The Black House in Harley Street/Chapter 4

Once within his rooms, Goulburn turned up the gas and reread this strange epistle. It was written on a half-sheet of the very commonest notepaper-such as is purchased so many sheets, so many envelopes, with a pen and penholder thrown in, for a penny; and although the spelling was quite in order, the handwriting was either genuinely illiterate or designedly so. Looking at it still more carefully, Goulburn was inclined to fancy that it was affected. He had some knowledge of calligraphy, and prided himself on his own penmanship, and it seemed to him that this curious message had been written by some one who in reality wrote a very good hand, and had taken rather clumsy measures to disguise it on this occasion. Even with this conclusion in his mind, he could not account for the presence of the scrap of paper in his pocket. He carried his latchkey in a small inside pocket of his lounge jacket-who could have come so near him as to deposit the paper there? He tried to think of any moment in which he had been in close quarters with any one during the evening. Certainly he had shared a somewhat narrow settee with Moira Phillimore in the drawing room, while Miss Lamotte was playing the piano ​close by, but he was quite sure that her very slightest movement could not have escaped him. He remembered van Mildart holding him in close conversation—buttonholing him, in fact—in the hall just before he left, and keeping him and Pimpery, who was holding his hat and stick, waiting for some moments before letting him go; but it was scarcely likely that the doctor would slip into his guest's pocket a document which seemed to hint dark things against his own establishment. Yet—there was the fact that the note had been slipped into his pocket, and there it was.

"I'm not sure that that isn't the biggest mystery of all," he said to himself, as he sealed the ill-written epistle up in an envelope, marked the letter with the date, and put it away in his writing-case. Then, glancing at his mantelpiece, he caught sight of a note addressed to himself in Christopher Aspinall's well-known, characteristic handwriting. He smiled as he opened it—there could be no mystery about anything which Chris had to communicate.

"Dear Dick," wrote Chris, "I waited in for you from ten until I couldn't wait any longer. Maisie and I are engaged—we became engaged soon after I told her the good news; because, of course, as soon as I had told her, I also told her that—well, I don't know what I did tell her, but anyway, she said that if it was two hundred and fifty millions instead of thousands she wouldn't have anybody but me, which was good of her, and just what I expected. And, of course, being ​the sober and sensible-minded young people that we are, we have made certain arrangements of a proper nature; but don't you think that I'm going to leave Pepperall & Tardrew simply because I shall have a wealthy wife—no, sir, I'm going to stick to business more than ever, and become a merchant prince and Lord Mayor of my native city. In the meantime, I shall visit you, I expect, occasionally, in marble halls. It's well that I managed a new dress suit out of my last year's savings, for your present quarters will not hold you much longer, I'm thinking. Well, no more from your affectionate

"P.S.—Maisie will be ready for you at ten o'clock."

Goulburn smiled as he laid this epistle aside. "Present quarters suit him much longer!" No, indeed—good harbour of refuge that they had proved in times past, he should be glad to sail out to wider seas and ampler stretches. He looked about him at the somewhat dingily papered walls; at the pictures which were supposed to ornament them—pictures of the sentimental variety so dear to our ancestors of that awful mid-Victorian age when women wore crinolines and pork-pie hats, and young ladies played the Battle of Prague to evening parties carefully lined up round the drawing-room walls with their eyes on the ceiling and their hands gracefully composed; and at the cheap ornaments on the mantelpiece; at the plush upholstered chair and sofa; and at the glass-fronted chiffonier in which he kept his ​tea and coffee, and his butter and his sugar, and such-like matters, and always smelled, in consequence, not unlike a grocer's shop. Until now he had heeded these things very little. They were conveniences, and no more. He had a desk of his own in the window, and a bookcase of his own in the recess at its side, with a hundred or so of his favourite books in it; and these things were all that ever concerned him when he spent his evenings or Sundays alone. But now, remembering the house he had just left, this little Bloomsbury lodging seemed very mean and colourless—when he thought of van Mildart's enthusiastic description of the house in Harley Street which awaited him and Maisie, it seemed to stifle him. He threw up the window and looked out into the street; the pavements were still glistening after the evening's heavy rain, and the reflection of the lamps shone like spots of liquid gold upon them. Gold!—well, he had plenty of that now, anyway, and he and Maisie—particularly Maisie, who had had to work harder than he had, in view of the fact that she was not strong and therefore less fitted to bear work—would begin to enjoy it.

