The Black House in Harley Street

Front matter

THE BLACK HOUSE IN HARLEY STREET

ALSO BY

J. S. FLETCHER

Chapter I

THE BLACK HOUSE IN HARLEY STREET

CHAPTER I

ON EPSOM DOWNS

A field of eighteen came flashing into view round the slope of Tattenham Corner, Richard Goulburn held his breath and strained his eyes. From his place in one of the cheaper stands on the top side of the course he saw little more than a confusion of colour. Most of the animals struggling for victory seemed to him to be browns or chestnuts; being quite inexperienced in anything relating to racing matters, he wondered in a vague sort of fashion how it was that none of them was grey or white. But he was much more concerned just then in endeavouring to pick out from the various colours of the jockeys—the turquoise-blue, the purples, the blue and whites, the whites, the black and reds, the golds, the maroons—a certain white jacket with violet sleeves, over which, as a quick nervous glance at his card told him, there would be a red cap.

"Can you see where Mountain Apple is?" he timidly inquired of a very sporting-looking gentleman at his elbow who, unlike himself, was provided with a pair of field-glasses, and was diligently following the progress of the oncoming rush. "Is he anywhere in——"

The gentleman with the field-glasses snapped out a reply without deigning to look at his questioner.

"Can't yer see for yerself?" he said. "He's bloomin' well in front—that's where he is."

"And bloomin' well goin' to win, if you arsk me!" exclaimed another sporting gentleman in close proximity. "Bli' me! Look how he's goin'! And where's Norman III., I'd like to know—yah!"

"Out of it, my boy, out of it!" said the gentleman with the field-glasses. "Out of it—that's where he is, and no error. Here y'are! Mountain Apple wins!"

Goulburn shouted as loudly as any of them as the red cap surmounting the white and violet flashed past at the head of a swirling mass of colour. It seemed to him that all the world had suddenly gone mad and was yelling "Mountain Apple!" at the top of its voice. A sudden magnificent delirium of gladness seized him, and he only stopped shouting to begin laughing.

The man who wanted to know where Norman III. had got to turned a gloomy face upon him and scowled scoffingly.

"Don't you laugh too soon, my lad!" he said. "It's not over yet. I've seen some good 'uns go down at the end."

"It was well in front here, anyway," retorted Goulburn, with the hauteur of one-and-twenty. "And winning easily, too."

"Oh, was it?" said the other, imitating Goulburn's intonation. "Well, I'll lay yer lordship half a quid it hasn't."

The gentleman with the field-glasses suddenly closed them with a snap. "And you'd be right," he said decisively. "It's a bloomin' outsider that's won, that's what it is. Where's yer shouting now?"

A strange silence had fallen over the seething, struggling, perspiring crowd which, but a moment before, had been straining its lungs to their utmost. There was nothing to show that a popular favourite had passed the post first—men were already beginning to realise, with a species of electric sense only felt on racecourses, that the unexpected had happened.

"The numbers are going up," said somebody.

The man with the field-glasses adjusted them to his eyes once more and gazed down the course.

"Sixteen. Nine. Three," he read out staccato fashion. "Told yer it was an outsider. Signorinetta—that's it. Hundred to one chance."

"You're sure it isn't number six instead of sixteen?" asked Goulburn timidly.

The man looked at him for the first time, and saw the lad's white face and anxious eyes. And without a word he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously and began to elbow his way through the people about him.

How Richard Goulburn got off the stand he could never remember. Something seemed to crack in his brain; something seemed to seize on his heart; something seemed to make him feel queer in the region of his stomach. Without knowing how he got there, he found himself standing in a comparatively lonely part of the Downs, realising that the Derby of 1908 was over and that he had lost—lost more than the losing owners had lost.

