The Ashiel mystery: A Detective Story by Mrs. Charles Bryce (read out loud books TXT) 📖

With a flourish of his handkerchief he withdrew, shutting the door behind him.

Juliet sat down on a hard chair covered with green leather, and told her maid to take another. Her spirits were damped. The sight of Mr. Nicol, as the clerk was named, often had that effect upon persons who saw him for the first time; indeed he was found to be a very useful check on troublesome clients, who arrived full of determination to have their own way, and were often so cowed by their preliminary interview with Nicol as to feel it a privilege and a relief subsequently to be bullied by Mr. Ince, or persuaded by Mr. Findlay into the belief that what they had previously decided on was the last thing advisable to do.

Mr. Findlay frequently remarked to Mr. Ince, when his partner's easily roused temper was more highly tried than usual by some imbecile mistake of the clerk's, that Nicol might have faults as a clerk and as a man, but that, as a buffer, he was the nearest approach to perfection obtainable in this world of makeshifts.

To which Mr. Ince would reply with point and fluency that fenders could be had by the dozen from any shipping warehouse, at a lower cost than one week's salary of Nicol's would represent, and would be far more efficient in the office. Still he did not suggest dismissing the man.

Juliet, as she sat and looked round the musty little waiting-room, felt that here was an end of her dreams of the resplendent family she was to find pining to take her to its heart. She felt certain that she could never have any feelings in common with people who could employ a firm of solicitors which in its turn was served by the man who had received her. Romance and the clerk could never, she thought, meet under one roof. And such a roof! The room in which she sat was so dark, so gloomy, so bare and cheerless, that Juliet began to wonder whether she would not have been wiser not to have come. This was not a place, surely, which fond parents would choose for a long-deferred meeting with their child, after years of separation. She walked to the window, but the only view was of a blank wall, and that so close that she could have touched it by leaning out. No wonder the room was dark, even at midday in August. The walls were lined with bookshelves, where heavy volumes, all dealing with the same subject, that of law, stood shoulder to shoulder in stout bindings of brown leather.

There was a fireplace of cracked and dirty marble with an engraving hung over it, representing the coronation of Queen Victoria. A gas stove occupied the grate, and a gas bracket stuck out from the wall on either side of the picture.

On the small round mahogany table that stood in the middle of the room lay a Bible, and a copy of the St. James's Gazette, which was dated a week back. Juliet took it up and read an account of a cricket match without much enthusiasm. Then she flung it down and wandered about the room once more; but she had exhausted all its possibilities; and though she took a volume entitled Causes Célèbres from the shelf, and turned its pages hopefully, she put it back with a grimace at its dullness and a sort of surprise at finding anything drier than the cricket.

She had waited half an hour, when the door opened and the face of Nicol was introduced round the corner of it.

"Will you please come this way," he said.

Telling her maid to stay where she was, Juliet followed him. He opened the other door on the landing, and announced her in a loud voice as, with a quickened pulse, she passed him, and entered the room.

There were two men standing by the hearth. One of them came forward to receive her.

"How do you do, Miss Byrne," he said; "I am glad you were able to come.
I am Jeremy Findlay, at your service."

Mr. Findlay was a man of moderate height, with a long pointed nose which he was in the habit of putting down to within an inch or two of his desk when he was looking for any particular paper, for he was very short sighted. It rather conveyed the impression that he was poking about with it, and that he hunted for questionable clauses or illegalities in a document, much as a pig might hunt for truffles in a wood. For the rest, he was middle-aged, with hair nearly white, and small grey whiskers. He beamed at Juliet through gold-rimmed eyeglasses.

"Let me introduce my friend," he said, mumbling something.

Juliet did not catch the name, but she supposed that this was Mr. Ince.

The other man stepped forward and shook hands, but said nothing. He was a thin, pallid creature, rather above the average height, and had the drooping shoulders of a scholar. His face, which was long and narrow, looked pale and emaciated, and though his blue eyes had a kindly twinkle it seemed to Juliet that they burned with a feverish brightness. His nose was long and slightly hooked, and beneath it the mouth was hidden by a heavy red moustache; while his hair, though not of so bright a colour, had a reddish tinge about it. He appeared to be about fifty years of age, but this was due to a look of tiredness habitual to his expression, and, in part, to actual bad health. In reality he was younger.

"Pray take this chair, Miss Byrne," Mr. Findlay was saying. "We are anxious to have a little conversation with you. I am sure you quite understand that we should not have asked you to come all the way from Belgium unless your presence was of considerable importance. How important it is I really hardly know myself, but I repeat that I would not have urged you to take so long a journey if I had not had serious reason to think that it was desirable for your own sake that you should do so. I may say at once that the matter is a family one; but before going further I must ask your permission to put one or two questions to you, which I hope you will believe are not prompted by any feeling of idle curiosity on my part."

