The Wharf by the Docks by Florence Warden (novel24 TXT) 📖

thought. My father told me to bring him into the next room, and--when I stooped to touch him"--Dudley shuddered at the ghastly recollection--"my hands were covered with blood."

"Good gracious! He had murdered him?"

"Yes. And from that time he seemed a different man. I saw that he was mad. I tried to persuade him to give himself up, to let himself be put under restraint. I laid traps for him, trying to take him to an asylum. But he was too cunning for me, and all I got by it was to rouse in him a bitter feeling of hatred of myself."

"Why didn't you give information--to the police, if necessary?"

"How could I? My own father! I believed he would be hanged if he was caught. I believe so still. The last time I saw him he seemed sane, except for a feeling of irritation against me and against Carrie, who, it seems, is my half-sister. But he attacked me suddenly, knocked me on the head, and tried to drown me. There, now you know as much as I do. Can you wonder now that I was obliged to cut myself off from my friends, with such a burden as that on my mind?"

Mr. Wedmore was silent for a time.

"Poor lad!" he said at last. "Poor lad! I think you might have found some better way out of it than holding your tongue and shutting yourself up from all your friends; but, on the other hand, it was a jolly difficult position. Jolly difficult! And so you never even told Max?"

"No, though I more than once felt inclined to. But it was such a ghastly business altogether that I thought I'd better hold my tongue, especially as--I was afraid--it might filter through him to--to somebody else--somebody who couldn't be told a beastly secret like that."

Mr. Wedmore nodded.

"And this girl--this Carrie?" said he.

Dudley's face lighted up.

"That's my one comfort in all this," said he, "that it has led to my finding out the girl and doing something for her. I never heard of her before. But my father told me she was my half-sister, and they say there is something in our faces which confirms the story. Anyhow, she's a grand girl, and I'm going to look after her. She's gone away--"

"Gone away!" repeated Mr. Wedmore, disconcerted.

There had been a lull in the quarrel between him and his son for the last few days, during which Carrie had avoided Max and Max had avoided his father.

"Yes," said Dudley. "She would go, and she thought it best to go without any fuss, leaving me to say good-bye for her. She's all right. I'm going to look after her; and she's going into training as a hospital nurse."

"Oh, well, I'm sure I hope she'll get on," said Mr. Wedmore, rather vaguely.

He had been getting used, during the last few days, to the thought of the pretty, blue-eyed girl as a daughter-in-law, and he found himself now rather hoping than fearing that Max would stick to his choice.

"Well," said he at last, "I must send the ladies to have a look at you now, I suppose. I wouldn't let them talk my head off on the first day, if I were you."

Dudley sprang to his feet. He seemed restless and excited.

"I won't talk much. I won't let them talk much," said he, in an unsteady voice. "But may I see--may I speak to Doreen?"

Mr. Wedmore nodded good-humoredly.

"Well, you may speak to her, if she'll let you," said he, cheerfully. "But, really, she's a thorny young person. She's treated young Lindsay, the curate, very cruelly, and I'm sure he's a much better looking fellow than you. However, you can try your luck."

Dudley did not wait for any more encouragement. No sooner had Mr. Wedmore left the room than the convalescent followed. He found Doreen in the hall, putting a handful of letters on the table ready for the post. She started when she turned and saw him, and, leaning back with her hands upon the table, she asked him what he meant by leaving the nice, warm, ox-roasting fire they had built up expressly for him upstairs.

"I hear you've been treating the curate very badly," said he. "I've come to ask for an explanation."

Doreen looked down at the tip of her shoe, and, after a pause, said demurely:

"Well, I suppose if you don't know the reason, nobody does."

"Why, was it anything connected with me, then?"

"So I have been informed," answered Doreen, more primly than ever.

And then he waited for her to look up; and when she did, he kissed her. And they didn't exchange a word upon the subject of the long misunderstanding, but just strolled into the dining-room and saw pictures in the fire together.

