CHAPTER XX.
MONTAGUE NEVITT FINESSES.
Guy rose mechanically, and followed him to the door. Nevitt still
held the forged cheque in his hand. Guy thought of it so to himself
in plain terms, as the forgery. Yet somehow, he knew not why,
he followed that sinister figure through the passage and down the
stairs like one irresistibly and magnetically drawn forward. Why,
he couldn't let any one go forth upon the streets of London--with the
cheque he himself had forged in his hands--unwatched and unshadowed.
Nevitt called a cab; and jumped in, and beckoned him. Guy, still
as in a dream, jumped after him hastily.
"To the London and West Country Bank, in Lombard Street," Nevitt
called through the flap.
The cab drove off; and Guy Waring leaned back, all trembling and
irresolute, with his head on the cushions.
At last, after a short drive, during which Guy's head seemed
to be swimming most dreamily, they reached the bank--that crowded
bank in Lombard Street. Nevitt thrust the cheque bodily into his
companion's hand.
"Take it in, now, and cash it," he said with an authoritative air.
"Do you hear what I say? Take it in--and cash it."
Guy, as if impelled by some superior power, walked inside the door,
and presented it timidly.
The cashier glanced at the sum inscribed on the cheque with no
little surprise.
"It's a rather large amount, Mr. Waring," he said, scanning his
face closely. "How will you take it?"
Guy trembled violently from head to foot as he answered, in a voice
half choked with terror, "Bank of England hundreds, if you please.
It is a large sum, as you say; but I'm placing it elsewhere."
The cashier retired for a few minutes; then he returned once more,
bringing a big roll of notes, and a second clerk by his side--just
to prevent mistake--stared hard at the customer. "All square,"
the second clerk said, in a half-whispered aside. "It's him right
enough."
And the cashier proceeded to count out the notes with oft-wetted
fingers.
Guy took them up mechanically, like a drunken man, counted them
over one by one in a strange, dazed way; and staggered out at last
to the cab to Nevitt.
Nevitt leaned forward and took the bundle from his hands. Guy stood
on the pavement and looked vacantly in at him! "That's right," Nevitt
said, clasping the bundle tight. "Rio Negro Diamond and Sapphire
Mines, cabby, 127, Knatchbull Street, Cheapside."
The cabman whipped up his horse and disappeared round the corner,
leaving Guy Waring alone--like a fool--on the pavement.
For a minute or two the dazed and dazzled journalist stood there
awaking by degrees as from some trance or stupefaction. At first
he could only stand still and gaze vacantly down the street after
the disappearing cab; but as his brain cleared slowly, and the mist
that hung over his mind dispelled itself bit by bit, he was able
to walk a few steps at a time towards the nearest shops, where he
looked in at the windows intently with a hollow stare, and tried
to collect his scattered wits for a great effort at understanding
this strange transaction.
All at once, as he looked, the full folly of his deed burst in its
true light upon his muddled brain. He had handed Nevitt six thousand
pounds in Bank of England notes; to waste, or lose, or speculate,
or run away with.
Six--thousand--pounds of Cyril's money! Not that for one moment he
suspected Nevitt. Guy Waring was too innocent to suspect anybody.
But as he woke up more fully now to the nature of his own act,
a horrible sense of guilt and pollution crept slowly over him. He
put his hand ito his forehead. Cold sweat stood in clammy small
drops upon his brow. Bit by bit, the hateful truth dawned clearly
upon him. Nevitt had lured him by strange means, he knew not how,
into hateful crime--into a disgraceful conspiracy. Word by word,
the self-accusing sentence framed itself upon his lips.
He spoke it out, aloud: "Why--this--is forgery!"
Dazzled and stunned by the intensity of that awful awaking from
some weird possession or suggestion of evil by a stronger mind, Guy
Waring began to walk on in a feverish fashion, fast, fast, oh, so
fast, not knowing where he went, but conscious only that he must
keep moving, lest an accusing conscience should gnaw his very heart
out.
Whither, he hadn't as yet the faintest idea. His whole being for
the moment was centred and summed up in that unspeakable remorse.
He had done a great wrong. He had made himself a felon. And now,
in the first recoil of his revolted nature, he must go after the
man who held the evidences of his guilt, and by force or persuasion
demand them at once from him. Those notes were Cyril's. He must
get them. He must get them.
Possessed by this one idea, with devouring force, but still in a
very nebulous and hazy form, Guy began walking towards the Strand
and the Embankment, at the hot top of his speed, to get the notes
back--at Montague Nevitt's chambers. He had walked with fiery
zeal in that wrong direction for nearly a mile, his heart burning
within him all the way, and his brain in a whirl, before it began
to strike him, in a flash of common sense, that Montague Nevitt
wouldn't be there at all. He had driven off to the office. Guy
clapped his hand to his forehead once more, in an agony of remorse.