Now, there are all sorts of ways in which one may feel about losing the Derby. If you are a very wealthy personage and love horse-racing for its own sake, and wisely abstain from betting on it, your chief sadness in losing the race, as owner, is that you have not won the Blue Ribbon of the Turf. If you are a regular backer of horses, making a profession of the most doubtful calling in the world, you will be disappointed when, after all your care and study of handbooks and newspapers, your horse comes in a bad third or a worse eighth. If you are a poor man, knowing very well that you cannot afford to stake even a sovereign on a horse, and you do so and lose, that sovereign will be commensurate with the amount of the odds which you got. It will make it all the worse in the last case if you merely got two to one on the favourite (which was nowhere), while your neighbour had a hundred to one on some unknown beast—which won easily. You will sigh, "Oh—if I had but known what was going to win!"—but quite uselessly, for there is no more useless form of regret than that of being sorry after the event is over. It is almost as useless—if not quite as much so—as moralising on the foolishness of betting at all.

But this is what Richard Goulburn—as was, after all, not unnatural, seeing that he was very young and by no means a philosopher—exactly did now that the excitement was over and he had time to think. He flung himself down on the ground near an almond-scented clump of brilliantly coloured gorse, and smote his fists together.

"What a fool I've been!" he groaned. "What a fool! And what shall I do now?"

That, of course, is what all young men placed in the same predicament would say. And his next remark—with the exception of the proper name included in it—is one that has been voiced more times than once by more young men than one would like to reckon the number of.

"I wish I'd never taken Bassett's advice! And yet he said Mountain Apple was a certainty—a dead certainty. I wish I'd never known Bassett."

Then he groaned again, and rising from his recumbent position, began to pace up and down the quiet patch of ground amongst the gorse brakes into which he had accidentally strayed. He was walking to and fro with bent head and hands clasping and unclasping themselves behind his back when he suddenly heard himself addressed by what was without doubt the voice of a young woman.

"I am afraid you are in great trouble!"

Goulburn started, turned, and stared about him, the colour rising to his cheek at the thought that he had been observed. He had believed himself to be alone; now, looking round his retreat, he saw a girl of something about his own age, who, shaded by a scarlet sunshade, sat in a sort of nest beneath the gorse. He perceived at once that she was a girl of refinement, and—judging from her dress and appearance—of some position. As to her looks, good or bad, he formed a hasty general impression of a mass of chestnut-hued hair under a large picture hat, of a pair of large brown eyes, of a pretty face, and of an expression which was just then somewhat anxious.

Goulburn, himself the descendant of good stock, instinctively uncovered his head. He was conscious that he began to blush.

"I—I didn't know that any one was there," he said lamely. "I thought I was alone."

"But you are in trouble," she said, returning to her first remark with true feminine persistency.

Goulburn made a feeble attempt to smile, and succeeded in making a wry face.

"Yes," he answered, "I'm pretty badly hit."

"You've lost your money in betting?"

He nodded his head.

"Could you afford to lose it?" she asked, looking at him with interest.

"No!" he replied promptly.

"Then why did you risk it?" she inquired.

"Because I wanted to make it much more, and believed firmly that I should win," he replied.

The girl inspected him narrowly. He was a straight, clean-limbed young man, open of face, bright of eye, and with a certain simple candour about him that appealed more than his generally handsome appearance and good looks. His flannel suit and straw hat were in the best and quietest taste; he spoke and moved like a gentleman. She began to be interested in him.

"Will it really make very much difference?" she asked. "I mean to say—you aren't ruined and going to blow your brains out, or anything of that sort, are you? Because you—well, you don't look what one usually calls poor, you know."

Goulburn laughed.

"Ah, but I am!" he replied. "Really, I am. I'm only a clerk with a very modest salary. That's why I ought not to have been so foolish as to risk any money on a horse-race. And——"

His face suddenly darkened, and, as if some new thought had struck him, he lifted his hat in silence and was about to move off when she stopped him with a gesture.

"No," she said. "I wish you wouldn't go. I'm sure you are in greater trouble than you've said—and—well, when one sees anybody in trouble one naturally feels that one would like to help them as far as one can. Don't you think so?"

Goulburn was looking at her very steadily.

