The Disentanglers

‘Have you anything in the way of terms to propose?’ asked the doctor, filling his pipe.

‘Well, first, absolute secrecy. I alone know the state of the case.’

‘Has Mr. Logan no guess?’

‘Not the faintest suspicion. The detectives, when I left Kirkburn, had not even found the trap door, you understand. You hit on its discovery through knowing the priest’s hole at Oxburgh Hall, I suppose?’

The doctor nodded.

‘You can guarantee absolute secrecy?’ he asked.

‘Naturally, the knowledge is confined to me, you, and your partners. I want the secrecy in Mr. Logan’s interests, and you know why.’

‘Well,’ said the doctor, ‘that is point one. So far I am with you.’

‘Then, to enter on odious details,’ said Merton, ‘had you thought of any terms?’

‘The old man was stiff,’ said the doctor, ‘and your side only offered to double him in your advertisement, you know.’

‘That was merely a way of speaking,’ said Merton. ‘What did the marquis propose?’

‘Well, as his offer is not a basis of negotiation?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Merton.

‘Five hundred he offered, out of which we were to pay his fare back to Scotland.’

Both men laughed.

‘But you have your own ideas?’ said Merton.

‘I had thought of 15,000l. and leaving England. He is a multimillionaire, the marquis.’

‘It is rather a pull,’ said Merton. ‘Now speaking as a professional man, and on honour, how is his lordship?’ Merton asked.

‘Speaking as a professional man, he may live a year; he cannot live eighteen months, I stake my reputation on that.’

Merton mused.

‘I’ll tell you what we can do,’ he said. ‘We can guarantee the interest, at a fancy rate, say five per cent, during the marquis’s life, which you reckon as good for a year and a half, at most. The lump sum we can pay on his decease.’

The doctor mused in his turn.

‘I don’t like it. He may alter his will, and then – where do I come in?’

‘Of course that is an objection,’ said Merton. ‘But where do you come in if you refuse? Logan, I can assure you (I have read up the Scots law since I came to town), is the heir if the marquis dies intestate. Suppose that I do not leave this house in a few minutes, Logan won’t bargain with you; we settled that; and really you will have taken a great deal of trouble to your own considerable risk. You see the usual document, my statement, is lodged with a friend.’

‘There is certainly a good deal in what you say,’ remarked the doctor.

‘Then, to take a more cheerful view,’ said Merton, ‘I have medical authority for stating that any will made now, or later, by the marquis, would probably be upset, on the ground of mental unsoundness, you know. So Logan would succeed, in spite of a later will.’

The doctor smiled. ‘That point I grant. Well, one must chance something. I accept your proposals. You will give me a written agreement, signed by Mr. Logan, for the arrangement.’

‘Yes, I have power to act.’

‘Then, Mr. Merton, why in the world did you not let your friend walk in Burlington Arcade, and see the lady? He would have been met with the same terms, and could have proposed the same modifications.’

‘Well, Dr. Melville, first, I was afraid that he might accidentally discover the real state of the case, as I surmised that it existed – that might have led to family inconveniences, you know.’

‘Yes,’ the doctor admitted, ‘I have felt that. My poor daughter, a good girl, sir! It wrung my heartstrings, I assure you.’

‘I have the warmest sympathy with you,’ said Merton, going on. ‘Well, in the second place, I was not sure that I could trust Mr. Logan, who has rather a warm temper, to conduct the negotiations. Thirdly, I fear I must confess that I did what I have done – well, “for human pleasure.”’

‘Ah, you are young,’ said the doctor, sighing.

‘Now,’ said Merton, ‘shall I sign a promise? We can call Dr. Fogarty up to witness it. By the bye, what about “value received”? Shall we say that we purchase your ethnological collection?’

The doctor grinned, and assented, the deed was written, signed, and witnessed by Dr. Fogarty, who hastily retreated.

‘Now about restoring the marquis,’ said Merton. ‘He’s here, of course; it was easy enough to get him into an asylum. Might I suggest a gag, if by chance you have such a thing about you? To be removed, of course, when once I get him into the house of a friend. And the usual bandage over his eyes: he must never know where he has been.’

‘You think of everything, Mr. Merton,’ said the doctor. ‘But, how are you to account for the marquis’s reappearance alive?’ he asked.

‘Oh that– easily! My first theory, which I fortunately mentioned to his medical attendant, Dr. Douglas, in the train, before I reached Kirkburn, was that he had recovered from catalepsy, and had secretly absconded, for the purpose of watching Mr. Logan’s conduct. We shall make him believe that this is the fact, and the old woman who watched him – ’

‘Plucky old woman,’ said the doctor.