Great heavens, what folly! He had heard him tell the cabman the
address himself--"127, Knatchbull Street, Cheapside."
Even now he hadn't sense enough to hail a cab and go after him. His
faculties were still numbed and entranced by that horrible spell
of Montague Nevitt's eye. He had but one thought--to walk on, walk
hastily. He tramped along the streets in the direction of Cheapside,
straining every muscle to arrive at the office before Nevitt had
parted with Cyril's six thousand--but he never even thought of
saving the precious moments by driving the distance between instead
of walking it. Montague Nevitt's personality still weighed down
half his brain, and rendered his mind almost childish or imbecile.
Hurrying on so through the crowded streets, now walking, now running,
now pausing, now panting, knocking up here against a little knot of
wayfarers, and delayed again there by an untimely block at some
crowded crossing, he turned the corner at last with a beating
heart into the narrow pavement of an alley marked up as Knatchbull
Street. Number 127 was visible from afar.
A mob of excited people marked its site by loitering about the door.
Two policemen held off the angrier spirits among the shareholders.
But, nothing daunted by the press, Guy forced his way in and looked
around the room trembling, for Montague Nevitt. Too late! Too late!
Nevitt wasn't there. The unhappy dupe turned to the clerk in charge.
"Has Mr. Montague Nevitt been here?" he asked, in a voice all
tremulous with emotion.
"Mr. Montague Nevitt?" the clerk responded. "Just gone ten minutes
ago. Came to settle Mr. Whitley's call--his brother-in-law's. Went
off in a cab. Can I do anything for you?"
"He's paid in six thousand pounds?" Guy gasped out interrogatively.
The clerk gazed at him hard with a suspicious glance. "Are you
a shareholder?" he asked, with one eye on the policeman. "What do
you want to know for?"
"Yes, I'm a shareholder, unfortunately," Guy answered, still in a
maze. "I hold three hundred original shares. My name's Guy Waring.
You've got me on your books. Mr. Nevitt has paid three thousand
in Mr. Whitley's name, and three thousand for me. That was our
arrangement."
The clerk glanced hard at him again. "Waring!" he repeated, turning
over the leaves of his big book for further verification. "Waring!
Waring! Waring! Ah, here it is; Waring, Guy; journalist; 22,
Staple Inn; 300 shares. Three hundred pounds paid. Then we call up
to three thousand. No, Mr. Nevitt didn't settle for you, sir. He
paid Mr. Whitley's call in full. That was all. Nothing else. You're
still our debtor."
"He didn't pay up!" Guy exclaimed, clapping his hands to his head,
all the black guile and treachery of the man coining home to him
at once, at one fell blow. "He didn't pay up for me! Oh, this is
too, too terrible!"
He paused for a moment. Floods of feeling rushed over him. He knew
now that he had committed that forgery for nothing. Cyril's money
was gone. And Montague Nevitt had stolen the three thousand Guy
intrusted to him at the bank for the second payment. Yet Guy knew
he had no legal remedy save by acknowledging the forgery! This was
almost more than human nature could stand. If Montague Nevitt had
been by his side that moment Guy would have leapt at his throat,
and it would have gone hard with him if he had left the villain
living.
He clapped his hands to his ears in the horror and agony of that
hideous disclosure.
"The thief!" he cried aloud, in a choking voice. "Did he pay what
he paid from a big roll of notes, and did he take the rest of the
notes in the roll away with him?"
"Yes, just so," the clerk answered calmly. "He didn't mention your
name. But perhaps he's coming back by-and-by to settle for you."
Guy knew better. He saw through the man's whole black nature at
once.
"I've been robbed," he said slowly. "I've been robbed and deserted.
I must follow the man and compel him to disgorge. When I've got
the cash back I'll return and pay you. ... No, I won't, though. I
forgot. I'll take it home to the bank for Cyril."
The clerk gazed at him with a smile of pitying contempt. Mad, mad;
quite mad! The loss of his fortune had, no doubt, unhinged this
shareholder's reason. But Guy, never heeding him, rushed out into
the street and hailed a passing cab.
"Temple Flats," he cried aloud, and drove to Nevitt's chambers.
Too late, once more! The housekeeper told him Mr. Nevitt was out.
He'd just started off, portmanteau and all, as hard as a hansom
could drive, to Waterloo Station.
"Waterloo, then!" Guy shouted, in wild despair, to the cabman. "We
must follow this man post haste. Alive or dead, I won't rest till
I catch him!"
It was an unhappy phrase. In the events that came after, it was
remembered against him.
