The Trail of the Serpent/Book 2/Chapter 7
Chapter VII.
The Usher Resigns his Situation.
On the very day on which Mr. Peters treated Kuppins and the "fondling" to tea and watercresses, Dr. Tappenden and Jane his daughter returned to their household gods at Slopperton.
Who shall describe the ceremony and bustle with which that great dignitary, the master of the house, was received? He had announced, his return by the train which reached Slopperton at seven o'clock; so at that hour a well-furnished tea-table was ready laid in the study—that terrible apartment which little boys entered with red eyes and pale cheeks, emerging therefrom in a pleasant glow, engendered by a specific peculiar to schoolmasters whose desire it is not to spoil the child. But no ghosts of bygone canings, no infantine whimpers from shadow-land—(though little Allecompain, dead and gone, had received correction in this very room)—haunted the Doctor's sanctorum—a cheerful apartment, warm in winter, and cool in summer, and handsomely furnished at all times. The silver teapot reflected the evening sunshine; and reflected too Sarah Jane laying the table, none the handsomer for being represented upside down, with a tendency to become collapsed or elongated, as she hovered about the tea-tray. Anchovy-paste, pound-cake, Scotch marmalade and fancy bread, all seemed to cry aloud for the arrival of the doctor and his daughter to demolish them; but for all that there was fear in the hearts of the household as the hour for that arrival drew near. What would he say to the absence of his factotum? Who should tell him? Every one was innocent enough, certainly, but in the first moment of his fury might not the descending avalanche of the Doctor's wrath crush the innocent? Miss Smithers—who, as well as being presiding divinity of the young gentlemen's wardrobes, was keeper of the keys of divers recesses and cupboards, and had sundry awful trusts connected with tea and sugar and butchers' bills—was elected by the whole household, from the cook to the knife-boy, as the proper person to make the awful announcement of the unaccountable disappearance of Mr. Jabez North. So, when the doctor and his daughter had alighted from the fly which brought them and their luggage from the station, Miss Smithers hovered timidly about them, on the watch for a propitious moment.
"How have you enjoyed yourself, miss? Judging by your looks I should say very much indeed, for never did I see you looking better," said Miss Smithers, with more enthusiasm than punctuation, as she removed the shawl from the lovely shoulders of Miss Tappenden.
"Thank you, Smithers, I am better," replied the young lady, with languid condescension. Miss Tappenden, on the strength of never having anything the matter with her, was always complaining, and passed her existence in taking sal-volatile and red lavender, and reading three volumes a day from the circulating library.
"And how," asked the ponderous voice of the ponderous Doctor, "how is everything going on, Smithers?" By this time they were seated at the tea-table, and the learned Tappenden was in the act of putting five lumps of sugar in his cup, while the fair Smithers lingered in attendance.
"Quite satisfactory, sir, I'm sure," replied that young lady, growing very much confused. "Everything quite satisfactory, sir; leastways"
"What do you mean by leastways, Smithers?" asked the Doctor, impatiently. "In the first place it isn't English; and in the next it sounds as if it meant something unpleasant. For goodness sake, Smithers, be straightforward and business-like. Has anything gone wrong? What is it? And why wasn't I informed of it?"
Smithers, in despair at her incapability of answering these three questions at once, as no doubt she ought to have been able to do, or the Doctor would not have asked them, stammered out,—
"Mr. North, sir"
"'Mr. North, sir'! Well, what of 'Mr. North, sir'?" By the bye, where is Mr. North? Why isn't he here to receive us?"
Smithers feels that she is in for it; so, after two or three nervous gulps, and other convulsive movements of the throat, she continues thus—"Mr. North, sir, didn't come home last night, sir. We sat up for him till one o'clock this morning—last night, sir."
The rising storm in the Doctor's face is making Smithers's English more un-English every moment.
"Didn't come last night? Didn't return to my house at the hour of ten, which hour has been appointed by me for the retiring to rest of every person in my employment?" cried the Doctor, aghast.
"No, sir! Nor yet this morning, sir! Nor yet this afternoon, sir! And the West-Indian pupils have been looking out of the window, sir, and would, which we told them not till we were hoarse, sir."