"I don't think everybody does," he said slowly. "I haven't met many people who did. But then my life's been spent amongst men who care nothing for anything but themselves and money-making. No—I don't know anybody who'd care to hear a trouble of mine—most people I know would say they'd no time to listen. Certainly, there's Chris Aspinall—he would."

"And who is he?" she asked.

"Oh, a fellow-clerk, and my best friend. But he's as poor as I am."

She looked at him steadily for a while, and then pointed to the bank on which she sat with a gesture in which there was something like authority.

"I'd be glad if you'd sit down there and tell me all about it," she said. "I would like to know. And I'm absolutely sincere in wanting to know. Don't throw away sympathy when it's shown to you."

Goulburn hesitated a moment or two; then, with a sudden glance at the girl, which in reality, and as she saw, conveyed a recognition of his belief in her, he sat down in the place she indicated.

"Well, it's this way," he said, "though I'm an awful duffer at telling a story consecutively or clearly. You see, I not only lost my own money, but some money which, in strict truth, was not really mine."

He saw a sudden flush of colour come into her cheeks, and his own flushed hotly.

"Oh," he said, "don't think that I—stole it or got it in any dishonest way. I believe—yes, I'm sure—that legally the money really is mine; but, you see, I've always looked upon it as being somebody else's. I'm afraid this is very muddling—anyway, you see, my father was a poor country clergyman—very poor indeed. When he died a few years ago—my mother had then been dead several years—we did not expect a penny, and we were quite surprised to find that he had left a little piece of landed property—a small farm, in fact—which, it turned out, had been in his family for some generations, and was entailed. I don't know how it was that he never spoke to me of it—perhaps he meant to and had no chance, for he died suddenly. Well, of course it came to me, being the eldest and only son, and the income from it-forty pounds a year—is paid to me. But from the first I have always considered one-half of that as my sister's."

The listener nodded comprehensively.

"I see," she said. "And how old is your sister?"

"She is twenty-two, and I am twenty-four," he replied, in a grave fashion which suggested to his hearer that he thought himself very old and wise. "She is a governess in South Kensington. But, you know, governesses are not well paid, and the twenty pounds a year from the little farm is very useful. She always has a good holiday with it. And that is why I am so angry with myself, because——"

He paused and turned his face away and was silent.

"Yes?" said the girl encouragingly.

"Because I put her money—the twenty pounds—and mine on Mountain Apple for the Derby—win or place—and he was fourth."

The girl fingered her parasol and seemed to reflect.

"Was it with her consent?" she asked, after a short silence.

"No," he replied frankly. "She knew nothing about it. You see, I wanted to give her such a splendid surprise. If I could explain——"

"Yes," she said, "explain—tell me everything."

Goulburn had broken off a sprig of gorse and was unconsciously stripping it of its bloom. He seemed to be thinking of two things at once, and the girl noticed that when he spoke of his sister his face grew soft, even to the point of wistfulness.

"Well," he continued at last, "I did want to give her a real surprise. She's very fond of travel, you know, my sister—her name's Maisie—and she's talked for a long time of how she'd like to go to Sweden and Norway and Denmark during her summer holidays—she has nearly two months' liberty. And I've wondered how I could make some money for her. And one day last week I was talking to a chap in our office—chap named Bassett, who knows everything—regular sharp man of the world—and I asked him if he thought I could make a bit on the Stock Exchange with the forty pounds. Then he said that one could do much better and with less risk on the turf, and strongly advised me to have it all on Mountain Apple—both ways—and then I shouldn't lose anything in any way, because he said it was a perfectly absolute certainty that if it didn't win outright it was bound to be in the first three. And you know everybody in the office knows Bassett to be a real sportsman—he's gone hunting, and he goes to see prize-fights—and so I believed him. Indeed, I thought it was quite a favour to get such a tip from him."

He paused and looked at her somewhat shyly, as a child might have done.

"Do you think I'm a big fool?" he said.

The girl laughed.

"I think you are a refreshingly innocent young man," she answered. "You said you were a clerk—that's something in the city, isn't it? What are you in—sugar, jute, wheat, coal, or what?"

