"Run along to bed. To-morrow night--to-morrow night, then, I will fetch you. Good-bye!"

He let himself out. He did not even look behind to the spot where he had left her. He closed the front door and walked with swift, almost savage footsteps down the quiet Street, across the Square, and into New Oxford Street. Here he seemed to breathe more freely.

He called a hansom and drove to his rooms.

The hall-porter had left his post in the front hall, and there was no one to inform Laverick that a visitor was awaiting him. When he entered his sitting-room, however, he gave a little start of surprise.

Mr. James Shepherd was reclining in his easy-chair with his hands upon his knees--Mr. James Shepherd with his face more pasty even than usual, his eyes a trifle greener, his whole demeanor one of unconcealed and unaffected terror.

"Hullo!" Laverick exclaimed. "What the d.i.c.kens--what do you want here, Shepherd?"

"Upon my word, sir, I'm not sure that I know," the man replied, "but I'm scared. I've brought you back the certificates of them shares. I want you to keep them for me. I'm terrified lest they come and search my room. I am, I tell you fair. I'm terrified to order a pint of beer for myself. They're watching me all the time."

"Who are?" Laverick demanded.

"Lord knows who;" Shepherd answered, "but there's two of them at it.

I told you about them as asked questions, and I thought there we'd done and finished with it. Not a bit of it! There was another one there this afternoon, said he was a journalist, making sketches of the pa.s.sage and asking me no end of questions. He wasn't no journalist, I'll swear to that. I asked him about his paper.

'Half-a-dozen,' he declared. 'They're all glad to have what I send them.' Journalist! Lord knows who the other chap was and what he was asking questions for, but this one was a 'tec, straight. Joe Forman, he was in to-day looking after my place, for I'd given a month's notice, and he says to me, 'You see that big chap?'--meaning him as had been asking me the questions--and I says 'Yes!' and he says, 'That's a 'tee. I've seed him in a police court, giving evidence.' I went all of a shiver so that you could have knocked me down."

"Come, come!" said Laverick. "There's no need for you to be feeling like this about it. All that you've done is not to have remembered those two customers who were in your restaurant late one night.

There's nothing criminal in that."

"There's something criminal in having two hundred and fifty pounds'

worth of shares in one's pocket--something suspicious, anyway,"

Shepherd declared, plumping them down on the table. "I ain't giving you these back, mind, but you must keep 'em for me. I wish I'd never given notice. I think I'll ask the boss to keep me on."

"Why do you suppose that this man is particularly interested in you?"

Laverick inquired.

"Ain't I told you?" Shepherd exclaimed, sitting up. "Why, he's been to my place down in 'Ammersmith, asking questions about me.

My landlady swears he didn't go into my room, but who can tell whether he did or not? Those sort of chaps can get in anywhere.

Then I went out for a bit of an airing after the one o'clock rush was over to-day, and I'm danged if he wasn't at my 'eels. I seed him coming round by Liverpool Street just as I went in a bar to get a drop of something."

Laverick frowned.

"If there is anything in this Story, Shepherd," he said, "if you are really being followed, what a thundering fool you were to come here! All the world knows that Arthur Morrison was my partner."

"I couldn't help it, sir," the man declared. "I couldn't, indeed.

I was so scared, I felt I must speak about it to some one. And then there were these shares. There was nowhere I could keep 'em safe."

"Look here," Laverick went on, "you're alarming yourself about nothing. In any case, there is only one thing for you to do. Pull yourself together and put a bold face upon it. I'll keep these certificates for you, and when you want some money you can come to me for it. Go back to your place, and if your master is willing to keep you on perhaps it would be a good thing to stay there for another month or so. But don't let any one see that you're frightened. Remember, there's nothing that you can get into trouble for. No one's obliged to answer such questions as you've been asked, except in a court and under oath. Stick to your story, and if you take my advice," Laverick added, glancing at his visitor's shaking fingers, "you will keep away from the drink."

"It's little enough I've had, sir," Shepherd a.s.sured him. "A drop now and then just to keep up one's spirits--nothing that amounts to anything."

"Make it as little as possible," Laverick said. "Remember, I'm back of you, I'll see that you get into no trouble. And don't come here again. Come to my office, if you like--there's nothing in that--but don't come here, you understand?"

Shepherd took up his hat.

"I understand, sir. I'm sorry to have troubled you, but the sight of that man following me about fairly gave me the shivers."

"Come into the office as often as you like, in reason," Laverick said, showing him out, "but not here again. Keep your eyes open, and let me know if you think you've been followed here."

"There's no more news in the papers, sir? Nothing turned up?"

"Nothing," replied Laverick. "If the police have found out anything at all, they will keep it until after the inquest."

"And you've heard nothing, sir," Shepherd asked, speaking in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, "of Mr. Morrison?"

"Nothing," Laverick answered. "Mr. Morrison is abroad."

The man wiped his forehead with his hand.

"Of course!" he muttered. "A good job, too, for him!"

CHAPTER XXVI

THE DOc.u.mENT DISCOVERED

On the following morning, Laverick surprised his office cleaner and one errand-boy by appearing at about a quarter to nine. He found a woman busy brushing out his room and a man Cleaning the windows.

