The Ivory Gate, a new edition

'Certainly. There has been a forgery. The forged cheque has been cashed. The notes are stopped. Have you any clue to the forgery – any suspicions?'

'As yet, none. We are only beginning to collect the facts.' The lawyer spoke in the coldest and most austere manner. 'I am laying them, one by one, before you.'

Young Arundel bowed.

'Observe then, that the forged cheque belongs to a cheque book which has been lying, forgotten by me, in this safe for two years. Here is the book. Turn to the last counterfoil. Here is the cheque, the forged cheque, which corresponds. You see?'

'Perfectly. The book has been in the safe for two years. It has been taken out by someone – presumably the forger – the cheque has been forged; the counterfoil filled up; and the book replaced. Why was all this trouble taken? If the man had got the cheque, why did he fill up the counterfoil? Why did he return the book? I beg your pardon.'

'Your questions are pertinent. I come to the next point. The safe is never opened but by myself. It is open so long as I am in the room, and at no other time.'

'Certainly, I know that.'

'Very well. The man who took out this cheque book, forged the cheque, and replaced the book, must have done it in my very presence.'

'Oh! Could not someone – somehow – have got a key?'

'I thought of that. It is possible. But the drawers are full of valuables, jewellery – curios – all kinds of things which could easily be turned into money. And they were not touched. Now, had the safe been opened by a key, these things would certainly have vanished.'

'So it would seem.'

'These are the main facts, Mr. Arundel. Oh! one more. We have found the messenger who cashed the cheque. Perhaps there are one or two other points of more or less importance. There is only one more point I wish to bring before you. Of course – I make no charge – I insinuate none. But this must be remembered – there are only two persons who have had access to this safe in such a manner as to make it possible for them to take anything out of it – Checkley – '

'No – no – no,' cried the old man.

'And you yourself. At the time of the robbery, you were working at that table with the safe open and within reach of your left hand. This is a fact, mind – one of the facts of the case – not a charge.'

'What?' cried the young man, his cheek aflame – 'you mean – '

'I mean nothing – nothing at all. I want you – and Checkley – who alone have used this room, not counting callers who sat in that chair – to know the facts.'

'The facts – yes – of course – the facts. Well' – he spoke rapidly and a little incoherently – 'it is true that I worked here – but – oh! it is absurd. I know nothing of any cheque book lying in your safe. I was working at this table' – he went to the table – 'sitting in this chair. How could I get up and search about in a safe for an unknown and unsuspected cheque book before your very eyes?'

'I do not know. It seems impossible. I only desire you to consider, with me, the facts.'

Had Mr. Dering spoken just a little less coldly, with just a little less dryness in his manner, what followed would perhaps have been different.

'Yes – the facts,' repeated the young man. 'Well – let us get at the facts. The chief fact is that whoever took that cheque and filled it up must have known the existence of that cheque book more than two years old.'

'It would seem so.'

'Who could know about that old cheque book? Only one who had been about your office more than two years, or one who had had opportunities of examining the safe. Now, you sat there – I sat here' – he seated himself, only turning the chair round. 'How is it possible for a man sitting here to take anything out of that safe without your seeing him? How is it possible for him, without your knowledge, to examine slowly and carefully the contents of the safe?'

'Everything is possible,' said Mr. Dering, still coldly. 'Let us not argue on possibilities. We have certain facts before us. By the help of these, I shall hope to find out others.'

'At five o'clock every day I put the work in the drawer of this table and I go away.' He opened the drawer, as if to illustrate this unimportant fact. He saw in it two or three pieces of paper with writing on them. He took them out. 'Good Heavens!' he cried. 'They are imitations of your handwriting.'

Checkley crossed the room swiftly, snatched them from him, and laid them before his master. 'Imitations of your handwriting,' he said, 'imitations – exercises in forgery – practice makes perfect. Found in the drawer. Now!'

Mr. Dering looked at the papers and laid them beside the forged cheque. 'An additional fact,' he said. 'These are certainly imitations. The probable conclusion is that they were made by the same hand that forged this cheque.'

'Found in the drawer,' said Checkley, 'used by Mr. Arundel. Never by me. Ah! The only two, are we? These imitations will prove that I'm not in it.'