"Tea," he answered. "I'm with Pepperall & Tardrew, in Mincing Lane. A very old firm—and not too strict."

She regarded him thoughtfully for a moment.

"I'm glad I met you," she said. "You're much more interesting than the racing. After two races I couldn't sit on a drag in the blazing sunshine any longer, and I ran away on my own account, and found this little oasis—into which you came 'like one distraught,' as some poet or other remarks."

"I am glad to have afforded you amusement," he replied, with some touch of hauteur.

"Now, don't get up to run away," she said. "You mayn't think it, but I'm one of those persons who like to have their own way, and I've some more to say to you. So sit still—unless you think I am too insistent on your obedience, or wasteful of your time."

"No," he answered. "You have been very kind in sympathising——"

"How do you know I sympathise with you?" she said, with a somewhat roguish twinkle of her eyes. "I never said I did."

"No," he answered, "but—you listened to me."

She nodded her head as if in approval of the answer.

"That's discerning of you," she said. "I like discernment—especially in young men who seem to need it. Well, listen: here's my judgment on the matter. First, I think you were very foolish to stake your money on such an uncertain thing as horse-racing, and in taking Mr. Bassett's advice. If Mr. Bassett knows so much about horse-racing, why hasn't Mr. Bassett made a fortune for himself?"

"Well, but surely——" began Goulburn.

She shook a dainty finger at him.

"Don't interrupt," she commanded. "Because you know very well that I'm right, and so you should listen in silence. Then I think you were very wrong in using the money intended for your sister. Because, you see, however good your intentions were in respect to making more of it, you've lost it."

Goulburn nodded his head miserably.

"Yes!" he said bitterly. "That's just the worst of it. It doesn't matter how you condemn me—you can't make me feel worse about myself than I do."

"Well, I'm not condemning you. I've seen and know of a good many things done in what some men call business that were a million times wickeder than your little bit of thoughtlessness. If you take somebody else's money without their leave, and speculate with it, and prove successful, and share the profits with them handsomely, that's all right every time; if you're not successful and the money's gone, it's all wrong, very much wrong—for you."

Goulburn had watched her inquisitively during this speech. He smiled as she finished it.

"I think," he said, with the half-shyness which she already noticed in him, "I think you must be American."

She smiled.

"No," she said, "only half American—on my mother's side—though I have lived in the States a good deal. And what made you think so, I pray?"

"Something in what you said. It sounded like the smart things you hear of sometimes as having been said in America," he said. "I should think you are good at giving advice."

"I am—very good. Let me give you some."

"Yes?"

"Let me lend you twenty pounds."

Goulburn uttered a hasty exclamation. He sprang to his feet, and stood with flushed cheek and amazed eyes staring at her. She returned his gaze with unmoved composure.

"Lend—me—twenty pounds!" he repeated. "What do you——"

"I mean what I say. Let me lend you twenty pounds."

"But why should you?"

"Why should I? That's obvious. So that you can pay your sister."

Goulburn suddenly saw that she was not joking, but in sober earnest.

She had a curiously shaped purse in her hand, and her fingers were already on its clasp. Goulburn felt himself blushing hotly; he drew away from her.

"Oh, no, no!" he said. "I—I couldn't—I—please don't suggest such a thing."

"Now don't be silly. I'm not insulting you, though you are admittedly stony-broke, by offering you five shillings. I said, quite politely and in quite friendly fashion, 'Let me lend you twenty pounds.' I further explained why I wished to lend you twenty pounds."

Goulburn was still obviously puzzled. He put his hands in his pockets and began to dig a hole in the sand with the tip of his right boot. He kept his eyes intently fixed on this hole as he made it.

"Well?" she said, when he had remained thus occupied for some time. "Are you going to remain silent?"

"It's awfully kind of you," he said hurriedly. "Of course I appreciate such kindness immensely, but of course it's impossible. Why, you don't even know me, and——"

The girl yawned.

