The Major drew on his gloves; his colour had come back to him; he had resumed his easy suavity of manner.
“I don’t think,” he said slowly, “I’ll trouble my mother or the Princess; and I shall be glad, if you have the opportunity, if you will make people understand that I only moved in the matter at all out of—of mere kindness to a young and friendless foreigner.”
Drawn Daggers
“I admit that the dagger business is something of a puzzle to me, but as for the lost necklace—well, I should have thought a child would have understood that,” said Mr. Dyer irritably. “When a young lady loses a valuable article of jewellery and wishes to hush the matter up, the explanation is obvious.”
“Sometimes,” answered Miss Brooke calmly, “the explanation that is obvious is the one to be rejected, not accepted.”
Off and on these two had been, so to speak, “jangling” a good deal that morning. Perhaps the fact was in part to be attributed to the biting east wind which had set Loveday’s eyes watering with the gritty dust, as she had made her way to Lynch Court, and which was, at the present moment, sending the smoke, in aggravating gusts, down the chimney into Mr. Dyer’s face. Thus it was, however. On the various topics that had chanced to come up for discussion that morning between Mr. Dyer and his colleague, they had each taken up, as if by design, diametrically opposite points of view.
His temper altogether gave way now.
“If,” he said, bringing his hand down with emphasis on his writing table, “you lay it down as a principle that the obvious is to be rejected in favour of the abstruse, you’ll soon find yourself launched in the predicament of having to prove that two apples added to two other apples do not make four. But there, if you don’t choose to see things from my point of view, that is no reason why you should lose your temper!”
“Mr. Hawke wishes to see you, sir,” said a clerk, at that moment entering the room.
It was a fortunate diversion. Whatever might be the differences of opinion in which these two might indulge in private, they were careful never to parade those differences before their clients.
Mr. Dyer’s irritability vanished in a moment.
“Show the gentleman in,” he said to the clerk. Then he turned to Loveday. “This is the Rev. Anthony Hawke, the gentleman at whose house I told you that Miss Monroe is staying temporarily. He is a clergyman of the Church of England, but gave up his living some twenty years ago when he married a wealthy lady. Miss Monroe has been sent over to his guardianship from Peking by her father, Sir George Monroe, in order to get her out of the way of a troublesome and undesirable suitor.”
The last sentence was added in a low and hurried tone, for Mr. Hawke was at that moment entering the room.
He was a man close upon sixty years of age, white-haired, clean shaven, with a full, round face, to which a small nose imparted a somewhat infantine expression. His manner of greeting was urbane but slightly flurried and nervous. He gave Loveday the impression of being an easygoing, happy-tempered man who, for the moment, was unusually disturbed and perplexed.
He glanced uneasily at Loveday. Mr. Dyer hastened to explain that this was the lady by whose aid he hoped to get to the bottom of the matter now under consideration.
“In that case there can be no objection to my showing you this,” said Mr. Hawke; “it came by post this morning. You see my enemy still pursues me.”
As he spoke he took from his pocket a big, square envelope, from which he drew a large-sized sheet of paper.
On this sheet of paper were roughly drawn, in ink, two daggers, about six inches in length, with remarkably pointed blades.
Mr. Dyer looked at the sketch with interest.
“We will compare this drawing and its envelope with those you previously received,” he said, opening a drawer of his writing-table and taking thence a precisely similar envelope. On the sheet of paper, however, that this envelope enclosed, there was drawn one dagger only.
He placed both envelopes and their enclosures side by side, and in silence compared them. Then, without a word, he handed them to Miss Brooke, who, taking a glass from her pocket, subjected them to a similar careful and minute scrutiny.
Both envelopes were of precisely the same make, and were each addressed to Mr. Hawke’s London address in a round, school-boyish, copybook sort of hand—the hand so easy to write and so difficult to being home to any writer on account of its want of individuality. Each envelope likewise bore a Cork and a London postmark.
The sheet of paper, however, that the first envelope enclosed bore the sketch of one dagger only.
Loveday laid down her glass.
“The envelopes,” she said, “have, undoubtedly, been addressed by the same person, but these last two daggers have not been drawn by the hand that drew the first. Dagger number one was, evidently, drawn by a timid, uncertain and inartistic hand—see how the lines wave and how they have been patched here and there. The person who drew the other daggers, I should say, could do better work; the outline, though rugged, is bold and free. I should like to take these sketches home with me and compare them again at my leisure.”
“Ah, I felt sure what your opinion would be!” said Mr. Dyer complacently.
Mr. Hawke seemed much disturbed.
“Good gracious!” he ejaculated; “you don’t mean to say I have two enemies pursuing me in this fashion! What does it mean? Can it be—is it possible, do you think, that these things have been sent to me by the members of some Secret Society in Ireland—under error, of course—mistaking me for someone else? They can’t be meant for