‘Will swear to anything that he chooses to say.’

‘Well, that is your affair,’ said the doctor.

‘Now,’ said Merton, ‘give me a receipt for 750l.; we shall tell the marquis that we had to spring 250l. on his original offer.’

The doctor wrote out, stamped, and signed the receipt. ‘Perhaps I had better walk in front of you down stairs?’ he asked Merton.

‘Perhaps it really would be more hospitable,’ Merton acquiesced.

Merton was ushered again into Dr. Fogarty’s room on the ground floor. Presently the other doctor reappeared, leading a bent and much muffled up figure, who preserved total silence – for excellent reasons. The doctor handed to Merton a sealed envelope, obviously the marquis’s will. Merton looked closely into the face of the old marquis, whose eyes, dropping senile tears, showed no sign of recognition.

Dr. Fogarty next adjusted a silken bandage, over a wad of cotton wool, which he placed on the eyes of the prisoner.

Merton then took farewell of Dr. Melville (alias Markham); he and Dr. Fogarty supported the tottering steps of Lord Restalrig, and they led him to the gate.

‘Tell the porter to call my brougham,’ said Merton to Dr. Fogarty.

The brougham was called and came to the gate, evading a coal-cart which was about to enter the lane. Merton aided the marquis to enter, and said ‘Home.’ A few rough fellows, who were loitering in the lane, looked curiously on. In half an hour the marquis, his gag and the bandage round his eyes removed, was sitting in Trevor’s smoking-room, attended to by Miss Trevor.

It is probably needless to describe the simple and obvious process (rather like that of the Man, the Goose, and the Fox) by which Mrs. Lumley, with her portmanteau, left Trevor’s house that evening to pay another visit, while Merton himself arrived, in evening dress, to dinner at a quarter past eight. He had telegraphed to Logan: ‘Entirely successful. Come up by the 11.30 to-night, and bring Mrs. Bower.’

The marquis did not appear at dinner. He was in bed, and, thanks to a sleeping potion, slumbered soundly. He awoke about nine in the morning to find Mrs. Bower by his bedside.

‘Eh, marquis, finely we have jinked them,’ said Mrs. Bower; and she went on to recount the ingenious measures by which the marquis, recovering from his ‘dwawm,’ had secretly withdrawn himself.

‘I mind nothing of it, Jeanie, my woman,’ said the marquis. ‘I thought I wakened with some deevil running a knife into me; he might have gone further, and I might have fared worse. He asked for money, but, faith, we niffered long and came to no bargain. And a woman brought me away. Who was the woman?’

‘Oh, dreams,’ said Mrs. Bower. ‘Ye had another sair fit o’ the dwawming, and we brought you here to see the London doctors. Hoo could ony mortal speerit ye away, let be it was the fairies, and me watching you a’ the time! A fine gliff ye gie’d me when ye sat up and askit for sma’ yill’ (small beer).

‘I mind nothing of it,’ replied the marquis. However, Mrs. Bower stuck to her guns, and the marquis was, or appeared to be, resigned to accept her explanation. He dozed throughout the day, but next day he asked for Merton. Their interview was satisfactory; Merton begged leave to introduce Logan, and the marquis, quite broken down, received his kinsman with tears, and said nothing about his marriage.

‘I’m a dying man,’ he remarked finally, ‘but I’ll live long enough to chouse the taxes.’

His sole idea was to hand over (in the old Scottish fashion) the main part of his property to Logan, inter vivos, and then to live long enough to evade the death-duties. Merton and Logan knew well enough the unsoundness of any such proceedings, especially considering the mental debility of the old gentleman. However, the papers were made out. The marquis retired to one of his English seats, after which event his reappearance was made known to the world. In his English home Logan sedulously nursed him. A more generous diet than he had ever known before did wonders for the marquis, though he peevishly remonstrated against every bottle of wine that was uncorked. He did live for the span which he deemed necessary for his patriotic purpose, and peacefully expired, his last words being ‘Nae grand funeral.’

Public curiosity, of course, was keenly excited about the mysterious reappearance of the marquis in life. But the interviewers could extract nothing from Mrs. Bower, and Logan declined to be interviewed. To paragraphists the mystery of the marquis was ‘a two months’ feast,’ like the case of Elizabeth Canning, long ago.

