The Ivory Gate, a new edition

'Yes; it is very mysterious.'

'A Person on Two Sticks might manage it. Very likely, he is concerned in the business. Or a boy under the table would be able to do it. Perhaps there is a boy under the table. There must be. Mr. Dering's table is like the big bed of Ware. I daresay fifty boys might creep under that table and wait there for a chance. But perhaps there is only one – a comic boy.'

'I should like to catch the joker,' said George. 'I would give him something still more humorous to laugh at.'

'If there is no comic boy – and no Person on Two Sticks,' Elsie continued, 'we are thrown back upon Checkley. He seems to be the only man who receives the letters and goes in and out of the office all day. Well – I don't think it is Checkley. I don't think it can be – George, you once saw Mr. Dering in a very strange condition, unconscious, walking about with open eyes seeing nobody. Don't you think that he may have done this more than once?'

'What do you mean, Elsie?'

'Don't you think that some of these things – things put in the safe, for instance, may have been put there by Mr. Dering himself? You saw him open the safe. Afterwards he knew nothing about it. Could he not do this more than once – might it be a habit?'

'Well – but if he puts the things in the safe – things that belonged to Edmund Gray, he must know Edmund Gray. For instance, how did he get my note to Edmund Gray, left by me on his table in Gray's Inn? That must have been given to him by Edmund Gray himself.'

'Or by some friend of Edmund Gray. Yes; that is quite certain.'

'Come,' said Athelstan. 'This infernal Edmund Gray is too much with us. Let us leave off talking about him for a while. Let him rest for this evening. – Elsie, put on your things. We will go and dine somewhere, and go to the play afterwards.'

They did so. They had the quiet little restaurant dinner that girls have learned of late to love so much – the little dinner, where everything seems so much brighter and better served than one can get at home. After the dinner they went to a theatre, taking places in the Dress Circle, where, given good eyes, one sees quite as well as from the stalls at half the money. After the theatre they went home and there was an exhibition of tobacco and soda water. Those were very pleasant days in the Piccadilly lodgings, even allowing for the troubles which brought them about. Athelstan was the most delightful of brothers, and every evening brought its feast of laughter and of delightful talk. But all through the evening, all through the play, Elsie saw nothing but Mr. Dering and him engaged in daylight somnambulism. She saw him as George described him, opening the safe, closing it again, and afterwards wholly forgetful of what he had done.

She thought about this all night. Now, when one has a gleam or glimmer of an idea, when one wants to disengage a single thought from the myriads which cross the brain, and to fix it and to make it clear, there is nothing in the world so good as to talk about it. The effort of finding words with which to drag it out makes it clearer. Every story-teller knows that the mere telling of a story turns his characters, who before were mere shadows, and shapeless shadows, into creatures of flesh and blood. Therefore, in the morning she began upon the thought which haunted her.

'Athelstan,' she said, 'do you know anything about somnambulism?'

'I knew a man once in California who shot a grizzly when he was sleep-walking. At least, he said so. That's the sum of my knowledge on the subject.'

'I want to know if people often walk about in the daytime unconscious?'

'They do. It is called wool-gathering.'

'Seriously, Athelstan. Consider. George saw Mr. Dering arrive in a state of unconsciousness. He saw nobody in the room. He opened the safe and placed some papers there. Then he locked the safe. Then he sat down at the window. Presently he awoke, and became himself again. If he did that once, he might do it again.'

'Well? And then?'

'You heard yesterday about the letters, and the placard and the Socialist tracts. Now Checkley couldn't do that. He couldn't, and he wouldn't.'

'Well?'

'But Mr. Dering could. If he had that attack once, he might have it again and again. Why, he constantly complains of forgetting things.'

'But the letters yesterday were addressed to Edmund Gray. How do you connect Edmund Gray with Edward Dering?'

'I don't know. But, my dear brother, the more I think of this business, the more persuaded I am that Checkley is not the prime mover, or even a confederate.'

'The same hand has doubtless been at work throughout. If not Checkley's aid to make that hand possible and successful, who is there? And look at the malignity with which he tries to fix it on some one else.'

'That may be because he is afraid of its being fixed upon him. Consider that point about the control of the letters. The business could only be done by some one through whose hands passed all the letters.'

'Checkley is the only person possible.'