They stared at him in amazement. His arrival at such an hour was absolutely unprecedented.

"You can leave the office just as it is, if you please," he told them. "I have a few things to attend to at once."

He was accordingly left alone. He had reckoned upon this as being the one period during the day when he could rely upon not being disturbed. Nevertheless, he locked the door so as to be secure against any possible intruder. Then he went to his safe, unlocked it, and drew from its secret drawer the worn brown-leather pocket-book.

First of all he took out the notes and laid them upon the table.

Then he felt the pocket-book all over and his heart gave a little leap. It was true what Mademoiselle Idiale had told him. On one side there was distinctly a rustling as of paper. He opened the case quite flat and pa.s.sed his fingers carefully over the lining.

Very soon he found the opening--it was simply a matter of drawing down the stiff silk lining from underneath the overlapping edge.

Thrusting in his fingers, he drew out a long foreign envelope, securely sealed. Scarcely stopping to glance at it, he rearranged the pocket-book, replaced the notes, and locked it up again. Then he unbolted his door and sat down at his desk, with the doc.u.ment which he had discovered, on the pad in front of him.

There was not much to be made of it. There was no address, but the black seal at the end bore the impression of a foreign coat of arms, and a motto which to him was indecipherable. He held it up to the light, but the outside sheet had not been written on, and he gained no idea as to its contents. He leaned back in his chair for a moment, and looked at it. So this was the doc.u.ment which would probably reveal the secret of the murder in Crooked Friars' Alley!

This was the doc.u.ment which Mademoiselle Idiale considered of so much more importance than the fortune represented by that packet of bank-notes! What did it all mean? Was this man, who had either expiated a crime or been the victim of a terrible vengeance,--was he a politician, a dealer in trade secrets, a member of a secret society, an informer? Or was he one of the underground criminals of the world, one of those who crawl beneath the surface of known things--a creature of the dark places? Perhaps during those few minutes, when his brain was cool and active, with the great city awakening all around him, Laverick realized more completely than ever before exactly how he stood. Without doubt he was walking on the brink of a precipice. Four days ago there had been nothing for him but ruin. The means of salvation had suddenly presented themselves in this startling and dramatic manner, and without hesitation he had embraced them. What did it all amount to? How far was he guilty, and of what? Was he a thief? The law would probably call him so. The law might have even more to say. It would say that by keeping his mouth closed as to his adventure on that night he had ranged himself on the side of the criminals,--he was guilty not only of technical theft, but of a criminal knowledge of this terrible crime. Events had followed upon one another so rapidly during these last few days that he had little enough time for reflection, little time to realize exactly how he stood. The long-expected boom in "Unions," the coming of Zoe, the strange advances made to him by Mademoiselle Idiale, her incomprehensible connection with this tragedy across which he had stumbled, and her apparent knowledge of his share in it,--these things were sufficient, indeed, to give him food for thought. Laverick was not by nature a pessimist. Other things being equal, he would have made, without doubt, a magnificent soldier, for he had courage of a rare and high order. It never occurred to him to sit and brood upon his own danger.

He rather welcomed the opportunity of occupying his mind with other thoughts. Yet in those few minutes, while he waited for the business of the day to commence, he looked his exact position in the face and he realized more thoroughly how grave it really was. How was he to find a way out--to set himself right with the law? What could he do with those notes? They were there untouched. He had only made use of them in an indirect way. They were there intact, as he had picked them up upon that fateful night. Was there any possible chance by means of which he might discover the owner and restore them in such a way that his name might never be mentioned?

His eyes repeatedly sought that envelope which lay before him.

Inside it must lie the secret of the whole tragedy. Should he risk everything and break the seal, or should he risk perhaps as much and tell the whole truth to Mademoiselle Idiale? It was a strange dilemma for a man to find himself in.

Then, as he sat there, the business of the day commenced. A pile of letters was brought in, the telephones in the outer office began to ring. He thrust the sealed envelope into the breast-pocket of his coat and b.u.t.toned it up. There, for the present, it must remain.

He owed it to himself to devote every energy he possessed to make the most of this great tide of business. With set face he closed the doors upon the unreal world, and took hold of the levers which were to guide his pa.s.sage through the one in which he was an actual figure.

Her visit was not altogether unexpected, and yet, when they told him that Mademoiselle Idiale was outside, he hesitated.

"It is the lady who was here the other day," his head clerk reminded him. "We made a remarkably good choice of stocks for her. They must be showing nearly sixteen hundred pounds profit. Perhaps she wants to realize."

"In any case, you had better show her in," said Laverick.

She came, bringing with her, notwithstanding her black clothes and heavy veil, the atmosphere of a strange world into his somewhat severely furnished office. Her skirts swept his carpet with a musical swirl. She carried with her a faint, indefinable perfume of violets,--a perfume altogether peculiar, dedicated to her by a famous chemist in the Rue Royale, and supplied to no other person upon earth. Who else was there, indeed, who could have walked those few yards as she walked?