"The person intrusted by me with the care of my pupils abandoning his post, and my pupils looking out of the window!" exclaimed Dr. Tappenden, in the tone of a man who says—"The glory of England has departed! You wouldn't, perhaps, believe it; but it has!"
"We didn't know what to do, sir, and so we thought we'd better not do it," continued the bewildered Smithers. "And we thought as you was coming back to-day, we'd better leave it till you did come back—and please, sir, will you take any new-laid eggs?"
"Eggs!" said the Doctor; "new-laid eggs! Go away, Smithers. There must be some steps taken immediately. That young man was my right hand, and I would have trusted him with untold gold; or," he added, "with my cheque-book."
As he uttered the words "cheque-book," he, as it were instinctively, laid his hand upon the pocket which contained that precious volume; but as he did so, he remembered that he had used the last leaf but one when writing a cheque for a mid-summer butcher's bill, and that he had a fresh book in his desk untouched. This desk was always kept in the study, and the Doctor gave an involuntary glance in the direction in which it stood.
It was a very handsome piece of furniture, ponderous, like the Doctor himself; a magnificent construction of shining walnut-wood and dark green morocco, with a recess for the Doctor's knees, and on either side of this recess two rows of drawers, with brass handles and Bramah locks. The centre drawer on the left hand side contained an inner and secret drawer, and towards the lock of this drawer the Doctor looked, for this contained his new cheque-book. The walnut-wood round the lock of this centre drawer seemed a little chipped; the Doctor thought he might as well get up and look at it; and a nearer examination showed the brass handle to be slightly twisted, as if a powerful hand had wrenched it out of shape. The Doctor, taking hold of the handle to pull it straight, drew the drawer out, and scattered its contents upon the floor; also the contents of the inner drawer, and amongst them the cheque-book, half-a-dozen leaves of which had been torn out.
"So," said the Doctor, "this man, whom I trusted, has broken open my desk, and finding no money, he has taken blank cheques, in the hope of being able to forge my name. To think that I did not know this man!"
To think that you did not, Doctor; to think, too, that you do not even now, perhaps, know half this man may have been capable of.
But it was time for action, not reflection; so the Doctor hurried to the railway station, and telegraphed to his bankers in London to stop any cheques presented in his signature, and to have the person presenting such cheques immediately arrested. From the railway station he hurried, in an undignified perspiration, to the police-office, to institute a search for the missing Jabez, and then returned home, striking terror into the hearts of his household, ay, even to the soul of his daughter, the lovely Jane, who took an extra dose of sal-volatile, and went to bed to read "Lady Clarinda, or the Heart-breaks of Belgravia."
With the deepening twilight came a telegraphic message from the bank to say that cheques for divers sums had been presented and cashed by different people in the course of the day. On the heels of this message came another from the police-station, announcing that a body had been found upon Halford Heath answering to the description of the missing man.
The bewildered schoolmaster, hastening to the station, recognises, at a glance, the features of his late assistant. The contents of the dead man's pocket, the empty bottle with the too significant label, are shown him. No, some other hand than the usher's must have broken open the desk in the study, and the unfortunate young man's reputation had been involved in a strange coincidence. But the motive for his rash act? That is explained by a most affecting letter in the dead man's hand, which is found in his desk. It is addressed to the Doctor, expresses heartfelt gratitude for that worthy gentleman's past kindnesses, and hints darkly at a hopeless attachment to his daughter, which renders the writer's existence a burden too heavy for him to bear. For the rest, Jabez North has passed a threshold, over which the boldest and most inquisitive scarcely care to follow him. So he takes his own little mystery with him into the land of the great mystery.
There is, of course, an inquest, at which two different chemists, who sold laudanum to Jabez North on the night before his disappearance, give their evidence. There is another chemist, who deposes to having sold him, a day or two before, a bottle of patent hair-dye, which is also a poisonous compound; but surely he never could have thought of poisoning himself with hair-dye.
The London police are at fault in tracing the presenters of the cheques; and the proprietors of the bank, or the clerks, who maintain a common fund to provide against their own errors, are likely to be considerable losers. In the mean while the worthy Doctor announces, by advertisements in the Slopperton papers, that "his pupils assemble on the 27th of July."