"Did you catch her in the act?"

"Catch her! We've never been able to prove it against her yet, but the presumption's as strong as Hercules. She went to Brown's, and made him swear by all his G.o.ds that he knew nothing about it; then she made him open his safe, and went through all his private papers."

"Brown must be a fine sort of a man."

"She's a fine sort of a woman. She drugged me in my own house."

"No?"

"I say yes! She came here one night. I offered her a little something to drink--I was having something to drink, and I couldn't see her sitting dry. I've no doubt that when my back was turned she put something into my gla.s.s which took away my senses in a flash. When I came to it was early morning; the daylight was streaming through the blinds; she was gone; the whole place was upside down."

"You're a lawyer: didn't you give her a taste of the law?"

"What was the use? She'd pose as an injured woman--her grievance is real enough. We'd get no good; it might do us harm. The mischief is that she's got what she chooses to regard as some sort of groundwork for her suspicions. It's this way. She met the secretary of the Hardwood Company. The Hardwood Company's paid dividends averaging thirty per cent, ever since it started.

The fellow got friendly with her--as plenty of men do get within five minutes of their meeting her. He told her that only one original shareholder remained on their lists, and, since the shares rushed to a premium directly the issue was made, that therefore he was the only person who received the full benefit of the thirty per cent. He added that the shareholder's name was Grahame--Cuthbert Grahame (you may see her p.r.i.c.king her ears at that!)--and (she always leading him by the nose!) that the dividends had not been paid to him direct, but to his solicitors, Messrs. McTavish & Brown, of Southampton Row. He was a talkable body, that secretary man--men are apt to be talkative when she gets them alone with her in a corner. He told her something else: that the queerest part of the business was that while the shares still stood in Grahame's name, the dividends had remained unclaimed for quite a while, so that a considerable sum was waiting for some one to take it. The next morning she came to us running over with the story. Now I remembered those shares--an investment which returns thirty per cent, these hard times one has to remember. He had ten thousand of them; they were in our charge; we did collect the dividends. But one day he wrote asking us to send them to him, which we did do. My lady of course wanted proof. Do you know we couldn't give it her."

"I don't see why."

"Under ordinary circ.u.mstances nothing could have been simpler.

Such a thing has never before happened in the whole course of my experience, but by some infernal accident we couldn't lay our hands on either his letter of instructions, or his acknowledgment of receipt."

"There was still the letter advising their despatch."

"David, ever since that woman appeared on the scene we have been persecuted by a malignant fate."

"Big words, Andrew, big words."

"She moves me to them. On the day Grahame's letter came I happened to be going abroad. Brown sent a clerk here with his letter and the shares, so that I might check them and see that they were right. I packed the clerk back, and sent the shares myself; but in my haste--I was running the boat train pretty close!--I was idiot enough not to take a copy of my own letter, and what I did with Grahame's I have not the dimmest recollection."

"Very unbusiness-like."

"Don't I know it, man! Of course she declined to credit a word of the story; said that she believed it was a fabrication from beginning to end; and that she was more than ever convinced that she was dealing with a set of rogues. The climax is to come! The day after she had drugged me she came to my office, and produced a Hardwood Company's share, which she had the a.s.surance to a.s.sert that she had taken out of my own safe when I was in a state of unconsciousness!--think of it! She had taken it round to the Company's offices, and it had there been identified as one of the shares which were standing in Cuthbert Grahame's name."

"Was it one of his shares?"

"It was, beyond a doubt."

"And had she taken it out of your safe?"

"David, I can only tell you that she swore she had; and I'm bound to admit that if she hadn't, I don't know where she got it from. On the other hand, if she did I have not the vaguest notion how it got there. Plague take the thing!"

Mr. McTavish, emptying his liqueur gla.s.s, immediately refilled it.

"Don't you know what's in your own safe?"

"Do you take me for a feather-brain? I knew every trifle it contained, or thought I did. She says that she took up a bundle of papers, and that the share dropped out of one of them. If it did, no one knows less than I do who put it there. The only conclusion at which I can arrive is that, in returning the shares to Grahame, I overlooked one of them, and that, in my hurry, it got mixed up with some of the papers which I keep in my safe, and which were lying on my table at the time. Of all the evil chances that ever befel a man!"

"And what was the inference she drew?"

"The inference she drew! What do you suppose? Why, of course, that the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine shares were hidden somewhere in my house, exactly as that one had been.

