The Ivory Gate, a new edition

'You have learned some of the lessons of Poverty Lane, Scholar,' said the Master. – 'Let us now go home.'

CHAPTER XXVII

'I KNOW THE MAN'

'Another evening of mystery, Elsie?' said Athelstan.

'Yes. Another, and perhaps another. But we are getting to an end. I shall be able to tell you all to-day or to-morrow. The thing is becoming too great for me alone.'

'You shall tell us when you please. Meantime, nothing new has been found out, I believe. Checkley still glares, George tells me. But the opinion of the clerks seems on the whole more favourable, he believes, than it was. Of that, however, he is not perhaps a good judge.'

'They shall all be turned out,' cried Elsie. 'How dare they so much as to discuss – '

'My sister, it is a very remarkable thing, and a thing little understood, but it is a true thing. People, people – clerks and le Service generally – are distinctly a branch of the great human tribe. They are anthropoid. Therefore, they are curious and prying and suspicious. They have our own faults, my dear.'

All day Elsie felt drawn as with ropes to Mr. Dering's office. Was it possible that after that long evening among the lessons of Poverty Lane he should remember nothing? How was she to get at him – how was she to make him understand or believe what he had done? Could she make the sane man remember the actions and words of the insane man? Could she make the insane man do something which would absolutely identify him with the sane man? She could always array her witnesses: but she wanted more: she wanted to bring Mr. Dering himself to understand that he was Mr. Edmund Gray.

She made an excuse for calling upon him. It was in the afternoon, about four, that she called. She found him looking aged, his face lined, his cheek pale, his eyes anxious.

'This business worries me,' he said. 'Day and night it is with me. I am persecuted and haunted with this Edmund Gray. His tracts are put into my pockets; his papers into my safe: he laughs at me: he defies me to find him. And they do nothing. They only accuse each other. They find nothing.'

'Patience,' said Elsie softly. 'Only a few days – a day or two – then – with your help – we will unravel all this trouble. You shall lose nothing.'

'Shall I escape this mocking devil – this Edmund Gray?'

'I cannot promise. Perhaps. – Now, my dear guardian, I am to be married next Wednesday. I want you to be present at my wedding.'

'Why not?'

'Because things have been said about George: and because your presence will effectually prove that you do not believe them.'

'Oh! Believe them? I believe nothing. It is, however, my experience that there is no act, however base, that any man may not be tempted to do.'

'Happily, it is my experience,' said the girl of twenty-one, 'that there is no act of baseness, however small, that certain men could possibly commit. You will come to my wedding, then. Athelstan will give me away.'

'Athelstan? Yes; I remember. We found those notes, didn't we? I wonder who put them into the safe? Athelstan! Yes. He has been living in low company, I heard – Camberwell. – Rags and tatters.'

'Oh!' Elsie stamped impatiently. 'You will believe anything – anything, and you a lawyer! Athelstan is in the service of a great American journal. – Rags and tatters!'

'American? Oh! yes.' Mr. Dering sat up and looked interested. 'Why, of course. How could I forget it? Had it been yesterday evening, I should have forgot. But it is four years ago. He wrote to me from somewhere in America. Where was it? I've got the letter. It is in the safe. Bring me the bottom right-hand drawer. It is there, I know.' He took the drawer which Elsie brought him, and turned over the papers. 'Here it is among the papers of that forgery. Here is the letter.' He gave it to Elsie. 'Read it. He writes from America, you see. He was in the States four years ago – and – and – What is it?'

'Oh!' cried Elsie, suddenly springing from her chair – 'Oh! Do you know what you have given me? Oh! do you know what you have told me? It is the secret – the secret – of my fortune. Oh! Athelstan gave it to me – Athelstan – my brother!'

Mr. Dering took the letter from her and glanced at the contents. 'I ought not to have shown you the letter,' he said. 'I have violated confidence. I forgot. I was thinking of the trouble – I forgot. I forget everything now – the things of yesterday as well as the things of to-day. Yes; it is true, child: your little fortune came to you from your brother. But it was a secret that he alone had the right to reveal.'

'And now I know it – I know it. Oh! what shall I say to him?' The tears came in her eyes. 'He gave me all he had – all he had – because – oh! for such a simple thing – because I would not believe him to be a villain. Oh! my brother – my poor brother! He went back into poverty again. He gave me all because – oh! for such a little thing! – Mr. Dering!' She turned almost fiercely upon him. 'After such a letter, could you believe that man to be a villain? Could you? Tell me! After such a deed and such a letter!'