'The fact that these imitations are found in the drawer,' said Mr. Dering, 'is a fact which may or may not be important.'

'What?' cried the young man, flaring up. 'You think that I made those imitations?'

'I do not permit myself – yet – to make any conclusions at all. Everything, however, is possible.'

Then this foolish young man lost his temper and his head.

'You have known me all my life,' he cried. 'You have known me and all my people. Yet at the first moment you are ready to believe that I have committed a most abominable forgery! You – my father's oldest friend – my mother's Trustee! My own Guardian! You!'

'Pardon me. There are certain facts in this case. I have laid them before you. I have shown – '

'To suspect me,' Arundel repeated, 'and all the time another man – that man – your clerk – who knows everything ever done in this office, is in and about the place all day long.'

'The imitations,' said Checkley quietly, 'were found in his own drawer – by himself.'

'Who put them there? Who made them? You – villain and scoundrel!'

'Stop, stop,' said Mr. Dering coldly. 'We go too fast. Let us first prove our facts. We will then proceed to conclusions.'

'Well, sir, you clearly believe that I forged your name and robbed you of all this money. I have not got ten pounds in the world; but that is not, I suppose, a fact which bears on the case. You think I have seven hundred pounds somewhere. Very good. Think so, if you please. Meanwhile, I am not going to stay in the service of a man who is capable of thinking such a thing. I leave your service – at once. Get some one else to serve you – somebody who likes being charged with forgery and theft.' He flung himself out of the room and banged the door behind him.

'He has run away,' said Checkley. 'Actually, run away at the very outset! What do you think now?'

'I do not think. We shall, I daresay, find out the truth in due course. Meantime, these documents will remain in my keeping.'

'Only, I hope, sir,' the clerk began, 'that after what you've just seen and heard, after such insolence and running away and all – '

'Don't be an ass, Checkley. So far as appearances go, no one could get at the safe except you and Arundel. So far as the ascertained facts go, there is nothing to connect either of you with the thing. He is a foolish young man; and if he is innocent, which we must, I suppose, believe' – but his look did not convey the idea of robust faith – 'he will come back when he has cooled down.'

'The imitations of your handwriting in his drawer – '

'The man who forged the cheque,' said Mr. Dering, 'whoever he was, could easily have written those imitations. I shall see that hot-headed boy's mother, and bring him to reason. – Now, Checkley, we will resume work. And not a word of this business, if you please, outside. You have yourself to think of as well, remember. You, as well as that boy, have access to the safe. Enough – enough.'

Athelstan Arundel walked home all the way, foaming and raging. No omnibus, cab, or conveyance ever built could contain a young man in such a rage. His mother lived at Pembridge Square, which is four good measured miles from Lincoln's Inn. He walked the whole way, walking through crowds, and under the noses of dray-horses, carriage-horses, and cart-horses, without taking the least notice of them. When he reached home, he dashed into the drawing-room, where he found his two sisters – Hilda and Elsie – one of them a girl of eighteen, the other of thirteen. With flaming cheeks and fiery eyes he delivered himself of his story; he hurled it at their heads; he called upon them to share his indignation, and to join with him in scorn and contempt of the man – their supposed best friend, Trustee, Guardian, Adviser – their father's best friend – who had done this thing – who had accused him, on the bare evidence of two or three circumstantial facts, of such a crime!

There is something magnetic in all great emotions: one proof of their reality is that they are magnetic. It is only an actor who can endow an assumed emotion with magnetism. Elsie, the younger girl, fell into a corresponding sympathy of wrath: she was equal to the occasion: passion for passion, she joined him and fed the flame. But – for all persons are not magnetic – the elder sister remained cold. From time to time she wanted to know exactly what Mr. Dering had said: this her brother was too angry to remember: she was pained and puzzled: she neither soothed him nor sympathised with him.

Then the mother returned, and the whole story was told again, Elsie assisting. Now, Mrs. Arundel was a woman of great sense: a practical woman: a woman of keen judgment. She prided herself upon the possession of these qualities, which are not supposed to be especially feminine. She heard the story with disturbed face and knitted brow.

