Mrs. George Corbett

“ At eight-thirty that evening, having donned orthodox evening wear, I was sitting with Miss Rankin, waiting for the development of my little plot. The poor girl looked very pale, and I could see that the great anxiety was almost killing her. But I knew that it could not last much longer, and a little thrill of excitement ran through me when Miss Hanson and Mr Gilbertson were announced.
As they entered the room both looking somewhat mystified, the heiress sprang to her feet, and an angry flush suffused her face as she murmured: “This is too much!” ”

“ All Pearce Churchill’s arguments in favour of an immediate marriage were in vain, and when Mr Calmour died quite suddenly, three months after his daughter’s disappearance, none knew where to find her. Probably the misguided man had been visited by compunctious qualms of conscience concerning his treatment of his own child, for his will, as read at the funeral, savoured of a half-hearted attempt to saddle Fate with the responsibility of deciding whether his wife or his daughter should inherit his wealth. ”

“ Even if she had been losing money heavily, this would not make marriage into her family desirable for an impoverished fortune-hunter, for that Mr Jackson had actually fallen in love with Alice Wemysson was, I concluded, hardly a likely supposition to entertain. I preferred to look upon his motives as entirely mercenary.
Suppose Miss Wemysson proved to be a greater matrimonial prize than she knew herself to be? This would explain the solicitor’s conduct in forcing his attentions upon an unwilling girl. But it made the widow’s behaviour all the more inexplicable. ”

“ Said will was fantastic to a ridiculous degree, and provoked the indignation of all the old friends of the family, who estimated Mrs Calmour at her true value, and set her down as the unscrupulous, scheming adventuress she really was.
Some even went so far as to hint that Mr Calmour, who was in the prime of life, and had always been a healthy man, would have been alive still, if he had been further removed from his wife’s influence. But hints and suspicions are more easily indulged in than open accusations, and many a tragedy remains unexposed because nobody likes to be the initiative accuser. ”

“ But this view of the case, excited my impulsive client so much that I with difficulty restrained his prematurely triumphant exultation, and when he left our office he seemed to be firmly convinced that his wife would still become possessor of what was left of her father’s estate. As she was an only child, it had always been natural to suppose herself the heiress, and as at first one beloved piece of land and then another was sold by the present possessor she found it very hard to hear of such wanton waste of fine property. ”

“ This morning matters reached a climax when Mr Flowers, on rising, discovered his own watch to have disappeared as completely as that of his wife had done. I was sent for to see if I could throw any light on this strange affair. I found Mr Flowers looking the picture of rage and mystification, and his clerks were sulkily proceeding with their work, their expressions almost indicating a dawning disbelief in the extent of their employer’s losses. The office boy struck me as looking rather jubilant. He evidently revels in the sensational. ”

“ Presently Madame Duchesne approached me with a very mysterious air, and introduced a very handsome man to my notice. “Don’t be shocked,” she whispered, “But this is the private detective, Mr Bell. I communicated with him at once after leaving Madame von Auerbach’s yesterday, and he is here to watch that no pickpocket secures booty here. Isn’t it too dreadful to have to take such precautions? I will never give another party in London!” ”

“ The Misses Hansons’ Mr Gilbertson passed before my view, and I had not the slightest hesitation in judging him to be also Miss Rankin’s Mr Gilbertson. I was sorry for this, for he looked so frank and honest that anybody might have trusted him; and it is sad to have one’s ideals shattered, even if one be a detective, and, as such, already somewhat inured to the depressing influence of treacherous natures. ”

“ Had any one ever told my mother that her daughter would live to be the most talked of and the most courted woman in London, she would have scouted the prediction as one that was impossible of fulfilment. ”

“ The sham detective, whose pretended avocation had been disclosed to none but Madame von Auerbach and myself, sauntered from group to group, as if intent upon scrutinising their actions. His real object was to attach their jewellery, and I had the satisfaction of seeing him possess himself of a costly watch which Lady A. was wearing in somewhat careless fashion. Instant denunciation was not my intention. I mean to probe the matter to the root, and followed “Mr Bell’s” movements with apparent nonchalance. ”

“ Just about this time Mr Calmour fell under the spell of a lady whom his daughter did not hesitate to dub an adventuress of the most pronounced type, and it became evident to his friends that he was sickening for matrimony.
The ordinary judge of humanity would have imagined that Mr Calmour’s own infatuation would have made him more tolerant of his daughter’s love affair. ”

“ She is a noble girl, and has been shamefully treated. On your head be it, if she has come to grief in her fight with adversity. I wonder what my aunt, whom you used to pretend to love, would think if she could know that within two years of her death you have practically turned her only child into the streets, to make room for a professional adventuress, whom no one but you would have married?”
Pearce Churchill knew that his letter would enrage his uncle. ”

“ When her five years of study are ended there will be another star added to our galaxy of genius, and I shall be more thankful than ever that the opportunity was given me to rescue a despairing soul from a watery grave, and that I had the ability to make a Pattern of Virtue pay liberally for his vices. ”

“ But not the slightest clue to the perpetrators of the theft could be discovered.
“‘If it had been my own property that had been stolen I would not have minded so much,’ said Mr Flowers. ‘But trust deeds! it is too dreadful.’
“Various theories were promulgated as to the nature and motives of the thief, the most feasible one being that someone, hearing that a relative had made a will, had conceived that it was inimical to his interests, and had resolved to steal it from the solicitor with whom he believed it to have been deposited. ”

