The Simpkins Plot Part 6

'No,' said Mrs. Lorimer, smiling. 'You may not ask that; or, if you do, I shall not answer you. But you may do this for me, if you like.

You may tell the hall porter to order a cab for me, a four-wheeler. I have a good deal of luggage.'"

"She had," said Meldon; "I saw it when we got out at Dunbeg station, and it wasn't all there, for one of her trunks had got lost on the way."

"'Our representative,' read the Major, 'shook hands with Mrs. Lorimer as she entered the cab. The order given to the driver was Euston station. Thus a lady of great personal charm, whose terrible experience has for some weeks focussed the attention of the civilised world upon the affairs of her private life pa.s.ses--'"

"You needn't go on," said Meldon. "The rest of the article is mere piffle. The essential part is what you've read out, and I imagine it ought to pretty well clinch the matter. She drove to Euston, intending to travel from that station to some very quiet neighbourhood in which she had taken a house beforehand. Now where could you possibly find a quieter neighbourhood than this?"

"I don't see that you've proved your point, J. J. There are a lot of other places for which you might start from Euston."

"Not so many quiet neighbourhoods. Think of where the London and North-Western Railway runs. Lancas.h.i.+re! You wouldn't call Bolton a quiet neighbourhood, I suppose. North Wales! You know what it is at this season of the year, thick with holiday people. No. You may take it for certain that if she left Euston she came to Ireland. Now all English people head straight for the west as soon as they land in this country, especially those who have any kind of a past that they are anxious to keep dark. Dublin and Wicklow are just as thick with people as England is. n.o.body ever stops half-way across the country.

Besides, there wasn't another woman in the train with me who could possibly have been Mrs. Lorimer."

Major Kent rose from his chair and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

"I don't suppose, J. J., that it's any use telling you that you're going to make an a.s.s of yourself."

"Not a bit, because it isn't true. I'm going to proceed in the most circ.u.mspect and cautious manner. Not that I'm the least afraid of making an a.s.s of myself. I should never do that under any circ.u.mstances. But because I have a conscience and I am afraid of doing a grave injustice, I am going to convince myself first of all that this fellow Simpkins really deserves to be killed. I admit the force of all you said about him last night, especially that part about the heating of the church; but it's a serious thing to condemn a man to death. It's a thing that you can't undo again once you've done it. I must see the man myself before I take any further steps."

"You can't have him here, J. J. He's a horrid little cad, and I won't have him inside this house."

"I'm not asking you to, at present. Later on if it becomes necessary in the interests of justice to patch up some appearance of a reconciliation between you and him I shall, of course, ask him here; but in the meanwhile--"

"You may entertain him yourself, if you do."

"I may. But that won't deter me from doing my duty. You haven't had the education in philosophy and literature, Major, that you ought to have had; but the years that you spent in the army ought to have taught you that no amount of unpleasantness should prevent a man doing his duty. I thought that was one of the things which military life impressed on me. Suppose now that it was your duty to stand in a pool of water on a wintry night looking out for the approaching army of a powerful enemy. You wouldn't like doing it because you'd know that you'd have a cold in your head next day which would probably last you for the rest of that particular campaign. But would you allow that fact to interfere with your duty? I'll give you credit, Major, for not even considering your own comfort in the matter. You'd stand in the pool. You wouldn't so much as splash about, and when your feet got wet you'd bear it without grumbling. Why can't you admit that I am actuated by the same sort of motives in doing my duty?"

"But is it your duty? I can't see, really, that there's any need for you to mix yourself up in it at all."

"It is my duty," said Meldon, "for several reasons. In the first place you are my friend, and you've always been kind to me; so it's plainly my duty to do you a good turn when I can. Next, I liked what I saw of Miss King. I'm convinced that she's in earnest about her art, and is really working at it simply for art's sake and not from any selfish motives. Therefore, as an educated man, it's my duty to help her if I can, without outraging my own conscience or acting in any way unsuitable for a clergyman. a.s.suming Simpkins to be the kind of man you describe, it is a public duty, the duty of every good citizen, to put him out of the world altogether. He's nothing but a nuisance here, and he can't be really happy. I imagine that even for his own sake he'd be a great deal better dead. He may not see that himself, but it's very likely to be true. What's the use of his dragging out a miserable existence in a place where he is getting more and more unpopular every year? He can't like it. Where does he live?"

