CHAPTER VIII.

MR. OTRANTO PRONOUNCES AN OPINION.

From Cedar House Lucius went straight to Mr. Otranto’s office. It was still early, not yet noon, and he would have time for his daily round after he had settled this business, which was uppermost in his mind.

‘Well,’ he said, after a brief good-morning to the detective, ‘any news from Rio?’

‘Some, but not much,’ answered Mr. Otranto, looking up from the desk, at which he had been copying some document into a note-book. ‘The mail’s just in. I was going to write you a letter in the course of to-day or to-morrow. This Mr. Ferdinand Sivewright seems to have been altogether a bad lot—card-sharper, swindler, anything you like. He soon made Rio too hot to hold him, and after managing to rub on there about six months, went on to Mexico. My agent hunted up any information about him that was to be got in Mexico; but it’s a long time ago, you see, since he was there. He seems to have behaved pretty much the same in Mexico as he did in Rio, and that’s about all my agent could hear. The impression was that he had left Mexico on the quiet—taken French leave, as you may say—and come back to England; but he couldn’t find out the name of the vessel he sailed in.’

‘You needn’t take any farther trouble about the matter, Mr. Otranto,’ said Lucius. ‘I believe I have found the missing links in the man’s history. My business to-day is of a different kind.’

He went on to explain the state of affairs at Cedar House. Mr. Otranto shook his head doubtfully.

‘I think you ought to put this into the hands of the regular police,’ he said; ‘my line is private inquiry. This is rather out of my way.’

‘But it isn’t out of your old way, Mr. Otranto, when you belonged to the regular police. If I were to go to the police-station they’d send a loud-talking noisy man to examine the premises, and frighten the invalid gentleman I’ve been telling you about. I want the property recovered, if possible, and the place closely watched; but I want the thing done quietly, and I’d rather trust it in your hands than make a police-case of it.’

‘Very well, sir; I’ll do my best. I’ll send a quiet hand round to Cedar House at nine o’clock to-night.’

‘Good; but he must come in at the back. I’ll have some one on the watch for him at nine. I’d better write my directions as to the way he must come. The young lady’s sitting-room is in the front of the house; so he mustn’t come in that way, for fear she should see him.’

Lucius wrote his instructions for the detective. He was to come from the barges to the garden, as the thief had come, and he would see a door ajar, and a light burning in one of the outbuildings. This was the door by which he was to enter.

‘And now, sir, for a description of the property,’ said Mr. Otranto, ‘if you want me to trace it.’

‘A description?’

‘Yes to be sure. I can do nothing without that.’

‘I never thought of that,’ replied Lucius, feeling himself a poor creature when face to face with this practical far-seeing detective; ‘you will want a description of course. I only know that there are Queen Anne teapots, Cromwell tankards—’

‘Queen Anne be hanged!’ exclaimed the detective contemptuously.

‘Some curious old saltcellars, and a monstrance.’

‘What in the name of wonder is that?’ cried the detective. ‘I’ll tell you what it is, sir, I must have a detailed description before I can move a peg. I daresay the property is out of the country by this time, if it isn’t in the melting-pot.’

‘A thief who took the trouble to rob Mr. Sivewright would most likely have some idea what he was stealing,’ answered Lucius, ‘and would hardly take rare old silver to the melting-pot. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Otranto; I’ll bring the old servant round here this afternoon, and you shall have the description from him. In cross-questioning him about the robbery you might, perhaps, arrive at some conclusion as to whether he had any hand in it.’

‘I might, perhaps,’ retorted Mr. Otranto, with ineffable contempt; ‘let me have half-a-dozen words with the man and I’ll soon settle that question. I never saw the man yet that was made of such opaque stuff that I couldn’t see through him.’

‘So much the better,’ said Lucius. ‘I want to find out whether this old man is a consummate hypocrite or an honest fellow. Shall you be at home at four o’clock this afternoon?’

‘I shall.’

‘Then I’ll bring him to you at that hour.’

Lucius went about his day’s work, and got through it by half-past three, when he took a hansom cab, a rare extravagance for him, and drove to Cedar House.

He asked at once to see Mrs. Wincher’s good gentleman, whereupon Jacob Wincher emerged from his retreat briskly enough, and came to the garden-gate where Lucius waited.

‘You haven’t heard anything of the property?’ he asked eagerly.

‘No. But I want you to come along with me to give a description of it.’

‘To the police-station, sir?’ asked Wincher, without any appearance of alarm or unwillingness.

