Dorothy's Double Volume Iii Part 12

'Not worse than might be expected, Jacob. I have spoken to her, told her who I am, and why I came here. Naturally enough, she is sore at present, and considers that I have been deceiving her, which is true enough. At first she denied nothing, but afterwards fired up, and for the present regards me as an enemy; but I believe it will all come right. She is angry now because it seems to her that I have been taking her in for my own purposes, but I think that when she thinks it over calmly she will do what I want.'

Just as Ned Hampton was thinking of turning in for the night a man came up to the fire. He recognised him at once as Murdoch, Truscott's partner in the saloon.

'I have come round to have a bit of a talk with you,' the man said, as he seated himself on a box near the fire. 'Linda has been telling me that you are the man I saw at New Orleans, and that you followed us here. She has also been telling me what you came for, and the girl is downright cut up about it. Up till now I have never known the rights of the job she and Warbles had done in England. She has not told me much about it now, only that she acted the part of another girl and got things in her name, and that the other girl has been suspected of it, and that you want to clear her. Now when I first saw her at New Orleans I took an oath I would do what I could for her, and would see that she was not wronged in any way. I have been watching her pretty close for some time. I could see she liked you. If you had pretended to be fond of her so as to wheedle her into doing what you wanted in this business, and had then chucked her over, I would have thought no more of shooting you than I would of putting my heel on a rattler's head; but I am bound to say that you haven't. I could see that whatever your game was, you were not trying to make her like you; and when I said something about it, when she was talking to me, she flared up and said that you had never been more than civil to her, and there was no thought of love between you.

'I don't think she quite spoke the truth on her side, but that was only natural. Anyhow, I don't feel any grudge against you, and it is only to make things best for her that I have come here. There is nothing hardly I would not do for her, and I want to make things as smooth as possible.

You behaved like a man in that affair with Wyoming Bill, and I guess as you are at the head of Judge Lynch's band, and I look upon you as a straight man, and I am not afraid of talking straight to you. It was I who set that n.i.g.g.e.r on you at New Orleans. I knew nothing about you except that you would have spoilt our plans, and might even get her arrested. Your life was nothing to me one way or another; I had got to stop you and I did it. I told the n.i.g.g.e.r to hit you so that you would be laid up for a time, but not to kill you; but when I did so I tell you I didn't care the turn of a straw whether he killed you or not. I have been thinking over for the last hour what I had best do, and I concluded to come to you and put it to you straight.

'Warbles is pretty nigh rubbed out; I doubt if he will get round; he takes a lot of liquor every night, and always has done, and that tells against a man's chances when he is hurt. You know well enough that you could do nothing against the girl here. If a sheriff came to arrest her the boys would pretty well tear him to pieces, but the chap that could travel as you have done, from England to the States, and then across to California, would certainly be ready to wait and bide his time, and sooner or later you would catch her.'

'I have no wish to catch her,' Ned Hampton said. 'I have told her so. I believe that she has been deceived throughout by this man Warbles, who is, I know, a very bad lot. I have a strong admiration for her; in person she marvellously resembles a lady to whom I am much attached, and the manner in which she behaves here and remains untouched by the admiration she excites is admirable, and I am convinced that she acted in England solely under Warbles' influence and without any knowledge or thought of the harm she was doing. I am anxious--most anxious--to obtain a written confession from her that would clear the reputation of the lady she impersonated, but if she will not make that confession I shall certainly take no steps whatever against her or put the law in motion to bring about her arrest.'

'That is well spoken, sir, and if I can help you I will. If Warbles dies I shall do my best to be a father to the girl until the time comes when she will choose a husband for herself. I have been a pretty bad man in my time, and in most things she could hardly have a worse guardian, but at any rate I will watch over and keep her from harm, and would shoot down any man who insulted her as I would a dog. That is all I have got to say now. I hope you don't bear any ill will for that job at New Orleans, but I will tell you fairly, I would have done it again here had I thought you were coming to try to win her heart just for your purposes, or you had been scheming to get her arrested and sent to England to be punished.'

'I have got over the affair at New Orleans,' Ned said, 'and feel no malice about it now; and had I done so, the feeling would have been wiped out by the sentiments you express towards Linda. I don't know her real name.'

'Nor do I,' Murdoch said, 'beyond the fact that at first Warbles often called her Sally, I don't know who she is or where he got her from. I know he had her educated, because one day when she was angry she said that she felt no grat.i.tude to him for that, for he had only had her taught for his own purposes. At present he is too bad to talk, but if he gets a bit better I shall try and get the whole story out of him, and if I do you shall have it. As to Linda, she feels pretty bad at present.