"It will feel strange leaving a poky little hole like this and going to live in a big house," he thought as he retired to bed.

But there Goulburn was wrong. Human beings, if they have even the elements of adaptability in them, can adapt themselves to changed circumstances almost as naturally and as readily as the birds and beasts of the Arctic regions adapt their colour to the changing ​seasons. In a very short time he and his sister were in occupation of the house in Harley Street, and had settled down there as if to the manner born. Indeed, to use an old-fashioned North-country phrase, there was nothing for them to do but to walk in and hang their hats up. Everything was in readiness for them. There was a full staff of servants—all women; for it turned out that the late Mr. Nathaniel Goulburn had a further eccentricity in the shape of an insuperable dislike to men-servants, whom he had been wont to refer to in various terms of disparagement, though he had not scrupled to provide a male caretaker, an ex-soldier, for the protection of the house and its staff during the interregnum between his death and the arrival of his successors—and the entire establishment was in well-oiled order under the direction of a housekeeper, Mrs. Magstone. And, as Mr. Conybeare remarked, if any two young people could desire more than to be put in possession of a beautifully furnished house, with pictures, and old china, and rare books, and musical instruments, and, most important of all, a first-class cook and a capital cellar of choice vintages—well, they must be very hard to please. It was through Mrs. Magstone's instrumentality—innocent enough on her part—that the brother and sister solved the last of the mystery which had hung about Uncle Nathaniel Goulburn, benefactor and eccentric. On the first night of their arrival, as they sat together in as cosy a smoking-room as heart could desire, Goulburn enjoying one of the dead man's cigars (such a cigar as he had never tasted ​in his life) and Maisie still lost in bewilderment of their good fortune (and also expectant of the arrival of Mr. Christopher Aspinall), the housekeeper knocked at the door and entered the room with all the solemnity which a rustling silk gown and a fine lace cap could communicate. In her hand she carried a letter, which Goulburn immediately noticed to be heavily sealed.

"Mr. Goulburn," said Mrs. Magstone, "I have intruded, sir, for the purpose of discharging a duty laid upon me by your uncle, my late employer, Mr. Nathaniel Goulburn. A few days before his death, the deceased gentleman requested my presence at his bedside, and thus addressed me: 'Mrs. Magstone,' he said, 'you're an honest woman, and I can trust you. I shall soon be gone, Mrs. Magstone, and sooner or later you'll have my nephew and his sister here in my stead. Now, Mrs. Magstone, you see this letter, written in my own hand,' which of course I said I did. 'Well, Mrs. Magstone,' he continued, 'I desire you to take charge of this letter and to keep it in strict safety until my nephew enters this house as its master. On the first evening of his arrival, you will hand it to him with your own hand.' And having given him my sacred promise, sir," concluded Mrs. Magstone, "I received the document from him, which I now hand over to you in discharge of my duty."

Having said these words, Mrs. Magstone retired from the smoking-room with as much dignity as she had entered it, leaving the brother and sister to stare at each other.

​"More mystery, Dick!" said Maisie.

"We'll soon see what it is, anyway," said her brother, breaking the seal, and drawing out a large sheet of quarto notepaper folded in four and scribbled over with the late Nathaniel's large, sprawling handwriting. "Ah, it's addressed to both of us. Listen":—