He paused, and Juliet murmured some words of acquiescence. Mr. Findlay took off his eyeglasses, glared at them, replaced them, and ran his nose over the surface of the papers on his writing-table.

"Ah, here it is!" he exclaimed triumphantly, pouncing on a folded sheet and lifting it to his eyes. "Just a few notes," he explained.

"We wrote you care of Sir Arthur Byrne," he resumed; "are you a member of his family?"

Here was a disturbing question for Juliet. She had imagined, until this instant, that she was on the point of being told who her family was, and now this man was asking for information from her. Tears of disappointment would not be kept from her eyes.

"I am a member of Sir Arthur's household," she stammered.

"Are you not his daughter, then?" asked Mr. Findlay.

"No, I am not really," Juliet replied.

"Then may I ask what relation you are to him?" said the lawyer.

"I am his adopted daughter," said Juliet. "I have always called him
'Father.'"

"Are you not any relation at all?" pursued Mr. Findlay.

"I believe not."

"Then, Miss Byrne, I hope you will not think it an impertinent question if I ask, who are you?"

"I don't know," acknowledged poor Juliet. "I was hoping you would tell me that. I thought, I imagined, that that was why you sent for me."

"You astonish me," said Mr. Findlay. "Do you mean to say that your family has never made any attempt to communicate with you?"

"No, never."

"And that Sir Arthur Byrne has never told you anything as to your birth?
Surely you must have questioned him about it?"

"He has told me all he knows," said Juliet, "but that amounts to nothing."

"Indeed; that is very strange. He must have had dealings with the people you were with before he adopted you. He must at least know their name?"

"I don't know," said Juliet. "He doesn't know either, I am sure. It wasn't Sir Arthur who adopted me. It was the lady he married. A Mrs. Meredith. She is dead."

"But he must have heard about you from her," insisted Mr. Findlay. "He would not have taken a child into his household without knowing anything at all about it."

"His wife told him that I was the daughter of a friend of hers, and begged him not to ask her any more about me. He was very devoted to her, and he did as she wished. He has been most kind to me; but I am sure he would be as glad as I should be to discover my relations. I am dreadfully disappointed that you don't know anything about them. We all thought I was going to find my family at last."

Juliet's voice quavered a little. She had built too much on this interview.

"I am really extremely sorry not to be able to give you any information,"
Mr. Findlay said.

He turned towards the other man with an interrogative glance, and was met by a nod of the head, at which he leant back in his chair, crossed his legs and folded his hands upon them, with the expression of some one who has played his part in the game, and now retires in favour of another competitor. The pale man moved his chair a little forward and took up the conversation.

"Are you really quite certain that Sir Arthur Byrne has told you all he knows?" he said earnestly, fixing on Juliet a look at once grave and eager.

"Yes," she answered. "I can see that he is as puzzled as I am. And he would be glad enough to find a way to get rid of me," she added bitterly.

"I thought you said you were attached to him," said the stranger in surprise, "and that he had been very kind to you?"

"Yes," said Juliet, "he has, and I am as fond of him as possible. But he has three stepdaughters now; he has married again, you know. And he is not very well off. I am a great expense, besides being an extra girl. I don't blame him for thinking I am one too many."

There was a long pause, during which Juliet was conscious of being closely scrutinized.

"I think I may be able to give you news of your family," said the pale man unexpectedly. "That is, if you are the person I think you are likely to be."

"Oh," exclaimed Juliet, "can you really?"

"Well, it is possible," admitted the other. "I can't say for certain yet."

"Oh, do, do tell me!" cried the girl.

"Out of the question, at present," he replied firmly. "I must first satisfy myself as to whose child you are, and on that point you appear able to give me no assistance. You must wait till I can find out something further about this matter of your adoption. And even then," he added, "it is not certain if I can tell you. You must understand that, though certain family secrets have been placed in my possession, it does not depend upon myself whether or not I shall ultimately reveal them to you."

Juliet's face fell for a moment, but she refused to allow herself to be discouraged.

"There is a chance for me, anyhow!" she exclaimed. "How I hope you will be allowed to tell me in the end! But why," she went on, turning to Mr. Findlay, "did you make me think you knew nothing at all about me. I suppose the family secrets your partner speaks of are the secrets of my family?"

"My dear young lady," said Mr. Findlay, "Lord Ashiel is not my partner. On the contrary, he is an old client of ours, and it was at his request that we wrote to you as we did. We know no more about your affairs than you have told us yourself."

"Oh," murmured Juliet, confused at her mistake. "I thought you were Mr.
Ince," she apologized; "I am so sorry."

"Not very flattering to poor Ince I'm afraid," said Lord Ashiel, smiling at her. "He's ten years younger than I am, I'm sorry to say, and I would change places with