'I believe nothing. My experience, however, tells me that any man, whoever he is, may be led to commit – '

'NO! I won't have it said again. – Now, listen, Mr. Dering. These suspicions must cease. There must be an end. Athelstan returned six weeks ago – or thereabouts. That can be proved. Before that time, he was working in San Francisco on the journal. That can be proved. While these forgeries, with which he is now so freely charged, were carried on here, he was abroad. I don't ask you to believe or to disbelieve or to bring up your experience – oh! such experience – one would think you had been a police magistrate all your life.'

'No, Elsie.' Mr. Dering smiled grimly. 'There was no need to sit upon the bench; the police magistrate does not hear so much as the family solicitor. My dear, prove your brother's innocence by finding out who did the thing. That is, after all, the only thing. It matters nothing what I believe – he is not proved innocent – all the world may be suspected of it – until the criminal is found. Remove the suspicions which have gathered about your lover by finding the criminal. There is no other way.'

'Very well, then. I will find the criminal, since no one else can.'

Mr. Dering went on without heeding her words.

'They want to get out a warrant against Edmund Gray. I think, for my own part, that the man Edmund Gray has nothing to do with the business. He is said to be an elderly man and a respectable man – a gentleman – who has held his Chambers for ten years.'

'They need not worry about a warrant,' Elsie replied. 'Tell your brother, Mr. Dering, that it will be perfectly useless. Meantime – I doubt if it is any good asking you – but – if we want your help, will you give me all the help you can?'

'Assuredly. All the help I can. Why not? I am the principal person concerned.'

'You are, indeed,' said Elsie gravely – 'the principal person concerned. Very well, Mr. Dering – now I will tell you more. I know the – the criminal. I can put my hand upon him at any moment. It is one man who has done the whole, beginning with the cheque for which Athelstan was suspected – one man alone.'

'Why, child, what can you know about it? What can you do?'

'You were never in love, Mr. Dering – else you would understand that a girl will do a great deal – oh! a great deal more than you would think – for her lover. It is not much to think for him and to watch for him – and for her brother – the brother who has stripped himself of everything to give his sister!' She was fain to pause, for the tears which rose again and choked her voice.

'But, Elsie – what does this mean? How can you know what no one else has been able to find out?'

'That is my affair, Mr. Dering. Perhaps I dreamed it.'

'Do you mean that you will get back all the papers – all the transfers – the dividends that have been diverted – everything?'

'Everything is safe. Everything shall be restored. – My dear guardian, it is a long and a sad story. I cannot tell you now. Presently, perhaps. Or to-morrow. I do not know how I shall be able to tell you. But for your property, rest easy. Everything will come back to you – everything – except that which cannot be stored in the vaults of the Bank.'

The last words he heard not, or understood not.

'I shall get back everything!' The eyes of the Individualist lit up and his pale cheek glowed – old age has still some pleasures. 'It is not until one loses Property that one finds out how precious it has become. Elsie, you remember what I told you, a day or two ago. Ah! I don't forget quite everything – a man is not the shivering naked soul only, but the complete figure, equipped and clothed, armed and decorated, bearing with him his skill, his wit, his ingenuity, his learning, his past, and his present, his memories and his rejoicings, his sorrows and his trials, his successes and his failures, and his Property – yes – his Property. Take away from him any of these things, and he is mutilated: he is not the perfect soul. Why, you tell me that my Property is coming back – I awake again. I feel stronger already; the shadows are flying before me: even the terror of that strange forgetfulness recedes: and the haunting of Edmund Gray. I can bear all, if I get my Property back again. As for this forger – this miscreant – this criminal – you will hale him before the judge – '

'Yes – yes. We will see about the miscreant afterwards. The first thing is to find the man and recover your Property, and to dispel the suspicions resting on innocent persons. If I do the former, you must aid me in the latter.'

'Assuredly. I shall not shrink from that duty.'

'Very well. – Now tell me about yourself. Sometimes it does good to talk about our own troubles. Tell me more about these forgetful fits. Do they trouble you still?' Her eyes and her voice were soft and winning. One must be of granite to resist such a voice and such eyes.

