the pretty miss bristowe was certainly an enigma.
in that dingy consulting-room in the walworth road i often sat during the days that followed, musing over that curious and fruitless journey. i felt rather piqued than disappointed, for to put it bluntly i had been fooled, and left to pay nearly a sovereign to a cabman.
her parting words to me: “perhaps one day you will learn the real reason of this decision,” seemed ominous ones, while her agitation was strange in such circumstances. she parted from me so hastily that it seemed almost as though she held me in fear. but why? i am sure i acted towards her with all the gallantry in my rather rough nature. no; the more i thought over it the more remarkable seemed the incident.
but a few days later i discovered yet a stranger circumstance. in order to find out something regarding my pretty companion on that long cab drive, i wrote to dr. whitworth at bude, telling him that she had called, and inquiring the nature of her brother’s complaint. to this i received a brief note saying that he had never heard of “miss bristowe” in his life.
then the truth was rudely forced upon me that the woman who had held me fascinated by her beauty was actually an impostor.
what, however, could have been her object in inducing me to accompany her upon such a vain errand? doctors see some queer things and meet with strange adventures in the course of their practice, but surely her motive in fooling me was utterly unintelligible.
through the remaining fortnight i continued to treat the crowd of poor suffering humanity that seemed to greet me ever in the waiting-room; for whitworth was a kindly man, hence all the poor came to him. night after night i sat listening to the ills of costermongers and their wives, labourers, factory hands, cabmen, tram-men, and all that hard-working class that makes up lower london “over the water.” sometimes they told me their symptoms with quaint directness, using scientific terms wrongly or atrociously pronounced—the result of school board education in elementary physiology, i suppose. but, as in every neighbourhood of that class, drink was accountable for, or aggravated, at least two-thirds of the cases that i saw. surely it would open the eyes of the social reformer or the temperance advocate if he spent one evening in the consulting-room of a dispensary in lower london.
at last whitworth returned, fresh and bronzed, from the cornish coast, and as i sat handing back to him the keys of the place and receiving a cheque for my services, i mentioned the subject of miss bristowe.
“ah!” he laughed, “what did you mean by that letter? i don’t know any such person, nor even anyone who lives at blackheath.”
“and she said that you had attended her brother for nearly two years for some internal ailment. she came here one night to fetch you. i told her you were away, and after some persuasion she allowed me to accompany her. then, when we got to blackheath, she suddenly changed her mind and sent me back.”
“you never saw the brother?”
“never went to the house. she wouldn’t let me.”
“but you yourself suggested going with her, you say?”
“yes,” i replied, “i did.”
“pretty?”
“very much so.”
“and you were struck with her, eh?” he laughed, for he was a prosaic married man with a couple of children.
“just a trifle,” i admitted.
“well,” he said, “the girl possibly saw that you were gone on her, so she had a lark with you. you paid her cab home, and she had no objection.”
“but her story was so plausible.”
“every woman can be plausible when she pleases,” he said. “but are you sure she asked for me?”
“quite certain. she first inquired for you, telling me that you were an old friend.”
he laughed heartily at what he termed the woman’s audacity; then, after some further discussion of the subject, we dropped it as one of those little mysteries of life that are beyond solution.
on relinquishing my position at the dispensary i wandered heedlessly hither and thither in london. the weather was still hot, more oppressive even than i had felt it at naples or at leghorn, and all seemed dull because my friends were away in the country or at the seaside. through the lancet i was offered a three months’ engagement as assistant to a doctor in northumberland, but i declined it, as it was too far from london. somehow i felt it necessary, for the elucidation of the mystery of the seahorse, to remain in town—why i cannot tell.
one day in response to a note, i called upon macfarlane, the specialist in lunacy, and found him seated in his consulting-room, a fine apartment furnished in old oak, of which he was an ardent collector, and surrounded by a number of fine old clocks of various periods.
“well, pickering,” he exclaimed cheerily, rising to greet me, “i’ve got some news for you about your—what shall we call him—foundling, eh?”
“that’s a good description,” i laughed. “captain seal used to call him ‘old mister mystery.’ but what is the news?”
“well, he’s taken a decided turn for the better. i see him every day, and although at first he was bitterly hostile towards me because i wouldn’t allow him to wear his sword, he has now become quite mild and tractable. and what’s more, he’s taken to writing, which is one of the best signs of impending recovery that we could have. here are some of his efforts,” he added, taking from a drawer a quantity of scraps of paper, from half-sheets of foolscap to bits torn from newspapers, and placing them before me. “i don’t suppose you can make anything more out of them than i can. his brain is clearing, but is not yet rightly balanced. now and then his ideas run in the direction of a design made up of creepy-looking demons and imps. there’s no doubt about it, that whoever he is, he’s a man of some talent. did you see what was in the telegraph the other day?”