'Surely,' she said, 'what you tell me, Athelstan, is beyond belief. Mr. Dering, of all men, to accuse you – you – of such a thing! It is impossible.'

'I wish it was impossible. He accuses me of forging that cheque for 720l. He says that while I was working in his office for him, a fortnight ago, I took a certain cheque book out of the safe, forged his writing on a cheque, and returned the cheque book. This is what he says. Do you call that accusing, or don't you?'

'Certainly. If he says that. But how can he – Mr. Dering – the most exact and careful of men? I will drive to Lincoln's Inn at once and find out. My dear boy, pray calm yourself. There is – there must be – some terrible mistake.'

She went immediately; and she had a long interview with the solicitor.

Mr. Dering was evidently much disturbed by what had happened. He did not receive her as he usually received his clients, sitting in his arm-chair. He pushed back the chair and stood up, leaning a hand on the back of it, a tall, thin, erect figure, gray-haired, austere of face. There was little to reassure the mother in that face. The very trouble of it made her heart sink.

'I certainly have not accused Athelstan,' he said. 'It is, however, quite true that there has been a robbery here, and that of a large sum of money – no less than 720l.'

'But what has that to do with my boy?'

'We have made a few preliminary inquiries. I will do for you, Mrs. Arundel, what I did for your son, and you shall yourself understand what connection those inquiries have with him.'

He proceeded coldly and without comment to set forth the case so far as he had got at the facts. As he went on, the mother's heart became as heavy as lead. Before he finished, she was certain. There is, you see, a way of presenting a case without comment which is more efficacious than any amount of talk; and Mrs. Arundel plainly perceived – which was indeed the case – that the lawyer had by this time little doubt in his own mind that her son had done this thing.

'I thought it right,' he continued, 'to lay before him these facts at the outset. If he is innocent, I thought, he will be the better able to prove his innocence, and perhaps to find the guilty person. If he is guilty, he may be led to confession or restitution. The facts about the cheque book and the safe are very clear. I am certain that the safe has not been opened by any other key. The only persons who have had access to it are Checkley and your son Athelstan. As for Checkley – he couldn't do it, he could not possibly do it. The thing is quite beyond him.'

Mrs. Arundel groaned. 'This is terrible!' she said.

'Meantime, the notes are numbered: they may be traced: they are stopped: we shall certainly find the criminal by means of those notes.'

'Mr. Dering' – Mrs. Arundel rose and laid her hand on his – 'you are our very old friend. Tell me – if this wretched boy goes away – if he gives back the money that remains – if I find the rest – will there be – any further – investigation?'

'To compound a felony is a crime. It is, however, one of those crimes which men sometimes commit without repentance or shame. My dear lady, if he will confess and restore – we shall see.'

Mrs. Arundel drove home again. She came away fully persuaded in her own mind that her son – her only son – and none other, must be that guilty person. She knew Mr. Dering's room well: she had sat there hundreds of times: she knew the safe: she knew old Checkley. She perceived the enormous improbability of this ancient clerk's doing such a thing. She knew, again, what temptations assail a young man in London: she saw what her Trustee thought of it: and she jumped to the conclusion that her son – and none other – was the guilty person. She even saw how he must have done it: she saw the quick look while Mr. Dering's back was turned: the snatching of the cheque book: the quick replacing it. Her very keenness of judgment helped her to the conviction. Women less clever would have been slower to believe. Shameful, miserable termination of all her hopes for her boy's career! But that she could think of afterwards. For the moment the only thing was to get the boy away – to induce him to confess – and to get him away.

He was calmer when she got home, but he was still talking about the thing: he would wait till the right man was discovered: then he would have old Dering on his knees. The thing would be set right in a few days. He had no fear of any delay. He was quite certain that it was Checkley – that old villain. Oh! He couldn't do it by himself, of course – nobody could believe that of him. He had accomplices – confederates – behind him. Checkley's part of the job was to steal the cheque book and give it to his confederates and share the swag.

'Well, mother?' he asked.

His mother sat down. She looked pale and wretched.

'Mother,' cried Hilda, the elder sister. 'Quick! What has happened? What does Mr. Dering say?'

'He accuses nobody,' she replied in a hard dry voice. 'But – '

'But what?' asked Hilda.

