The Conspiracy

by Thomas Waters

The repudiated or unacknowledged claims upon the British Government, some of them for fabulous sums, all amount to a respectable national debt, and scores of individuals fall into poverty and untimely graves, in vain pursuit of a glittering bubble, ever dancing before their eyes, and ever just—only just—beyond their reach. The advent of a new First Lord of the Treasury, is the signal of a general revival from uneasy slumber of de­mands, which, shamefully ignored or neglected by his predecessor in office, will, write the unteachable solicitors, “be sure to meet with due apprecia­tion from the distinguished statesman, to whom the favor of a gracious sov­ereign, and the suffrages of an en­lightened people have entrusted the honor and interests of the great Brit­ish nation—which honor and interests can never be more effectually pro­moted than by doing justice to the meanest alike with the mightiest of that sovereign’s subjects,” It is sur­prising, too, or at least it would be surprising to those who do not from experience know how slight a thread of colored cobweb will retain persons otherwise sane in the consuming idleness, gradually changing to equal­ly idle despair, of the fool’s paradise of visionary hope,—to observe upon how slight and fanciful a foundation they continue to erect their air-drawn castles, I once knew a mathematician, of all men in the world, whom the following merely formal note uplifted to the seventh heaven from the slough of despond into which he was fast sinking, with some hope on his friends’ part that he would at last touch the bottom, and rebound therefrom by his own latent energy into the clear and healthful atmosphere of genuine working-day life.

“Whitehall,
“I am directed by Lord Melbourne to acknowledge the receipt of your memorial and accompanying voucher and to state that the matter shall receive his earliest attention.”

In less than six months afterward, the mathematician was a confirmed lunatic! Since I left the police force I have been more familiar with these hallucinations, and it happened that once whilst therein, I was brought in the exercise of my vocation; in contact with one of the most importunate inexorcisable of the “ghosts” by which the halls and passages of the Treasury and other public offices are constantly haunted; an intimacy which, it will be seen, led to curious revelations and results.

This person, one Alexander Tyrell was about thirty years of age, and had inherited, two or three years before I made official acquaintance with him, about eight hundred pounds cash, and a claim upon the English Treasury for the same number of thousands, from his father, which claim, as far as I could or cared to understand the bill of particulars— so forth in the bundle of documents exteriorly known, at all events, to every clerk and messenger at the Treasury; and by them facetiously denominated “The Kelp Papers,”—was for losses sustained by Tyrell, senior, a manufacturer of kelp from sea-weed, on the coast of Kent, who, at the suggestion or command of Sir John Moore, during the alarm previous to Trafalgar French invasion, gave up his premises, buildings, &c., for the use and occupation of the troops assembled there incurring thereby the destruction of an immense quantity of partially prepared kelp, and the ruin of his business. Tyrell’s father died in 18— just as he was more sanguine of success than he had at any time, during the previous five-and-twenty years, in consequence of Earl Grey’s succession to office, and the bequest of a thousand pounds, by a relative, enabling him to press his siege at the Treasury with great vigor than ever. Death, albeit, always unwelcome, and never more so than when the hand grasps, or its owner fancies it is about to grasp, the prize of a life’s exertion, suddenly interposed at the critical moment, his coming having probably been hastened, by the agitation into which the change of ministry and the unanticipated legacy threw the old man’s care-can­kered mind and body; and his only son, Alexander, found himself, after his father’s debts and funeral charges had been paid, in possession of eight hundred pounds in money, and a bill for eight thousand, drawn upon but not accepted by the British govern­ment. Now Alexander Tyrell was a young man of compressed but naturally elastic genius, who, thus sud­denly liberated from parental control and the much sterner gripe of poverty, forthwith expanded into a swell of first-rate brilliancy; and carried on the war with such spirit, that at the end of less than two years, he found, upon a rough calculation, hurriedly gone into, after awakening one morn­ing in the custody of a sheriff’s officer, that he was worth about twenty pounds in cash, after relieving him­self of the said officer, wherewith to face about two thousand pounds of debt! Thus beset, Alexander Tyrell bethought himself of his important claim upon the national exchequer; and the treasury clerks, who had con­gratulated themselves upon the death of “Old Kelp,” were surprised and disgusted by the apparition of Kelp the younger, who moreover quickly manifested a combative persistence in his purpose, which the rudest rebuff, the most supercilious insolence, utterly failed to repress or mitigate. More than that, the obstinate claimant of eight thousand pounds, which he assured them “was a vital necessity of his cruel and unexampled position,” began at last to assume, concurrently with the cultivation of his moustaches, an air of occult menace; darkly inter­preted by warning hints at the risks incurred, by official personages, who systematically perverted or dammed up the fountain of justice. Matter for merriment this to anyone moder­ately skilled in physiognomy that had once seen his good-looking, good-­humored, knavish face, wherein brag­gart was written plainly enough, but of courage, moral or physical, not the faintest sign.