'My dear' – Mr. Dering softened. 'You are good to interest yourself in an old man's ailments. It is Anno Domini that is the matter with me. The forgetful fits are only symptoms – and the disease is incurable. Ask the oak why the leaves are yellow. – It is the hand of winter. That is my complaint. First the hand of winter, then the hand of Death. Meantime, the voice of the grasshopper sings loud and shrill.' In presence of the simple things of age and death, even a hard old lawyer grows poetic.

'Tell me the symptoms, then. Do you still forget things?'

'Constantly. More and more. I forget everything.'

'Where were you yesterday evening, for instance?'

'I don't know. I cannot remember. I have left off even trying to remember. At one time I racked my brain for hours, to find out, and failed. Now I remember nothing. I never know when this forgetfulness may fall upon me. At any hour. – For instance – you ask me about yesterday evening. I ordered dinner at home. My housekeeper this morning reminded me that I did not get home last night till eleven. Where was I? Where did I spend the evening?'

'At the Club?'

'No – I took a cab this morning and drove there under pretence of asking for letters. I asked if I was there last night. The hall porter stared. But I was not there. I thought that I might have fallen asleep there. I have done so before. Checkley tells me that I went away before him. Where was I? – Child!' – he leaned forward and whispered, with white cheeks – 'I have read of men going about with disordered brains doing what they afterwards forget. Am I one of these unfortunates? Do I go about with my wits wandering? Oh! horrible! I picture to myself an old man – such as myself – of unblemished reputation and blameless life – wandering about the streets demented – without conscience – without dignity – without self-respect – committing follies – things disgraceful – even things which bring men before the law – ' He shuddered. He turned pale.

'No – no,' murmured Elsie. 'You could not. You could never – '

'Such things are on record. They have happened. They may happen again. I have read of such cases. There was a man once – he was like myself – a Solicitor – who would go out and do things, not knowing what he did. They found him out at last doing something so incredibly foolish that there was but one explanation. In another man and a younger man it would have been worse than foolish, it would have been criminal. Then they gave him a companion, and he discovered what he had done. The shame and the shock of it killed him. I have thought of that man of late. Good Heavens! Think, if you can, of any worse disaster. Let me die – let me die, I say, rather than suffer such a fate – such an affliction. I see myself brought before the magistrate – me – myself – at my age, charged with this and with that. What defence? None, save that I did not remember.'

'That could never be,' said Elsie confidently, because she knew the facts. 'If such a thing were to befall, your character would never be changed. You might talk and think differently, but you could never be otherwise than a good man. You to haunt low company? Oh! you could not even in a waking dream. People who dream, I am sure, always remain themselves, however strangely they may act. How could you – you – after such a life as yours, become a haunter of low company? One might perhaps suppose that Athelstan had been living among profligates because he is young and untried – but you? – you? Oh! no. If you had these waking dreams – perhaps you have them – you would become – you would become – I really think you would become' – she watched his face – 'such – such a man as – as – Mr. Edmund Gray, who is so like yourself, and yet so different.'

He started. 'Edmund Gray again? Good Heavens! It is always Edmund Gray!'

'He is now a friend of mine. I have only known him for a week or two. He does not think quite as you do. But he is a good man. Since, in dreams, we do strange things, you might act and speak and think as Edmund Gray.'

'I speak and think as – But – am I dreaming? Am I forgetting again? Am I awake? Edmund Gray is the man whom we want to find.'

'I have found him,' said Elsie quietly.

'The forger – if he is the forger – '

'No – no. Do not make more mistakes. You shall have the truth in a day or two. Would you like to see Edmund Gray? Will you come with me to his Chambers? Whenever you call, you – you, I say – will find him at home.'

'No – no. I know his doctrines – futile doctrines – mischievous doctrines. I do not wish to meet him. What do you mean by mistakes? There are the letters – there are the forgeries. Are there two Edmund Grays?'

'No – only one. He is the man they cannot find. I will show you, if you like, what manner of man he is.'

'No. I do not want to see a Socialist. I should insult him. – You are mysterious, Elsie. You know this man, this mischievous doctrinaire – this leveller – this spoliator. You tell me that he is a good man – you want me to see him. What, I ask, do these things mean?'

'They mean many things, my dear guardian. Chiefly they mean that you shall get back your Property, and that suspicion shall be removed from innocent persons – and all this, I hope, before next Wednesday, when I am to be married. We must all be happy on my wedding day.'

