and this advantage had been swiftly followed by the arrest of Fordyce Jukes, as related to me in a letter, received the day before, from Mr Tredgold. I had not told him of my betrayal, nor of how everything I had laboured so long to acquire had been lost beyond recall. In a few brief notes sent down to Canterbury, I had assured him that all was going along very well, and that Miss Carteret and I had been laying our plans. In the reply he had now sent to the last of these hastily composed communications, I detected an anxious impatience, which I much regretted; but I was determined, at all costs, to keep my employer in ignorance of the true situation, and of what I was about to do.
The letter did, however, contain the welcome news concerning Jukes.You may or may not be aware that, following information received from an anonymous source, Jukes has been found in possession of a large number of very precious objects, every one of which appears to have been stolen, over a period of time, from Evenwood. He claims that he merely stored these items under instruction from the person actually responsible for the thefts. And the person he names? None other than Mr Phoebus Daunt! Of course no one believes him. It is too ridiculous, and a dastardly slur on the reputation of a great literary man (so goes the general view). Jukes has certainly had opportunity to carry out the thefts during the time that he has been in my employ, having often accompanied me to Evenwood on business, and at other times he was sent there alone on various errands. I very much fear his protestations will count for little when his case comes on. Nothing, I think, can lessen Lord Tansor’s exalted estimation of Mr Phoebus Daunt. Jukes has of course been dismissed from the firm, and is presently awaiting trial. I shudder that such a person was in my trusted employ for so long, and the anonymous informant, whoever he may be, has my sincere gratitude for thus exposing him. As a result of the police investigation, it has now also emerged that Jukes may have been implicated in the defrauding of his previous employer, Pentecost & Vizard, in the year 1841. He is said to have facilitated a burglary, during which a number of the firm’s blank cheques were stolen, which, if true, makes me shudder that I placed my trust in him for so long.On another matter, what you certainly will not know is that I have decided, in consultation with my brother and sister, that I shall formally retire from the firm on the 31st of this month. Mr Donald Orr is to become Senior Partner (my sister’s views on this promotion are extremely severe), whilst I propose to take a little house in the country, play my violincello, and tend my collections, though I confess that they do not hold the fascination that once they did. Rebecca is to come and keep house for me – Harrigan has deserted her, and it now appears that they were never married. It is an arrangement that suits both parties very well. Leaving London is for the best, I think. The world is much changed, and really I wish to have as little to do with it as possible.
Dear, kind Mr Tredgold! How I wished I could turn back from the path on which my feet were now set! But it was too late. The past had been closed off; the future was dark; I had only my present unshakeable resolve, as minute succeeded minute, and the snow began to fall.
My first task was to remove my moustachios. When the operation was over, I stood for some moments regarding myself in the cracked mirror above my wash-stand. I was bemused. Who was this person? The boy who dreamed of sailing away to the Country of the Houyhnhnms? Or the young man who wished to become a great scholar? No: I saw clearly who I was, and what I had become. I saw, too, that I did not have, and would never have, the strength to turn aside from visiting retribution on my enemy, and so reclaim my former innocent self. I was damned, and I knew it.
The thought of who I had once been, before I discovered the truth about myself, suddenly conjured up a vivid memory of an event that I had almost forgotten until revived by some strange unconscious mechanism on this day of vengeance.
When I was eight, and in my second year at Tom Grexby’s little school, our small band of scholars, three in number by now, was augmented by the son of a corn-factor from Wareham, Rowland Beesley by name, who had been sent to Sandchurch to live temporarily in the care of his aunt. Beesley tried Tom’s patience sorely from the start, and it was not long before he took it into his head to cross me – which, even at that age, was a foolish thing to do.
After several preliminary skirmishes, in which I think it is fair to say I triumphed decisively, battle was joined in earnest on the day that I brought to school, for Tom’s perusal, my pride and joy – the first volume of the translation of M. Galland’s
Towards the end of the morning lesson, Beesley asked to be excused. He returned after a few minutes, took his place, and the lesson continued. When at last Tom said we could go off, I waited until the others had left and then, eager to show him my treasure, jumped up and ran out into the sitting-room.
The piece of green plush lay on the floor. Of the book there was no sign.
I let out a howl of rage, then rushed towards the door and out into the street. I knew for sure that Beesley had taken it, and I ran about screaming ‘Scheherazade! Scheherazade!’ like a mad thing, trying to see where he might have hidden my most precious possession; but there was no sign of either the book or the thief. And then I happened to glance into the old stone water-trough that stood just outside the King’s Head. There, floating on the dark-green water, was my book, its pages sodden and torn, the spine ripped off and floating separately, ruined past all remedy.
There was not a doubt who had been responsible for this outrage; and so the following Sunday, when Beesley and his aunt were in church, as I knew they would be, I made my way to the back garden of Miss Henniker’s house. It was a raw, wet November morning, and through one of the windows I could see a fire burning merrily. On the floor were scattered a number of playthings, amongst them a tin box, which I knew contained my foe’s much-prized army of toy soldiers. He had brought this box to school on his first day, and had set out the contents proudly on Tom’s parlour table: a whole encampment, carved and painted, comprising two or three dozen mounted and foot soldiers, together with tents, camp followers, cannon balls and cannon.
A little while after Miss Henniker and her nephew had left for church, I saw the maid unlock the terrace doors to shake out a duster. When she had finished her work, I crept to the terrace, and was soon inside the room.
It burned well, that little wooden army. I stood and watched the conflagration for a moment or two, warming myself by the flames that spat and darted on the hearth, and saying to myself the rhyme that my foster-mother used to sing to me, in which the appearance of Bonaparte was threatened if I did not go to sleep. I smiled to myself as the words now came back to me over the waste of years:And he’ll beat you, beat you, beat you,
And he’ll beat you all to pap.And he’ll eat you, eat you, eat you,
Every morsel, snap, snap, snap.
And now, like Rowland Beesley, another enemy must pay for taking what was mine.
I have called in a favour and have set someone to watch over the house in Mecklenburgh-square, day and night. Daunt is still there. No one has called. On Thursday, he went to a dinner at the London Tavern* with a number of other literary men. Last night he stayed at home the whole evening. But I know for certain where he will be tonight.
Last Tuesday week, my spy-a certain William Blunt, of Crucifix-lane, Borough – brought word that Lord Tansor