"I am wearied of smug British conventionality," she said, with mock pathos. "It's so dull. Now listen to me—listen to some common sense. See, I'm going to tick certain points off on my fingers. First, I believe you told me the exact truth; therefore I believe in your honesty. Second, I should like you to be able to give your sister her money at once, as I gather you always have done. Third, you can't—because you haven't got it. Fourth, I have, and will lend it to you with all the pleasure in the world, because I happen to be a very rich young woman, and sometimes like to use my money sensibly. Fifth—yes, there is a fifth reason."

"What is it?" asked Goulburn.

"Well," she said, looking away from him for the first time, "I shall feel hurt if you don't."

Goulburn set to work on the digging process again.

"You will completely spoil the toe of that boot," she said presently. "And it isn't necessary."

He looked up and faced her squarely.

"Very well," he said. "You shall lend me those twenty pounds on the understanding that I pay them to my sister to-morrow and—make a clean breast of it to her."

She nodded thoughtfully.

"That's honest of you," she said. "She'll understand."

"And that you allow me to repay you as quickly as I can. I shall be eager to do that," he said, somewhat proudly.

"Oh, of course," she replied. Then, unclasping her purse, she handed him some notes, after which she rose to her feet. "There! And what a fuss about nothing! We could have done all that in two minutes if you hadn't been so prim and proper."

"Will you please give me your name and address?" he said, producing a pocket-book and a pencil.

She hesitated a moment.

"My name is Moira Phillimore, and I am staying at Claridge's Hotel," she replied. "But I shall not be there after to-morrow. They will always have my address, though."

Goulburn drew out a card-case and handed her a card. She looked at it first carelessly, then with a close scrutiny, and she suddenly gazed earnestly at him.

"Had you ever an uncle named Nathaniel?" she asked.

Goulburn laughed.

"Poor old Uncle Nat!" he said. "Yes, I had. I can just remember him. He went to the United States when I was a boy, and we never heard of him afterwards. Why?—is it possible that you ever met him?"

"No," she answered, "but I have heard of him—through friends. This is a small world. Now I must go. You go that way—I this."

With a smile and a wave of her hand she had gained the other side of the clearing before he could say more. She paused on the bank, turned, and flashed another smile on him.

"I said this is a small world!" she called to him. "So Au revoir!"

Then she was gone, and Goulburn set off across the Downs to the station. And as he went he said to himself more than once—

"Au revoir!"

Chapter II

CHAPTER II

FORTUNE'S WILD WHEEL

P who remember the heat of the Derby Day in 1908, will remember also that the day which succeeded it was, if anything, still hotter. That Thursday the thermometer rose to 81 degrees in the shade; folk who sat out in the sun, as many and many a thousand did in the parks and public places of resort, felt as if they were being slowly roasted. There were Panama hats, light head-gear, and sunshades, cooling drinks, and ice-carts everywhere; men mopped perspiring foreheads, and hard-driven animals showed a desire to stop at every available water-trough. Overhead the sun blazed out of a leaden sky; the earth's surface burned beneath his ardent embraces. That section of London's overgrown population—no inconsiderable one—which is drawn from the south of Europe welcomed the heat, and dreamed dreams of Naples and Sicily as they lounged about the frowsy courts of Soho and the back streets of Hatton Garden; but there were not wanting those who were minded to grumble at the fierce sunlight, as being just as much a vagary of the English climate as the next winter hurricane. It was there to-day—where would it be to-morrow?

Nowhere in all the widespread expanse of London was that day's heat felt so much as in the city, where the streets are for the most part narrow and high, and where men are crowded together like sheep in a pen. It would have been hard to find a cool-looking man amidst the seething crowds around the Bank or in Leadenhall Street, or in Fenchurch Street, or in any of the thoroughfares where everybody bustles and hustles as if for dear life. True, there are plenty of delightfully shady nooks, cool enough in any weather, however tropical, in the old world squares and alleys of the city and behind the walls of its old churches, but who has time to stay in them when every one must get from some certain point to another in the shortest possible time? And so that strange hive of human bees sweltered, enduring in patience or cursing in impatience, while the sun grew hotter and hotter, and the pavements seemed as hard as adamant and as hot as a furnace.

