The Red Derelict

“Pownall wants you, Calmour,” said one of the clerks at once.

“Ha, does he? I thought he would,” answered Bob lightly. Already he saw himself in possession. The reply had come. The only thing now to be reckoned with was that Pownall should not make an undue deduction for costs. Yet, somehow, as he knocked and entered, there was something in Pownall’s veined and scrubby-bearded face that was not propitious. And Pownall was not inclined to waste valuable time.

“Look here, Calmour,” he began, “when you brought me this claim of yours I told you I didn’t think there was the slightest chance of your getting anything. Here’s the answer.”

“Do they refuse, sir?”

“Absolutely and uncompromisingly. Here, read it yourself,” chucking an open letter across to his discomfited clerk, who took it and read:

“Hilversea Court,

“23rd June 1897.

“Sirs, – I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of yesterday’s date, demanding from me the sum of a thousand pounds as compensation to one Robert Calmour, for assaulting him. If this person is the blackguard I chastised last week on the Swanton Road for grossly insulting a young lady under my charge, I may mention incidentally that he is very ill-advised in revealing his identity, for the young lady’s father, on learning it, is not only prepared, but eager, to repeat the infliction, and that with very considerable exaggeration of the punishment he received at my hands. To come to the main point, I flatly refuse to pay one farthing; indeed, so impossible is it for me to treat this claim as a serious one that I have not even deemed it worth while to refer the matter to my solicitors. – Yours faithfully,

“Wagram Gerard Wagram.

“Messrs Pownall and Skreet.”

Bob had gone very pale during the perusal of this letter. Not only had his house of cards gone down with a flutter – for he could read no compromise here – but he was threatened with the summary vengeance of an unknown and vindictive parent. The stripes that Wagram had laid upon him, now turned to yellow and red bruises, seemed to tingle afresh.

“Is it no good pressing him further, sir?” he stammered. “This may be bluff.”

“Ours was bluff,” sneered Pownall. “I thought it just worth trying on, but only just. Now I see it isn’t. No jury in England would find for you, and we can’t afford to take up such a case.”

“But they paid my sister, sir, almost by return.”

“What?” shouted Pownall, jumping from his chair. “What? Paid in full?”

“Yes. Sent her a cheque for a thousand.”

“But this ought to have gone through us. It’s irregular, damned irregular.”

“So it is, sir. And what’s more irregular, she’s going to return it.”

“Going to return it?”

“Yes; swears she won’t accept it; calls it blackmail, and so forth.”

“Does she? Well, see here, Calmour, I’m sick of all your family grievances, and am devilish sorry I ever took them up. If it hadn’t been that your father’s a very old friend of mine I wouldn’t have touched them with the tip of the tongs. Now you’d better get back to the office.”

“One minute, sir,” stammered Bob. “Er – who is the person referred to in the letter as – er – threatening me with further violence?”

“I shrewdly conjecture it’s Haldane – and, if so, you’d better give him a wide, wide berth. He just about worships that girl of his, and he has knocked about in rough, wild parts. Hang it! couldn’t you tell the difference between a lady – a thoroughbred – and a village wench if you must get playing the fool by roadsides, you silly young rip? Now get back to your job. I haven’t taken anything by either of you,” added the lawyer disgustedly as he resumed his work.

If ever anybody found himself in an utterly abject state of mind, assuredly that individual was Bob Calmour as he slunk out of his principal’s room, and as he took his place at his own desk he felt as if he could have blown his brains out, only he lacked the courage. He cursed Pownall, he cursed Delia, he cursed everything and everybody, but more than all did he curse Wagram. Should he take his claim to some other solicitor? That would be useless, for he felt pretty sure that nobody but his principal would have touched it. Furthermore, the hint thrown out by Wagram with regard to his identity becoming known commanded his whole-hearted respect, and he grew green with scare at the thought that Haldane might be looking for him even at that moment. Heavens! what if Delia had let drop anything that might give him away when she was spending the day there? Hardly likely; and again he congratulated himself on his sound policy in keeping the thing a fast secret between himself and his principal. One comfort was that Haldane rarely came to Bassingham, his county town being Fulkston, away in the other direction; still, Bob Calmour was destined to expiate his act of Yahooism very fully, in the shape of a chronic apprehension, which rendered life a nightmare to him for some time thenceforward.