"He lives," said Major Kent, "in that little house just beyond the police barrack."

"That won't save him," said Meldon. "Miss King would laugh at our police after slipping through the fingers of the Scotland Yard authorities, and any way he'd have to go and live with her once they're married. I'll call there."

"At this time of day," said the Major, "he'll probably be in his office, next to Doyle's hotel."

"I'll leave a card at his house first," said Meldon. "It's only civil.

Then I'll go on to the office. I suppose you can send me in, Major?

I'll walk back. I wouldn't like to keep your horse in town all day. I shall probably be a long time. I can't scamp the business, you know.

I must thoroughly investigate Simpkins. After that, I'll look in and have a chat with Doyle."

CHAPTER V.

Mr. Eustace St. Clair Simpkins preferred to have his letters addressed "E. St. Clair-Simpkins, Esq.," as if his second Christian name were part of his surname. He belonged by birth to the _haute aristocratie_, and believed that the use of a hyphen made this fact plain to the members of the middle cla.s.ses with whom he came in contact. He was a man of thirty-five years of age, but looked slightly older, because his hair was receding rapidly from the left side of his forehead. He had enjoyed, for a time, the education afforded by one of the greatest of the English public schools; but at the age of sixteen, being then cla.s.sed with boys so small that he looked ridiculous among them, he was removed at the special request of the headmaster. A private tutor, heavily paid, took him in hand, but was no more successful with him than the schoolmasters had been. At the age of eighteen he was found unfit to pa.s.s any of the examinations which open the way to gentlemanly employment. Various jobs were found for him by his desponding parents, but on every occasion he was returned to them politely. He drifted at last into an Irish land-agent's office. Mr. Tempest was a successful man of business, and managed estates in various parts of the country from his Dublin office. He was under an obligation to a London solicitor, whose wife was the sister of Mrs. Simpkins, the mother of Eustace St. Clair. He felt that he could not very well refuse to give the young man such a chance as a clerks.h.i.+p afforded. Things went on fairly satisfactorily until Mr. Simpkins conceived the idea of marrying his employer's daughter. He reasoned, quite rightly, that Miss Tempest, being an only child, was likely to have a substantial fortune.

Mr. Tempest, unimpressed by the hyphened St. Clair, was unwilling to allow the courts.h.i.+p to proceed. He sent Mr. Simpkins down to Ballymoy, and charged him with the management of such parts of the Buckley estate as were not already sold to tenants.

Mr. Simpkins, for the first time in his life, felt that he had found a position which really suited him. There was very little work to do.

He received the ground rents of the town of Ballymoy; saw that Ballymoy House was kept in repair and the grounds in tolerable order; and let the fis.h.i.+ng of the river every year by means of advertis.e.m.e.nts in sporting papers. Many men would have found the life dull, but Mr.

Simpkins had a busy and vigorous mind of a sort not uncommon among incompetent people. By temperament he was a reformer of minor abuses, and Ballymoy afforded him an almost unique opportunity for the exercise of his powers. There were, of course, difficulties. The inhabitants of Ballymoy, long unaccustomed to the presence of a reformer amongst them, had drifted into quiet, easy ways of living. Mr. Simpkins, who was not lacking in a certain quality of quiet persistence, troubled every one with fine impartiality, and became exceedingly unpopular in Ballymoy. The Resident Magistrate hated being obliged to enforce unnecessary laws such as that which forbids cyclists to ride on footpaths, and that which ordains the carrying of lighted lanterns on carts at night. The postman, at the other end of the official scale, liked loitering on his rounds, and had adopted a pleasant habit of handing on letters to any wayfarer who might be supposed to be proceeding in the direction of the place to which the letters were addressed. Every one with a public duty of any sort to perform was stimulated by Mr. Simpkins, and consequently came to hate him.

After a while Mr. Doyle, on whom, as chief citizen, the duty naturally devolved, got up a pet.i.tion to Mr. Tempest. The necessity for removing Mr. Simpkins was presented in the strongest terms. Mr. Tempest, who was a man of wide experience and kindly heart, sympathised with Mr.