Richard Goulburn, seated at his desk in his office at Messrs. Pepperall & Tardrew's, Tea Merchants, Mincing Lane, congratulated himself that it was well out of the sunlight. He remembered the vivid glare of the sun on the previous day, but that had been tempered by a stirring breeze; to-day, as he knew, having been out in the streets for half an hour at noon, there was no breeze, and the heat was great. The room in which he sat was at the back of the building, and looked into a court the walls of which were covered with white tiles, cool to look at and rarely get-at-able by the sun. He had been glad to sit in such cool quarters most of the morning, for he was feeling somewhat slack and washed-out after his adventures of the previous day, and the anxieties through which he had passed had affected his nerves. He was also in a state of pleasant reflection about the fairy godmother upon whom he had so curiously and unexpectedly alighted, and had paid much more attention to her than to his account-books and letters. She had said that this is a small world, and that they would meet again; he was cudgelling his brains to think how, when, and where such a delightful event could happen. Certainly he very much wanted to see her again.

Then he became melancholy, and asked himself what good it could do if he did meet her. She was a very nice young lady, who could afford to carry a roll of bank-notes in her purse and to stay at Claridge's Hotel; while he was a poor clerk, who earned just one hundred and twenty pounds a year and lived in a cheap boarding-house in Bloomsbury. Oh, if he were only a rich man, with a town house and a country house, and horses and carriages and a car or two and a yacht and—— The door of the room was suddenly thrust open, and a head just as suddenly presented itself round it in a fashion which suggested that somebody had cut the body completely away from it and was now presenting the head itself as a trophy of prowess with beheading axe or sword. It was a somewhat noticeable head presented in this fashion, being covered with a thick crop of very red hair, rather thatchlike in tex- ture and arrangement, and having a face beneath the hair which was chiefly remarkable for a pair of twinkling eyes, a snub nose, a very large mouth cut in a straight line and turned up at the corners, and a quantity of freckles each as big as a threepenny bit. It was the sort of face at the sight of which children and music-hall audiences immediately burst into shrieks of immoderate and unreasoning laughter, and it had been a matter of perplexity and wonder to a good many people that it should be found inside a tea broker's office in Mincing Lane.

"Aren't you coming to grub, Dickie?" asked the detached head. "It's five past one—come on."

Goulburn, who had been scribbling the name Moira over and over again on a sheet of notepaper (just to see how it looked), tore the paper into small fragments and threw the latter into the waste-basket.

"Doesn't seem a grubby day, does it, Chris?" he said lazily. "The sight of a chop would make me ill."

The head came farther into the room, proving itself to be the capital of a somewhat diminutive body, the legs of which were short and the arms long. One of the arms raised a long thin hand to the ceiling dramatically.

"Speak not of chops," said the straight lips which curled upwards at the ends. "I abhor them. A little something light, now?—and strawberries, I hear, are cheap to-day."

"Oh, well, I suppose we may as well," answered Goulburn indifferently as he took down his hat. "Come on, then."

The owner of the red hair opened the door with exaggerated politeness and bowed the other out with mock ceremony.

"Always clowning, Chris," said Goulburn half-peevishly.

"Much better than always crying, my dear," replied Chris. "What's the matter, infant? You look a bit so-so."

"Weather," said Goulburn laconically. "Can't stand heat—especially in this beastly city."

"How now—how now!" said Chris, in affected horror. "Speakest thou ill words of our ancient City of London, base-born provincial? Nay but——"

"Oh, shut up!" said Goulburn. "If you want to play the fool, why don't you go on the stage and have done with it?"

"Because I am but a poor thing of no presence," answered Chris, as they turned into a popular restaurant. "If I had your godlike looks, my friend, and your hyacinthine locks, and your first-walking-gentleman air, I would indeed seek to tread the boards; as I am what I am, I shall study the romance of tea in Mincing Lane. But what it the matter, Dick? You looked tired this morning when we walked in together, and now you look quite disgusted with life. Result of getting a day off and going to the Derby, eh, my son?"