The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney Part 20

Lady Seyton eagerly agreed to this proposal; and it was arranged that we should be at Seyton House half an hour before the appointed time, in readiness for the gentleman. Lady Seyton left in a hackney-coach, somewhat relieved, I thought, by having confided the oppressive secret to us, and with a nascent hope slightly flus.h.i.+ng her pale, dejected countenance.

The firm of Flint and Sharp had then a long conference together, during which the lady's statement and Mr. Chilton's doc.u.ments were, the reader may be sure, very minutely conned over, a.n.a.lyzed, and commented upon.

Finally, it was resolved that, if the approaching interview, the manner of which we agreed upon, did not prove satisfactory, Mr. Flint should immediately proceed to Ireland, and personally ascertain the truth or falsehood of the facts alleged by Chilton.

"Mr. Chilton is announced," said Lady Seyton, hurriedly entering the library in Grosvenor Square, where Mr. Flint and myself were seated. "I need not be present, I think you said?" she added, in great tremor.

"Certainly not, madam," I replied. "We shall do better alone."

She retired instantly. Flint rose and stationed himself close by the door. Presently a sounding, confident step was heard along the pa.s.sage, the library door swung back on its noiseless hinges, and in stalked a man of apparently about thirty-five years of age, tall, genteel, and soldier-looking. He started back on seeing me, recognizing, I perceived, my vocation, at a glance.

"How is this?" he exclaimed. "I expected"--

"The Countess of Seyton. True; but her ladys.h.i.+p has deputed me to confer with you on the business mentioned in your note."

"I shall have nothing to say to you," he replied abruptly, and turned to leave the room. Mr. Flint had shut, and was standing with his back to the door.

"You can't go," he said, in his coolest manner. "The police are within call."

"The police! What the devil do you mean?" cried Chilton, angrily; but, spite of his a.s.surance, visibly trembling beneath Flint's searching, half-sneering look.

"Nothing very remarkable," replied that gentleman, "or unusual in our profession. Come, sit down; we are lawyers; you are a man of business, we know. I dare say we shall soon understand each other."

Mr. Chilton sat down, and moodily awaited what was next to come.

"You are aware," said Mr. Flint, "that you have rendered yourself liable to transportation?"

"What"' exclaimed Chilton, flas.h.i.+ng crimson, and starting to his feet. "What!"

"To transportation," continued my imperturbable partner, "for seven, ten, fourteen years, or for life, at the discretion of the judge; but, considering the frequency of the crime of late, I should say there is a strong probability that _you_ will be a _lifer_!"

"What devil's gibberish is this?" exclaimed Chilton, frightened, but still fierce. "I can prove everything I have said. Mr. Gosford, I tell you"--

"Well, well," interrupted Mr. Flint; "put it in that light, how you please; turn it which way you will; it's like the key in Blue Beard, which, I dare say, you have read of; rub it out on one side, and up it comes on the other. Say, by way of argument, that you have _not_ obtained money by unfounded threats--a crime which the law holds tantamount to highway robbery. You have in that case obtained money for compromising a felony--that of polygamy. An awful position, my good sir, choose which you will."

Utterly chop-fallen was the lately triumphant man; but he speedily rallied.

"I care not," he at length said. "Punish me you may; but the pride of this sham countess and the sham earl will be brought low. And I tell you once for all," he added, rising at the same time, and speaking in ringing, wrathful tones, "that I defy you, and will either be handsomely remunerated for silence, or I will at once inform the Honorable James Kingston that he is the true Earl of Seyton."

"And I tell _you_," retorted Flint, "that if you attempt to leave this room, I will give you into custody at once, and transport you, whatever may be the consequence to others. Come, come, let us have no more nonsense or bl.u.s.ter. We have strong reasons for believing that the story by which you have been extorting money, is a fabrication. If it be so, rely upon it we shall detect and punish you. Your only safe course is to make a clean breast of it whilst there is yet time. Out with it, man, at once, and you shall go Scot-free; nay, have a few score pounds more--say a hundred. Be wise in time, I counsel you."