Chapter Thirteen.

Concerning One Claim

“A matter of urgent importance,” read the Squire again from a card just handed him by a servant, and which bore the inscription: “Miss Calmour.”

“What on earth can the girl want next? She’s got her money – far more than any court would have awarded her. What the deuce is she bothering us further for?”

“I can’t imagine. Still, I’ll see her, if you like.”

“I wish you would, Wagram. The fact is, I’m sick of the very sound of the name.”

It was the middle of the afternoon, and the two were strolling together in the shrubbery. Both were, not unnaturally, somewhat annoyed.

“The young lady’s in the morning room, sir,” said the footman. “I put her in there, sir, because she said she’d come on a matter of business, and hoped no one else would come in.”

“Quite right,” said Wagram.

Delia rose as he entered. She did not put forth her hand, and did not seem to expect him to. She was busying herself extracting something from an envelope, and he noticed that her hands shook.

“I would have been over about this the first thing this morning,” she began, speaking quickly, “but my tyres were punctured. I did not want to lose a moment. But” – looking up – “it was not you I came to see, it was your father.”

“Won’t I do as well, Miss Calmour? Any matter of business is all within my province.”

“Well, then, it is about this,” exhibiting the letter of demand and the cheque. Wagram felt himself growing grim.

“Has any mistake been made in the drawing of it?” he asked, bending over to look at it. She caught at the word.

“Mistake? The whole thing is a mistake, and worse. Mr Wagram, will you believe me when I assure you upon my honour that until I received these two enclosures this morning I knew no more about this than – than, well – than if I had never been born?”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.”

“Don’t you? Oh, you do make it hard,” with a little stamp of the foot. “Well, then, this claim was never made by me – never – and until this morning I did not know it had been made at all.”

“Well, but – if you were hurt that time why not accept a little – er – compensation?”

“Hurt that time? I would be hurt now, if I were not too ashamed, that you should think me capable of such a thing. Even if I had been half killed I would not have – have – done – what has been done. Compensation! Look!”

She tore the cheque twice across, and laid the fragments on the table before him, together with the letter of demand.

“Now, will you believe that my hands are entirely clean in the matter? The moment I received this I never had a moment’s doubt as to the course I should pursue. That is the outcome.” And she pointed to the torn cheque.

She looked very pretty standing there – her breast heaving in her excitement, her eyes brightened, and the colour coming and going in her face – very pretty and appealing.

“Certainly I believe you,” said Wagram, who now, as by an inspiration, saw through the whole sordid affair; “and I don’t think you need go to the trouble of explaining it any further, for I can quite see how it happened.”

“But I must explain a little. Oh, Mr Wagram, my father is not well, not always quite responsible. His health is weak, and he has had a great deal of trouble, and might do what he would never have dreamed of doing when he was a younger and stronger man; and the temptation, I suppose, was too great.”

Her voice tailed off into a sob, and Wagram felt a great wave of pity overwhelm him as he looked at this girl, who now more than ever struck him as far too good for her sordid surroundings. Her laboured apology for her rascally old parent, too, had sent her up a hundred per cent, in his estimation, but as an excuse for the old sot it weighed not with him at all. The attempted blackmailing had been too flagrant, too outrageous, but to find that Delia was entirely innocent of it afforded him more satisfaction than he could have believed.

“Sit down, sit down. Why have you been standing all this time?” he said gently; and the tone was too much for poor Delia, who broke down utterly, and wept.

“There, there, now. Don’t give way over nothing,” he went on. “A mistake has been made, and put right again, that’s all. Meanwhile you must accept my sincere apologies for my side of it.”

“Apologies! Mr Wagram, don’t. Apologies! Why, I have been feeling as if I could never look you in the face again.”

“But you don’t feel that any more, of course not. Now, I know my father would like to see you, so I will let him know you are here, if you will excuse me for a minute or two.”

As the door closed on him Delia brushed away her tears, and then did an inexplicable, a foolish thing. She rose and pressed her lips to the table, on the spot where his hand had rested during the interview.