Logan inherited under the marquis’s original will, and, of course, the Exchequer benefitted in the way which Lord Restalrig had tried to frustrate.

Miss Markham (whose father is now the distinguished head of the ethnological department in an American museum) did not persist in her determination never to see Logan again. The beautiful Lady Fastcastle never allows her photograph to appear in the illustrated weekly papers. Logan, or rather Fastcastle, does not unto this day, know the secret of the Emu’s feathers, though, later, he sorely tried the secretiveness of Merton, as shall be shown in the following narrative.

XII. ADVENTURE OF THE CANADIAN HEIRESS

I. At Castle Skrae

‘How vain a thing is wealth,’ said Merton. ‘How little it can give of what we really desire, while of all that is lost and longed for it can restore nothing – except churches – and to do that ought to be made a capital offence.’

‘Why do you contemplate life as a whole, Mr. Merton? Why are you so moral? If you think it is amusing you are very much mistaken! Isn’t the scenery, isn’t the weather, beautiful enough for you? I could gaze for ever at the “unquiet bright Atlantic plain,” the rocky isles, those cliffs of basalt on either hand, while I listened to the crystal stream that slips into the sea, and waves the yellow fringes of the seaweed. Don’t be melancholy, or I go back to the castle. Try another line!’

‘Ah, I doubt that I shall never wet one here,’ said Merton.

‘As to the crystal stream, what business has it to be crystal? That is just what I complain of. Salmon and sea-trout are waiting out there in the bay and they can’t come up! Not a drop of rain to call rain for the last three weeks. That is what I meant by moralising about wealth. You can buy half a county, if you have the money; you can take half a dozen rivers, but all the millions of our host cannot purchase us a spate, and without a spate you might as well break the law by fishing in the Round Pond as in the river.’

‘Luckily for me Alured does not much care for fishing,’ said Lady Bude, who was Merton’s companion. The Countess had abandoned, much to her lord’s regret, the coloured and figurative language of her maiden days, the American slang. Now (as may have been observed) her style was of that polished character which can only be heard to perfection in circles socially elevated and intellectually cultured – ‘in that Garden of the Souls’ – to quote Tennyson.

The spot where Merton and Lady Bude were seated was beautiful indeed. They reclined on the short sea grass above a shore where long tresses of saffron-hued seaweed clothed the boulders, and the bright sea pinks blossomed. On their right the Skrae, now clearer than amber, mingled its waters with the sea loch. On their left was a steep bank clad with bracken, climbing up to perpendicular cliffs of basalt. These ended abruptly above the valley and the cove, and permitted a view of the Atlantic, in which, far away, the isle of the Lewis lay like a golden shield in the faint haze of the early sunset. On the other side of the sea loch, whose restless waters ever rushed in or out like a rapid river, with the change of tides, was a small village of white thatched cottages, the homes of fishermen and crofters. The neat crofts lay behind, in oblong strips, on the side of the hill. Such was the scene of a character common on the remote west coast of Sutherland.

‘Alured is no maniac for fishing, luckily,’ Lady Bude was saying. ‘To-day he is cat-hunting.’

‘I regret it,’ said Merton; ‘I profess myself the friend of cats.’

‘He is only trying to photograph a wild cat at home in the hills; they are very scarce.’

‘In fact he is Jones Harvey, the naturalist again, for the nonce, not the sportsman,’ said Merton.

‘It was as Jones Harvey that he – ’ said Lady Bude, and, blushing, stopped.

‘That he grasped the skirts of happy chance,’ said Merton.

‘Why don’t you grasp the skirts, Mr. Merton?’ asked Lady Bude. ‘Chance, or rather Lady Fortune, who wears the skirts, would, I think, be happy to have them grasped.’

‘Whose skirts do you allude to?’

‘The skirts, short enough in the Highlands, of Miss Macrae,’ said Lady Bude; ‘she is a nice girl, and a pretty girl, and a clever girl, and, after all, there are worse things than millions.’

Miss Emmeline Macrae was the daughter of the host with whom the Budes and Merton were staying at Skrae Castle, on Loch Skrae, only an easy mile and a half from the sea and the cove beside which Merton and Lady Bude were sitting.

‘There is a seal crawling out on to the shore of the little island!’ said Merton. ‘What a brute a man must be who shoots a seal! I could watch them all day – on a day like this.’

‘That is not answering my question,’ said Lady Bude. ‘What do you think of Miss Macrae? I know what you think!’