Chilton hesitated; his white lips quivered. There _was_ something to reveal.

"I cannot," he muttered, after a considerable pause. "There is nothing to disclose."

"You will not! Then your fate be on your own head. I have done with you."

It was now my turn. "Come, come," I said, "it is useless urging this man further. How much do you expect? The insolent proposal contained in your note is, you well know, out of the question. How much _money_ do you expect for keeping this wretched affair secret? State your terms at once."

"A thousand per annum," was the reply, "and the first year down."

"Modest, upon my word! But I suppose we must comply." I wrote out an agreement. "Will you sign this?"

He ran it over. "Yes; Lady Seyton, as she calls herself, will take care it never sees the light."

I withdrew, and in two or three minutes returned with a check. "Her ladys.h.i.+p has no present cash at the bankers," I said, "and is obliged to post-date this check twelve days."

The rascal grumbled a good deal; but as there was no help for it, he took the security, signed the agreement, and walked off.

"A sweet nut that for the devil to crack," observed Mr. Flint, looking savagely after him. "I am in hopes we shall trounce him yet, bravely as he carries it. The check of course is not payable to order or bearer"

"Certainly not; and before twelve days are past, you will have returned from Ireland. The agreement may be, I thought, of use with Cunningham or Mullins. If they have been conspiring together, they will scarcely admire the light in which you can place the arrangement, as affording proof that he means to keep the lion's share of the reward to himself."

"Exactly. At all events we shall get at the truth, whatever it be."

The same evening Mr. Flint started for Dublin _via_ Holyhead.

I received in due course a letter from him dated the day after his arrival there. It was anything but a satisfactory one. The date on the grave-stone had been truly represented, and Mullins who erected it was a highly respectable man. Flint had also seen the grave-digger, but could make nothing out of him. There was no regular register of deaths kept in Swords except that belonging to Cunningham; and the minister who buried Gosford, and who lived at that time in Dublin, had been dead some time.

This was disheartening and melancholy enough; and, as if to give our unfortunate client the _coup-de-grace_, Mr. Jackson, junior, marched into the office just after I had read it, to say that, having been referred by Lady Seyton to us for explanations, with respect to a statement made by a Mr. Edward Chilton to the Honorable James Kingston, for whom they, the Messrs. Jackson, were now acting, by which it appeared that the said Honorable James Kingston was, in fact, the true Earl of Seyton, he, Mr.

Jackson, junior, would be happy to hear what I had to say upon the subject! It needed but this. Chilton had, as I feared he would, after finding we had been consulted, sold his secret, doubtless advantageously, to the heir-at-law. There was still, however, a chance that something favorable might turn up, and, as I had no notion of throwing that chance away, I carelessly replied that we had reason to believe Chilton's story was a malicious fabrication, and that we should of course throw on them the onus of judicial proof that Gosford was still alive when the late earl's marriage was solemnized. Finally, however, to please Mr. Jackson, who professed to be very anxious, for the lady's sake, to avoid unnecessary eclat, and to arrange the affair as quietly as possible, I agreed to meet him at Lady Seyton's in four days from that time, and hear the evidence upon which he relied. This could not at all events render our position worse; and it was, meanwhile, agreed that the matter should be kept as far as possible profoundly secret.

Three days pa.s.sed without any further tidings from Mr. Flint, and I vehemently feared that his journey had proved a fruitless one, when, on the evening previous to the day appointed for the conference at Seyton House, a hackney-coach drove rapidly up to the office door, and out popped Mr. Flint, followed by two strangers, whom he very watchfully escorted into the house.

"Mr. Patrick Mullins and Mr. Pierce Cunningham," said Flint as he shook hands with me in a way which, in conjunction with the merry sparkle of his eyes, and the boisterous tone of his voice, a.s.sured me all was right.

"Mr. Pierce Cunningham will sleep here to-night," he added; "so Collins had better engage a bed out."

Cunningham, an ill-looking lout of a fellow, muttered, that he chose "to sleep at a tavern."

