CHAPTER XVII.

LUCIUS SEEKS ENLIGHTENMENT.

Lucius was more than usually solicitous for the security of the old house in the Shadrack-road after his meeting with Absalom Schanck; locks and bolts were adjusted with an almost mathematical precision under his eye, or even by his own hand; and Mr. Magsby, the ex-policeman, remarked to Mrs. Magsby, in the confidence of the domestic hearth, that for a young gentleman, Mr. Davoring was the fidgettiest and worritingest he had ever had dealings with. Whereupon Mrs. Magsby, who entertained a reverential admiration for Lucius, protested that she could see no fidgettiness in taking precautions against thieves in a house which had already been robbed; and that burnt children are apt to be timid of fire; and, in short, that in her opinion, whatever Mr. Davoren did, he was always ‘the gentleman.’

Early on the day following his visit to Battersea, Lucius went in quest of Jacob Wincher at the address which the old servant had given him at departing.

Mrs. Hickett’s, Crown-and-Anchor-alley, was an abode of modest dimensions, the ground floor being comprised by a small square parlour with a corner cut off for the staircase, and an offshoot of an apartment, with a lean-to roof, in the rear, which served as a kitchen.

The parlour, into which the street-door opened directly, was, in the continental sense, Mr. and Mrs. Wincher’s ‘apartment,’ since it constituted their sole and entire abode. That convenient fiction, a sofa-bedstead, with a chintz cover which frequent washing had reduced to a pale pea-soup colour, occupied one side of the apartment; a Pembroke table, a chest of drawers, and three Windsor chairs filled the remaining space, and left limited standing room for the inhabitants.

But if the domain was small, it was, in the eyes of the Crown-and-Anchor world, genteel, if not splendid. There was a looking-glass in a mahogany frame over the mantelpiece, with a pair of black-velvet kittens, and a crockery shepherd and shepherdess in front of it; a pair of fancy bellows hung from a nail on one side of the fireplace, and a fancy hearthbrush adorned the other side. Altogether, Mrs. Wincher felt that in Mrs. Hickett’s ground floor she was sumptuously lodged, and could hold her head high in the Shadrack-road when, in her own phrase, she ‘fetched her errands,’ with no galling sense of having descended the social ladder.

She felt the strength of her position with peculiar force this morning when she opened the door to Lucius Davoren.

Her first sensation on beholding him was, as she informed Mrs. Hickett in a subsequent conversation, ‘astarickle.’ She fully believed he had come to announce the apprehension of the thief, or the recovery of the stolen property. But in the next moment her native dignity came to her rescue, and she received her guest with a freezing politeness and an assumption of profound indifference.

Some memory of the summer evenings when Mrs. Wincher had played the duenna, the happy talk of a bright future to which she had listened approvingly, came back to Lucius at sight of her familiar countenance. He had once thought her the soul of fidelity; even now he preferred to think her innocent of any complicity in her husband’s guilt.

Jacob Wincher was sitting by the fireless grate in a somewhat despondent attitude. He had found ‘odd jobs’ harder to get than he had supposed they would be, and enforced idleness was uncongenial. Nor was his slender stock of money calculated to hold out long against the charges of rent and living.

‘Good-morning,’ said Lucius with cold civility. ‘I should be glad to have a few minutes’ talk with you alone, Mr. Wincher, if you’ll allow me.’

‘I have no secrets from my good lady, sir. You can say what you have to say before her. You haven’t found out who took that silver. I can tell as much as that from your manner,’ said Jacob Wincher quietly.

‘I can’t say that I have actually found the thief,’ answered Lucius; ‘but I have made a discovery which may help me to find him.’

‘Eh, sir? What discovery?’

‘Mr. Wincher,’ said Lucius, seating himself opposite the old man and leaning across the table to look into his face, ‘who was the man you let into your master’s house, by the brewhouse door, between one and two o’clock on the seventeenth of last month?’

‘Sir,’ said Jacob Wincher, steadily returning the questioner’s steady gaze, ‘as surely as there is a higher Power above us both, that knows and judges what we do and say, I have told you nothing but the truth. I let no one into my master’s house on that night or any other night.’

‘What! You had no light burning long after midnight—you set no candle in one of the upper rooms for a signal—you never gave your accomplice a lodging in one of the attics? Why, I tell you, man, I found the bed he had slept in—the ashes of the fire that warmed him—his empty brandy bottle! If you want to go scot-free yourself, or to be paid handsomely for your candour, the truth will best serve you, Mr. Wincher. Who was the man you kept hidden in that upstair room at Cedar House?’

‘I can but repeat what I have said, sir. I never admitted any living creature to that house surreptitiously. I never lodged so much as a strange cat in those upstair rooms. How could I? Miss Lucille always kept the key of the upper staircase.’

‘Pshaw! What was to prevent your having a duplicate key?’ exclaimed Lucius impatiently.

This old man’s protestations sounded like truth; but Lucius told himself they could not be truth. After all, when a man has once made things easy with his conscience—settled with himself that he will not attempt to square his life by the right angle of fair dealing—there need be nothing so very difficult in lying. It can only be a matter of invention and self-possession.

‘Come, Mr. Wincher,’ said Lucius, after a pause; ‘believe me, candour will best serve your interests. I know the name of your accomplice, and I am ready to believe that you were ignorant of the darker purpose which brought him to that house. I am ready to believe that you had no hand in the attempt to poison your old master.’

‘Sir,’ said Jacob Wincher, with another solemn appeal to the Highest of all Judges, ‘all that you say is incomprehensible to me. I admitted no one. I know nothing of any attempt to injure my old master, whom I have served faithfully and with affection for five-and-twenty years. I know no more of the robbery than I told you when I informed you of it. There is some mistake, sir.’

