Guy Waring reached Waterloo ten minutes too late. Nevitt had gone on by the West of England express. The porter at the labelling place “minded the gentleman well.” He was a sharp-looking gentleman, with a queer look about the eyes, and a dark moustache curled round at the corners.
“Yes, yes,” Guy cried eagerly, “that’s him right enough. The eyes mark the man. And where was he going to?”
“He had his things labelled,” the porter said, “for Plymouth.”
“And when does the next train start?” Guy inquired, all on fire.
The porter, consulting the time-table in the muddle-headed way peculiar to railway porters, and stroking his chin with his hand to assist cerebration, announced, after a severe internal struggle, that the 3.45 down, slow, was the earliest train available.
There was nothing for it then, Guy perceived, but to run home to his rooms, possessing his soul in patience, pack up a few things in his Gladstone bag, and return at his leisure to catch the down train thus unfavourably introduced to his critical notice.
If Guy had dared, to be sure, he might have gone straight to a police-station, and got an inspector to telegraph along the line to stop the thief with his booty at Basingstoke or Salisbury. But Guy didn’t dare. For to interfere with Nevitt now by legal means would be to risk the discovery of his own share in the forgery. And from that risk the startled and awakened young man shrank for a thousand reasons; though the chief among them all was certainly one that never would have occurred to any one but himself as even probable.
He didn’t wish Elma Clifford to know that the man she loved, and the man who loved her, had become that day a forger’s brother.
To be sure, he had only seen Elma once—that afternoon at the Holkers’ garden-party. But, as Cyril himself knew, he had fallen in love with her at first sight—far more immediately, indeed, than even Cyril himself had done. Blood, as usual, was thicker than water. The points that appealed to one brother appealed also to the other, but with this characteristic difference, that Guy, who was the more emotional and less strong-willed of the two, yielded himself up at the very first glance to the beautiful stranger, while Cyril required some further acquaintance before quite giving way and losing his heart outright to her. And from that first meeting forward, Guy had carried Elma Clifford’s image engraved upon his memory—as he would carry it, he believed, to his dying day. Not, to be sure, that he ever thought for a moment of endeavouring to win her away from his brother. She was Cyril’s discovery, and to Cyril, therefore, he yielded her up, as of prior right, though with a pang of reluctance. But now that he stood face to face at last with his own accomplished crime, the first thought that rose in his mind spontaneous was for Elma’s happiness. He must never let Elma Clifford know that the man she loved, and would doubtless marry, was now by HIS act—a forger’s brother.
Three forty-five arrived at last, and Guy set off, all trembling, on his fatal quest. As he sped along, indignant at heart with Nevitt’s black treachery, on the line to Plymouth, he had plenty of time to revolve these things abundantly in his own soul. And when, after a long and dusty drive, he reached Plymouth, late at night, he could learn nothing for the moment about Montague Nevitt’s movements. So he was forced to go quietly for the evening to the Duke of Devonshire Hotel, and there wait as best he might to see how events would next develop themselves.
A day passed away—two days—but nothing turned up. Guy wasted much time in Plymouth making various inquiries before he learnt at last that a man with a queer look about the eyes, and a moustache with waxed ends, had gone down a night or so earlier by the other line to a station at the foot of Dartmoor, by the name of Mambury.
No sooner, however, had he learnt this promising news, than he set off at once, hot at heart as ever, to pursue the robber. That wretch shouldn’t get away scot free with his booty; Guy would follow him and denounce him to the other end of the universe! When he reached Mambury, he went direct to the village inn and asked, with trembling lips, if Mr. Montague Nevitt was at present staying there. The landlord shook his head with a stubborn, rustic negative. “No, we arn’t a-got no gentleman o’ thik there name in the house,” he said; “fact is, zur, to tell ‘ee the truth, we arn’t a-had nobody stoppin’ in the Arms at all lately, ‘cep’ it might be a gentleman come down from London, an’ it was day afore yesterday as he did come, an’ he do call ‘unself McGregor.”
Quick as lightning, Guy suspected Nevitt might be passing under a false name. What more likely, indeed, seeing he had made off with Guy’s three thousand pounds?
“And what sort of a man is this McGregor?” he asked hastily, putting his suspicion into shape. “What age? What height? What kind of a person to look at?”
“Wull, he’s a vine upstandin’ zart of a gentleman,” the landlord answered glibly in his own dialect; “as proper a gentleman as you’d wish to zee in a day’s march; med be about your height, zur, or a trifle more, has his moustaches curled round zame as if it med be a bellick’s harns; an’ a strange zart o’ a look about his eyes, too, as if ur could zee right drew an’ drew ‘ee.”
“That’s him!” Guy exclaimed, with a start, in profound excitement. “That’s the fellow, sure enough. I know him. I know him. And where is he now, landlord? Is he in the house? Can I see him?”
“Well, no, ‘ee can’t zee him, zur,” the landlord answered, eyeing the stranger askance; “he be out, jest at present. He do go vur a walk, mostly, down yonner in the bottom alongside the brook. Mebbe if you was to vollow by river-bank you med come up wi’ him by-an’-by ... and mebbe, agin, you medn’t.”
“I’ll follow him,” Guy exclaimed, growing more excited than ever, now this quarry was almost well within sight; “I’ll follow him till I find him, the confounded rascal. I’ll follow him to his grave. He shan’t get away from me.”
The landlord looked at him with a dubious frown. That one could smile and smile and be a villain didn’t enter into his simple rustic philosophy.
“He’s a pleasant-spoken gentleman is Maister McGregor,” the honest Devonian said, with a tinge of disapprobation in his thick voice. “What vur do ‘ee want to vind ‘un? That’s what I wants to know. He don’t look like one as did ever hurt a vlea. Such a soft zart of a voice. An’ he do play on the viddle that beautiful—that beautiful, why, ‘tis the zame if he war a angel from heaven. Viddler Moore, he wur up here wi’ his music last night; an’ Maister McGregor, he took the instrument vrom un, an’ ‘Let ME have a try, my vrend,’ says he, all modest and unassoomin’; and vi’ that, he wounded it up, an’ he begun to play. Lard, how he did play. Never heard nothing like it in all my barn days. It is the zame, vor all the world, as you do hear they viddler chaps that plays by themselves in the Albert Hall up to London. Depend upon it, zur, there ain’t no harm in HIM. A vullow as can play on the viddle like thik there, why, he couldn’t do no hurt, not to child nor chicken.”
Guy turned away from the door, fretting and fuming inwardly. He knew better than that. Ne............