"Not if I know it, my fine fellow," rejoined Mr. Flint. "You mean well, I dare say; but I cannot lose sight of you for all that. You either sleep here or at a station-house."

The man stared with surprise and alarm; but knowing refusal or resistance to be hopeless, sullenly a.s.sented to the arrangement, and withdrew to the room appointed for him, vigilantly guarded. For Mr. Mullins we engaged a bed at a neighboring tavern.

Mr. Flint's mission had been skillfully and successfully accomplished. He was convinced, by the sullen confusion of manner manifested by Cunningham, that some villainous agency had been at work, and he again waited on Mullins, the stone-cutter. "Who gave you the order for the grave-stone?" he asked. Mr. Mullins referred to his book, and answered that he received it by letter. "Had he got that letter?" "Very likely,"

he replied, "as he seldom destroyed business papers of any kind." "A search was inst.i.tuted, and finally this letter," said Mr. Flint, "worth an earl's coronet, torn and dirty as it is, turned up." This invaluable doc.u.ment, which bore the London postdate of June 23, 1832, ran as follows:--

"Anglesea Hotel, Haymarket, London, _June_ 23, 1832.

"Sir--Please to erect a plain tomb-stone at the head of Charles Gosford, Esquire's grave, who died a few month's since at Swords, aged thirty-two years. This is all that need be inscribed upon it. You are referred to Mr. Guinness of Sackville Street, Dublin, for payment. Your obedient servant,

"Edward Chilton."

"You see," continued Flint, "the fellow had inadvertently left out the date of Gosford's death, merely stating it occurred a few months previously; and Mullins concluded that, in entering the order in his day-book, he must have somehow or other confounded the date of the letter with that of Gosford's decease. Armed with this precious discovery, I again sought Cunningham, and by dint of promises and threats, at last got the truth out of the rascal. It was this:--Chilton, who returned to this country from the Cape, where he had resided for three years previously, about two months ago, having some business to settle in Dublin, went over there, and one day visited Swords, read the inscription on Charles Gosford's grave-stone, and immediately sought out the grave-digger, and asked him if he had any record of that gentleman's burial. Cunningham said he had, and produced his book, by which it appeared that it took place December 24, 1831. "That cannot be," remarked Chilton, and he referred to the head-stone. Cunningham said he had noticed the mistake a few days after it was erected; but thinking it of no consequence, and never having, that he knew of, seen Mr. Mullins since, he had said, and indeed thought, nothing about it. To conclude the story--Chilton ultimately, by payment of ten pounds down, and liberal promises for the future, prevailed upon the grave-digger to lend himself to the infamous device the sight of the grave-stone had suggested to his fertile, unscrupulous brain."

This was indeed a glorious success and the firm of Flint and Sharp drank the Countess of Seyton's health that evening with great enthusiasm, and gleefully "thought of the morrow."

We found the drawing-room of Seyton House occupied by the Honorable James Kingston, his solicitors, the Messrs. Jackson, Lady Seyton, and her father and sister, to whom she had at length disclosed the source of her disquietude. The children were leaving the apartment as we entered it, and the grief-dimmed eyes of the countess rested sadly upon her bright-eyed boy as he slowly withdrew with his sisters. That look changed to one of wild surprise as it encountered Mr. Flint's s.h.i.+ning, good-humored countenance. I was more composed and reserved than my partner, though feeling as vividly as he did the satisfaction of being able not only to dispel Lady Seyton's anguish, but to extinguish the exultation, and trample on the hopes, of the Honorable James Kingston, a stiff, grave, middle-aged piece of hypocritical propriety, who was surveying from out the corners of his affectedly-un.o.bservant eyes the furniture and decorations of the splendid apartment, and hugging himself with the thought that all that was his! Business was immediately proceeded with. Chilton was called in. He repeated his former story verbatim, and with much fluency and confidence. He then placed in the hands of Jackson, senior, the vouchers signed by Cunningham and Mullins.

The transient light faded from Lady Seyton's countenance as she turned despairingly, almost accusingly, towards us.

"What answer have you to make to this gentleman's statement, thus corroborated?" demanded Jackson, senior.