‘What, will you tell me that my own senses have deceived me—that I did not see the door opened and the light in the upper window that night? Who was there in the house to open that door or set that beacon light in the window except you—or Miss Sivewright?’

Or Miss Sivewright! What if it was Lucille who opened the door—Lucille who gave the man shelter in that upper room? Was she not capable of any act, however desperate, for the sake of the father she loved with such a morbid affection? If he came to her as a suppliant, entreating for shelter, pleading perhaps for her influence to bring about a reconciliation between himself and his father, would this fond confiding daughter refuse to admit him? Would she foresee the danger of his presence in that house; or could her innocent mind conceive so deep a guilt as that of the would-be parricide?

A new light broke in upon Lucius Davoren’s mind. He remembered all that had been strange in Lucille’s manner and conduct since the evening when they went up to the loft and he saw the opening of the attic door. He remembered her anxiety on that occasion—her agitation on every subsequent recurrence to the same subject—her impatient denial of any foundation for his suspicions about the Winchers—how she fell unconscious at his feet when he plainly declared his discovery; and last of all, that fever in which the mind rather than the body had been affected. He recalled her wandering words, in which the name of father had been so often reiterated, and, most significant of all, that strange appeal which Mrs. Milderson had repeated to him, ‘You couldn’t be so wicked as to poison your poor old father.’ To whom but a son could those words have been spoken? And could delirium suggest so deep a horror if it were utterly baseless?

‘No, it was memory, and not a mind distraught, that shaped those fearful words,’ thought Lucius.

He was silent for some time, pondering this new view of the question. Jacob Wincher waited patiently, his poor old head shaking a little from the agitation of the foregoing conversation. Jacob Wincher’s good lady stood with her arms folded, like a statue of female stoicism, as if it were a point of honour with her not to move a muscle.

‘Well, Mr. Wincher,’ said Lucius at last, ‘it is not for me to decide whether you are guilty or innocent. You will hardly deny that circumstances conspired to condemn you. I did what I felt to be my duty when I advised Mr. Sivewright to dismiss you.’

‘After five-and-twenty years, and never a fault to find with neither of us,’ interjected Mrs. Wincher.

‘The result has in a considerable measure justified that act. The attempt to poison a helpless old man has made no further progress.’

Jacob Wincher cast up his eyes in mute appeal to heaven, but said nothing.

‘We could have poisoned him in Bond-street, if we’d wanted to it,’ protested Mrs. Wincher. ‘It would only ’a been to cook his bit of minced weal or Irish stew in a verding-greasy copper saucepan, and all the juries as ever sat couldn’t have brought it home to us.’

‘Now, if you are, as you allege, an innocent man,’ pursued Lucius thoughtfully, ‘you will be glad to give me the utmost assistance. I have made a discovery that may in some measure affect this question. Ferdinand Sivewright is alive, and probably in England!’

‘Then it was he who stole that silver!’ cried the old man, starting up with sudden energy.

‘Is not that a hasty conclusion?’

‘You would not say so, sir, if you knew that young man as well as I do. He was capable of anything—clever enough for anything in the way of wickedness. The most artful man couldn’t be a match for him. He deceived me; he hoodwinked his father, over and over again. There was no lock that could keep anything from him. He robbed his father in every way that it was possible for a man to rob, and looked in his face all the time, and shammed innocence. His mother had trained him to lie and cheat before he could speak plain. If Ferdinand Sivewright is in England, Ferdinand Sivewright is the thief.’

‘And the poisoner?’ asked Lucius.

‘I don’t know! Perhaps. He did not shrink from stupefying his father’s senses with an opiate, when it suited his purpose. He may have grown more hardened in wickedness since then, and may be capable of trying to poison him.’

‘Mind, I do not say that he is in England,’ said Lucius, ‘only that he may be. Now, there is one thing very clear to me, namely, that whoever put the arsenic in that medicine must have entered your master’s room by the secret staircase. Mr. Sivewright’s door was kept locked at night, and his room was carefully watched by day—especially during the two or three days immediately before my discovery of the poison. Now, you pretend to have been ignorant of the existence of that staircase until I showed it to you.’

‘I have told you nothing but the truth, sir.’

‘But if you, who had lived in that house for several years, knew nothing about it, how should a stranger, coming into the house by stealth, discover it?’

‘I cannot tell you, sir,’ answered the old man helplessly.

‘Does your master know of that staircase, do you think?’

‘He may, sir, though he never mentioned it to me. He is a close gentlemen at all times. He chose the room he now sleeps in for his bedroom when we first came to the house. He would have no painting, or whitewashing, or repairs of any kind done—saying that the place was good enough for him, and he didn’t want to waste money upon it. My wife cleaned up the rooms as well as she could, and that was all that was done. There were no workmen spying about, to find out secret staircases or anything else.’

‘From whom did your master take the house?’ asked Lucius.

‘From an agent, Mr. Agar, in the Shadrack-road.’

‘To whom does it belong?’

‘I’ve never heard, sir; but I believe it’s the property of somebody that lives abroad. Mr. Agar always collected the rent half-yearly.’

‘Then, no doubt, Mr. Agar knows all about that staircase,’ said Lucius; ‘I’ll go to him at once.’

‘Heaven grant you may be able to come at the truth, sir; though I can’t see how that staircase can help you.’

‘I don’t know about that, Mr. Wincher,’ returned Lucius; and with a hasty ‘Good-morning,’ he departed.