'Yes; he understands that. It makes him horribly afraid. He therefore lies with all his might in order to pass on suspicion to another person. You and George think him guilty – well, I do not. If I were trying to find out the man, I should try a different plan altogether.'

Her brother had work to do which took him out directly after an early breakfast. When Elsie was left alone, she began again to think about Mr. Dering's strange daylight somnambulism; about his continual fits of forgetfulness; about the odd things found on his table and in his safe, all connected with Edmund Gray. Checkley could not have placed those letters on the table: he could not have put those things in the safe.

Elsie looked at the clock. It was only just after nine. She ran to her room, put on her jacket and hat, and called a cab.

She arrived at half-past nine. Checkley was already in his master's room, laying out the table for the day's work as usual. The girl was touched at the sight of this old servant of sixty years' service doing these offices zealously and jealously. She stood in the outer office watching him through the open door. When he had finished, he came out and saw her.

'Oh!' he grumbled. 'It's you, is it? Well – he hasn't come. If you want to see Mr. Dering, it's full early. If you want to see the new partner, he isn't come. He don't hurry himself. Perhaps you'll sit down a bit and look at the paper. Here's the Times. He'll be here at a quarter to ten.'

Checkley sat down at his desk and took up a pen. But he laid it down again and began to talk. 'We're in trouble, Miss. No fault of yours – I don't say it is. We're in trouble. The trouble is going to be worse before it's better. They're not content with robbing the master, but they mock at him and jeer him. They jeer him. They put on his table letters addressed to the man they call Edmund Gray. They open his safe and put things in it belonging to Edmund Gray. We're not so young as we was, and it tells upon us. We're not so regular as we should be. Sometimes we're late – and sometimes we seem, just for a bit, not to know exactly who we are nor what we are. Oh! it's nothing – nothing, but what will pass away when the trouble's over. But think of the black ingratitood, Miss – Oh! black – black. I'm not blamin' you; but I think you ought to know the trouble we're in – considering who's done it and all.'

Elsie made no reply. She had nothing to say. Certainly she could not enter into a discussion with this man as to the part, if any, taken in the business by the new partner. Then Checkley made a show of beginning to write with zeal. The morning was hot: the place was quiet: the old man's hand gradually slackened: the pen stopped: the eyes closed: his head dropped back upon his chair: he was asleep. It is not uncommon for an old man to drop off in this way.

Elsie sat perfectly still. At eleven o'clock she heard a step upon the stairs. It mounted: it stopped: the private door was opened, and Mr. Dering entered. He stood for a moment in the doorway, looking about the room. Now, as the girl looked at him, she perceived that he was again in the condition described by George – as a matter of fact, it was in this condition that Mr. Dering generally arrived in the morning. His coat was unbuttoned: his face wore the genial and benevolent look which we do not generally associate with lawyers of fifty years' standing: the eyes were Mr. Dering's eyes, but they were changed – not in colour or in form, but in expression. Elsie was reminded of her portrait. That imaginary sketch was no other than the Mr. Dering who now stood before her.

He closed the door behind him and walked across the room to the window.

Then Elsie, lightly, so as not to awaken the drowsy old clerk, stepped into Mr. Dering's office and shut the door softly behind her.

The sleep-walker stood at the window, looking out. Elsie crept up and stood beside him. Then she touched him on the arm. He started and turned. 'Young lady,' he said, 'what can I do for you?' He showed no sign of recognition at all in his eyes: he did not know her. 'Can I do anything for you?' he repeated.

'I am afraid – nothing,' she replied.

He looked at her doubtfully. Then apparently remembering some duty as yet unfulfilled, he left the window and unlocked the safe. He then drew out of his pocket a manuscript tied up with red tape. Elsie looked into the safe and read the title – 'The New Humanity, by Edmund Gray,' which was written in large letters on the outer page. Then he shut and locked the safe and dropped the key in his own pocket. This done, he returned to the window and sat down, taking no manner of notice of his visitor. All this exactly as he had done before in presence of George and his old clerk.

For ten minutes he sat there. Then he shivered, straightened himself, stood up, and looked about the room, Mr. Dering again.

'Elsie!' he cried. 'I did not know you were here. How long have you been here?'

'Not very long. A few minutes, perhaps.'

