Читать книгу A Perilous Secret - Charles Reade Reade - Страница 10

"Who the devil are you?" said Monckton.

"He is my new partner, my associate in business," said the politic

Bartley. Then deferentially to Hope, "What do you advise?"

"You have two clerks. I would examine them both."

"Examine me?" cried Monckton. "Mr. Bartley, will you allow such an affront to be put on your old and faithful servant?"

"If you are innocent, why object?" said young Clifford, spitefully, before Bartley could answer.

The remark struck Bartley, and he acted on it.

"Well, it is only fair to Mr. Bolton," said he. "Come, come, Monckton, it is only a form."

Then he gave the detective a signal, and he stepped up to Monckton, and emptied his waistcoat pockets of eighty-five sovereigns.

"There!" cried Walter Clifford, "There! there!"

"My own money, won at the Derby," said Monckton, coolly; "and only a part of it, I am happy to say. You will find the remainder in banknotes."

The detective found several notes.

Bartley examined the book and the notes. The Derby! He was beginning to doubt this clerk, who attended that meeting on the sly. However, he was just, though no longer confiding.

"I am bound to say that not one of the numbered notes is here."

The detective was now examining Monckton's overcoat. He produced a small bunch of keys.

"How did they come there?" cried Monckton, in amazement.

It was an incautious remark. Bartley took it up directly, and pounced on the keys. He tried them on the safe. One opened the safe, another opened the cash-box.

Meantime the detective found some notes in the pocket of the overcoat, and produced them.

"Great heavens!" cried Monckton, "how did they come there?"

"Oh, I dare say you know," said the detective.

Bartley examined them eagerly. They were the numbered notes.

"You scoundrel," he roared, "these show me where your gold and your other notes came from. The whole contents of my safe—in that villain's pockets!"

"No, no," cried Monckton, in agony. "It's all a delusion. Some rogue has planted them there to ruin me."

"Keep that for the beak," said the policeman; "he is sure to believe it. Come, my bloke. I knew who was my bird the moment I clapped eyes on the two. 'Tain't his first job, gents, you take my word. We shall find his photo in some jail or other in time for the assizes."

"Away with him!" cried Bartley, furiously.

As the policeman took him off, the baffled villain's eye fell on Hope, who stood with folded arms, and looked down on him with lowering brow and the deep indignation of the just, and yet with haughty triumph.

That eloquent look was a revelation to Monckton.

"Ah," he cried, "it was you."

Hope's only reply was this: "You double felon, false accuser and thief, you are caught in your own trap."

And this he thundered at him with such sudden power that the thief went cringing out, and even those who remained were awed. But Hope never told anybody except Walter Clifford that he had undone Monckton's work in the lobby; and then the poor boy fell upon his neck, and kissed his hand.

To run forward a little: Monckton was tried, and made no defense. He dared not call Hope as his witness, for it was clear Hope must have seen him commit the theft and attempt the other villainy. But the false accusation leaked out as well as the theft. A previous conviction was proved, and the indignant judge gave him fourteen years.

Thus was Bartley's fatal secret in mortal peril on the day it first existed; yet on that very day it was saved from exposure, and buried deep in a jail.

Bartley set Hope over his business, and was never heard of for months. Then he turned up in Sussex with a little girl, who had been saved from diphtheria by tracheotomy, and some unknown quack.

There was a scar to prove it. The tender parent pointed it out triumphantly, and railed at the regular practitioners of medicine.