She has taken a liking to you, you see, and she feels sore about it, but I expect in time she will come round. It depends a great deal on whether Warbles gets well again. She doesn't like him, and she fights with him often enough, but when it is something he's downright set on she always gives way at last. I think she has got an idea that she is bound to do it. I guess it was a sort of agreement when he had her educated that she would work with him and do whatever he bid her. If it had not been for that I believe she would have thrown it up at New Orleans, and for aught I know long before that. If he gets well again she will do as he tells her in this affair of yours. If he dies, you may take it from me that she will own up as you want her to do. You don't mean to hurt her, and I don't think there is any one in England she could go back to, so there can't be any reason why she should not make things straight. Well, I will let you know if there is any change. I shall see you over there, no doubt. She won't be going into the bar, so you can drop in when you like. You are sure to find me there. There is no one else to see about things.'

For the next few days it was understood in the camp that the boss of the Eldorado was likely to get round. It was reported that he was conscious, and was able to talk freely. Indeed, the doctor said it would be much better that he should not talk as much as he did. The doctor had been one of the ten men who had helped to clear out the camp. When not professionally employed he worked at a claim some distance from that of Ned Hampton's party, and as he and his partners messed together instead of taking their meals at either of the saloons Ned seldom saw him. A week after his interview with Murdoch he happened to meet him.

'How is your patient really going on, Ryan?'

The latter shook his head. 'I think he is going downhill fast. He will talk. We have tried opiates as strong as we dare give him, but they don't seem to have any effect, which is often the case with steady drinkers. He has not been a drunkard, I believe, but he has been in the habit of taking a lot of liquor regularly. He scarcely sleeps at all.

That girl nurses him with wonderful patience, but she is breaking down under the strain. She wasn't in his tent this morning, and it is the first time that she has been away. When I called the other man, Murdoch, seemed a good deal put out. I don't know what about, and when I told him outside the tent that the other was worrying himself and was a good deal weaker than he was two days ago, he muttered, "The infernal skunk, it is a pity he didn't go down twenty years ago." So I suppose there has been some row between them.'

'He was a bad lot, Ryan; I know something of his past history, and believe that he was a thorough scoundrel.'

'Is that so? I never saw much of him. I don't throw away my money at the bars; my object is to make as much money as will buy me a snug practice in the old country.'

'Quite right, Ryan; it's a pity that more do not have some such object in view, and so lay by their earnings instead of throwing them away in those saloons or in the gambling h.e.l.ls of Sacramento.'

CHAPTER XXIII

The next day it was known in camp that the wounded man was sinking.

There was a general feeling of pity for the girl who was believed to be his daughter, but none for the man himself, owing to his having been detected cheating--one of the deepest of crimes in a community where all men gambled more or less.

The next morning it was known that he was dead. He was buried a few hours later. Had he died in good odour, the whole camp would have followed him to his grave; but not one would attend the funeral of a detected cheat, and Murdoch had to hire six men to carry the roughly-made coffin to a cleared spot among the pines that had been set apart as the graveyard of the camp. He himself followed, the only mourner, and those who saw the little procession pa.s.s through the camp remarked on Murdoch's stern and frowning face. When the body was consigned to the earth--without prayer or ceremony--Murdoch went down to where Ned was at work.

'Come round this evening,' he said; 'there is a lot to tell you.'

When he went into the saloon in the evening, Murdoch beckoned him into the inner room. Having closed the door, he placed a bottle, a jug of water, and two tumblers upon the table.

'Now,' he said, 'sit down. I have a long story and a bad one to tell you. As I said the other night, I am not a good man, Captain Hampton. I have been mixed up in all sorts of shady transactions on the turf at home, and if I had not made a bolt for it should have got seven years for n.o.bbling a horse. I was among a pretty bad lot at New Orleans, and many a sailor was hocussed and robbed at my place, and I pretty near caused your murder; and yet, I tell you, if I had known what a black-hearted villain that man Warbles--or, as he says his name really is, Truscott--was, I would have shot him rather than have taken his hand. First, will you tell me how much you know of him?'

Ned Hampton told what he knew of the man; of his disappointment at his not obtaining his father's position of steward at Mr. Hawtrey's, of the threats he had made, and how, as it seemed, he carried out those threats by first giving rise to the rumours that Miss Hawtrey was at the mercy of some one who held damaging letters of hers, and then by causing Linda to personate her in the commission of audacious thefts.

'You don't know half of it,' Murdoch said; 'he told it all to her and me, boasting of the vengeance he had taken. You were a boy of eight when Mr. Hawtrey's wife died--do you remember anything about it?'