“i saw a distorted story about the seahorse,” i answered.
“but on the following day there was a short statement regarding this nameless patient of ours. they sent a reporter to me to obtain further details, but i did not consider myself justified in giving them. the less the public knows about the affair the better—that’s my opinion.”
“certainly,” i said. “i’m very glad you did not allow yourself to be interviewed.”
then i turned myself to the uneven scribble, mostly in pencil, which had been executed by the lunatic. my hopes were quickly dashed, for i found it poor stuff. sometimes it appeared as though he wished to write a letter, for there were the preliminary words, “dear sister,” “dear harry,” and “my dear sir.” once he started to write a nautical song, whether of his own composition or not i am unaware. the lines, written quite distinctly, although in a shaky old-fashioned hand, were:?—
there’s nothing like rum on a windy night,
????sing hey, my lads, sing hey!
when the rigging howls and you’re battened tight,
????yo ho! my lads, yo ho!
on a dirty piece of newspaper was written: “jimmy jobson, 1st mate, went to davy jones’s locker may 16.” another bore the statement: “pugfaced willie ought to have been a tub-thumper instead of sailing under the black flag. that is andy anderson’s opinion.”
the last piece i examined was half a sheet of note-paper bearing the heading, “high elms,” the paper given to patients for their correspondence. it was covered with scribble, just as a child scribbles before it can write, but in a small blank space near the bottom were the strange words: “beware of black bennett! he means mischief!”
the latter had been written as a warning, but to whom addressed it was impossible to tell.
“all are, of course, the wanderings of the patient’s mind,” remarked macfarlane. “those names may possibly help us to establish his identity.”
“have you determined his age?”
“not more than seventy, if as much,” was the reply. “but i feel certain that he’ll recover, if not at once, within, say, a year. this writing is a very hopeful sign. of course, i can’t say that he’ll recover his speech too—probably he won’t. but he can write, and by that means tell us something of how he came on board the ancient ship.”
i remained with the great specialist for half an hour longer, then taking possession of the curious evidence of the old fellow’s returning sanity i went back to chelsea.
time after time i examined that strange warning regarding “black bennett.” who could he be?
there was one remark about the black flag, which meant piracy. possibly, then, this man bennett had been a pirate at some time or other.
anyhow, i was greatly gratified to think that ere long the mysterious man might be able to give us an intelligible account of himself, and although the meaning of the warning regarding “black bennett” was an enigma, i quickly forgot all about it.
the one point upon which all my energies were concentrated was the recovery of that cryptic document which the drunken old labourer at rockingham had disposed of. i called at all the chief dealers in manuscripts in london and made inquiry if anything like the parchment i described had been offered for sale, but was informed that sixteenth-century parchments of that character were too common to be of sufficient value for them to consider. codexes or charters of any century down to the fifteenth would always be looked at, but a notarial deed of so late a date as the end of the sixteenth century was beneath the notice of any of the dealers.
early one morning i received a telegram from mr. staffurth, and, in response, went to clapham park road in hot haste.
i found, to my surprise, a strange, black-bearded man in his study, and the old gentleman was greatly excited and alarmed. a pane of glass in the window was, i noticed, missing, and it was accounted for by his breathless statement that during the night his house had been broken into by burglars.
the black-bearded man, who was a detective, chimed in, saying:?—
“it seems, sir, as though they were after some of the valuable books the gentleman has. they didn’t go further into the house than this room, although the door was unlocked.”
“you see what they’ve done, doctor—cut out a pane of glass, opened the window, forced the shutters, and got in. look at the place! they’ve turned everything topsy-turvy!”
they certainly had, for papers and books were strewn all over the floor.
“have you missed anything?” i asked quickly.
“one thing only. it is, i regret to say, that parchment deed of yours with the seven signatures. they’ve taken nothing else but that, although here, as you see, is an illuminated hor? worth at least ￡300, and the twelfth-century st. bernardus that quaritch bid ￡200 for at sotheby’s last week.”
“they were expert thieves,” the detective remarked, “and were evidently in search of something which they knew the gentleman had in his possession.”
“but the book—the book containing the cipher!” i cried, dismayed, the truth dawning upon me that the burglars had been in search of those documents of mine.
“fortunately, they were unable to secure it,” was old mr. staffurth’s reply. “i had locked it in the safe here as a precaution against its destruction by fire.” and he indicated the good-sized safe that stood in the opposite corner of the room. “you see upon it marks of their desperate efforts to open it, but with all their drills, chisels, wedges, and such-like things they were not successful. the secret of the cipher is still ours.”
“then they were hired burglars?” i said.
“that seems most probable, sir,” replied the detective. “such a thing is not by any means unusual. they were professionals at the game, whoever they were.”
