A Butterfly on the Wheel Part 33

They looked around them. Both of them were absolutely at sea in this part of London.

"Tell you what," Ellerdine said suddenly: "I have got another idea.

Let's go to an A.B.C.--what?"

"What do you mean?" Adams replied.

"Why," Lord Ellerdine answered, "the A.B.C. you know, where clerks and people have tea. There are always lots of them in every street, I believe."

They turned eastwards and began to walk slowly down Fleet Street.

"Ellerdine," Colonel Adams exclaimed bitterly, "look at this!"

The pavements were lined with news-venders displaying great contents bills of the evening papers:

"MRS. ADMASTON ON THE RACk"; "SOCIETY LADY'S ADMISSIONS"; and in a violently Radical sheet, "SOCIETY b.u.t.tERFLY EXAMINED."

Lord Ellerdine saw the placards also. "Sickening, isn't it?" he said, with a real note of pain in his voice. "Poor little Peggy! Poor little girl! I would have done anything to stop it, Adams; and in half an hour--these newspaper fellows are so d.a.m.ned clever--in half an hour there'll be all about the last scene, the letter and all that. By the time we get back to town"--Lord Ellerdine didn't imagine that he was really in London at the moment,--"by the time we get back to town it will be in all the clubs just as it has come over the tape machines for the last two hours, only with further details--how Peggy looked and all that. Sickening!"

Colonel Adams agreed. He did not in the least know what his rather fatuous friend was about to propose or had in his mind; but he was, at anyrate, glad of his companions.h.i.+p, weary and unhappy as he felt at the terrible spectacle which he had found almost impossible to endure.

"I could kill that man Robert Fyffe," he said savagely as they walked slowly eastwards. "Great, big, d.a.m.ned bully, I call him."

"Well, I know him," Ellerdine replied; "and really, Adams, he is quite a decent chap in private life. It is his job, you know, and he has got to do it as well as he can. I believe he gets about a hundred a day or more for a case like this."

"Filthy cruelty, I call it," Adams answered, "whether he is a decent chap or not. To be paid--to earn your living, by Gad!--to torture men and women like that seems to me a low way of earning your bread-and-b.u.t.ter."

"Perhaps it is," the other replied. "At the same time, Adams, it might be said of your job too. That Afghan business, when there was no quarter, that you were in: there were a whole lot of sentimentalists in the Radical press that howled and held you up to execration as a sort of Pontius Pilate with a flavour of Nero, at home. You were out there doing the work. I was home and read the papers--you didn't. Bally monster, they called you--what?"

"d.a.m.n all newspaper writers!" the old white-haired colonel growled. "But I say, Ellerdine, what about this cup of tea?"

Lord Ellerdine looked round anxiously, and then his face lighted up.

"Here's an A.B.C.," he said, pointing to some adjacent windows covered with letters in white enamel and displaying buns and pastry.

"How will this do, old chap?"

The soldier nodded, and together the two men entered the shop.

"What do we do now?" Ellerdine said, looking round him with some perplexity. "By Jove! there's a pretty girl."

One of the waitresses, realising suddenly that the two gentlemen who had just entered were quite unaccustomed to the ways of the establishment, and having one of her tables vacant, hurried up to them.

"Tea?" she said engagingly.

"That's just it, my dear," said Lord Ellerdine, with a pleased smile.

"Now, you show us all the ropes, will you?"

"Come this way," said the pretty waitress, with an engaging little toss of her head and a consciousness of something pleasantly unusual. She led them to a little round-topped marble table where two cheap cane chairs were waiting, upon which Lord Ellerdine and Colonel Adams seated themselves.

"Tea, I think you said?" said the waitress to Lord Ellerdine, whom she obviously found the most sympathetic of the pair.

The ex-diplomatist nodded. "But we must have something to eat--what?

Well, my dear, we will leave it to you. _Carte blanche_--what?"

