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CHAPTER XXI

LITTLE GEORGEY LEAVES HIS OLD HOME

“I am going to take your grandson away with me, Mr. Maldon,” Robert said gravely, as Mrs. Plowson retired with her young charge.

The old man’s drunken imbecility was slowly clearing away like the heavy mists of a London fog, through which the feeble sunshine struggles dimly to appear. The very uncertain radiance of Lieutenant Maldon’s intellect took a considerable time in piercing the hazy vapors of rum-and-water; but the flickering light at last faintly glimmered athwart the clouds, and the old man screwed his poor wits to the sticking-point.

“Yes, yes,” he said, feebly; “take the boy away from his poor old grandfather; I always thought so.”

“You always thought that I should take him away?” scrutinizing the half-drunken countenance with a searching glance. “Why did you think so, Mr. Maldon?”

The fogs of intoxication got the better of the light of sobriety for a moment, and the lieutenant answered vaguely:

“Thought so—’cause I thought so.”

Meeting the young barrister’s impatient frown, he made another effort, and the light glimmered again.

“Because I thought you or his father would fetch ‘m away.”

“When I was last in this house, Mr. Maldon, you told me that George Talboys had sailed for Australia.”

“Yes, yes—I know, I know,” the old man answered, confusedly, shuffling his scanty limp gray hairs with his two wandering hands—”I know; but he might have come back—mightn’t he? He was restless, and—and—queer in his mind, perhaps, sometimes. He might have come back.”

He repeated this two or three times in feeble, muttering tones; groping about on the littered mantle-piece for a dirty-looking clay pipe, and filling and lighting it with hands that trembled violently.

Robert Audley watched those poor, withered, tremulous fingers dropping shreds of tobacco upon the hearth rug, and scarcely able to kindle a lucifer for their unsteadiness. Then walking once or twice up and down the little room, he left the old man to take a few puffs from the great consoler.

Presently he turned suddenly upon the half-pay lieutenant with a dark solemnity in his handsome face.

“Mr. Maldon,” he said, slowly watching the effect of every syllable as he spoke, “George Talboys never sailed for Australia—that I know. More than this, he never came to Southampton; and the lie you told me on the 8th of last September was dictated to you by the telegraphic message which you received on that day.”

The dirty clay pipe dropped from the tremulous hand, and shivered against the iron fender, but the old man made no effort to find a fresh one; he sat trembling in every limb, and looking, Heaven knows how piteously, at Robert Audley.

“The lie was dictated to you, and you repeated your lesson. But you no more saw George Talboys here on the 7th of September than I see him in this room now. You thought you had burnt the telegraphic message, but you had only burnt a part of it—the remainder is in my possession.”

Lieutenant Maldon was quite sober now.

“What have I done?” he murmured, hopelessly. “Oh, my God! what have I done?”

“At two o’clock on the 7th of September last,” continued the pitiless, accusing voice, “George Talboys was seen alive and well at a house in Essex.”

Robert paused to see the effect of these words. They had produced no change in the old man. He still sat trembling from head to foot, and staring with the fixed and solid gaze of some helpless wretch whose every sense is gradually becoming numbed by terror.

“At two o’clock on that day,” remarked Robert Audley, “my poor friend was seen alive and well at ——, at the house of which I speak. From that hour to this I have never been able to hear that he has been seen by any living creature. I have taken such steps as must have resulted in procuring the information of his whereabouts, were he alive. I have done this patiently and carefully—at first, even hopefully. Now I know that he is dead.”