'I must have fallen asleep. It is a hot morning. You must forgive the weakness of an old man, child. I had a bad night too. I was awake a long time, thinking of all these troubles and worries. They can't find out, Elsie, who has robbed me.' He spoke querulously and helplessly. 'They accuse each other, instead of laying their heads together. Nonsense! Checkley couldn't do it. George couldn't do it. The thing was done by somebody else. My brother came here with a cock-and-bull case, all built up of presumptions and conclusions. If they would only find out!'

'The trouble is mine as much as yours, Mr. Dering. I have had to leave my mother's house, where I had to listen to agreeable prophecies about my lover and my brother. I wish, with you, that they would find out!'

He took off his hat and hung it on its peg. He buttoned his frock-coat and took his place at the table, upright and precise. Yet his eyes were anxious.

'They tease me too. They mock me. Yesterday, they laid two letters addressed to this man, Edmund Gray, on my letters. What for? To laugh at me, to defy me to find them out. Checkley swears he didn't put them there. I arrived at the moment when he was leaving the room. Are we haunted? And the day before – and the day before that – there were things put in the safe – '

'In the safe? Oh! but nobody has the key except yourself. How can anything be put in the safe?'

'I don't know. I don't know anything. I don't know what may be taken next. My houses – my mortgages, my lands, my very practice – '

'Nay, – they could not. Is there anything this morning?'

He turned over his letters. 'Apparently not. Stay; I have not looked in the safe. He got up and threw open the safe. Then he took up a packet. 'Again!' he cried almost with a scream. 'Again! See this!' He tossed on the table the packet which he had himself, only ten minutes before, placed in the safe with his own hands. 'See this! Thus they laugh at me – thus they torment me!' He hurled the packet to the other side of the room, returned to his chair, and laid his head upon his hands, sighing deeply.

Elsie took up the parcel. It was rather a bulky manuscript. The title you have heard. She untied the tape and turned over the pages. The work, she saw, was the Autobiography of Edmund Gray. And it was in the handwriting of Mr. Dering!

She replaced it in the safe. 'Put everything there,' she said, 'which is sent to you. Everything. Do you know anything at all about this man Edmund Gray?'

'Nothing, my dear child, absolutely nothing. I never saw the man. I never heard of him. Yet he has planted himself upon me. He holds his Chambers on a letter of recommendation from me. I was his introducer to the manager of the Bank – I – in my own handwriting – as they thought. He drew a cheque of 720l. upon me eight years ago. And he has transferred thirty-eight thousand pounds' worth of shares and stock to his own address.'

'Added to which, he has been the cause of suspicion and vile accusation against my lover and my brother, which it will cost a great deal of patience to forgive. Dear Mr. Dering, I am so sorry for you. It is most wonderful and most mysterious. Suppose,' she laid her hand upon his – 'suppose that I was to find out for you – '

'You, child? What can you do, when the others have failed?'

'I can but try.'

'Try, in Heaven's name. Try, my dear. If you find out, you shall be burned for a witch.'

'No. If I find out, you shall be present at my wedding. You were to have given me away. But now – now – Athelstan shall give me away, and you will be there to see. And it will be a tearful wedding' – the tears came into her own eyes just to illustrate the remark – 'because everyone will be so ashamed of the wicked things they have said. Sir Samuel will remain on his knees the whole service, and Checkley will be fain to get under the seat. – Good-bye, Mr. Dering. I am a Prophetess. I can foretell. You shall hear in a very few days all about Edmund Gray.'

She ran away without any further explanation. Mr. Dering shook his head and smiled. He did not believe in contemporary Prophecy. That young people should place their own affairs – their love-makings and weddings – before the affairs of their elders, was not surprising. For himself, as he sometimes remembered – and always when this girl, with her pretty ways and soft voice, was with him – her visit had cheered him. He opened his letters and went on with the day's work.

As for Elsie, the smile in her eyes died out as she descended the stairs. If she had been herself a lawyer, she could not have worn a graver face as she walked across the courts of the venerable Inn.

She had established the connection between Mr. Dering and Edmund Gray. It was he, and nobody else, who laid those letters on the table – placed those things in the safe. This being so, it must be he himself, and nobody else, who wrote all the letters, signed the cheques, and did all the mischief. He himself! But how? Elsie had read of hypnotism. Wonderful things are done daily by mesmerists and magnetisms under their new name. Mr. Dering was hypnotised by this man Edmund Gray – as he called himself – for his own base ends. Well – she would find out this Edmund Gray. She would beard this villain in his own den.