“And they would have had me extort money from him, blackmail him!” she said to herself. “Faugh! what a horrible word. But the whole thing was horrible, shameful. Oh, but the tactfulness of him! It was wonderful. No wonder such people seem to reckon themselves a separate order of being. They are.”

Meanwhile Wagram had found the old Squire in the library.

“The poor girl had no hand in it after all,” he said. “It appears she knew nothing about it until this morning, when she received the cheque. The whole thing was got up by her rascally father without her knowledge.”

“Of course. But now that it’s within her knowledge she won’t find a thousand pounds come in badly,” was the somewhat testy answer.

“She tore up the cheque of her own accord under my eyes.”

“What? Did she? That looks genuine, Wagram. By George, that looks genuine. Fancy anything Calmour refusing a thousand pounds – or even a hundred! Good heavens! is the world coming to an end?”

“Well, she’s done it anyhow. I want you to come in and see her, father, and put her at her ease. She’s genuinely distressed that we should have thought so badly of her, and all that.”

“By the way, does she know of the trouncing you gave that precious blackguard of a brother of hers?”

“I haven’t told her. If she knows I expect she thinks he richly deserved it. I fancy she’s that sort of girl.”

The blend of the courtly and the paternal in the old Squire’s manner was charming, and soon Delia was quite at ease with herself and her surroundings. Then they showed her over the historic parts of the house, and she gazed with awed delight at the great staircase with its twisted stone banister and the gallery hung with family portraits and old war trophies.

“Oh, but this is perfection,” cried the girl as she leaned out of one of the high windows to gaze upon the panorama unfolded beneath. Miles and miles of it lay outspread in the sunlight – green meadow and dark fir covert, cloud-like masses of feathery elms and hawthorn hedgerows, with here and there a gleam of silver, as a winding of the river broke into view. Then, from far and near, a chorus of song thrushes and the joyous sound of a cuckoo lent the finishing touch to this fairest of English landscapes.

“That spire away there beyond the dark line is Fulkston, near Haldane’s place,” went on Wagram, in the course of pointing out to her the various landmarks.

“Is it? What a delightful day that was. Isn’t Miss Haldane perfectly sweet? By the way, Mr Wagram, I enjoyed hearing how you thrashed a cad for insulting her.”

If the faintest gleam of mirth came into the other’s eyes Delia missed its point.

“Oh, I’m not proud of it, I assure you. If he had been impudent only to me I wouldn’t have touched him, for he was no match for me. If it had been any other girl I should have thought I had given the poor devil too much, but it being Yvonne Haldane he insulted it seemed as if he couldn’t have enough.”

“I most heartily agree,” said Delia, and again that curious gleam passed across Wagram’s face.

“Would you like to see a secret chamber?” he said.

“Wouldn’t I? Is it a real secret chamber, opening with a sliding panel, and all that sort of thing?”

“You shall see.”

He led the way to a high gallery in an unused part of the house, a trifle gloomy by reason of the few and narrow windows that lighted it from one side. The old Squire had left them early in the investigation, declaring that he did not feel equal to going up and down so many stairs. The girl’s nerves were athrill with the delightful air of mystery suggested by the surroundings.

“You haven’t asked as to the family ghosts yet,” he said, “and it seems strange.”

“Strange? Why?”

“Because you are the first within my knowledge to be shown over the house who has not asked about them long before this. Were you keeping it till we got down again?”

“No. I wouldn’t have asked such a question. How could I tell but that it might be an unwelcome one?”

It was a small thing, but somehow it seemed to Wagram to argue an uncommon thoughtfulness and delicacy of mind on the part of this girl – this daughter of a drunken, blackmailing, old ex-army vet.

“I won’t insist on blindfolding you, Miss Calmour,” he said, with a smile, “but I’ll ask you just to look out of that window for a minute.”

“Certainly,” she said. “Why, this is more than interesting.”

“That’ll do. Thanks.”

“Can I look?”

“Yes.”

The inner wall of the gallery was patterned faintly in large squares diagonally divided, so that you might see in them squares or triangles according to the caprice of the eye. Now, where one of these squares had been Delia saw a dark aperture easily large enough to admit the body of a man. It was about a yard and a half from the ground.