"'My dear Nephew and Niece,—You'll read this when I'm dead, and you'll no doubt, by the time you do read it, have heard me spoken of as a very queer and eccentric old man. Very likely I'm both—it doesn't matter, for I'm perfectly sane, and perhaps clearer in mind than I ever was. I want to write a few words to you, conjointly. I dare say you've wondered why I left you all my money. I'll tell you why. Because I knew you wouldn't waste it. I bluffed the lawyers—I told old Conybeare that I didn't know where you were. As a matter of fact, I knew all the time. When I came back to England I soon found out all about you both, and that you were earning your livings in a steady, honest way; and I determined you should have what I'd got. But I didn't tell him all I knew—I thought he might as well do a bit more for his money. Besides, I knew he'd soon find you; and if he hadn't, I'd made provision for your being found within three months of my death. Don't feel bad because I didn't send for you—I knew I hadn't got long, and I didn't want bothering—young folk ain't old folk. Well, now, you've got the money. Have a good time, but never touch your capital. Don't go marrying worn-out aristocracy. Don't run race-​horses nor yet ballet-dancers, Richard; don't think too much about new gowns, Maisie, and nothing about Continental Counts. Live straight. I made old Conybeare put a simple stone over my grave, but if you approve it, you can put a big marble monument in Little Diddington Church to my memory and another to your father's. If the man that carves them can manage it, I'd like him to convey—gracefully—that I'd made my bit in pork. I dare say he could do it. I could like that monument—it's the only vanity I have. Well, I guess that's all. Be good children.—Your uncle,

"What an extraordinary thing!" exclaimed Maisie, as they reread the letter some time later. "I do wish we had seen him, though, Dick. I'll take good care to follow his advice, if only for his sake, for I'm sure he's been more than kind to us. But then there isn't any temptations for me in Continental Counts, and I don't think there's much for you in race-horses, is there, Dick? No. I think Uncle Nathaniel would quite have approved of Chris, don't you, Dick?"

"Oh, I should say decidedly so!" replied Goulburn. "Chris is a smart business man—he'll get on."

"I wonder whom you'll marry, Dick?" she said. "Do you know, I believe you're somewhat impressed by the girl next door—eh?"

"Nonsense, Maisie!" said Goulburn, giving her an affectionate shake as she nestled against him. "You're such a soft, pussy-cat sort of young party yourself, ​always thinking about love and its kindred worries. And which of the young ladies next door, pray?"

For there had already been several interchanges of hospitalities between the occupants of the black house and the new inmates of the white, and Miss Maisie Goulburn was as conversant with Dr. van Mildart's establishment as her brother was.

"Now that's silly, Dick!" she said. "You know very well I mean Miss Phillimore. Haven't you been riding with her every morning this week?"

"I don't see anything very much in that," answered Goulburn, "seeing that we're next-door neighbours."

"So is Miss Lamotte—who is very handsome, much handsomer than Miss Phillimore—a next-door neighbour, but you don't take her riding," said Maisie.

"I don't know that Miss Lamotte does ride," replied Goulburn, "and———"

"Oh yes, she does!" interrupted Maisie. "I saw her go out the other morning with Dr. van Mildart. I say, Dick, don't you think Dr. van Mildart and Miss Lamotte are a queer pair?"

Goulburn turned a pair of astonished eyes upon his sister.

"Queer pair?" he repeated. "What do you mean, child?"

"Well—queer. Queer—just queer."

"That is a sensible explanation," he said, laughing. "I don't see where they're queer. They're very clever. Look at van Mildart's practice!—Why, he must be making thousands upon thousands a year."

​"Oh yes!" agreed Maisie. "There's no doubt about that: it's just amazing to see the carriages at his door every morning. And, by the bye, I didn't tell you, Dick, that I'd been a patient of his to-day."

"You a patient of his! What do you mean, Maisie?"

"Well, when you were out this afternoon—I've a shrewd suspicion, sir, that you were out with Moira—I went out, meaning to do some shopping in Bond Street. But as I was crossing Cavendish Square I had an attack of neuralgia—right there, in the old place—and it was so excruciating that I turned back home to get some drops. Just as I reached our house Dr. van Mildart came out of his—his car was waiting. He saw me, and hurried up: 'You look to be in pain, Miss Goulburn,' he said. 'I'm in awful pain, Dr. van Mildart,' I replied. 'It's neuralgia.' 'Come into my house,' he said. 'I'll cure you in a minute.' He took me into the dining-room; never bothered to close the door nor even to take off his hat or gloves or lay down his umbrella. 'Now,' he said, 'stand there—just so—and look straight and hard at my spectacles until I speak to you.' In what seemed to me to be at once he laughed and said, 'You've no neuralgia—it's all gone.' And so it had, Dick—completely."