* * * * *

There was no trial and no scandal; there were rumors, and that was all. Max remained true to his fancy for Carrie, and gave proof of his sincerity by settling down to work in a merchant's office, after the manner so dear to his father's heart. And in return, Mr. Wedmore consented to Carrie's being invited down to The Beeches in the spring, to be present at Doreen's wedding.

And when Carrie came, several details concerning the life led by her and the supposed Mrs. Higgs in the house by the docks came to light, and the last remains of the mystery were cleared away.

She told how her father, passing himself off as Mrs. Higgs, an old servant in the Horne family, of whom Carrie had heard in the lifetime of Miss Aldridge, had found her out, had touched her heart by a kindness evidently genuine, and had prevailed upon her to go and make her home in the deserted house, which, Mrs. Higgs said, had been intended for her by her late master.

In the empty house they found that an entrance had been made into the adjoining warehouse, which had been used by a gang of thieves as a hiding-place for stolen goods. In the little front shop these ingenious persons had fashioned an ingenious hiding-place by hollowing out a tunnel to the river. Into this tunnel the water flowed at high tide; but when the tide was low an entrance could be effected from the river, by which the thieves could pass in and out, and in which they could safely deposit, in a chest in the slimy earth, property too valuable to be left above ground.

Carrie explained how Mrs. Higgs fraternized with the thieves, before she herself guessed who they were, and how she had got used to them before she learned their character, though not before she had grown suspicious about them. How she had seen Dudley with Mrs. Higgs, without knowing who he was, and how she had set him down as a suspicious character from the furtive manner of his visits. How she herself posted the two letters, the one to Edward Jacobs and the other to Dudley, which brought them to the place on the same day. How she herself was sent out of the way on that occasion, and returned in time to witness, through the hole in the floor above, the stooping over the body by Dudley, and his drawing back covered with blood, which she took for the actual murder. How Mrs. Higgs and Dudley had then left the house together, while she was too sick with fright to move. How she had remained outside the house until she saw Max; and how, when he was gone, and Mrs. Higgs had come back, she found that the manner of the supposed old woman had changed toward her and grown unbearably cruel and harsh. How she had been left for days and nights by herself, until she resolved to bear it no longer. And how, when Mrs. Higgs had sent her to Dudley's chambers with the message about Dick Barker, she had told her never to come back again.

Carrie added that she herself had always been treated with kindness, not only by the gang, of whom, indeed, they saw little, but by such of the men and boys on the barges which came to the wharf as knew her, and "winked" at her unauthorized tenancy of the deserted house.

In broad daylight, in the company of half a dozen policemen, Max and Dudley revisited the house together. They found the holes in the wall through which "Mrs. Higgs" took stock of Max on the occasion of his first visit; they tested the ingenious device by means of which the middle boards in the front shop could be made to fall and deposit anything laid upon them in the tunnel beneath. They found the hole in which Mrs. Higgs had stepped, and the pole which had been used to underpin the middle boards. This hole extended under the floor of the kitchen, so that by creeping under the flooring from the one room to the other the pole could be withdrawn or replaced without the knowledge of a person in the front room.

This final discovery explained to Max the manner in which the body of Jacobs had been made to disappear while he himself was in the room with it.

The gang, of which the illustrious Dick Barker had formed one, had wisely disappeared, never to return.

But one day, when Carrie, in her nurse's dress, was walking along Oxford Street, in the company of Max, to whom, with Mr. Wedmore's permission, she was now engaged, she felt a hand in her pocket, and turning quickly, found that she was having her purse stolen, "for auld lang syne," by Dick Barker.

Max recognized in the well-dressed young man, with the low type of face, the man whom he had once supposed to be his rival.

As Dick promptly disappeared, Carrie and Max looked at each other, and the girl burst into tears.

"Oh, Max, if it hadn't been for you--" whispered she, as she dried her eyes quickly and hurried on with him.

"And, oh, Carrie, if it hadn't been for you--" whispered Max back, as he took her into the shop of the Hungarian Bread Company, and made her have a cup of tea.


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Publication Date: 08-18-2009

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