Whether, however, from fear or fussiness, one of the officials, choosing to treat the affair seriously, had Al­exander Tyrell taken before a magis­trate, by whom he was bound over to keep the peace towards all the king’s lieges, and notably the British government and its employees, an un­dertaking which the terrified young man gave with a firm resolution, I am quite sure, not to break it. He was not, however, forbidden to strut solemnly past the office doors, as the clerks were arriving or leaving, and glare at them with all the Byronic-­satanism he could force into his weak light-hazel eyes—a pastime which, in conjunction with a continuous succession of anonymous letters, written in a woman’s hand, but it was not doubted dictated by him, and addressed to the lords and secretary of the treasury, caused an intimation to be given to the authorities of Scot­land Yard, that it would be well to keep a sharp eye upon Alexander Tyrell’s movements, and the more heedfully, that it was reported he had connected himself with the Chartist politicians who were agitating the country. I was selected for this service, and of course entered upon it at once, though with no great alacrity, till my zeal was quickened by a glimpse of circumstances, point­ing to more serious issues than swag­gering Alexander Tyrell’s imaginary murderous or treasonable designs. True, he occasionally attended the meetings in John Street, but more from complaisance towards his sworn friend David Closs, managing clerk in a city attorney’s office, and enthu­siastic champion of the five points, than from any pleasure or interest he himself took in Chartist oratory, wildly as he cheered every denunciation of government villainy and op­pression. The sad truth was, that the deposition of the ministry and transference of the treasury to the friendly gentlemen that dispensed their liberal eloquence from the John Street platform, would, taking the most sanguine calculation, be brought about too late for him; for so press­ing were his needs, that delay was destruction—ruin! His experience in furnished lodgings had been, I found, during the last twelve months, large and various, and in so swiftly a descending scale that his present domicile was a back attic in Great Windmill Street, which moreover his landlady had given him peremp­tory notice to quit, lest peradventure her sheets and blankets should go the three-golden balls way of’ her lodger’s last shirt. Thus desperately circumstanced, Alexander Tyrell may be forgiven, sworn though he had, eternal enmity to the vile British government, for presenting himself at the Albany Barracks, and intima­ting his willingness to enlist in the Guards. Being very young-looking for his age, and standing nearly six feet in his stockings, he was provisionally accepted, received earnest of, the king’s bounty, and my surveil­lance of the gentleman’s movements was, I imagined, at an end. I was mistaken: it was about to seriously begin. A still young, and no ques­tion very handsome woman, before her fresh, country complexion—she was from Christchurch, Hampshire—­and bright, girlish eyes had been grimed, quenched by constant daily and nightly toil in a wholesale mil­linery manufactory, and other beauty ­marring agencies, presented herself at the barracks in a state of semi-dis­traction and informed the command­ing officer that Tyrell was in his thirty-second year, and bound by a solemn engagement—sealed by a fatal pledge, to marry her directly he received the first instalment of the money due to him from the govern­ment. She gave the name of Lydia Lockwood; and it being known that I took especial interest in the new, recruit, I was commissioned to as­certain the truth or falsehood of her story. It was true enough, poor girl! She loved the fellow with the devoted apprehensiveness with which a solitary woman cast into the en­gulfing whirlpool of London labor life attaches herself to a man who, from motives of real or simulated affection promises to lift her up from those gloomy depths to the peace and, sunshine of a cheerful home, Her faith, too, in his honesty of purpose towards herself, was but momently shaken by his attempt at enlistment, and she unhesitatingly sold her scanty furniture to a broker in order to raise the smart-money required, she was told, to insure Tyrell’s discharge. This she offered him; but, much to my surprise, when a few days afterwards I chanced to hear of the cir­cumstance—and I should suppose to hers also—he declined receiving it, the commanding officer having, he informed her, determined, in conse­quence of her representations, to cancel his provisional engagement without charge. Money, however, it was soon apparent he must have somewhere obtained, and to a large amount, inasmuch, that he and his now inseparable crony David Closs; who had moreover suddenly lost his situation, forthwith entered upon a course of riotous living; that Tyrell himself dressed again as in his buck­ish days, and presented Lydia Lockwood with the means of making quite a fashionable appearance! A riddle to read this, especially as Closs was indebted to his employer when discharged, —had been, therefore dis­charged, and only saved from appear­ing at a police office by compassion for his wife and family. The attor­ney, Mr. B—, apprised of the dashing style of life assumed by his late clerk, bethought him that he might not have discovered the whole extent of that person’s defalcations, and a more rigorous investigation was gone into, without, however, producing any enlightening result, and the mystery but for an accident might have remained unsolved. The two friends, who had been indulging with their usual freedom at the Wrekin tavern, got into a brawl with some of their boon associates, when going home, which ended in a fight, and a night’s lodging at a police sta­tion. There, as the custom is, they were searched, and a note was found in Tyrell’s pocket, a copy of which I was in possession of early the next morning. It was from Closs and had been received early the previous day: I transcribe it verbatim:

“Dear Tyl: —If there is much more of Lydia Lockwood spooney­ness, we shall both of us have a capital chance of finding ourselves double ­ironed in Newgate. That’s a fact. That vulture Levy, was waiting for me when I got home last night, and an infernal jobation he gave me. He swears we obtained his three hundred pounds by false pretences, and that if the bill is not paid on the day it falls due, and it wants but about three weeks till then, he will give us both into custody forthwith. A pleasant prospect, eh? What with the drink I was full of, and the old brutal villain’s threats and abuse, my head so aches and throbs that I can scarcely lift it from the pil­low to scribble this note. I shall, however, be at the Wrekin to-night, when I hope to hear that you have made up your mind to go in and win. By—, it’s enough to make one’s hair stand on end to find that dread of a wench’s tears and tongue stands between a sensible man and twenty­ thousand pounds! If that young feather-headed fool did not know me personally, I myself would run the risk of transportation to clutch such a prize, whilst you, lucky dog that you are in not being tied up—not at least by a legal halter—run no risk whatever. There must, mind you, be no more shilly-shallying: Newgate or twenty thousand pounds is about the size of it, and a fellow must have a queer sort of nut on his shoulders that in such a case hesitates for choice. We’ll have a roaring jollification to-night, and to-morrow or next day, you must be off, per mail, to Bristol.

“Yours faithfully,

“D.C.”

