CHAPTER XVIII.
THE TERRIBLE MISTAKE.
Dulcie had thought that no possible harm could accrue to her from rambling or sitting in that beautiful Park alone, and watching the children playing with their hoops along the gravelled walk. With whom could she go? She had no one to escort her. She knew not that it was not quite etiquette for a young lady to be there alone and unattended; but the event that occurred to her was one which she could never have anticipated.
She had sat for some time, absorbed in her own thoughts, on one of the rustic sofas not far from Stanhope Gate, all unaware that an odd-looking and mean-looking, but carefully dressed little man had been hovering near her, and observing her closely with his keen small ferret-like eyes, and with an expression of deep interest, destitute, however, of the slightest admiration, and with a kind of sardonic and stereotyped smile in which mirth bore no part.
He scanned her features from time to time, grinned to himself, and ever and anon consulted something concealed in his hand.
'Golden hair—sealskin jacket—sable muff—hat and feather—a silver necklet—all right,' he muttered, and then he advanced close towards her.
Dulcie looked up at him with surprise, and then with an emotion of alarm, mingled with confusion, which he was neither slow to see nor misinterpret—
'May I ask your name?' said he in a mild tone.
'Miss Carlyon—Dulcie Carlyon.'
'Ah! you speak good English.'
'I am English.'
'And not a furriner?'
'No,' replied Dulcie in growing alarm.
'But you reside in London, just now?'
'Just now—yes,' said Dulcie, seeing that he was comparing her face with that of a photo in his hand.
'With your family—friends?'
'I have no family—no friends,' said Dulcie, with a sob in her throat, and starting up to withdraw in great alarm.
'Just so—not here, but at Ostend, perhaps.'
Thinking her questioner was mad or intoxicated, Dulcie, in growing terror, was about to move away when he laid a hand very decidedly on her left arm.
'Leave me,' she exclaimed, and on looking around her terror increased on seeing that no male aid was near her; 'who are you that ask these questions—that dare to molest me?'
'My name is Grabbley—Mr. Gilpin Grabbley, of Scotland Yard—oh, you'll know enough o' me, my dear, before I'm done with you. Come along: you're wanted partiklar—you are. Will you walk with me quietly?'
Perceiving that she was about to utter a shriek, he grasped her arm more tightly, even to the bruising of her soft tender skin, and said in a sharp hissing tone:
'Don't—don't make a row: 'taint no use, my beauty—you must come along with me.'
'Oh, what do you mean?' moaned Dulcie, almost incapable of standing now.
'Mean—why, that you are my prisoner, that is all.'
'Am I mad or dreaming? Oh, sir, this is some dreadful mistake.'
'No mistake at all,' said Mr. Grabbley tauntingly.
They were out in Park Lane now, and Dulcie cast a despairing glance at the many closed and shuttered windows of the mansions there, as if she would summon aid.
'Look here, gal,' said the detective, for such Mr. Grabbley was, 'I have orders to arrest the original of this fotygraf—you are that original—look! don't you see yourself, as if in a looking-glass?'
Dulcie did look, with a kind of horrible fascination, and recognised in it a very striking resemblance to her face and dress—even to the luckless silver locket and chain.
Mr. Grabbley utilised the moments of her bewilderment. He stopped a passing cab—half lifted, half thrust her in.
'Marlborough Street,' said he to the driver, and they were driven off.
'Of what am I accused?' said Dulcie, driven desperate now.
'Robbery on a railway—that's all; and you knows all about it—the when and the where.'
If not the victim of some deliberate outrage, she was certainly the victim of some inexplicable mistake which might yet be explained; anyway in her ignorance and in her wild fear she strove to elicit succour from passers-by, till Mr. Grabbley closed the rattling glasses of the cab and held her firmly, while, like one in a dreadful dream, she was rapidly driven through Berkley Square, across Bond Street and Regent Street, to their destination, where, when the cab stopped, she was quickly taken indoors, through a passage, in which several police officers and odd, repulsive-looking people of both sexes were loitering about, and whence she was conveyed by the inexorable Grabbley, to whom all appeals were vain, and left in a state of semi-stupefaction—after being led down a long corridor, having many doors opening on each side thereof—in a small bare room—a den it seemed, and if not quite a prison cell, yet dreary, cold, and comfortless enough to suggest the idea of being one.
She heard a key turned upon her, and felt that now—more than ever—she was a prisoner!
She had no sense of indignation as yet—only a wild and clamorous one of fear, or dread, she knew not of what—of being disgraced, and, it might be, the victim of a mad-man's freak. She was in utter solitude, and no sound seemed to be there but the loud beating of her heart.
Past grief and anxiety had rendered her very weak and unable to withstand the tension on her nerves caused by this astounding accusation and catastrophe, of which she could neither calculate nor see the end. Then an exhaustion that was utter and complete followed, and for a time she was physically and mentally prostrate—in that awful sense of desolation and heart-broken grief that God in His mercy permits few to suffer.... So passed the night.
'A person—a gentleman,' said a commissionaire at the Rag doubtfully to Villiers as he entered the vestibule, 'has been waiting here for nearly an hour for you, sir.'