“What was it used for?” she said, as her eyes becoming more accustomed to the gloom she made out a narrow, oblong chamber, or rather closet, about eight feet by four, and running parallel with the wall.

“A priest’s hiding-place. There is still a sprinkling of them to be seen in our old country houses, more or less perfect still.”

“This one seems perfect. But how did they get light and air?”

“They didn’t get much of the first. For the last, there’s a small winding shaft that opens under the roof.”

“And did they spend days in here? It must have been dreadful.”

“Not to them, because their mission was in its highest sense the reverse of dreadful. But there was a dreadful side to it, for at that time every one of them who came to this country came with the quartering block and boiling pitch before his eyes, as, sooner or later, his certain end. You can imagine, then, that to such men there would be nothing very dreadful in spending a few days in a place like this.”

“Of course not. What a stupid remark of mine.”

“As a matter of fact, the last to use this place met with just that fate. He was a relation, and was captured in that avenue which was the route of the procession this day last week.”

“How terrible,” said Delia, gazing with renewed awe into the gloomy chamber. “How you must venerate this place, Mr Wagram.”

“Well, you can imagine we do; in fact, it isn’t often shown.”

“Oh, then I do feel honoured – I mean it seriously.”

He smiled.

“Have you seen enough? because if so we’ll shut it up again.”

“One minute. How does it open and shut? Why, it isn’t a mere panel, it’s a solid block of stone.”

“Ah, that’s the secret of it. It is easily opened from within if you know how; but from without – well, it has never been discovered. The secret has been handed down among ourselves. It is always known to three persons, of which, needless to say, I am one.”

“How interesting! But if I were in there, and you and the other two were not get-at-able, what then?”

“You might as well be buried alive. Now, oblige me by looking out of that window once more.”

“If I mayn’t look, may I listen?”

“Certainly. Now you may turn again. Well, what did you hear?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Well, see if you can tell which of the squares it was that opened.”

“This one. No; it doesn’t sound hollow. None of them do. I give it up.”

“We’ll be going down again, then. You’ll be glad of tea.”

She protested that such a thing was beyond her thoughts amid the wonder and delight of all she had seen. On the way he pointed out a few of the more prominent family portraits.

“That is our martyr relative.”

A cry of surprise escaped Delia.

“That! Why, Mr Wagram, it might be yourself.”

The portrait was quite a small one, and in a massive frame of stained oak. It represented a man of about the same age, with the same thoughtful dark eyes, the same shaped face, and the same close-trimmed, pointed beard. The figure was gowned in black, and the head crowned with a Spanish biretta with high-pointed corners. Attached to the frame was a Latin inscription.

“People do remark a likeness,” he said; “but you can guess how we value that portrait for its own sake. It was painted at Salamanca just before he left for St Omer to start on the English mission.”

“Is there any Spanish blood in your family, Mr Wagram?”

“A strain; but it dates rather far back. Aren’t you more than ever afraid of coming to our services now?” he added slily. “The Inquisition, you know.”

“Afraid? If I didn’t know you were chaffing me I would say that I was the more attracted after what you have shown and told me to-day.”

The old Squire was waiting for them in the great hall, where they had tea, and Delia, having now recovered her spirits completely, was chatting away as though the matter which had brought her there was but the recollection of a half-faded nightmare – a very note of interest and admiration concerning all she had just seen. Then, imperceptibly to her, they drew her on to talk about herself, and one point in the plain tale of real, plucky, hard work, which had come within her experiences of late, Wagram made a mental note of for future use.

Chapter Fourteen.

The Sea and her Dead

The old Squire was skimming the morning paper, without much show of interest, however. Of politics he declared himself sick, and there was not much of any interest all round. He felt himself wishing that all newspapers were only issued weekly.

He was about to throw the paper aside when a paragraph caught his eye. It was headed: “A Terrible Tale of the Sea,” and set forth the picking up of an open boat, a small dinghy, in fact, containing three men in the last stage of starvation and exhaustion, survivors – probably the sole survivors – of the passengers and crew of the steamship Carboceer, homeward bound from West Africa. The steamer, according to the narrative of these, had run at full speed ahead on to a huge floating hulk in black midnight, and had gone down in less than five minutes they estimated, and that amid a scene of terrible panic.