'Very little,' Ned replied, after sitting for a minute or two--trying to recall the past. 'I remember there was a great talk about it. She died a week or two after Miss Hawtrey was born. I remember there was a shock, or a loss, or something of that sort, but I do not remember more than that. Oh, yes, I do; I remember there was another baby, and that somehow she and her nurse were drowned.'

'Yes, that was it. Truscott was at the bottom of it; he told us he had been watching for his chance. It seems that when the twins came the mother could not nurse them. Two women were obtained as foster mothers; Truscott got hold of one of them. I believe from what he said she had belonged to the place, but had been away in London and had only returned a month or two, and had had a baby which had died a day or two before Mrs. Hawtrey's were born, and although she had no character they were glad enough to secure her services in the emergency. Truscott, as I said, got hold of her and bribed her heavily to consent to carry out his orders. One evening she pretended to get drunk. She was of course discharged, but being apparently too drunk to be turned out on a wet and wild night, as it happened to be, she was put in a room upstairs and was to be sent away first thing in the morning.

'The two babies slept in cradles in their mother's room. In the morning the one she had nursed was gone and so was the woman. The latter's bonnet was found at the end of the garden which ran down to the Thames.

The supposition naturally was that she had awoke half-sobered in the morning, with sense enough to remember how she had disgraced herself, and had determined to drown herself and the child. The river was dragged; the woman's shawl was found caught in a bush dipping into the water, and a torn garment which was recognised as that in which the baby had been put to bed was fished out of the river miles down. The woman's body was never found, but the river was in flood and it might have been swept out to sea in a few hours. A little baby's body was cast ash.o.r.e below Kew. It could not be identified, but no doubts were entertained that it was the one they were in search of, and it was buried with Mrs.

Hawtrey, for whom the excitement and shock had been too much.'

Captain Hampton had listened with growing excitement to the story.

'Then the child was not drowned, and Linda is Dorothy's twin sister! I wonder that a suspicion of the truth never occurred to their father. Had I known all these circ.u.mstances you are telling me I am sure I should have suspected it. I was convinced by this scoundrel's manner, when he had an altercation with Mr. Hawtrey at Epsom and threatened him, that he had already done him some serious injury, though Mr. Hawtrey, when I spoke to him, declared he was not conscious that he had suffered in any way at his hands, unless two or three rick-burnings had been his work.

'Certainly, no thought that he could have had any hand in the catastrophe that caused the death of his wife had ever occurred to him.

Had I known that the body of the infant had never been really identified, or that of its nurse found, I should have suspected the truth as soon as I found that Truscott and Dorothy's double were acting together. What an infamous scoundrel, and what a life for the girl. But he never could have foreseen that the two sisters would grow up so alike.

'No. He told the poor girl what his intentions had been. The woman who stole her died when the child was four years old, and he then placed her with a woman whom he had known as a barmaid. She was not only given to drink, but was mixed up with thieves and coiners. His expectation was that the girl so placed would necessarily grow up a young thief, and go to the bad in every way; and the vengeance to which he had looked forward was that Mr. Hawtrey should at last be informed that this degraded creature was his daughter. He had the declaration of the woman who stole her signed by herself in presence of three witnesses. Of course it made no allusion to his agency in the affair, but described it as simply an act of revenge on her part. He intended to testify only to the fact that he had known this woman, and at her death had taken the child she had left behind her and placed it with another woman as an act of pure charity. Of course, the part he had played in the matter would have been suspected--indeed, he would have lost half his pleasure had it not been so--but there would have been no proof against him.'

'It is a horrible business,' Ned Hampton said; 'a fiendish business, and he had no real ground for any hostility against Mr. Hawtrey. He would have had the appointment his father had held had it not been for his own misconduct. His own father, on his deathbed, implored Mr. Hawtrey not to appoint his son, as he would certainly bring disgrace upon his name.'

'Truscott represented that he had been scandalously treated and his life ruined by Hawtrey. I have no doubt the matter really was as you say, but he had certainly persuaded himself that he was a terribly ill-used man, and spoke with exultation over the revenge he had taken. It was about four years ago that on his going to see the girl in the court in which he had placed her--'

'It was Piper's Court, at Chelsea.'

'Why, how on earth did you know that?'

'I have a lad with me who was brought up in that very court, and who recognised her as soon as he saw her here; in fact he had remarked on the likeness directly he saw a photograph of her sister.'