Closs and Tyrell were discharged upon payment of a fine; and neither appeared to suspect that the strictly “private and confidential” note had been looked into; or perhaps Tyrell had not told his crafty friend that he had it about him. However that might have been, I was instructed to accompany Tyrell to Bristol, and take a hand at the game by which the confederates proposed to transfer 20,000l. from some other person’s possession to their own. The” vulture Levy’s” case and grievance were easily fathomed. Closs, whom Levy knew as B—’s managing clerk, had in­troduced Tyrell to the usurer as a person who was entitled to, and would shortly receive, a large amount of money from the treasury, but who, meantime, was in pressing want of 3001., which representation had in­duced Levy to advance the required sum upon Tyrell’s note for 4001. With, however, that rogue-rob-rogue affair, I had not to concern myself; neither, to confess the truth, did I set about that which was confided to me in very dexterous fashion. Tyrell, whose handsome, well-stocked port­manteau bore a plate upon which was engraved “Alexander Champneys Tyrell, Esq., Hill Street, Berkeley Square,” secured an inside place to Bristol by the night coach instead of the mail, and I, finding that the said passenger-coach was then full inside and out, and that the faster mail would reach Bristol full an hour before the coach, determined, after first seeing Tyrell off, to travel by mail. I did so, and was in punctual though covert attendance when the night-­coach reached that city; but, to my chagrin and dismay, without Alexan­der Champneys Tyrell, Esquire, who, for some reason, unguessed of by me, had alighted at Swindon, where, one of the passengers, from some remarks and inquiries he had made, thought he intended remaining for some time.

Very strange that Tyrell, intending to go no further than Swindon, should pay his fare, as he had done, to Bris­tol; and was his halting there a trick or an after thought? Did he, per­chance, know and recognize me whilst watching him from the White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, and in consequence, thus double, as it were, to throw me off the scent? I could hardly believe that could be the case, so careful had I been to keep well in shadow during the whole time that I had been upon his track; but whether so or not, it was essential to lose no time in again strik­ing the trail; and by eleven o’clock in the forenoon of the same day, I was in Swindon, then a quiet country village, where I learned from the landlord of the Swan Inn, that a gentleman answering to the descrip­tion I gave had breakfasted there, and directly afterwards hired a post-chaise, which had taken him about eight miles on the Warminster Road, to the Dark Horse, a road-side public-house, where he had alighted and discharged the chaise. In some­thing less than three hours I reached the Black Horse, on foot, not to at­tract notice or inquiry, and found myself again too late and completely at fault. A gentleman from London had been there, hired a lad to show him where the Bennetts lived, been absent something over two hours, and, soon after returning to the Black Horse, had hailed a return Bath post-­chaise that happened to pass, and set off therein for that city. I further as­certained that John Bennett was a farmer and widower in middling cir­cumstances, who had two grown-up daughters living with him, one a comely young woman that folk said would shortly become the wife of William Rowcliffe, a native of that part of Wiltshire, but who for some time past had been living with his mother at Bristol. It was on my tongue to ask if there was any talk of a fortune having been left to the comely young woman or her sister; but I restrained myself, and, being too much knocked up to think of journeying further that day, I determined upon inventing some excuse for calling personally upon John Ben­nett before following Tyrell to Bath. I accordingly waited early the next morning upon Mr. Bennett—a sour, hard-grained, wiry fellow, and about as great a niggard of his words as he was by reputation of his money. “No; I have no old wheat to sell, nor barley either. The gentleman that called yesterday was not a buyer, and therefore cannot have forestalled you. Yes, that young woman is my daugh­ter. As to handsome, why, handsome is as handsome does; and as that seems all you have to say, I have something else to do than stand gossiping here;” and so saying, the curmudgeon slammed the door—which he held in his hand whilst we were speaking—in my face.

A practiced reader of the meanings of men does not, fortunately, depend altogether upon speech for their interpretation; and the brief perusal I had obtained of the faces of Mr. Bennett and Clara Bennett was not without its value. Both father and daughter—I saw only the elder of the two sisters—were much and pleasurably, yet anxiously excited. This the man’s dilated; glittering glance, and his ner­vous clutch of the door handle, resembling that of one suffering from the reaction of a previous night’s debauch—the varying complexion of the young woman as she gazed at me with intense suspicious scrutiny—now bright and glowing, now shadowy and pale as stone, but for the hectic spots that lent a fire they needed not to her piercing black eyes, plainly testified; whilst that the previous day’s visitor was in some way connected therewith required no further proof than Alexander Champneys Tyrell’s fashionable card, held in her fidget­ing, restless fingers. Neither could I doubt that Tyrell suspected or feared that a police-agent was at his heels—a fear suggested by the possibility which might have occurred to him that David Closs’s confidential note had passed under “detective” scrutiny; and that my visit, the visit of any questioning stranger, had been in consequence adroitly provided against; though in what light his ingenuity placed the probability or possibility of such a visit, or the purposes a character of the visitor, I of course, could form no conjecture.

