Lady Audley’s Secret by M. E. Braddon (top ebook reader TXT) 📕

“You called at my chambers today,” Robert said, quietly. “Don’t let me disturb you, ladies.” This to the droppers-in. “You called at my chambers today, Mr. White, and⁠—”

The man interrupted him.

“I hope, sir, you will be so good as to look over the mistake,” he stammered. “I’m sure, sir, I’m very sorry it should have occurred. I was sent for to another gentleman’s chambers, Mr. Aulwin, in Garden Court; and the name slipped my memory; and havin’ done odd jobs before for you, I thought it must be you as wanted me today; and I called at Mrs. Maloney’s for the key accordin’; but directly I see the locks in your chambers, I says to myself, the gentleman’s locks ain’t out of order; the gentleman don’t want all his locks repaired.”

“But you stayed half an hour.”

“Yes, sir; for there was one lock out of order⁠—the door nighest the staircase⁠—and I took it off and cleaned it and put it on again. I won’t charge you nothin’ for the job, and I hope as you’ll be as good as to look over the mistake as has occurred, which I’ve been in business thirteen years come July, and⁠—”

“Nothing of this kind ever happened before, I suppose,” said Robert, gravely. “No, it’s altogether a singular kind of business, not likely to come about every day. You’ve been enjoying yourself this evening I see, Mr. White. You’ve done a good stroke of work today, I’ll wager⁠—made a lucky hit, and you’re what you call ‘standing treat,’ eh?”

Robert Audley looked straight into the man’s dingy face as he spoke. The locksmith was not a bad-looking fellow, and there was nothing that he need have been ashamed of in his face, except the dirt, and that, as Hamlet’s mother says, “is common;” but in spite of this, Mr. White’s eyelids dropped under the young barrister’s calm scrutiny, and he stammered out some apologetic sort of speech about his “missus,” and his missus’ neighbors, and port wine and sherry wine, with as much confusion as if he, an honest mechanic in a free country, were called upon to excuse himself to Robert Audley for being caught in the act of enjoying himself in his own parlor.

Robert cut him short with a careless nod.

“Pray don’t apologize,” he said; “I like to see people enjoy themselves. Good night, Mr. White good night, ladies.”

He lifted his hat to “the missus,” and the missus’ neighbors, who were much fascinated by his easy manner and his handsome face, and left the shop.

“And so,” he muttered to himself as he went back to his chambers, “ ‘with that she walked off as graceful as you please.’ Who was it that walked off; and what was the story which the locksmith was telling when I interrupted him at that sentence? Oh, George Talboys, George Talboys, am I ever to come any nearer to the secret of your fate? Am I coming nearer to it now, slowly but surely? Is the radius to grow narrower day by day until it draws a dark circle around the home of those I love? How is it all to end?”

He sighed wearily as he walked slowly back across the flagged quadrangles in the Temple to his own solitary chambers.

Mrs. Maloney had prepared for him that bachelor’s dinner, which, however excellent and nutritious in itself, has no claim to the special charm of novelty. She had cooked for him a mutton-chop, which was soddening itself between two plates upon the little table near the fire.

Robert Audley sighed as he sat down to the familiar meal, remembering his uncle’s cook with a fond, regretful sorrow.

“Her cutlets à la Maintenon made mutton seem more than mutton; a sublimated meat that could scarcely have grown upon any mundane sheep,” he murmured sentimentally, “and Mrs. Maloney’s chops are apt to be tough; but such is life⁠—what does it matter?”

He pushed away his plate impatiently after eating a few mouthfuls.

“I have never eaten a good dinner at this table since I lost George Talboys,” he said. “The place seems as gloomy as if the poor fellow had died in the next room, and had never been taken away to be buried. How long ago that September afternoon appears as I look back at it⁠—that September afternoon upon which I parted with him alive and well; and lost him as suddenly and unaccountably as if a trap-door had opened in the solid earth and let him through to the antipodes!”

Mr. Audley rose from the dinner-table and walked over to the cabinet in which he kept the document he had drawn up relating to George Talboys. He unlocked the doors of his cabinet, took the paper from the pigeonhole marked important, and seated himself at his desk to write. He added several paragraphs to those in the document, numbering the fresh paragraphs as carefully as he had numbered the old ones.

“Heaven help us all,” he muttered once; “is this paper with which no attorney has had any hand to be my first brief?”

He wrote for about half an hour, then replaced the document in the pigeonhole, and locked the cabinet. When he had done this, he took a candle in his hand, and went into the room in which were his own portmanteaus and the trunk belonging to George Talboys.

He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and tried them one by one. The lock of the shabby old trunk was a common one, and at the fifth trial the key turned easily.

“There’d be no need for anyone to break open such a lock as this,” muttered Robert, as he lifted the lid of the trunk.

He slowly emptied it of its contents, taking out each article separately, and laying it carefully upon a chair by his side. He handled the things with a respectful tenderness, as if he had been lifting the dead body of his lost friend. One by one he laid the neatly folded mourning garments on the