'Well, when Truscott noticed the likeness he saw that properly worked there was money to be made out of it, so he took her from the woman she had been with and put her with one who had been a governess, but who had come to grief somehow and was nearly starving. This woman was to educate her, but was to teach her nothing that could interfere with his plans for her. I mean nothing of religion or what was right or wrong, or anything of that sort. When he sent her to the woman, the girl had promised she would do whatever he wanted her to do if he would have her educated. So, when the time came, she was perfectly ready to carry out his scheme. She watched Miss Hawtrey come out from her house several times, noted the dress she wore, and had one made precisely similar in every respect, and, as you know, carried out her part perfectly.'

'Her hair is, as you see, rather darker than her sister's, but she faked it up to the right shade, and the make-up was so good that not only the shopmen but this Mr. Singleton, whom Truscott knew was her sister's G.o.dfather and a most intimate friend, was also taken in. I tell you, sir, if you had heard the devilish satisfaction with which that scoundrel went over this story again and again, you would have felt, as I did, a longing to throw yourself upon him and strangle him. I must tell you that Sally had no idea whatever that the girl she represented would be seriously suspected of having carried out these thefts. She knew nothing of Truscott's enmity to Hawtrey. He had told her only that he knew a young lady to whom she bore such a remarkable likeness that it would be easy to personate her. Sally herself had suggested that the girl might be suspected, but he had laughed at the idea and said she could have no difficulty whatever in showing where she was at the time that Sally called at the jeweller's and Singleton's. Sally herself is fond, as is natural enough in a girl as good-looking as she is, of handsome clothes, and that visit to the shop where she laid in a stock of fine clothes was, she admits, her own suggestion. She has kept her room since Truscott's death. She did not say a word as he was telling her his story, but she went as white as death, and got up with a sort of sob when he finished and went out of the tent without saying a word, and has not come out of her room since.

'I saw her after his death this morning, and it cut me to the heart. She was sitting on her bed, and I think she had been sitting there ever since she went into her room, twenty-four hours before. She talked it over with me in a strange hopeless sort of voice, as if the girl who had been brought up in that court in Chelsea had been somebody else. I brought her in some tea with some brandy in it, and made her drink it; and she took it just like a little child might. This afternoon I saw the doctor and told him what sort of a state she was in, and he gave me a sleeping mixture which I got her to take, and I peeped in just now and saw that she was lying asleep on her bed, and I hope she will be better to-morrow. It has been an awful shock for her.'

'Terrible,' Ned Hampton agreed. 'I could hardly imagine a more dreadful story for a woman to hear. She is indeed deeply to be pitied. What are you thinking of doing?'

'I am not thinking anything about it yet. I suppose she will go back to England. As for me, I expect I shall carry on this place. We have been doing first-rate since we came here three months ago. Of course it won't be the same when she has gone. We three were equal partners in it, but I am sure we shall have no trouble in arranging about that. I don't know what I shall do without her; you will hardly believe me, but the eight or nine months we have been together I have got to love that girl just as if she had been my daughter. You see I always doubted that Truscott meant fair by her. Of course, he would have used her as long as she was useful to him, but he would have thrown her off in a minute if it had suited him. She knew I meant fair by her, and when we happened to be alone together she talked to me quite different to what she did to him.

It seemed to me that with him she always had in her mind that it was a bargain which she was carrying out. She regarded him as her master in a sort of way, but I do really think she looked on me as a friend. She would not have stayed with us long. At New Orleans she got a partners.h.i.+p deed drawn out. She would not move without it, and one of the conditions she insisted on was that she could leave us when she liked, and if Truscott had pressed her to do anything, such as marry a man she did not fancy, or anything of that sort, she would have chucked it up at once.

But she has got lots of spirit and pluck, and though, of course, she is awfully cut up at present, she will get over it before long, and she particularly begged you would not write to England about all this till she has seen you.'

'That I certainly will not do. I don't know that I shall write at all.

My idea at present is that it will be better for me to take her home, and then to tell them the story gradually before introducing her to them. I intended going down to San Francisco and taking pa.s.sage direct to India, but I must give up that idea now. It is clear that she cannot go by herself, and that I must hand her over to her father.'

It was not until four days later that Ned heard from Murdoch that Linda, as they still called her, would see him next morning. On going in he was struck with the change that a week had made. She was paler and thinner, there were dark circles round her eyes and a certain air of timidity had taken the place of the somewhat hard expression of self-reliance that had before characterised her.

'You have heard all the story, Captain Hampton,' she said, 'and I don't know that there would be any use going over it again. I have written out a confession of the part I played under the direction of that man, and I will sign it in the presence of a magistrate and anyone else you like. I thank you for the kindness and consideration that you have shown for me, and hope--I do hope with all my heart--that when you go back you will get the reward for the sacrifices you have made for Miss Hawtrey. I don't think that there is anything else to say.'