Further inquiry having elicited nothing in respect of the Bennetts towards enlightening me as to Ty­rell’s object in turning out of his way, as it seemed he had done, to have some half hour’s conference with them, I hired a gig, and followed the quarry to Bath. There no tidings of the gentleman could be obtained, and I went on to Bristol, where, for a time, the same ill-fortune attended me. Tyrell could neither be seen nor heard of; no one that I questioned knew either a Mrs. Rowcliffe or her son, and I was mentally debating the expediency of inserting an ad­vertisement, in the local papers to the effect that a person of that name, for­merly resident in the neighborhood of Swindon, Wiltshire, might, by sending her address to Richard Sampson, Esq., 16 Wine Street, hear of some­thing to her advantage. This, how­ever, was so every-day, transparent a ruse that, supposing the Rowcliffes to be connected with the enterprise in which Tyrell was engaged—which, after all, was a wild surmise of mine, for which I could have given no intel­ligible reason—could hardly fail of being seen through and defeated by a man whom the consciousness of a guilty purpose would render especially keen sighted in the detection of such very common man-traps; and I was still undecided, when fortune or accident remedied the mischance, that had so long, reckoning by my impatience, separated Tyrell and myself from each other. I met him one afternoon about three o’clock in Redcliffe Street, and so sudden and unexpected was the rencontre that I could not help starting and changing color as my eyes met his—a want of presence of mind, which, however, convinced me of what I had been in some doubt of, namely, that I was personally unknown to the fashionably-attired gentleman whose stare and simper, as in condescendent reply to my respect­ful question he assured me I was mis­taken in supposing him to be Captain Augustus Fancourt, of the — regi­ment, then quartered in Bristol—were delightfully pleasant and refreshing. He was accompanied by a young, vulgar coxcomb, very sprucely attired, and displaying in his strutting gait and pretentious manner, a conse­quence as new and ill-fitting as his fine, ready-made clothes. They were on their way to the coach office, which they reached just in time to secure two outside places by the morrow’s day coach to London. Those were the only vacant seats; but determin­ed not again to lose sight of my slip­pery customer, I managed to make a private arrangement with the coach-man, who, for a consideration, agreed to take me up at some distance on the road, and run the chance of an infor­mation against the proprietors of the “Eclipse” for carrying more than the stipulated ten outsiders, a venture which, fortunately for the tentative mission in which I was engaged, he, on that particular day, indulged in somewhat to excess. At the place where I was directed to await the coach I found a youngish, decently­ dressed workingman, John Fentum by name, bound for London by the same conveyance; and, under favor of a similar bargain to mine, though entered into by him from an econom­ical motive. The “Eclipse” soon made its appearance, and its driver at length yielding to our importunity, agreed to give us a lift as far as Bath. Room was made for me in front, immediate­ly behind the coachman, and by the side of Tyrell and his youthful friend—a remarkably wordy young blade, I should say, at all times, but more abundantly so than usual it appeared on that occasion, and after the passing away of a flush of angry vexation, ex­cited, or I deceived myself, by the unexpected and unwelcome sight of Fentum, who had quickly climbed up to the dickey: his natural eloquence being stimulated by an unusual flow of spirits, the exhilarating fineness of the day, and the flattering smiles of a pretty and prodigiously genteel young woman on the box-seat. After the fashion of malapert youth, he was equally conversant with all topics; talked of the Carlist War of Succession, then raging in the Pen­insula, with Tyrell—an indirect recognition of that gentleman’s military moustaches; to me, but loftily, with patronizing condescendence, of the new reformed House of Commons, which he pronounced to be a despi­cable failure; and to the damsel on the box-seat of James’s or Bulwer’s last novel; the whole profusely interspers­ed with hints, quite as interesting to me as they could be to the said damsel, charmingly conscious as she did her best to look, that the young gentleman, whom a whim and the genial weather had, for once, induced to travel on the outside of a stage-coach, had lately come into possession of a large fortune. Not unamusing all that, and might be instructive, the more probably that Tyrell anxiously strove to confine his protégé’s eloquence, to national themes; at last with success, and the inflated young man, seizing the favorable oppor­tunity at afforded by the coach passing over a track of greensward, burst out with a flaming apostrophe to “Glory and Greece! The Sword, the Banner, and the Field!” à propos of what I do not remember; but if not quite intelligible, it was very sonorous, and the I admiring silence which followed its delivery, remained unbroken, till a voice from the dickey called out “Bil­ly, I say, Billy!” each “Billy” em­phasized by a poke in the small of the elocutionist’s back with the point of John Fentum’s umbrella; which per­son, stretching himself over the roof of the coach, claimed acquaintance, in that very disgusting fashion, with the suddenly extinguished orator, whose face, flaming with shame and rage, was, however, kept determinedly in the direction of the spires of Bath, spite of his remorseless tormentor’s· persistent iteration of “Billy,” pres­ently amplified into “I say, Billy, your mother served me a pretty trick this morning: fobbed me off with two stale buns at the price of new ones: a shameful imposition, I call it!” uttered in so ludicrous a tone that every soul on the coach—the victim, of course, excepted—burst at once into explo­sions of laughter, which were only repressed by the tact of the coach­man, who, any thing but desirous, under the circumstances, of irritating a legitimate passenger, or permitting others to do so, caused his leaders to suddenly prance and curvet after a fashion that instantly checked the general mirth; and when the alarm had subsided, it was time for me and Fentum, in accordance with our un­derstanding with the coachman­—Bath being less than half a mile dis­tant—to descend from the roof of the “Eclipse,” and not attempt to resume our places till at about the same dis­tance on the other side of that city.