“ Once fully alive to the unscrupulous creature’s real nature, they wondered how such an ugly incarnation of selfishness could ever have fascinated them, and were inclined to attribute her power to sorcery, or hypnotism, or to anything but the deep-laid plots of mere cunning.
After Miss Reede’s marriage to Mr Calmour, the whilom guardian (he posed as “uncle” at Dieppe) lived in bachelor chambers in London in great style, and did not even trouble to go to the office in which he had formerly done occasional business of a shady sort. ”

“ As there were at least two other rooms in the rambling old house that would have suited Mrs Calmour’s purpose equally well, Ada recognised in the new arrangement a deliberate intention to insult her, and suspected that the ulterior motive was to drive her from the house.
A girl of meek and yielding spirit would have submitted to the indignity without audible complaint. Miss Calmour was too high-spirited for that, and declined to yield her treasured privileges without a struggle. ”

“ But the exceptions have taught us caution, and we rarely fall into a confidential mood until we are quite sure that our professional prestige will not suffer by doing so.
Thus it happened that I forebore to tell Mr Churchill how hopeful I really considered his wife’s cause to be. But I knew enough already to have made Mrs Calmour quake in her shoes, could she have guessed that I was on her trail. For instance, I knew that a certain Mr Selby formerly posed as the guardian of the lady, who, by-the-by, was at least thirty-six years of age, though she only owned to being twenty-seven. ”

“ Mr Jackson knew that Mrs Wemysson had gambled her daughter’s money, and threatened to expose and ruin her if she did not insist upon Alice marrying him. He forebore to tell her that Mr Wemysson’s brother, of whom they had not heard for years, had died and left his niece a fortune of fifty thousand pounds. He, as the family solicitor, knew all about it, but was keeping the information back until he had secured the heiress for his wife. ”

“ But so far from coming out of his shell, the master became, if possible, a more confirmed recluse than ever. His instructions to us were brief and to the point. ‘Take no steps to discover Wright,’ was his order. ‘Let his greed be his own punishment. What he has stolen does not equal the legacy I would have left him. Henceforth, do not name him to me. Let him be as one dead, and do not expect a successor in his place. My wants become fewer as I get more feeble, and I cannot tolerate the idea of having new people about the house. ”

“ Lucy has a rare taste for music, and her special gifts lie in the direction of operatic composition. She is talented, industrious, and ambitious, and she is having the best tuition obtainable. Her whole soul is in her art, and there is little fear that she will hearken to the flattery which her sweet looks, gentle nature, and future prospects evoke. ”

“ But oh, God! how I do crave for a little, real honest love and sympathy! I would give the world to be able to retire with my beautiful innocent children to some place where they could never learn that their mother is anything but one of the best and purest of women! ”

“ But you will have to give up such a notion as marrying so rich a man as he is. Take my advice, and get all you can out of him while you have the chance. He’ll soon fall in love with somebody else.”
Lucy’s heartbroken threat to expose her betrayer only provoked the derision of the servant.
“You would very likely get locked up for attempted blackmailing,” she said. “He has been too careful for such a greenhorn as you to circumvent him. He has never been here to see either you or the house except after dark, and nobody would believe you if you said that Mr Maynard was Mr Collinson. ”

“ To suppress a will is a serious thing, and culprits do not, I should imagine, carefully preserve the evidence of their own guilt.”
“There you are quite wrong. There are innumerable instances on record of people who have been punished for grave crimes that would never have been brought home to them but for their own incredible carelessness. A letter, an article of wearing apparel, a trivial trinket – these have often been the principal factors in elucidating criminal puzzles.”
“Then you really think Mrs Calmour has kept the real will back?” ”

“ My colleagues had given me their active co-operation, and when I had arrived at a quite triumphant point of my personal investigations, I knew exactly where to put my hands on the people I wanted. But I did not care to present myself unsupported in the lion’s den, so was accompanied both by my uncle and by Mr Henniker when I paid the unsuspecting swindlers a visit.
Within half an hour we convinced them that we had them in our power, and that the only way to escape imprisonment themselves was to confess everything they knew relating to Mr Calmour’s inheritrix and her accomplice. ”

“ Several times we believed ourselves to be on the eve of discovery, and each time our expected triumph turned out to be a will-o’-the-wisp. Twice I journeyed to a distant town, feeling confident of meeting Miss Calmour. ”

“ Her father had always petted and indulged her until these unfortunate love differences arose. He had, in her opinion, shown strong signs of mental aberration in marrying a woman of whose antecedents he knew nothing beyond the fact that she owed money in all directions before she secured him for her husband, and that her very close intimacy with a man whom she represented to be her guardian provoked invidious comments.
Ada was therefore not greatly surprised when her father declined to put a veto upon Mrs Calmour’s appropriation of her pet sanctum. ”

“ I wonder how many people have stood on Waterloo Bridge, looking down upon the ever-moving river, and feeling themselves irresistibly attracted by the weird fascination of its cruel waters! But one cannot wonder at the eerie influence it exerts upon the miserable. ”

“ The season has been an exceptionally gay one, and a gay season is always an expensive one. Society dames will be glad to leave their plate and jewellery at ‘their bankers’ until their most pressing debts are settled. Meanwhile, I have sufficient confidence in your acumen to hope that you will speedily recover the missing goods.”
We could not help thinking that Mr Davison’s confidence in us was too overweening to be anything but embarrassing, even though our vanity was flattered by having the sole onus of responsibility for the recovery of stolen goods fixed upon us. ”

“ You have filched ten thousand pounds out of me because I dreaded to have my family name disgraced. You will get no more. Every proof of these past events is now destroyed, and any assertions you might make would not be believed. ”