Dorothy's Double. Volume 1 of 3

'Certainly, sir; I offered to place them in the carriage for her, but she said it was a few doors up the street, and she would take them herself.'

'You have not a shadow of doubt about the facts, Mr. Williams?'

'None whatever, sir,' the assistant said, in some surprise.

'You know Miss Hawtrey well by sight?'

'Certainly, sir; she has been here many times, both by herself, for repairs or alterations to her watch or jewellery, and with other ladies.'

'Thank you, Mr. Williams, that will do at present.'

The door closed and the jeweller turned to his customers.

Mr. Hawtrey looked confounded, his daughter bewildered.

'I do not understand it,' she said. 'I have not been here, Mr. Gilliat, since the beginning of May, when I came to you about replacing a pearl that had become discoloured in my necklace.'

'I remember that visit perfectly, Miss Hawtrey,' the jeweller said gravely, 'but I must confirm what my assistant has said. Allow me to recall to you that, in the first place, you told me that in view of an approaching event you required a tiara of diamonds, and of course, having heard of your engagement to Lord Halliburn, I understood your allusion, and came in here with you, and had the honour of showing you five or six tiaras. Of these you selected two, and said that you should like to show them to Mr. Hawtrey before choosing. I offered to send an assistant with them, but you said that your carriage was standing a few doors off and that you would rather take them yourself. Our firm having had the honour of serving Mr. Hawtrey and his family for several generations, and knowing you perfectly, I had, of course, no hesitation in complying with your request. I may say, as an evidence of the exactness of my memory, that Miss Hawtrey was dressed exactly as she is at present. I had, of course, an opportunity of noticing her dress as she was examining the goods. She had on that blue walking dress with small red spots, and the bonnet with blue feathers with red tips.'

'Will you give me the hour as well as the day at which you say my daughter called here?' Mr. Hawtrey said sternly.

'My own impression is that it was about three o'clock,' the jeweller said, after a moment's thought.

'Will you call your assistant and ask him?'

Mr. Williams being summoned said that he had no distinct recollection as to the precise time, but that it was certainly somewhat early in the afternoon. He had returned from lunch about two, and it was not for some little time after that that Miss Hawtrey called; he should say it was between three and half past three.

'That will be near enough,' Mr. Hawtrey said. 'You shall hear from me again shortly, Mr. Gilliat; I know that I can rely upon you to say nothing in the meantime to anyone on the subject.'

'Certainly, Mr. Hawtrey.'

'Now, Dorothy, let us be going.'

Dorothy at the moment was unable to follow her father; she had sunk down in a chair, pale and trembling; her look of intense surprise had given way to one of alarm and horror, and it was not until she had drunk some water that the jeweller brought her, that she recovered sufficiently to take her father's arm and walk through the shop to the carriage.

'Well, Dorothy,' Mr. Hawtrey said, as they drove off, 'what does all this mean?'

'I have not the least idea, father; I am utterly bewildered.'

'You still say that you did not go to the shop – that you did not examine those tiaras and choose two of them?'

'Of course I say so, father. I have never been in the shop since I went about that pearl. Surely, father, you cannot suspect me of having stolen those things.'

'I am the last man in the world to suspect you of anything dishonourable, Dorothy, but this evidence is staggering. Here are two men ready to swear to the whole particulars of the incident. They are both sufficiently acquainted with your appearance to be able to recognise you readily. They can even swear to your dress. That you should do such a thing seems to be incredible and impossible, but what am I to think? You could not have done such a thing in your senses; it would be the act of a madwoman, especially to go to a shop where you are so well known.'

'But why should I have done it, father? I could not have worn them without being detected at once.'

'You could not have worn them,' her father agreed, 'but they might have been turned into money had you great occasion for it.'

Dorothy started.

'Do you mean, father – oh, surely, you never can mean that I could have stolen those things to turn them into money in order to satisfy the man who has been writing those letters?'

'No, my dear. I don't mean that myself, but that is certainly what anyone who did not know you would say. There, don't cry so, child,' for Dorothy was sobbing hysterically now; 'do not let us talk any more until we get home. We have got the day and hour at which you were supposed to have been at Gilliat's. Perhaps we may be able to prove that you were engaged somewhere else, and that it was impossible you could have been at Gilliat's about that time.'

Nothing more was said until they reached home.

'You had better come into my study, Dorothy; we shall not be disturbed there. Now, dear,' he said, 'let us have the matter out. I can only say this, that if you again give me your assurance that you are absolutely ignorant of all this, and that you never went to Gilliat's on the day they say you did, I shall accept your assurance as implicitly as I did before; but before you speak, remember, dear, what that entails. These people are prepared to swear to you, and will, of course, take steps to obtain payment for these things. If such steps are taken the whole matter will be gone into to the bottom. Remember everything depends on your frankness. It will be terribly painful for you to acknowledge that, after all, you had got into some entanglement, and that you did in a moment of madness take these things in order to free yourself from it. It would be terribly painful for me to hear this, but upon hearing it I should of course take steps to raise this twenty-five hundred pounds, for at present I do not happen to have so much at my bankers, and to settle Gilliat's claim. But even painful as this would be it would be a thousand times better than to have all this gone into in public. On the other hand, if you still assure me that you know nothing of it I must refuse to pay the money, both because to do so would be to admit that you took the things, and because, in the second place, whoever has taken these tiaras – for that some one has done so we cannot doubt – may again personate you and involve us in fresh trouble and difficulties.'