"Now look here, Adams," Lord Ellerdine said, "what I want to tell you is this. Of course, I am tremendously interested in this case. I am mixed up in it considerably, and also I am a great friend of Peggy's--one of her oldest friends. You know her too, though not as well as I do, and you know what a charming little woman she is. I would do anything to save her if I could, and I have got an idea! Now, some time ago," Lord Ellerdine continued, "a silly Johnny--a secretary it was--forged my name. It was on a cheque. There was considerable difficulty in finding out who was the actual culprit, as owing to the circ.u.mstances there were several people who might have done it. My solicitors told me that the only way to really find out was to go to a handwriting expert. I didn't know what that was until they explained, but it seems there are Johnnies who make a regular profession of studying people's writing."

"Are there, by Jove!" said the colonel, much interested.

"Yes; and just at that time--it was some two years ago--the king and skipper of the whole lot had come over from America and established a branch in London. His name is William Q. Devereux."

"Is it, by Jove!" said the colonel again.

Ellerdine nodded. "Odd," he said, "but true, _parole d'honneur_. He started an office in London to help all the commercial Johnnies in the city, and so I went to him with my papers; and I am d.a.m.ned if the chap didn't find out who forged my name in about an hour, and we had him nailed that same evening. Cost me a tenner, that's all."

Colonel Adams nodded, looking with some trepidation at the pile of rather too luscious-looking pastry which had by now been set upon the table.

"I don't think I will venture," he said to himself; and then to Ellerdine, "Well, go on, Ellerdine."

"Now, in my pocket," Lord Ellerdine continued, "I have got exact photographs and tracings of the letters which have made such a fuss this afternoon. My idea, Adams, is that you and I--if you have time, that is--should go down into the City and see this expert chap and see if he can throw some light on the situation. They have tried all the experts in London on Peggy's case, but they don't seem to know about my American friend. I believe in him. He is one of the most astute people going.

What do you say to trying him--for poor little Peggy's sake?"

"Excellent idea, by Jove!" the other answered. "You've got his address, of course?"

"Oh yes," Lord Ellerdine replied; "it's in Coleman Street, E.C. Now, I wonder if you would mind going down with me and seeing what he has got to say?"

"Not in the least," Colonel Adams answered. "In fact, I shall be tremendously interested. I'd do a good deal more than that, my dear Ellerdine, if I could, to help Mrs. Admaston in any way."

"Very well, then," said the peer. "We'll just finish our tea, and pay that pretty-looking girl and take a taxi at once."

In five minutes they had dismissed the cab and were being carried in a lift to the third floor of a big block of buildings in Coleman Street.

The door of Mr. Devereux's office was marked "Enter," and the newcomers found themselves in a small but comfortably furnished room. At a round polished table, on which there was a typewriting machine, sat a young lady, who was reading a novel of Miss Marie Corelli's.

"Mr. Devereux is in," she said in answer to their queries, "but he is just about to leave. However, I will take your name and see if he can see you."

Some people would have been annoyed at this fas.h.i.+on of greeting, but to the two simple gentlemen in question it seemed quite right and proper that such a rare bird as an American handwriting expert should be fenced round with a certain ritual.

"Tell Mr. Devereux," said Lord Ellerdine, "that Lord Ellerdine is here.

Mr. Devereux knows me."

Unlike the young person in the cafe, the young lady in the office did not seem at all impressed, but languidly sauntered through the door which led to the inner room. She came back much more quickly than she had entered. "Mr. Devereux begs that you will step in," she said, and once more fell to her enthralling romance as the door closed behind the visitors.

Mr. Devereux was a well-dressed, trim young American with a hard, clean-shaved face. His manner was brisk, business-like, and deferential, and his whole appearance suggested energy and capability.

Upon his large leather-covered writing-table were various appliances used in his business.

One saw a microscope of some peculiar construction. There were a variety of small lenses and reading-gla.s.ses, together with various instruments of s.h.i.+ning steel for measuring, with extreme accuracy, the length of a letter or a line.

There was also an enlarging camera upon a shelf by the window, and a door in one corner of the place was marked "Dark room."