'Oh—it is you, Mr.—Mr.——'
'Grabbley, sir,' said the little man affably, his ferret eyes twinkling, and his vulgar face rippling over with a smile.
'You have some news, I suppose?'
'Yes, sir, I've nabbed her.'
'When?'
'Yesterday morning.'
'Where?'
'In Hyde Park—nigh Stanhope Gate. She speaks English uncommonly well to be a furriner.'
'That's sharp work! You are a clever fellow, Grabbley. Was my pocket-book found upon her?'
'We did not search her, but she is locked up at Marlborough Street, where I would like you to see and identify her before making out the matter in the charge sheet.'
'All right—get a cab. Come with me, Hammersley, and I'll show you my little Belgienne.'
Hammersley went unwillingly, as it was pretty close on the time he had now begun to visit Finella at her grandmother's residence, and he cast longing eyes at the windows of the latter as he and his two companions were driven out of the square.
'A horrid atmosphere, and a horrid place in all its details,' he muttered, when the scene of Dulcie's detention was reached, and throwing away the fag end of a cheap cigar Mr. Grabbley, with an expression of no small satisfaction, puckering his visage, unlocked and threw open the door—a sound which roused Dulcie from her stupefied state—and starting up she stood before them, trembling in every fibre, with a hunted expression in her dark blue eyes and a gathering hope in her breast, to find herself confronted by two such men of unexceptionable appearance and bearing as Hammersley and Villiers, who raised his hat, and turning with astonishment and some dismay to the police official said sharply:
'This is some great—some truly infernal mistake!'
'A mistake—how, sir?' asked Grabbley.
'This young lady is not the person whose photo I gave you.'
'They seems as like as two peas.'
'The likeness, I admit, is great, but the Belgian girl, I told you, could not speak a word of English, or scarcely so. I have to offer you a thousand apologies, though the mistake is not mine, but that of this man,' said Villiers, bowing low to Dulcie, greatly impressed by the sweetness of her beauty and terror of the predicament in which she had been placed.
'So it's a mistake after all, young gal,' growled Mr. Grabbley, with intense disappointment and reluctance to relinquish his prey.
'And may I go, sir?' said Dulcie piteously to Villiers.
'Most certainly—you are free,' replied Villiers, who was again about to apologize and explain, but the girl, like a hunted creature, drew her veil tightly across her tear-blotched face, rushed along the dingy corridor, and gained the street in an instant.
That she was a lady in every sense of tone and bearing was evident, and Villiers felt overcome with shame and contrition, and swore in pretty round terms at the crestfallen Grabbley.
'This is a devil of a mistake!' said the latter as he scratched his head in dire perplexity.
'A mistake we have not, perhaps, heard the end of. Who is she?' asked Villiers.
'I don't know.'
'Did she give you no name?'
'Yes—here it is,' said Grabbley, producing a dirty note-book; 'Dulcie Carlyon.'
'A curious and uncommon name.'
'Who do you say—Dulcie Carlyon?' exclaimed Hammersley, who had hitherto been silent, starting forward; and on the name being repeated to him once or twice, 'Great Heaven!' he exclaimed, 'if it should be the same!'
'Same what—or who?'
'The girl to whom Florian is engaged: you remember Florian of ours.'
'Of course I do.'
'Golden hair, blue eyes, under middle height (how often he has described her to me), and then the name—Dulcie Carlyon; it must be she—let us overtake her! What an astounding introduction!'
But that was easier proposed than accomplished. On gaining the street the two officers saw not a trace of Dulcie Carlyon, so all hope of discovering her address was gone.
How Dulcie made her way back to her obscure lodgings she scarcely knew; but she was long and seriously ill after this startling event.
There she felt as much at home as a creature so poor and friendless could feel. Often she lay abed and seemed unconscious, but she was not so. Her eyes were wide open, and their gaze wandered about; her lips were generally dry and quivering. She was in the state which generally comes after a severe mental shock; her mind refused to grasp the situation.
Until a drink was given her by Ellen, the kind little maid of all work, she sometimes knew not how parched her throat was—how sorely athirst she had been.
She was afraid to be left alone after that horrible accusation. In her nervousness she feared that she might see her double—feel a touch, and on turning find herself face to face with her own likeness, as that evil Lord of Fettercairn did who sold his country.
Finella's astonishment to hear from Hammersley the story of where and under what circumstances he had met Dulcie Carlyon was only equalled by his own on learning that Florian, his comrade and brother-officer in the Zulu war, and whilom private soldier in his company of the 24th, was heir to a peerage, and the cousin of his affianced wife, Finella Melfort.
For so it was. Lord and Lady Fettercairn had undergone so much in the mismanagement of family matters latterly, and in years long past, that they were now well disposed to let Finella alone, and in all conscience they could not expect her to give to Florian (if he ever returned) the love she had never given to the now vanished Shafto.
'Vivian, you must find out the address of dear Dulcie,' said she.
'If I can.'
'You must. I shall want her as one of my bridesmaids.'
From this we may presume that matters between these two were all in fair training now.
'Your wish would delight Villiers, my groomsman, who has been sorrowing about her ever since the time of that terrible mistake.’