'Will – will Mr. Edmund Gray be there as well?'

'He has promised. – And now, my dear guardian, if you will come round to Gray's Inn with me, I will show you the Chambers of Mr. Edmund Gray.'

'No – no. Thank you, Elsie – I do not wish to make the personal acquaintance of a Socialist.'

'He has Chambers on the second floor. The principal room is large and well furnished. It is a wainscoted room with two windows looking on the Square. It is not a very pretty Square, because they have not made a garden or laid down grass in the middle – and the houses are rather dingy. He sits there in the evening. He writes and meditates. Sometimes he teaches me, but that is a new thing. In the morning he is sometimes there between nine o'clock and twelve. He has an old laundress, who pretends to keep his rooms clean.'

She murmured these words softly, thinking to turn his memory back and make him understand what had happened.

'They are pleasant rooms, are they not?' He made no reply – his eyes betrayed trouble. She thought it was the trouble of struggling memory. – 'He sits here alone and works. He thinks he is working for the advancement of the world. There is no one so good, I think, as Edmund Gray.'

He suddenly pushed back the chair and sprang to his feet.

'My Scholar! You speak of me?'

It was so sudden that Elsie cried out and fell backwards in her chair. She had brought on the thing by her own words, by conjuring up a vision of the Chambers. But – the trouble was not the struggle of the memory getting hold of evasive facts.

'Why, child,' he remonstrated, 'you look pale. Is it the heat? Come, it is cooler outside. Let us go to the Chambers in Gray's Inn. This old fellow – this Dering – here he sits all day long. It is Tom Tiddler's ground. It is paved with gold, which he picks up. The place – let us whisper – because he must be in the outer office – it reeks of Property – reeks of Property.'

He took his hat and gloves. 'My Scholar, let us go.' By force of habit, he shut and locked the safe and dropped the bunch of keys in his pocket.

CHAPTER XXVIII

ATHELSTAN'S DISCOVERY

On the evening of that same day the same discovery was made by another of the persons chiefly concerned.

You have seen that Athelstan on his return made haste to find out the commissionaire who had presented the forged cheque. Happily, the man remembered not only the circumstance itself but also his employer on that occasion. A generosity far above what is commonly found among those who employ the services of that corps endeared and preserved the memory of the day. He had received, in fact, half a sovereign for an eighteenpenny job; and the commissionaire is not like the cabby, to whom such windfalls are common. Not at all. With the former we observe the letter of the law.

After eight years this man's memory was rewarded. This thrice blessed job produced yet more golden fruit. Heard one ever of a more prolific job?

After breakfast, Athelstan was informed that a commissionaire desired to speak with him. It was his one-armed friend.

'Beg your pardon, sir,' he said, saluting after the military manner – 'you said I was to come and tell you, first thing, if I found your man for you.'

'Certainly. I told you also that I would give you a five-pound reward for finding my man, as you call him. Well – I will be as good as my word if you have found him.'

'I saw him yesterday. The very same old gentleman that sent me to the Bank that day. He's older, and he doesn't look so jolly, and he walks slower; but I knew him at once.'

'Oh! are you quite sure? Because a resemblance, you know – '

'Well, sir, I can swear to him. I remember him as well as I remember anybody. He sat in the chair, and he laughed, and he said: "You've been quick over the job, my man. There's something extra, because you might have dropped the money down a grating, or run away with it, or something," he says. "Here's half a sovereign for you, my man," says he; "and I daresay you can do with it." "I can so, sir," I says, "and with as many more like them as I can pick up." Then he laughed, and I laughed, and we both laughed. – And that's the same man that I saw yesterday evening.'

'Oh! this is very curious. Are you quite sure?'

'I'd swear to him anywhere. A man can't say fairer.'

'No – as you say – a man can hardly say fairer, can he? Now, then, when did you see him?'

'It was between six and seven. I'd been doing a message for a gentleman in the Strand – a gentleman in the dining-room line to a gentleman in Holborn in the sausage and tripe line – and I was going back with a letter, and going through Lincoln's Inn for a short cut. Just as I was getting near the gate to the Fields, I saw coming out of the door at No. 12 the very man you want to find. I wasn't thinking about him, not a bit – I was thinking of nothing at all, when he come out of the door and walked down the steps. Then I knew him. Lord! I knew him at once. "You're the man," I says to myself, "as give me the half-sov. instead of eighteenpence." Well, I stood at the corner and waited to see if he would remember me. Not a bit of it. He stared at me hard, but he never recollected me a bit – I could see that. Why should he? Nobody remembers the servant any more than they remember the private in the ranks. The very same old gentleman; but he's grown older, and he didn't look jolly any more. P'raps he's lost his money.'