Goulburn frowned a little—the frown of a man who doesn't like things that he doesn't understand.

"I don't exactly like that, Maisie," he said. "Seems to me like—well, like what they used to call black magic. I suppose it's what they now call hypnotic suggestion. By George! it's a dangerous power to ​have. Think what awful uses it might be put to in the hands of the unscrupulous!"

"Oh yes, but Dr. van Mildart is all right," said Maisie. "He's a nice, kind little man, and not a bit like a doctor."

"Why, you said just now he was queer," laughed Goulburn. "Didn't you?"

"He is queer," said Maisie. "So is Miss Lamotte. And so is Pimpery."

Goulburn lighted another cigar and finished his coffee.

"Pimpery!" he exclaimed. "I should think Pimpery is queer. He's the queerest man I've ever seen."

"Chris," remarked Maisie, "Chris says that he'd give a month's screw—whatever that may be, but I suppose it means salary—to know all about Pimpery. He says Pimpery has a past."

For Mr. Christopher Aspinall, first asked to dine at the black house as Miss Goulburn's fiancé, and subsequently because of that and his undoubted powers as a teller of tales and singer of humorous songs, had been as profoundly struck by the man with the dead eyes as his friend Goulburn, and had surreptitiously studied him whenever he got the chance.

"Well, if Chris says that, Chris must be impressed," commented Goulburn; "for, next to you, Master Christopher loves money."

"Dick darling!" said Maisie, "do tell his own sister if he is in love with Moira of the chestnut hair. Because his own sister thinks that Moira is really in love with him."

​But Mr. Richard Goulburn was not to be drawn even by this tempting bait. In his own mind he had no doubt whatever as to the state of his feelings towards Miss Moira Phillimore, but he was not going to make even Maisie his confidante—just yet. He and Moira were now constantly together, and it was very plain to outside observers that they enjoyed each other's society. Goulburn had set up what for a man of his income was really a very modest establishment in the way of horses and carriages, he had always been fond of riding and driving as a boy in the country,—and his favourite occupation now was riding in the Park with Moira in the morning or taking her long drives into the country in the afternoon. Each, old-fashioned as it seemed, preferred horse-flesh to petrol as a means of locomotion, each became adept at discovering quiet lanes where the hedgerows were as yet left unsmothered by dust. He never quite understood at this time what Miss Phillimore's exact attitude towards her uncle, Dr. van Mildart, was, for she rarely spoke of him except as regarded his tremendous ability as a specialist in cases of nervous disease. Of that Goulburn needed no assurance—the fame of van Mildart was all over London, and the fashionable world flocked to his door. It was well known that the credentials of both himself and his assistant were unimpeachable—both, in addition to American degrees, were fully qualified medical practitioners in England; and the most jealous of his confrères could not describe van Mildart as a quack, however much they canvassed his ​methods. His clientele was, naturally, chiefly composed of women, whose tired and jangled nerves he seemed to possess some rare secret of composing. That he charged huge fees was well known; it was well known also that he was inflexible in his rules. He would see no one, do nothing, after four o'clock in the afternoon; the rest of his day, he said, was for his own pleasure. He was fond of society in his own house, but steadily refused all invitations from the fashionable world, who would have lionised him. He was just a plain man, he said laughingly; and if he cured great lords and ladies, that was no reason why he should dance attendance on them. He liked to be at home with his own friends.

Of these friends the new inmates next door soon became part and parcel. The people of the black house frequently dined with the people of the white house; the white house people went in and out of the black house as they would. Never was there such a genial host as Dr. van Mildart nor so entertaining a one. He seemed to take a fancy to the two young people who had so suddenly, and by such a curious twist of fortune's wheel, come into his life, and he was certainly interested in and amused by Christopher Aspinall, whom he was perpetually advising to go upon the stage or adopt the music-halls as a profession.

Goulburn, intent on his love-making, had almost forgotten the extraordinary note which he had found in his ticket-pocket on the night of his return from his first visit to Dr. van Mildart's. Once or twice, happen​ing to catch Pimpery's lack-lustre eyes when he was dining there, he had wondered whether that extraordinary individual had had anything to do with it. And once, when they had become more intimate, he had ventured to remark on the butler's weird appearance to van Mildart. The doctor had taken the remark quite casually, and had merely replied, "Ah, yes, poor Pimpery—a faithful servant, but certainly odd in appearance," and had said no more.