‘Can a humble person like myself aspire to the daughter of the greatest living millionaire? Our host can do almost anything but bring a spate, and even that he could do by putting a dam with a sluice at the foot of Loch Skrae: a matter of a few thousands only. As for the lady, her heart it is another’s, it never can be mine.’

‘Whose it is?’ asked Lady Bude.

‘Is it not, or do my trained instincts deceive me, that of young Blake, the new poet? Is she not “the girl who gives to song what gold could never buy”? He is as handsome as a man has no business to be.’

‘He uses belladonna for his eyes,’ said Lady Bude. ‘I am sure of it.’

‘Well, she does not know, or does not mind, and they are pretty inseparable the last day or two.’

‘That is your own fault,’ said Lady Bude; ‘you banter the poet so cruelly. She pities him.’

‘I wonder that our host lets the fellow keep staying here,’ said Merton. ‘If Mr. Macrae has a foible, except that of the pedigree of the Macraes (who were here before the Macdonalds or Mackenzies, and have come back in his person), it is scientific inventions, electric lighting, and his new toy, the wireless telegraph box in the observatory. You can see the tower from here, and the pole with box on top. I don’t care for that kind of thing myself, but Macrae thinks it Paradise to get messages from the Central News and the Stock Exchange up here, fifty miles from a telegraph post. Well, yesterday Blake was sneering at the whole affair.’

‘What is this wireless machine? Explain it to me,’ said Lady Bude.

‘How can you be so cruel?’ asked Merton.

‘Why cruel?’

‘Oh, you know very well how your sex receives explanations. You have three ways of doing it.’

‘Explain them!’

‘Well, the first way is, if a man tries to explain what “per cent” means, or the difference of “odds on,” or “odds against,” that is, if they don’t gamble, they cast their hands desperately abroad, and cry, “Oh, don’t, I never can understand!” The second way is to sit and smile, and look intelligent, and think of their dressmaker, or their children, or their young man, and then to say, “Thank you, you have made it all so clear!”’

‘And the third way?’

‘The third way is for you to make it plain to the explainer that he does not understand what he is explaining.’

‘Well, try me; how does the wireless machine work?’

‘Then, to begin with a simple example in ordinary life, you know what telepathy is?’

‘Of course, but tell me.’

‘Suppose Jones is thinking of Smith, or rather of Smith’s sister. Jones is dying, or in a row, in India. Miss Smith is in Bayswater. She sees Jones in her drawing-room. The thought of Jones has struck a receiver of some sort in the brain, say, of Miss Smith. But Miss Smith may not see him, somebody else may, say her aunt, or the footman. That is because the aunt or the footman has the properly tuned receiver in her or his brain, and Miss Smith has not.’

‘I see, so far – but the machine?’

‘That is an electric apparatus charged with a message. The message is not conducted by wires, but is merely carried along on a new sort of waves, “Hertz waves,” I think, but that does not matter. They roam through space, these waves, and wherever they meet another machine of the same kind, a receiver, they communicate it.’

‘Then everybody who has such a machine as Mr. Macrae’s gets all Mr. Macrae’s messages for nothing?’ asked Lady Bude.

‘They would get them,’ said Merton. ‘But that is where the artfulness comes in. Two Italian magicians, or electricians, Messrs. Gianesi and Giambresi, have invented an improvement suggested by a dodge of the Indians on the Amazon River. They make machines which are only in tune with each other. Their machine fires off a message which no other machine can receive or tap except that of their customer, say Mr. Macrae. The other receivers all over the world don’t get it, they are not in tune. It is as if Jones could only appear as a wraith to Miss Smith, and vice versa.’

‘How is it done?’

‘Oh, don’t ask me! Besides, I fancy it is a trade secret, the tuning. There’s one good thing about it, you know how Highland landscape is spoiled by telegraph posts?’

‘Yes, everywhere there is always a telegraph post in the foreground.’

‘Well, Mr. Macrae had them when he was here first, but he has had them all cut down, bless him, since he got the new dodge. He was explaining it all to Blake and me, and Blake only scoffed, would not understand, showed he was bored.’

‘I think it delightful! What did Mr. Blake say?’

‘Oh, his usual stuff. Science is an expensive and inadequate substitute for poetry and the poetic gifts of the natural man, who is still extant in Ireland. He can flash his thoughts, and any trifles of news he may pick up, across oceans and continents, with no machinery at all. What is done in Khartoum is known the same day in Cairo.’

‘What did Mr. Macrae say?’

‘He asked why the Cairo people did not make fortunes on the Stock Exchange.’