'Came out of No. 12, did he? Why, Dering & Son's office is there. What does this mean?'

'I thought I'd like to find out something more about him; and I thought that a five-pound note was better worth looking after than eighteenpence – so I let the letter from the tripe and sausage man lay a bit, and I followed my old gentleman at a good distance.'

'Oh! you followed him. Very good. Did you find out where he lived? I can tell you that. He went to No. 22 South Square, Gray's Inn.'

'No; he didn't, sir. – But you are not very far wrong. He went through Great Turnstile; then he crossed Holborn and turned into Featherstone Buildings, which is all lodging-houses. But he doesn't live there. He walked through the Buildings, and so into Bedford Row, and he stopped at a house there – '

'What! In Bedford Row?'

'Yes; in Bedford Row – and he pulls out a latch-key and lets himself in. That's where he lives. No. 49 Bedford Row, on the west side, very near the bottom. He lives in Bedford Row. – Well, sir, I like to do things proper, and so, to make the job complete, I went to the Salutation, Holborn, where they keep a Directory, and I looked out his name. The gentleman that lives at No. 49 Bedford Row is named Edward Dering – and among the names of No. 12 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, is the name of Dering & Son. – So, sir, I don't think it is too much to say that your man is Mr. Dering, who belongs both to Bedford Row and Lincoln's Inn. He's the man who sent me to the Bank eight years ago.'

Athelstan stared at him. 'He the man?' he cried. 'You are talking impossibilities. He can't be the man.'

'Nobody else, sir. If that was Mr. Dering that I saw yesterday walking home from New Square to Bedford Row – he's the man who sent me for the money.'

To this statement the man stuck firm. Nor could he be moved by any assertion that his position was impossible. 'For, my friend,' said Athelstan, 'the man who sent you with the cheque was the man who robbed Mr. Dering.'

'Can't help that, sir. If the gentleman I saw yesterday walking from Lincoln's Inn to Bedford Row was Mr. Dering – then he robbed hisself.'

'That's foolishness. Oh! there must be some explanation. Look here! Mr. Edward Dering leaves his office every evening between six and seven. I will be in New Square on the west side this evening at six. You be there, as well. Try not to seem as if you were watching for anybody. Stand about at your ease.'

'I'll make it sentry-go, sir,' said the old soldier. 'I'll walk up and down in front of the door same as some of our chaps got to do in front of shops. You trust me, sir, and I won't take no notice of you.'

This little plot, in fact, was faithfully carried out. At six o'clock Athelstan began to walk up and down outside the gate which opens upon Lincoln's Inn Fields – the commissionaire at the same time was doing sentry-go in front of No. 12 in New Square. When the clock struck six there was a rush and a tramp of hurrying feet; these were the clerks set free for the day. There are not many solicitors' offices in New Square, and these once gone, the place becomes perfectly quiet. At half-past six there was the footfall as of one man on the stairs, and he descended slowly. He came out of the door presently, an old bent figure with white hair and shrivelled face. Paying no heed to the sentry, he walked away with feeble step in the direction of Chancery Lane. Checkley this was, on his way to look after his tenants and his property.

Athelstan looked after him, through the gate. Then he called his old soldier. 'See that man?' he asked. 'That's the man who sent you to the Bank.'

'No – he isn't.' The man was stout on that point. 'Not a bit like him. That old man's a servant, not a gentleman. See the way he holds his hands. Never a gentleman yet carried his hands that way. You can always tell 'em by their hands. The other day I met an old pal – seemed to forget me, he did. Wanted to make out that he'd never been in the army at all. So I lay by for a bit. Then I gets up – and he gets up too. "'Tention," says I, and he stood to 'tention like a good old Tommy Atkins. You watch their hands whatever they say. Always tell 'em by their hands. That old man he's a servant. He isn't a gentleman. He can't sit among the swells and order about the waiters. He hasn't learned that way. He'd get up himself, if you asked him, and put the napkin under his arm and bring you a glass of sherry wine. He's not my man. You wait a bit.'