Doyle and the others who signed the pet.i.tion, but he did not recall Mr.

Simpkins. He knew of no place in Ireland further from Dublin than Ballymoy is; and it appeared to him above all things desirable to keep Mr. Simpkins at a distance. It was better, in his opinion, that Ballymoy should suffer, than that his own house should be haunted on Sundays and his office disorganised on week-days by Mr. Simpkins. He acknowledged the receipt of the Ballymoy pet.i.tion, and promised, mendaciously, to consider the matter.

Meldon drove into Ballymoy on the first morning of his holiday, and went straight to Mr. Simpkins' house. He left a card there, and then walked on to the office. Mr. Simpkins was in the office, and Meldon greeted him with a warmth which seemed actually affectionate. Mr.

Simpkins was surprised, and rubbed his hand, which had been hurt by the hearty way in which Meldon shook it.

"Is there," he asked, in a puzzled tone, "anything that I can do for you?"

"Nothing," said Meldon; "nothing whatever. If there was I'm sure you'd do it, and I shouldn't hesitate to ask you. But there isn't. I simply called in to have a chat. You won't mind if I smoke, will you?"

"I never smoke in my office," said Simpkins. "I dislike free and easy and slipshod ways of doing business."

Meldon filled and lit his pipe.

"You're perfectly right," he said. "There's nothing impresses the intelligent stranger so unfavourably as the smell of tobacco in an office when he comes into it in the hope of doing business with a competent man. I wish you would impress your idea on that subject, and I may say a good many other subjects, on the people of this town. They are lamentably deficient in what I may call the etiquette of commercial life; and yet all these little points count for a lot. You and I know that."

Simpkins hesitated. He was at first inclined to be angry. Meldon was smoking vigorously, and his tobacco was of the kind described as "full-flavoured." But the remarks about the etiquette of business were certainly sound. Mr. Simpkins really believed that he had a mission to teach manners and method to the people of Ballymoy.

"Would you mind telling me," he said at last, "who you are?"

"Not in the least," said Meldon; "I shall be quite pleased. At the same time I think I ought to point out to you that, if you'd been on speaking terms with Major Kent, you'd have heard all about me weeks ago, and very likely would have been asked to dinner to meet me last night. Why have you quarrelled with the poor Major? He's a nice enough sort of man, and most people find him easy enough to get on with."

"It was he who quarrelled with me. I had no intention--"

"So it was. I remember that now; something about fis.h.i.+ng, wasn't it?

Curious how people will lose their tempers about ridiculous little trifles. That's the worst of places like this. The people who have never lived anywhere else become irritable and take offence about nothing, simply because their minds are cut off from wider interests.

You and I, now, know that no fish in the world, however large, is worth fighting about. We wouldn't, either of us, mind a bit if some other fellow came along and hooked the whale which we had marked down as our private prey."

Simpkins was puzzled again. The doctrine about fis.h.i.+ng rights struck him as slightly socialistic. It might possibly be applicable in the case of whales, but society could scarcely survive as an organised whole if many men regarded the possession of salmon as of no importance. At the same time he was pleased; it gratified him immensely to be hailed as a fellow citizen of a larger world.

"Would you mind," he said, speaking in quite a friendly tone, "telling me your name?"

"Not in the least," said Meldon. "I said so before. As a matter of fact, so far from having any wish to conceal my name from you, I went round to your house before I called here and left my card on you.

You'll find it there when you get back. I always like to be strict in the observance of the rules of civilised society. I particularly dislike the slack ways into which people in places like this are inclined to drift. I must say for the Major, he's not as bad as the rest in that respect. He always dresses for dinner."

"So do I."

"I'm glad to hear it. That ought to be a bond of union between you and the Major. You must be the only two men in Ballymoy who do. By the way, have you met Miss King?"

"No. She arrived yesterday, I hear; but I haven't seen her."

"You ought to go up and call on her at once. You'll like her, I'm sure. She's very good-looking."

He paused for a moment. The announcement did not seem to excite Simpkins' interest. He was, indeed, not of the temperament which is strongly moved by beauty or personal charm.