“Who is that chattering puppy, whose comb you cut so cleverly?” I asked Fentum, as we trudged on after the coach.

“Who is he? Why, William Row­cliffe, whose mother keeps a bread and bun-shop in Broadmead, and a friendly chap, too, till the fortune they say he’s come to sent his brains a-ballooning. He cocked up his nose, and pretended not to know Jack Fen­tum, when I met him yesterday with his grand friend; but have paid him quite twenty shillings in the pound upon that score. As to his mother, she’s a very decent, good sort of woman: and it’s all chaff, mind you, about the stale buns.”

“I supposed so. By-the-way, is that swell in moustaches the grand friend you speak of?”

“Yes: he’s a Government man, and brought down the news of William Rowcliffe’s fortune.”

“A Government man, is he? What kind of a Government man?”

“Ah, there you nonplush me. I only know that Mrs. Rowcliffe told me herself that she had seen letters with ‘On His Majesty’s Service,’ printed on the outside, directed to him, and signed by prime ministers, He’s a first-rate nob, depend upon it, and I wish now that I had not curry­combed young Rowcliffe’s tender hide quite so roughly.”

“It might have been as well, per­haps, not to have done so. Are you sure of work when you reach Lon­don?”

“Very far from sure, worse luck.”

“Where shall you hang out till you do? Perhaps I could recommend you to cheaper lodgings.”

“It ain’t likely, mister, that you could, seeing that I shall take up with my married sister, at No. 9 Rupert Street, Haymarket. That is the West End is it not?”

“Well, perhaps so, considering it is neither the east, south, or north end. Is Mrs. Rowcliffe, the widow, a marrying woman, think you?”

“A marrying woman! Oh, I say, mister, you are a squinting round that corner, are you? But it’s no go, my friend; Mrs. Rowcliffe’s a widow be­witched, though she don’t advertise herself in that capacity, and folk gen­erally don’t are to talk about it.

“A widow bewitched?”

“Yes; meaning thereby that her husband is gone abroad upon government account, for haying once upon a time forgot to sign his right name. But, so much talk, do you know, Mister Londoner, makes my throat feel uncommon dry.”

“No doubt it must do so; and here, luckily, is the ‘Ring of Bells,’ where, we can moisten it.”