She walked resolutely to Gray's Inn. She found No. 22 – she mounted the stairs. The outer door was closed. She knocked, but there was no answer. She remembered how George had found his laundress, and visited her at her lodgings – she thought she would do the same. But on the stairs she went down she met an old woman so dirty, so ancient, so feeble, that she seemed to correspond with George's account of her.

'You are Mr. Gray's laundress?' she asked.

'Yes, Miss; I am.' The woman looked astonished to see such a visitor.

'I want to see him. I want to see him on very important business. Most important to himself. When can I see him?'

'I don't know, Miss. He is uncertain. He was here yesterday evening. He said he should not be here this evening. But I don't know.'

'Look here.' Elsie drew out her purse. 'Tell me when you think he will be here, and if I find him I will give you two pounds – two golden sovereigns. If you tell me right I will give you two sovereigns.'

She showed them. The old woman looked hungrily at the coins. 'Well, Miss, he's been here every Saturday afternoon for the last six months. I know it by the litter of papers that he makes. Every Saturday afternoon.'

'Very good. You shall have your money if I find him.'

In the evening, Elsie said nothing about Mr. Dering and her strange discovery. The two young men talked about trying this way and that way, always with the view of implicating Checkley. But she said nothing.

CHAPTER XXI

I AM EDMUND GRAY

On Saturday afternoon, the policeman on day-duty at Gray's Inn was standing near the southern portals of that venerable Foundation in conversation with the boy who dispenses the newspapers, from a warehouse constructed in the eastern wall of the archway. It was half-past three by the clock and a fine day, which was remarkable for the season – August – and the year. The sun poured upon the dingy old courts, making them dingier instead of brighter. Where the paint of the windows and door-posts is faded and dirty – where the panes are mostly in want of cleaning – where there are no flowers in the windows – where there are no trees or leaves in the Square – where the bricks want painting, and where the soot has gathered in every chink and blackens every cranny – then the sunshine of summer only makes a dingy court shabbier. Gray's Inn in July and August, unless these months are as the August of the year of grace 1891, looks old, but not venerable. Age should be clean and nicely dressed: age should wear a front to conceal her baldness: age should assume false teeth to disguise those gums stripped of their ivory. It was felt by the policeman. 'We want a washin' and a brightenin' in this old place,' he remarked to the journalist. We want somethin' younger than them old laundresses,' said the newspaper boy. Great is the Goddess Coincidence. Even while he uttered this aspiration, a young lady entered the gate and passed into the Inn.

'Ha!' breathed the policeman, softly.

'Ah!' sighed the journalist.

She was a young lady of adorable face and form, surpassing the wildest dreams either of policeman or of paper-man – both of whom possessed the true poetic temperament. She was clothed in raiment mystic, wonderful, such as seldom indeed gets as far east as Gray's Inn, something in gray or silver gray with an open front and a kind of jacket. She passed them rapidly, and walked through the passage into the Square.

'No. 22,' said the policeman. 'Now, who does she want at No. 22? Who's on the ground-floor of 22?'

'Right hand – Architects and Surveyors. Left hand – Universal Translators.'

'Perhaps she's a Universal Translator. They must be all gone by this time. The first floor is lawyers. They're all gone too. I saw the clerks march out at two o'clock. Second floor – there's Mr. Carstone on the left, and Mr. Edmund Gray on the right. Perhaps it's Mr. Carstone she's after. I hope it isn't him. He's a gentleman with fine manners, and they do say a great scholar, but he's a Lushington, and a sweet young thing like that ought not to marry a man who is brought home every other night too tipsy to stand. Or there's Mr. Gray – the old gent – perhaps she's his daughter. What's Mr. Edmund Gray by calling, Joe?'

'Nobody knows. He don't often come. An old gentleman – been in the Inn a long time – for years. Lives in the country, I suppose, and does no work. Lives on other people's work – my work – honest working men's work,' said the boy, who was a Socialist and advanced.