'I did not do it, father; indeed I did not do it. I have had no entanglement; I was in no need of money; I have never been near Gilliat's shop, unless, indeed, I was altogether out of my mind and did it in a state of unconsciousness, which I cannot think for a moment. I have worried over this until I hardly knew what I was doing, but I never could have gone to that shop and done as they say without having a remembrance of it. Why, the last place I should choose if I had ever thought of stealing would be a place where I was perfectly known. Indeed, father, I am altogether innocent. I cannot account for it, not in the least, but I am sure that I had nothing to do with it.'

'Then, my dear, I will not doubt you for another moment,' Mr. Hawtrey said, kissing her tenderly. 'Now we just stand in the same position as we did in regard to the other affair; we have got to find out all about it. In the first place, get your book of engagements, and let us see what you were doing on the afternoon of the 15th.'

Dorothy went out of the room and soon returned with a pocket book.

'Not satisfactory, I can see,' Mr. Hawtrey said, as he glanced at her face.

'No, father; here it is, you see – "Lunch with Mrs. Milford;" nothing else. I remember about that afternoon now. I drove in the carriage to Mrs. Milford's, and had lunch at half-past one; there was one other lady there. Mrs. Milford had tickets for a concert, at St. James's Hall I think it was, but I am not sure about that. I had a headache, and would not go with them; and, besides, I had some shopping to do. I got out of her brougham in Hanover Square. I went into Bond Street certainly, and I got some gloves and scent; then I went into Cocks' and looked through the new music and chose one or two pieces, then I went into the French Gallery. Mrs. Milford had been talking about it at lunch, so I thought I would drop in. There were very few people there, so I sauntered round and sat down and looked at those I liked best. It was quiet and pleasant. I must have been in there a long time. When I came out I took a cab and drove straight home. It was six o'clock when I got back, and I remember I went straight up to my room and had a cup of tea there, then I took off my gown and my maid combed my hair, as it was time for me to dress for dinner. My head was aching a good deal and it did me good. We dined at the Livingstones' that evening.'

'It is unfortunate, certainly, Dorothy. I had hoped we might have been able to have fixed you somewhere that would have proved conclusively that you could not possibly have been at Gilliat's that afternoon. As it is, your recollections do not help us at all, for your time from somewhere about three till six is practically unaccounted for. The people you bought the gloves and scent from could prove that you were there, but you probably would not have been many minutes in their shop. Cocks' may remember that you were there a quarter of an hour or so.'

'I think I was there half-an-hour, father.'

'Well, say half-an-hour; the rest of the time you were really in the picture gallery, but it is scarcely likely that, even if the man who took your money at the door or the attendant inside noticed you sufficiently to swear to your face, they would be able to fix the day, still less have noticed how long you stayed. At any rate it is clear that it would be possible for you to have done all you say you did that afternoon and still to have spared time for that visit to Gilliat's.'

'I see that it is all terrible, father, but what can it all mean?'

'That is more than I can understand, Dorothy. At present we are face to face with what seems to me two impossibilities. I mean looking at them from an outsider's point of view. The one is that these shopmen should have taken any one else for you when they are so well acquainted with your face, and are able to swear even to the dress. No less difficult is it to believe that did you require money so urgently that you were ready to commit a crime to obtain it, you would go to the people to whom you were perfectly well known, and so destroy every hope and even every possibility of the crime passing undetected. One theory is as difficult to believe as the other. Those letters were a mystery, but this affair is infinitely more puzzling. I really do not know what to do. I must take advice in the matter, of course. I would rather pay the money five times over than permit it to become public, but who is to know what form this strange persecution is to take next?'

'Do you think there is any connection between this and the other, father?'

Mr. Hawtrey shook his head. 'I do not see the most remote connection between the two things. But there may be; who can say?'

'I would rather face it out,' Dorothy said, passionately. 'I would rather be imprisoned as a thief than go on as I have been doing for the last six weeks; anything would be better. Even if you were to pay the money the story might get about somehow, just as the other did. Then the fact that you paid it would be looked upon as a proof that I had taken the diamonds. Who will you consult, father?'

'My lawyers would be the proper people to consult, undoubtedly; but they were quite useless before, and this is wholly out of their line, I think. I will take a hansom and go across to Jermyn Street, and see if I can find Ned Hampton in. I have great faith in his judgment, and no one could be kinder than he has been in the matter. You don't mind my speaking to him?'

'Oh, no, father. I would rather that you should speak to him than to any one.'

Captain Hampton was in and listened in silent consternation to Mr. Hawtrey's story, and for a long time made no answer to the question.

'I can make neither head nor tail of it, Ned. What do you think?'

At first sight it seemed to him that this story explained the meeting he had seen opposite the Agricultural Hall. She had either turned the diamonds into money or had handed them over to this man to buy his silence. Then his faith in Dorothy rose again. It was absolutely absurd to suppose for a moment that she should have thus committed a crime which must be certainly brought home to her, and which would ruin her far more than any revelations this man might make could do.

'It is an extraordinary story, Mr. Hawtrey,' he said, at last; 'even putting our knowledge of your daughter's character out of the question, is it possible to believe that any young lady possessed of ordinary shrewdness would go to a place where she was well known, and, have acted in the way that she is reported to have done?'

'It would certainly seem incredible, Ned, but here are two or three people prepared to swear that she did do so, and that they identified her by her dress as well as by herself.'