Tempest-Driven: A Romance (Vol. 2 of 3). Dowling Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ is to be kept by you for me. In case I should absent myself from the neighbourhood for any length of time do not be uneasy, as I am much abroad. If I am away fifteen years, you may hand all these to my friend, Mr. Davenport, but not till fifteen years have passed without my return to the neighbourhood.

"Yours truly,"Michael Fahey."

      No. IV. was merely a long, narrow, slip of paper, bearing the following:

      "Dear Mr. Davenport,

      "Time has swallowed me, and everything connected with me. I hope when you receive this you will have forgotten I ever existed. I leave all the documents I own with Mr. O'Hanlon for you.

"Always most faithfully yours,"Michael Fahey."

      These did not throw a great flood of light on the subject. In fact, they did not help him to see an inch further than he had seen before. It was plain on the face of it that there must have been some kind of connection between this Fahey and the Davenports; but what the nature of that connection was there was no clue to. He had no particular interest in the mystery, if it could be said to reach the dignity of a mystery. He was a kind of indifferent centre in the events. He had known the Davenports and O'Hanlon for years, and now by a strange coincidence, or rather a series of coincidences, the Davenports, O'Hanlon, the Paultons, Fahey, and himself had all been drawn together.

      He shook himself and tried to argue himself into indifference, but failed. He told himself the whole matter was nothing in the world to him, and that, in fact, there was nothing particular in it to engage attention.

      What were the facts?

      Mr. Davenport had, under acute mental excitement, committed suicide after an interview with Tom Blake. He had left two documents respecting that act. Both of these documents were written in pencil, and on leaves of his pocket-book. One of these memoranda said he, Davenport, had committed suicide. The other accused Blake of poisoning, murdering him. Every one except Edward Davenport credited the former statement. Blake had formerly been Mrs. Davenport's lover, and might love her even still. Blake had got a thousand pounds years ago from the deceased for giving up his pretensions to that lady's hand. Blake had long been abroad; turned up unexpectedly at Davenport's house in London the first night the latter was in London, and the night of his death. Blake gets a hundred pounds from Davenport, and a promise of a further hundred in a few days.

      What was this money given for? Not, of course, with the old object. It did not come out at the inquest or elsewhere that the dead man had been in the least jealous of his wife. She had not seen Blake for a good while before her husband's death. Blake had been some years on the Continent, without visiting the United Kingdom. It was discreditable, but intelligible, that when the dead man was an elderly and unfavoured lover he should buy off his rival; but it would be absurd to suppose that ten or eleven years after marriage any man would continue to pay considerable sums of money to a former rival for absolutely nothing. Such an act would be that of a coward and a fool, and the dead man had been neither.

      For what, then, had Davenport given this money to Blake? The latter said the interview between the two had been of a pleasant character. Why? Blake was disreputable, and Davenport eminently respectable. It was absurd to suppose Davenport could have had a liking for Blake. Taking that thousand pounds years ago must have destroyed any good opinion Davenport had of Blake. Why, then, had the latter been received well and been given money? He had not only been received well and given money, but invited to dinner on a later date! It was simply incredible that out of gratitude for that service rendered long ago in Florence, Davenport was going to forget that this man had been his rival, and invite him to his house and a necessary meeting with his beautiful wife.

      O'Brien did not for a moment suspect the widow and her former admirer of perjury, of concocting their stories. These stories were not at all calculated to exculpate either of the two. In fact, these stories, uncorroborated by the evidence obtained at the post-mortem examination, would have heightened suspicion rather than allayed it. At first these stories seemed prodigal in daring, but this very excess of apparent improbability made them seem most probable when read by the light of Davenport's written confession. No, there was no reason to suspect perjury.

      He could make nothing of it so far. But did those documents of Fahey's aid one towards a solution? He could not see how they bore on the case one way or the other, and yet the coincidences were remarkable. He had seen Blake in London the day of the night on which Davenport died. When Alfred Paulton told him what had happened at Crescent House, he came to the conclusion Blake was in some way or other mixed up in the matter. This conclusion turned out right, although not exactly in the way he had expected. Now upon his coming back to Kilbarry he is met by a still more remarkable story. A man whom O'Hanlon knew ten or eleven years ago, and was then drowned at the hideous Black Rock, appears to O'Hanlon in the same spot and same clothes as he had been last seen alive in. It seemed as if he, O'Brien, were destined to be connected with the Davenport affair whether he would or not. Alfred Paulton was the greatest friend he had in London, and John O'Hanlon was the best friend he had in Kilbarry. He knew Blake by appearance and report, and he was acquainted with the Davenports; and here were all mixed up in the same matter in more or less degree, and all in a disagreeable way. It was the smallest of small worlds. He had no particular reason for being interested in the complication; and, indeed, except for the extraordinary statement made by O'Hanlon, the incident might be said to be closed, were it not that he was not quite sure whether Alfred Paulton-whom he hoped one day to have for a brother-in-law-had got over the fascination exercised on him by that beautiful woman. Any way, he had nothing particular to do now but fight those rascally commissioners; so he'd just glance over these documents again, and see if he could make anything out of them.

      With a sigh, he put them away a second time. He might as well look for help to the stars. He would call at O'Hanlon's to-day and ask was there any news.

      He found Mr. Gorman, head clerk to O'Hanlon, leaning against his favourite shutter with his hands in his trousers' pockets, placidly regarding through the window a tattered, battered, and wholly miserable-looking man of between sixty and seventy, who was playing "The Young May Moon," atrociously out of tune and out of time, on a penny tin whistle.

      "Well," said O'Brien, briskly to Gorman, "any news?"

      "Not a blessed word," answered the clerk, resting his back against the shutter instead of his shoulder, and so facing the visitor. "I suppose you came over about your weirs? Deuced bother, Mr. O'Brien!"

      "It is an infernal nuisance. Do you know, Mr. Gorman, I think half the people who ought to be hanged are never even brought to trial."

      "These Fishery Commissioners don't murder any one but fisheries and the proprietors of fisheries, and there is no precedent for hanging a man merely because he killed a fishery or the proprietor of a fishery. However, Mr. O'Brien, you need not be afraid. Your weirs are as safe as the Rock of Cashel. I often wonder why they call a rock a rock. It's about the last thing that would think of rocking, and the sea, which is the best rocker out, can't stir a rock that's in good wind and form. It would take the Atlantic a month of Sundays to rock the Black Rock, for instance, at Kilcash."

      The mention of the Black Rock made O'Brien start slightly, for it was in the rock that famous and treacherous Hole yawned and breathed dismay and destruction. It was odd Gorman should mention the rock which had occupied such a prominent place in his thoughts that forenoon.

      "It's strange," said O'Brien, walking over to the window, and placing himself against the shutter opposite Gorman, "that I should have been thinking of the Black Rock a little while ago! What put it into your head now?"

      "Well, I tell you, nothing could be simpler or more natural. I knew you arrived from London yesterday. I knew you were acquainted with the Davenports of Kilcash, and a man who once had some connection with the Davenports was last seen on the Black Rock, and drowned himself, to escape the СКАЧАТЬ