“But,” continued the paragraph, “the survivors, consisting of two seamen and a passenger, seem unable to agree as to the cause of the disaster. The sailors pronounce the obstruction to be a derelict, and are emphatic on this point. On the other hand, the passenger, Mr Develin Hunt, is equally positive that he saw at any rate one man on board of it, which points to the possibility of another lamentable catastrophe due to the carelessness of those in charge of a certain type of windjammer in neglecting to show lights.”

The paragraph went on to a little more detail, mainly conjectural, but of this Grantley Wagram took no heed. He had dropped the paper, and sat staring into space, with the look upon his face of a man who has met with a shock, as violent as it is unexpected – as one who had seen an apparition from beyond the grave.

“Develin Hunt!” he repeated. “Good God! it can’t be. Yet – there can’t be two Develin Hunts.”

He snatched up the paper again, with something of a tremble as he grasped it, and once more scanned the paragraph. Then he turned eagerly to several other morning dailies which lay on the table. More detail might be set forth in each – but no. Either too hurriedly did he turn over each close-printed sheet, or the item of news had been overlooked, but nothing further could he find concerning the tragedy. At last, stuck away in a corner of a different sheet, he found another paragraph: “The only surviving passenger of this ghastly marine tragedy,” it concluded, “proves to be a West African trader who has spent many years far up country – an elderly gentleman of some sixty years, named Develin Hunt.”

Grantley Wagram’s face lost none of its set greyness.

“Of some sixty years?” he repeated – “that would be about the age. No; he’d be more than that. There can’t be two Develin Hunts! The sea has given up her dead.”

He looked years older as he sat there, still grasping the paper, and for it he had reason; for should his conjectural identification of this man prove an accurate one, why, then, it meant that the ruin of his house would be fixed, and, humanly speaking, beyond his power to avert.

For long he sat, motionless as a stone figure. Through the open window came in the joyous sounds of the summer morning – the rustle of the great elms in a light breeze, the caw of rooks, and the distant clicking of a mowing-machine, and, with all, the scent of flowers upon a groundwork fragrance of new-mown hay. Every nerve and sense was alive to these. No wonder that he should look grey and stony. What if all should end with him?

What if his son – ? And then from without came the voice of his son, together with that of another, and both were inquiring as to his whereabouts. The voices from outside acted as a tonic; and, pulling himself together, the old Squire got up and went to meet their owners – his son and the family chaplain. Wagram had been serving the latter’s Mass, and had brought him in to breakfast.

“Looking fit? Oh, well, I suppose so. I haven’t begun to feel my years as yet,” was the easy answer of the old diplomat to the fresh, cheery greeting of the priest. But the latter was not altogether deceived. His keen observational faculty did not fail to detect a certain drawn and anxious look, differing from the ordinarily suave expression of his host’s face. “Wagram, tell Rundle to get us out a bottle or so of that dry, sparkling hock. You know, the 13 bin. I believe that’s better than anything else on a warm morning like this.”

“Upon my word, Squire, you’ve missed you’re vocation,” laughed Father Gayle. “You ought to have been a crack physician, for certainly no one answering to that qualification could have been guilty of a more salutary prescription.”

“Any news?” said Wagram, picking up the paper. Then, as they sat down: “Why, this is a queer yarn, these three chaps being picked up in a boat.” Then, after briefly skimming it: “Why, by George! I wonder if that’s the hulk we were reading about the other day when Haldane was here? I shouldn’t be surprised. It must be very much in the same part of the world.”

“You forget, Wagram,” said the chaplain quizzically, “that so far we none of us know what the mischief it is you are talking about, save that it concerns three men in a boat, a yarn, and Haldane. Now, even in my childhood, I was never good at piecing together puzzles. I can’t answer for the Squire.”

“Here you are; read it for yourself,” said Wagram, pushing the paper across the table. “It’s a ghastly thing to figure out, though, if these are the sole survivors. Develin Hunt! That’s a rum name! How perfectly sick that fellow must have got all through boyhood, youth, and middle age of being – banteringly or the reverse – told he had the Develin him.”