I left Fentum in the enjoyment of that agreeable pastime, and walked quickly to the inn; where the “Eclipse” changed horses, and the passengers were permitted to snatch a hasty breakfast, which, on that morning, was partaken of by John Bennett and daughter Clara, both in gala dress, and the young woman—girl, rather—who seemed to be in fragile health, all smiles and blushes. They were of course there by appointment, and I noticed that Alexander Champ­neys Tyrell, was superabundantly gracious towards both father and daughter; whilst the ostensible lover, Rowcliffe, looked glum and uneasy, as wishing to be gone rather than prolong or dally with the flying moments. The criterion by which I judged was, however, a very imper­fect one, being merely the reflection of their faces and gestures in the large chimney-glass of the breakfast­ room, obliquely visible from the slightly opened folding-door though which, being, of course, anxious that neither Bennett nor his daughter should glimpse their late visitor, I furtively peeped at the party whose conversation, amidst the clatter of knives and forks, was unintelligible, though not so entirely so but that I gladly comprehended Bennett and his daughter had no intention of ac­companying their friends to town. I remained but it few minutes in obser­vation; and, hastening off was over­taken in due time by the coach, and at about seven o’clock the same even­ing I saw Alexander Champneys Tyrell, Esq., and William Rowcliffe, Esq., safely housed at the Hummums Hotel, Covent Garden, where, less than two hours afterwards, they were joined by David Closs and Lydia Lockwood, both dashingly dressed, and, it seemed, in gleeful good humor. The plot was thickening, and rapidly too.

True, but what was the plot; what catastrophe did it foreshadow, and which were the villains, which the victims of the play? Puzzling que­ries these, and not oven partially answered by the occurrences of the next fortnight: continuous parties of pleasure; visits to the theatres, at which William Rowcliffe was always Lydia Lockwood’s beau; and researches on our part at Doctors’ Com­mons, from which it resulted that no legacy, large or small, had fallen to anyone of the name of Rowcliffe or Bennett. It almost seemed that we were laboring under some inexpli­cable delusion; chasing shadows, not tangible realities; and I was in the very act of writing to the commis­sioner, begging him to appoint some other officer to pursue the wearying, bootless investigation, when a lady, desirous of speaking with me, was announced.

“No lady, Mr. Waters,” exclaimed the person that followed close behind the servant girl; “no lady, but a wretched, wronged, outraged woman! Do you not recognize me?” she added, tossing passionately aside, and tear­ing by her violence the costly veil which covered her face. “I know you very well!”

“Lydia Lockwood!”

“Yes, Lydia Lockwood, one of the conspirators whom you, stanch blood­hound of the law, have been, I more than suspect, for some time closely tracking. Well, sir, I am here to inform you that there are two conspir­acies afloat, in one of which I am a cheater—in the other the cheated!”

“If this, Miss Lockwood, be a con­fession, let me warn you that all you say may be—”

“Used against me hereafter,” broke in the infuriate woman, whose eyes glared with a fiery rage that cast a light as of insanity over her white, haggard countenance, though her speech was constrainedly calm and measured—unnaturally so. “Be it so; there is no terror for such a wretch as I in any ‘hereafter’ over which magistrates have power. Yet will I not be tamely, unresistingly sacrificed: other and guiltier lips than mine shall taste the bitter potion of which it was hoped, is hoped, I alone shall be compelled to drink. But enough of vain words. Yon have really discovered nothing as yet, with all your practiced cunning.”

“Nothing of very great import­ance.”