But towards the end of July, when they were all seriously considering the question of leaving town and debating where to go, something happened which set up strange fears in Goulburn's mind, and subsequently in the somewhat more active and suspicious one of Mr. Christopher Aspinall. Goulburn was sitting in his smoking-room one morning smoking an after-breakfast cigarette when Maisie entered with a face which was more scared than troubled. She held out a volume which Goulburn instantly recognised as her bank pass-book.

"What's the matter, Maisie?" he asked.

"I don't know what's the matter, Dick," she answered; "but either something serious is the matter, or the bank people have made a horrible mistake. See, look at this: I'm debited, date July 21, with an entry of a thousand pounds! How ridiculous! As if I should ever have occasion to draw a cheque for that amount. All my cheques have been for small amounts—dressmakers, shoemakers, milliners, and so on. What do they mean by saying that I ever drew a thousand pounds?"

"Let me look," said Goulburn, and ran his eye down ​the debit side of the pass-book. "Yes, that's right," he said. "They must have made a mistake. Fetch your cheque-book, Maisie."

Maisie passed into the library, which adjoined the smoking-room, and Goulburn heard her unlock a cabinet in which she kept her private account books and papers. And then he heard her utter a slight scream of astonishment and surprise, and, throwing his newspaper aside, ran to her.

"Now, Maisie," he said, "what have you discovered?"

She was standing holding her open cheque-book at arm's length, staring at a counterfoil in it with dilated eyes.

"Look, Dick!" she whispered, as if she were frightened. "Look, it's there—the counter foil. See—July 21, 1908. Self, one thousand pounds. My writing! And—I don't remember anything about it!"

Now it so happened that Christopher Aspinall, just then starting out on his annual three weeks' holiday, was spending the first few days of it with his friends, and at that moment he entered the library, to find both of them in a state of extreme discomposure. To him Goulburn narrated the strange facts which had just come to light. Chris's usually smiling face became extremely grave, and he vented his feelings in a long, low whistle.

"I say, you know," he said, "there's something wrong here. You're sure that's your writing, Maisie?"

"I'm certain it is!" answered Maisie.

​"And you could swear to your own signature on the cheque that's been torn from this if it's produced to you?" asked Chris.

"Yes, I'm sure I could, because I always give a peculiar little twiddle to one of the letters in it," she replied.

"Then," said Chris, "the best thing to do is to go straight to the bank and find out when and by whom that cheque was cashed."

"We will all go," said Goulburn. "Get your things on, Maisie, while I order the brougham. That's a queer thing, Chris," he continued, when Maisie had left the room. "What can it mean?"

"Ah!" said Chris. "Just so—I quite apprehend the wisdom of your remark. Wait till we get to the bank."

As both brother and sister kept considerable sums at that particular bank, they were always received there with great attention, and on this occasion Goulburn's request to be favoured with an immediate interview with the manager was at once granted. But the interview, very brief and very much to the point, was eminently unsatisfactory. There was not the slightest doubt—as the manager quickly proved to them—that on the morning of the 21st of that month Miss Goulburn called in person at the bank, presented her own cheque for one thousand pounds, and requested to be paid in gold. The gold was packed in parcels of two hundred pounds each and placed by herself in a handbag which she produced and which the cashier remembered seeing her initials upon. The evidence was ​quite clear, and as the manager showed the three out, he drew Goulburn aside and suggested that his sister might have been suffering from a little temporary aberration, and that he would do well to consult a medical man.

Outside, Goulburn went up to their coachman on the impulse of the moment—a thought had struck him.

"Jarvis, do you remember bringing Miss Goulburn to the bank about a week ago on an occasion when she came out with a rather heavy bag?"

"Yes, sir—quite well."

"Where did you drive her afterwards?"

"Straight home, sir."

The brother and sister and Christopher Aspinall looked at each other with blank faces and reëntered the brougham in silence.