'Ah! There's something up about Mr. Gray. People are coming to inquire for him. First, it was a young gentleman: very affable he was – and free with his money – most likely other people's money. He wanted to know a good deal about Mr. Gray – more than I could tell him – wanted to know how often he came, and what he was like when he did come – and would I tell him all I knew. He went to the old laundress afterwards. – Then it was a little old man – I know him by sight – uses the Salutation Parlour of an evening – he wanted to know all about Mr. Gray too. No half-crown in that quarter, though. He's been spying and watching for him – goes and hides up the passage on the other side of the Square. Kind of a spider he is. He's watching him for no good, I'll bet. Perhaps the young lady wants to find out about him too. – Joe, there's something up at No. 22. The old gentleman isn't in his chambers, I believe. She'll come out again presently, and it'll be: "Oh, Mr. Policeman, could you very kindly tell me how I can find Mr. Edmund Gray?" With a shilling perhaps, and perhaps not. I wonder what she wants with Mr. Edmund Gray? Sometimes these old chaps break out in the most surprising manner. Joe, if you ever go into the Service, you'll find the work hard and the pay small. But there's compensation in learnin' things. If you want to know human nature, go into the Force.'

'There's old Mr. Langhorne, up at the top.'

'So there is. But no young lady wants to see that poor old chap. He's got no friends, young nor old – no friends and no money. Just now, he's terrible hard up. Took a shillin' off o' me last Sunday to get a bit of dinner with. Fine thing – isn't it, Joe? – to be a gentleman and a barrister all your life, isn't it – and to end like that? Starvation in a garret – eh? – Look out. She will be coming down directly.'

But she did not come down. Two hours and more passed, and she did not come down.

The visitor was Elsie Arundel. She walked up the stairs to the second floor. Here she stopped. There was a black door, closed, on the right of her, and another black door, closed, on the left of her. On the lintel of one was the name of Mr. F. W. Carstone. On the lintel of the other was that of Mr. Edmund Gray. Elsie knocked with her parasol at the latter door. There was no reply. 'The old laundress,' she murmured, 'told me that Saturday afternoon was my best chance of finding him. I will wait.' She sat down with hesitation on the stairs leading to the third floor – they were not too clean – and waited.

She was going to do a very plucky thing – a dangerous thing. She had made a discovery connecting Mr. Dering directly with this Edmund Gray. She had learned that he came to the office in a strange condition, perhaps hypnotic, bringing things from Edmund Gray. She now suspected that the only person who carried on the forgeries on Mr. Dering was Mr. Dering himself, acted on and perhaps mesmerised by Edmund Gray – and she wanted to find out who this Edmund Gray was. She would confront him and tax him with the crime. It was dangerous, but he could not kill her. Besides, he was described as quite an elderly man. He was also described as a benevolent man, a charitable man, a kindly man: and he wrote letters brimful of the most cheerful optimism. Yet he was carrying on a series of complicated forgeries. She resolved to wait for him. She would wait till sundown, if necessary, for him.

The place was very quiet. All the offices were closed and the clerks gone. Most of the men who lived in the chambers were away, out of town, gone on holiday, gone away from Saturday till Monday. Everything was quite quiet and still: the traffic in Holborn was only heard as a continuous murmur which formed part of the stillness: the policeman, who had now said all he had to say to the newspaper boy, was walking slowly and with heavy tread round the Court. The Inn was quite empty and deserted and still. Only, overhead there was the footfall of a man who walked up and down his room steadily, never stopping or ceasing or changing the time, like the beat of a pendulum. Elsie began to wonder, presently, who this man could be, and if he had nothing better to do than to pace his chamber all day long, when the sun was bright and the leaves on the trees and the flowers in full bloom.

The clock struck four: Elsie had been waiting half an hour: still Mr. Edmund Gray did not arrive: still the steady beat of the footstep continued overhead.

The clock struck five. Still that steady footfall. Still Elsie sat upon the stairs waiting in patience.

When the clock struck six, the footsteps stopped – or changed. Then a door overhead opened and shut and the steps came down the stairs. Elsie rose and stood on one side. An old man came down – tall and thin, close-shaven, pale, dressed in a black frock-coat, worn to a shiny polish in all those parts which take a polish – a shabby old man whose hat seemed hardly able to stand upright: and a gentleman – which was perfectly clear from his bearing – a gentleman in the last stage of poverty and decay.