As it appeared, however, that he had expressed a desire to see me directly on my arrival, the housemaid was commissioned to conduct me upstairs, which she did without further parley. I soon found myself in an apart ment which was neither studio nor library, although it partook of the distinctive peculiarities of each, for there was a large easel in the centre of the room with a half-finished picture upon it, whilst the walls were lined on either side with well-filled book-cases.

In one recess there was an open piano, and in another a couch upon which, as I entered, I observed Gilbert himself comfortably reclining, with a pipe in his mouth and a novel in his hand. ' Hallo, Philip,' he said, stretching out his hand, 'very glad to see you. You won't mind my not getting up. I should have been at the station to meet you, but I have a most confounded head ache, which nothing but a combination of rest and tobacco will drive away. Well, how are you ?' As I took the hand he offered I could not fail but be struck by the extreme frailty and almost feminine delicacy of his face and figure — a delicacy strangely out of keeping with the huge meerschaum at which he was still languidly puffing. ' You seem to have a jolly place here,' I said at last, looking round. ' I've never been in this room before.' ' Haven't you ?' he replied. ' Yes, I contrive to make it tolerably comfortable.

It's the only spot in the house where that confounded old woman downstairs is not allowed to enter. When I took possession I made an express stipulation with Fitz that that old hag should on no account cross the threshold.' ' Made a stipulation with whom ?' I asked in some surprise. 'With Fitz. With the old man. I put it to him fairly and clearly, and we've stood by the arrangement ever since. That is the reason the room is habitable.' He spoke in that restless, irritable way so common with those to whom pain is an almost constant companion, and seemed so entirely unaware that the term Fitz — as applied to his father — involved anything like disrespect, that I did not pursue the matter further. ' By-the-way, Philip,' he went on after a pause of a few moments, ' we have arranged for you to have a room, a private room of your own, you know, which you can lock up when you want to.

It will serve as a smoke-room when you happen to have a few fellows in at night.' I expressed my thanks for this considerate arrangement, but at the same time I ventured mildly to wonder whether Mr. Hilyard would care about my smoking in the house — smoking, in fact, being a luxury in which I had up to that time only indulged in remote corners, and far from the sight of men. Gilbert, however, did not appear to foresee any difficulty arising in that direction. 'You see,' he said, 'Fitz smokes a good deal himself, and I smoke too, so I don't see how another pipe going in the house can make much difference. But now, old fellow, you must be getting hungry. You will find lunch in the dining-room.' And so I left him and went down stairs to partake, in solitary state, of my first meal in Hawthorn Cottage.

At six o'clock Mr. Hilyard returned. Gilbert was much better in the evening, so he came down and we all dined together. I had seen the father and son together many times before, but only when others were also present, and I recollect well how strange the perfect freedom of their intercourse appeared to me on that night. It was not that Gilbert's manner struck me as being disrespectful, although I dare say in many well conducted households it would have been con sidered eminently so. But he expressed all his opinions with such perfect unreserve, and Mr. Hilyard listened to and replied to them with such an entire absence of all assertion of superiority, that they appeared to me to be much rather on the footing of brothers than upon that of parent and child. After the cloth had been removed we remained for a long time in conversation, and Mr. Hilyard drifted again, his constant habit whenever he found a sympathetic audience, into the recital of his sporting adventures, and we spent a very pleasant evening indeed.

Then I retired to bed, to mix up in my dreams wild boars and gigantic salmon with Stephen Claverton and Co., and the new career which awaited me on the morrow.

Chapter III

The breakfast-hour at Hawthorn Cottage was eight, and long before that time, the desire to distinguish myself proverbially possessed by new brooms being strong upon me, I was dressed and downstairs. Indeed, I was down so soon that I found a promiscuous heap of furniture in the hall, and Mary Ann, under the rigid supervision of Mrs. Dix, actively engaged in sweeping the breakfast room floor. I therefore went into the garden, and employed myself in stoning such game as the district afforded — principally sparrows and cats — until I heard the welcome sound of the bell. Mr. Hilyard and I breakfasted together alone, for the hour was, of course, much too early for Gilbert, and we then set out for the office. I well remember my mingled feelings of dread and curiosity as I walked down Woodhouse Lane by Mr. Hilyard's side, on that, the first morning of my business life, and how I found myself constantly wondering, as I passed certain land marks upon our route, what my sensations would be when I saw them again, bearing with me a full knowledge of Claverton and Co. The opportunity, however, for idle speculations of this nature was not protracted to any great length, for Mr. Hilyard's long measured strides soon brought us to our destination, and then, for the first time, the big brass plate, which since that day has ever been a distinct entity in my recollections, burst upon me in all its imposing shininess.

My first impression on entering the premises of Messrs. Claverton and Co. was one in which doors took a prominent place. There was such a lot of doors. The one directly in front of me had ' Mr. Claverton ' inscribed upon it in large black letters. On another I lead ' Mr. Jeffrey,' and on a third ' Mr. Hilyard.' My attention was also drawn to a small black frame hanging against a wall, from which I gathered that Mr. Claverton was ' Out,' Mr. Jeffrey ' In,' Mr. Hilyard ' Out.' As Mr. Hilyard stepped forward to correct this last announcement, which he did by moving a little slide, I had leisure to extend my observations. I was standing behind a counter which inter sected the room, thus cutting off the doors and myself from a moderately large enclosure. In this enclosure there was a long desk at which three figures were seated at intervals, upon three stools, and so I arrived without much difficulty at the conclusion that this was the general office of the firm, and that the three figures were the clerks.

As we came forward, one of these figures descended from his stool, placed the pen with which he had been writing in a big book behind his ear, and addressed Mr. Hilyard with a re spectful ' Good-morning, sir.' 'Ah! Good-morning, Whitehead,' said Mr. Hilyard, with his pleasant smile. ' Mr. Claverton not down yet, I see.' ' No, sir,' returned the figure referred to as Whitehead, who, by-the-way, appeared to have derived his surname as certain wild Indians do theirs, from some strongly marked personal char acteristic, for he had the biggest and bushiest crop of snowy hair I ever saw upon the head of mortal man. ' No, sir, Mr. Claverton has not yet arrived. Mr. Jeffrey is down, sir.' I had often heard of Mr. Jeffrey, who was a nephew of Mr. Claverton's, and I had already formed a private opinion as to his manners and appearance from chance references made to him by Mr. Hilyard ; but my speculative visions were at once and for ever dispelled by Mr. Jeffrey him self, who at that moment opened the door of the private room, and came forward to greet us.

I saw then that he was a much younger man than the Mr. Jeffrey I had sketched for myself, being, I should imagine, at that time, about twenty-four or five years of age, and that he was of a ruddy countenance, with dark moustache and whiskers and very keen bright eyes. He shook hands with me very kindly when Mr. Hilyard told him who I was, and seemed so easy and genial, and so little puffed up by the fact that he was Mr. Claverton's nephew, that I quite liked him. Mr. Hilyard and Mr. Jeffrey then stepped into the latter's room and busied themselves with some papers, whilst I, not wishing to appear obtrusive, remained in the outer office. The objects of interest which decorated the walls — a framed outline drawing of a complicated-looking machine and a large printed card setting forth the dates of the various leather fairs — being soon exhausted, I turned round and began furtively to examine the three clerks at the other side of the counter.