'He told me everything – everything – and – and – Oh!' She burst into sobs and crying, though she despised women who cry. 'It is terrible – It is terrible – It is incredible. Yet, what can I think? What can any one think? Leave us, Hilda. Leave us, Elsie.' The two girls went out unwillingly. 'Oh! my son – how can I believe it? And yet – on the one hand, a boy of two-and-twenty exposed to all the temptations of town: on the other, an old clerk of fifty years' service and integrity. And when the facts are laid before you both – calmly and coldly – you fly into a rage and run away, while Checkley calmly remains to await the inquiry.'

Mrs. Arundel had been accustomed all her life to consider Mr. Dering as the wisest of men. She felt instinctively that he regarded her son with suspicion: she heard all the facts: she jumped to the conclusion that he was a prodigal and a profligate: that he had fallen into evil ways, and spent money in riotous living: she concluded that he had committed these crimes in order to get more money for more skittles and oranges.

'Athelstan ' – she laid her hand upon his arm, but did not dare to lift her eyes and behold that guilty face – 'Athelstan' – confess – make reparation so far as you can – confess – oh! my son – my son! You will be caught and tried and found guilty, and – oh! I cannot say it – through the notes which you have changed. They are all known and stopped.'

The boy's wrath was now changed to madness.

'You!' he cried. 'You! My own mother! You believe it, no! Oh! we are all going mad together. What? Then I am turned out of this house, as I am turned out of my place. I go, then – I go; and' – here he swore a mighty oath, as strong as anybody out of Spain can make them – 'I will never – never – never come home again till you come yourself to beg forgiveness – you – my own mother!'

Outside, in the hall, his sisters stood, waiting and trembling.

'Athelstan,' cried the elder, 'what, in the name of Heaven, have you done?'

'Go, ask my mother. She will tell you. She knows, it seems, better than I know myself. I am driven away by my own mother. She says that I am guilty of – of – of forgery.'

'If she says so, Athelstan,' his sister replied coldly, 'she must have her reasons. She would not drive you out of the house for nothing. Don't glare like that. Prove your innocence.'

'What? You, too? Oh! I am driven away by my sisters as well – '

'No, Athelstan – no,' cried Elsie, catching his hand. 'Not both your sisters.'

'My poor child;' he stooped and kissed her. 'They will make you believe what they believe. Good Heavens! They make haste to believe it; they are glad to believe it.'

'No – no. Don't go, Athelstan.' Elsie threw her arms about him. 'Stay, and show that they are wrong. Oh! you are innocent. I will never – never – never believe it.'

He kissed her again, and tore himself away. The street door slammed behind him: they heard his footsteps as he strode away. He had gone.

Then Elsie fell into loud weeping and wailing. But Hilda went to comfort her mother.

'Mother,' she said, 'did he really, really and truly do it?'

'What else can I believe? Either he did it or that old clerk. Where is he?'

'He is gone. He says he will come back when his innocence is proved. Mother, if he is innocent, why does he run away? It's foolish to say that it is because we believe it. I've said nothing except that you couldn't believe it without reasons. Innocent young men don't run away when they are charged with robbery. They stay and fight it out. Athelstan should have stayed.'

Later on, when they were both a little recovered, Hilda tried to consider the subject more calmly. She had not her mother's cleverness, but she was not without parts. The following remarks – made by a girl of eighteen – prove so much.

'Mother,' she said, 'perhaps it is better, so long as this suspicion rests upon him, that he should be away. We shall certainly know where he is: he will want money, and will write for it. If it should prove that somebody else did the thing, we can easily bring him back as a martyr – for my own part I should be so glad that I would willingly beg his pardon on my knees – and of course we could easily get him replaced in the office. If it is proved that he did do it – and that, you think, they will be certain to find out – Mr. Dering, for your sake, will be ready to hush it up – perhaps we may get the notes back – he can't have used them all; in any case it will be a great comfort to feel that he is out of the way: a brother convicted – tried in open court – sentenced – oh!' She shuddered. 'We should never get over it: never, never! It would be a most dreadful thing for Elsie and me. As for his going away, if people ask why he is gone and where, we must invent something – we can easily make up a story – hint that he has been wild – there is no disgrace, happily, about a young man being wild – that is the only thing that reconciles one to the horrid selfishness of wild young men – and if, by going away in a pretended rage, Athelstan has really enabled us to escape a horrid scandal – why, mother, in that case – we may confess that the blow has been by Providence most mercifully softened for us – most mercifully. We ought to consider that, mother.'