‘Never mind where. You’ll find out all about it when you get there,’ answered Lucius, in whose mind yet lurked suspicions as to the old servant’s honesty.

The cab bore them speedily to Mr. Otranto’s office, and was there dismissed. Wincher entered that cave of mystery as calmly as a lamb going to the slaughter, or indeed much more calmly than the generality of those gentle victims, which seem to have some foreboding of the doom that awaits them within.

Mr. Otranto looked up from his desk, and contemplated the old man with a critical glance, keen, swift, searching, the glance of a connoisseur in that walk of art; as if Mr. Wincher had been a picture, and he, Mr. Otranto, were called upon to decide whether he were an original or a fraudulent copy. After that brief survey, the detective gave a somewhat contemptuous sniff; and then proceeded to elicit a description of the lost property, which Mr. Wincher gave ramblingly, and in a feebly nervous manner. To Lucius it seemed very much the manner of guilt.

Mr. Otranto asked a great many questions about the robbery, some of which seemed to Lucius puerile or even absurd. But he deferred to the superior wisdom of the trained detective.

In the course of this inquiry Mr. Otranto made himself acquainted with the numerous ins and outs of Cedar House.

‘A house built especially for the accommodation of burglars, one would suppose,’ he said; ‘there must be hiding-places enough for half the cracksmen in London. However, I think if there is any one still on the premises—or if the visitor of last night pays any farther visits—we shall catch them. I shall put on two men to-night, Mr. Davoren, instead of one—one to keep guard in the room that contains the property, the other to watch the back premises. This business will cost money, remember—but, by Jove, we’ll succeed in trapping the scoundrel!’

‘Your services shall be paid for,’ said Lucius, not without a pang, remembering the tenpound-note he had already given Mr. Otranto on account of the Rio inquiry, and of which there remained no balance in his favour—nay, there was more likely a balance against him.

‘You can go, Mr.—Mr. What’s-your-name,’ said the detective carelessly; and Jacob Wincher, thus dismissed, hobbled feebly forth to wend his way back to Cedar House; so rare a visitant to this outer world that the clamour of the City seemed to him like the howling of fiends in Pandemonium.

‘Well,’ said Lucius, directly the old servant had departed, ‘what do you think of that man?’

‘He isn’t up to it,’ answered Mr. Otranto contemptuously.

‘Isn’t up to what?’

‘To having act or part in that robbery. He isn’t up to it,’ repeated the detective, snapping his fingers with increasing contempt. ‘It isn’t in him. Lor bless you, Mr. Davoren, I know ’em when I see ’em. There’s a brightness about their eye, a firmness about their mouth, a nerve about ’em altogether, that there’s no mistaking.’

‘About a thief, I suppose you mean?’ inquired Lucius.

‘Yes, sir. I know ’em fast enough when I see ’em. There’s the stamp of intellect upon ’em, sir—with very few exceptions there’s talent in ’em to back ’em up through everything. You don’t catch _them_ stammering and stuttering like that poor old chap just now. Not a bit of it. They’re as clear as crystal. They’ve got their story ready, and they tell it short and sharp and decisive, if they’re first-raters; a little too wordy, perhaps, if they’re new to their work.’

Mr. Otranto dwelt on the talent of the criminal classes with an evident satisfaction.

‘As for that poor old chap,’ he said decisively, ‘there isn’t genius enough or pluck enough in him even for the kinchin lay.’

Lucius did not pause to inquire about this particular branch of the art, whereof he was profoundly ignorant.

‘He might not have pluck enough to attempt the robbery unaided,’ he said, still persisting in the idea that Jacob Wincher must be guilty, ‘yet he might be capable of opening the door to an accomplice.’

‘He didn’t do it, sir,’ answered the detective decisively. ‘I’d have had it out of him if he had, before you could have known what I was leading up to. I laid every trap for him that could be laid, and if he had done it he must have walked into one of ’em. I should have caught him tripping, depend upon it. But taking the question from a pischological point of view,’ continued Mr. Otranto, who sometimes got hold of a fine word, and gave his own version of it, ‘I tell you it isn’t in his composition to do such a thing.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Lucius, somewhat dejectedly.

He left Mr. Otranto’s office only in time to take a hasty dinner at a city eating-house, where huge rounds of boiled beef were dealt out to hungry customers in a somewhat rough-and-ready fashion. He had very little appetite for the ample and economical repast, but ate a little nevertheless, being fully aware of the evil effects of long fasting on an overworked mind and body. This brief collation dispatched, he went straight to Cedar House, to keep his appointment with Mr. Sivewright.