She had brought a solicitor with her to the office--think of it, David!--a pettifogging rascal of the name of Luker, who'd do anything for six-and-eightpence; and in his presence--picture it, David!--she told me that if I didn't permit her to subject my private premises to a thorough examination she should immediately commence proceedings for the recovery of the missing shares. And the creature Luker had the audacity to advise me to accede to her reasonable request--he called it her reasonable request! And I complied!--I complied! She, the wretched Luker, Brown, and myself, we went through every nook and cranny in the house, all of us together. The humiliation of it!--the maddening humiliation!"

With his handkerchief Mr. McTavish wiped his capacious brow, which was moist with indignant sweat.

"And did they find the missing shares?"

"David! Do you want me to make an end of you? The reptile Luker wrote that if rest.i.tution of the shares was not made at once he was instructed to immediately commence proceedings for their recovery. And that's only the beginning! If something isn't done to stop her it's very possible that she'll try to jockey us, by legal process, out of all the money that she supposes Cuthbert Grahame to have had. The law on such matters is in such a state--when twisted by such as Luker!--that there's no knowing what may be the issue; the one thing certain being that she may be the occasion to us of the gravest injury." The doctor emitted a sound which forced a startled inquiry from the other. "What's the matter with you, man?"

"I was laughing, to think that a couple of lawyers should be so mishandled by one of the laity! It's the funniest thing that ever I heard."

"It's no laughing matter, David, I can tell you that. Think of the scandal--that at the age to which I'm come I should be used as if I were a misbegotten rogue! She's a devil of a woman! And what's driving her is that she's come to the end of her tether."

"Do you mean that she's spent all her cash?"

"I've reason to know she has, or nearly all. She lives in a great house, has an expensive establishment, spends money like a queen. She took it for granted that long before this the bulk of Grahame's money would turn up. Now that it hasn't she's desperate. She means to get it out of somebody, somehow--or as much of it as she can--if it's only out of such poor creatures as McTavish and Brown."

"You're a pair of weans, you and Brown."

"So you see, David, how it is I have come to you for help--to you, my oldest friend. Why it is that I ask you to search your brain and see if you can give us no clue as to what Cuthbert Grahame did with his money. No one was more intimate with him than you, and on such a point there is no one who is more likely to be able to give us help."

"If that's so then you'll get help from no one, for it's certain you'll get none from me. I tell you I know nothing of the matter."

"Do you think Miss Wallace could help us? She had an intimate knowledge of Grahame and of his peculiarities. She might be able to tell us something which would prove to be of a.s.sistance."

"I'll ask her, if you wish it. But I doubt if you'll gain."

"Do, David, do. And"--Mr. McTavish tapped his forefinger on the arm of his chair--"the sooner the better. As to advice, David, you know this woman; you've had dealings with her before; in a sense, so far as we're concerned, you're responsible for her existence. You see the dilemma we are in. What advice have you to offer?"

"None--not a ha'porth. I'm not advising."

"David!"

"I tell you I'm not, and it's just because I've had dealings with the woman already. I've tried one fall with her, and I'm suffering from it still."

"She's an awful creature!--awful!"

"There's only one thing I can say to you, Andrew, and that I've said already, and then you sort of sn.i.g.g.e.red. But to my mind it's a comfortable thought when we come to deal with persons like Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame, or Mrs. Gregory Lamb, or whatever she calls herself, and it's this, that if the mills of G.o.d do grind slowly, they also do grind surely, and they grind exceeding small."

CHAPTER XIX

IN COUNCIL

There were five of them a.s.sembled in Margaret Wallace's sitting-room. Margaret herself, in a linen gown of cornflower-blue, the product of her own deft fingers, which became her hugely. Miss Dorothy Johnson, from the rooms below, who indulged her fondness for unconventional att.i.tudes by perching herself on the back of one chair and her feet on the seat of another. Bertram Winton, one of the handsomest of our actors, tall and dark, with big eyes and curly hair, whose clothes fitted him with a creaseless perfection which won the admiration of that considerable feminine public which bought his photographs and wrote for his autograph. Frank Staines, who was something of a mystery. He wrote a little, and painted a little, and drew a little, and sang a little, and played a little, and talked so much that there were people who said that he could do that better than he could do anything else. He had money. The exact quant.i.ty was not generally known, but there appeared to be enough of it to enable him to live in very considerable comfort, without rendering it necessary for him, to adopt his own phraseology, to descend into the market-place and "huckster" his brain. Between Miss Johnson and him there was a state of continual war, tempered by peaceful intervals of the briefest duration. It was commonly understood that he was very much in love with her, had frequently proposed to her and had been accepted several times, but that on each occasion a rupture had followed before they were able to make an interesting announcement to their friends and acquaintances.