‘And Mr. Blake?’

‘He looked a great deal, but he said nothing. Then, as I said, he showed that he was bored when Macrae exhibited to us the machine and tried to teach us how it worked, and the philosophy of it. Blake did not understand it, nor do I, really, but of course I displayed an intelligent interest. He didn’t display any. He said that the telegraph thing only brought us nearer to all that a child of nature – ’

‘He a child of nature, with his belladonna!’

‘To all that a child of nature wanted to forget. The machine emitted a serpent of tape, news of Surrey v. Yorkshire, and something about Kaffirs, and Macrae was enormously pleased, for such are the simple joys of the millionaire, really a child of nature. Some of them keep automatic hydraulic organs and beastly machines that sing. Now Macrae is not a man of that sort, and he has only one motor up here, and only uses that for practical purposes to bring luggage and supplies, but the wireless thing is the apple of his eye. And Blake sneered.’

‘He is usually very civil indeed, almost grovelling, to the father,’ said Lady Bude. ‘But I tell you for your benefit, Mr. Merton, that he has no chance with the daughter. I know it for certain. He only amuses her. Now here, you are clever.’

Merton bowed.

‘Clever, or you would not have diverted me from my question with all that science. You are not ill looking.’

‘Spare my blushes,’ said Merton; adding, ‘Lady Bude, if you must be answered, you are clever enough to have found me out.’

‘That needed less acuteness than you suppose,’ said the lady.

‘I am very sorry to hear it,’ said Merton. ‘You know how utterly hopeless it is.’

‘There I don’t agree with you,’ said Lady Bude.

Merton blushed. ‘If you are right,’ he said, ‘then I have no business to be here. What am I in the eyes of a man like Mr. Macrae? An adventurer, that is what he would think me. I did think that I had done nothing, said nothing, looked nothing, but having the chance – well, I could not keep away from her. It is not honourable. I must go… I love her.’

Merton turned away and gazed at the sunset without seeing it.

Lady Bude put forth her hand and laid it on his. ‘Has this gone on long?’ she asked.

‘Rather an old story,’ said Merton. ‘I am a fool. That is the chief reason why I was praying for rain. She fishes, very keen on it. I would have been on the loch or the river with her. Blake does not fish, and hates getting wet.’

‘You might have more of her company, if you would not torment the poet so. The green-eyed monster, jealousy, is on your back.’

Merton groaned. ‘I bar the fellow, anyhow,’ he said. ‘But, in any case, now that I know you have found me out, I must be going. If only she were as poor as I am!’

‘You can’t go to-morrow, to-morrow is Sunday,’ said Lady Bude. ‘Oh, I am sorry for you. Can’t we think of something? Cannot you find an opening? Do something great! Get her upset on the loch, and save her from drowning! Mr. Macrae dotes on her; he would be grateful.’

‘Yes, I might take the pin out of the bottom of the boat,’ said Merton. ‘It is an idea! But she swims at least as well as I do. Besides – hardly sportsmanlike.’

Lady Bude tried to comfort him; it is the mission of young matrons. He must not be in such a hurry to go away. As to Mr. Blake, she could entirely reassure him. It was a beautiful evening, the lady was fair and friendly; Nature, fragrant of heather and of the sea, was hushed in a golden repose. The two talked long, and the glow of sunset was fading; the eyes of Lady Bude were a little moist, and Merton was feeling rather consoled when they rose and walked back towards Skrae Castle. It had been an ancient seat of the Macraes, a clan in relatively modern times, say 1745, rather wild, impoverished, and dirty; but Mr. Macrae, the great Canadian millionaire, had bought the old place, with many thousands of acres ‘where victual never grew.’

Though a landlord in the Highlands he was beloved, for he was the friend of crofters, as rent was no object to him, and he did not particularly care for sport. He accepted the argument, dear to the Celt, that salmon are ground game, and free to all, while the natives were allowed to use ancient flint-locked fusils on his black cocks. Mr. Macrae was a thoroughly generous man, and a tall, clean-shaved, graceful personage. His public gifts were large. He had just given 500,000l. to Oxford to endow chairs and students of Psychical Research, while the rest of the million was bestowed on Cambridge, to supply teaching in Elementary Logic. His way of life was comfortable, but simple, except where the comforts of science and modern improvements were concerned. There were lifts, or elevators, now in the castle of Skrae, though Blake always went by the old black corkscrew staircases, holding on by the guiding rope, after the poetical manner of our ancestors.