“Nothing of the slightest import­ance; nor without me could you do so till it were too late to profit by that knowledge. The avenging lightning will be hurled by my hand—my hand alone! Now hearken, sir, and heedfully. Tyrell imparted to me that it had come to his friend Closs’s knowledge, in the course of business, that one Rowcliffe was entitled to a large, sum of money that had lain unclaimed for a long time in the Funds or Consols, and which he could only obtain by Closs’s aid. That being so, it was but fair, they argued, that Tyrell and Closs should have a share in the prize, and, that they might be certain of doing so, it was arranged that Tyrell should go to Bristol, acquaint Rowcliffe in general terms with his claim, bring him to London, profess, great friendship for him, and, with my help entangle, fascinate him. Oh, I could tear my heart out to know that, in giving credence to such trash, I showed my­self to be the vain fool they took me for; I was even to half-promise my­self in marriage to the susceptible inexperienced simpleton—and, with them, work upon him till he consented to share the riches that had, as it were, dropped to him from the clouds. That accomplished, the promise which has lured me to ruin, destruction, crime, was to be immediately fulfilled, and—but” suddenly broke off the unhappy young woman, find, speaking with accelerated rapidity, “but I need not waste sentiment upon Mr. Waters. Well, all this was a tissue—warp and woof—of un­mitigated lies. William Rowcliffe was entitled to no money; but a girl was, one Clara Bennett, who it was known, loved Rowcliffe—puppy and simpleton that he is—but that is nothing new; and the plan of the confederates was—more correctly Closs’s plan, for he alone had the brains to conceive it—was this; Tyrell was to see the Bennetts at Swindon—ah! you know all about that, I dare say—under pretence of procuring William Rowcliffe’s address, which was already so well known to them that Closs knew both him and his mother personally; he had been, I think, engaged in defending the elder Rowcliffe, who was convicted of some crime. Well, Tyrell, having obtained the address, and incidentally mentioned Rowcliffe’s pretended, accession of wealth, was to affect; whilst passing himself off as a very great man, sudden, but involuntary admiration of the girl; with a view, of course, to an ulterior well-meditated purpose. Every thing fell out as desired, and anticipated. Rowcliffe’s empty head was turned with his imaginary high fortune; Clara Bennett was no longer good enough for him; and the insolent booby told her so to her face, as he himself boasted to me last Thursday afternoon, a few hours after her arri­val, I am sure at Tyrell’s suggestion, in London, accompanied by her father. A terrible scene ensued; the young woman fainted, and, upon re­covering, found that, though the recreant swain was gone, Alexander Champneys Tyrell remained, who had no longer any hesitation in declaring his devotion for her; and the upshot was, that the scorned and slighted girl, urged by her father, dreading to encounter the sneers that would await her should she return home unmarried; fell into the trap set for her; and on the day after to-morrow Clara Bennett will be Mrs. Tyrell! Only think, will have the honor of being Alexander Champneys Tyrell’s lady-wife! ho, ho! Well, one can but laugh to think how strange a world this is we, live in; and what fearful slips sometimes occur ‘twixt cups and lips. ‘Pon my word that is rhyme, if you take it in time—is it not, clever Mr. Waters?”

The longer I listened to Lydia Lock­wood the stronger grew my convic­tion that she was positively insane; or that—but no, that was not the excitement of drink; not originally or chiefly, at all events.

‘‘Your disclosures, Miss Lockwood,” I hesitatingly began, “would—”

“To the devil with your Miss Lockwood!” she fiercely interrupted. ‘‘To the devil, did I say? ah! true words are often spoken in jest; false ones by solemn oaths! You were going to say, no, doubt,” she added, with renewed vivacity, ‘‘that I could foil those wretches without your help. True; but it glanced across me that my purpose might not hold; and that it were well to place the matter beyond my own power. I shall not tell you, either, how I discovered all this. Enough that I have discovered it, and by—. Well, good-bye; at ten in the morning after to-morrow, remember, if I should forget it—which, however, is not very likely—that the parson will ask if there is any just cause or impediment why Alexander Tyrell and Clara Bennett should not be joined in holy wedlock. Just cause! O thou all-seeing Christ!”

She was gone!

A few sentences will finish this narrative. Clara Bennett and her father, apprised by me of the true state of affairs, left London for Swin­don the next evening; and in the following day’s evening papers there appeared this paragraph: — “Determined Suicide. —Early this morning a young woman was seen to throw herself off Westminster Bridge into the river: she was drowned. Her name is Lydia Lockwood.”