'Yes, dear, yes. But he is gone. Athelstan is gone. And his future seems ruined. There is no hope for him. I can see no hope whatever. My dear, he was so promising. I thought that all the family influence would be his – we haven't got a single City solicitor in the whole family. I thought that he was so clever and so ambitious and so eager to get on and make money and be a credit to the family. Solicitors do sometimes – especially City solicitors – become so very, very rich; and now it is all gone and done – and nothing left to hope but the miserable wish that there should be no scandal.'

'It is indeed dreadful. But still – consider – no scandal. Mother, I think we should find out, if we can, something about his private life – how he has been living. He has been out a good deal of evenings lately. If there is any – any person – on whom he has been tempted to spend money – if he has been gambling – or betting, or any of the things that I read of' – this young lady, thanks to the beneficent assistance of certain works of fiction, was tolerably acquainted with the ways of young men and their temptations – 'it would be a satisfaction to know it at least.'

The ladies of a family where there is a 'wild' young man do not generally find it easy to get at the facts of his wildness: these remain locked up in the bosoms of his companions. No details could be learned about any wildness – quite the contrary. He seemed, so far as could be learned, to have led a very quiet and regular life. 'But then,' said the philosopher of eighteen, quoting from a novel, 'men shelter each other. They are all bad together.'

But – no scandal.

Everybody knows that kind of brother or sister by whom all family events are considered with a view to the scandal likely to be caused and the personal injury resulting to himself; or the envy that will follow and the personal advantage accruing from that event. That her brother was perhaps a shameful criminal might be considered by Hilda Arundel later on: at first, she was only capable of perceiving that this horrid fact, unless it could be hidden away and kept secret, might very materially injure herself.

Almost naturally, she folded her hands sweetly and laid her comely head a little on one side – it is an attitude of resignation which may be observed in certain pictures of saints and holy women. Hilda knew many little attitudes. Also, quite naturally, she glanced at a mirror on the wall and observed that her pose was one of sorrow borne with Christian resignation.

We must blame neither Hilda nor her mother. The case as put by Mr. Dering in the form of plain fact without any comment, did seem very black indeed against Athelstan. In every family the first feeling in such a case – it is the instinct of self-preservation – is to hush up the thing if possible – to avoid a scandal.

Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery – with a verdict of guilty – is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just assuming the robes of respectability: it ruins the chances of the girls: it blights the prospects of the boys: it drives away friends: it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off. Therefore, while the mother hoped, first of all, that the boy would escape the clutch of the law, Hilda was, first of all, grateful that there would be no scandal. Mr. Dering would not talk about it. The thing would not interfere with her own prospects. It was sad: it was miserable; but yet – no scandal. With what a deep, deep sigh of satisfaction did the young lady repeat that there would probably be no scandal!

As for Elsie, that child went about for many days with tearful eyes, red cheeks, and a swollen nose. She was rebellious and sharp with her mother. And to her sister she refused to speak. The days went on. They became weeks, months, years. Otherwise they would not have been days. Nothing at all was heard of Athelstan. He sent no letters to any one: he did not even write for money: they knew not where he was or what he was doing. He disappeared. It was understood that there had been wildness.

Now – which was very remarkable – though the forger had had a clear run of three weeks, it could not be discovered that any of the notes had been presented. Perhaps they were sent abroad: yet foreign and colonial banks would know the numbers of stopped notes. And towards the discovery of the forger no further step had been taken. The commissionaire who took the cheque had been, as you have seen, easily found: he said he should know the old gentleman who gave him the forged draft to cash. He said, being again interrogated, that Checkley was not in the least like that old gentleman. What could be thought, then? Athelstan must have 'made up' as an old man: he was fond of private theatricals: he could make up very well: of course he had made up. And then, this point being settled, they left off talking about the business.