London - Edward Rutherfurd [553]
As the days passed he waited anxiously for news of the clippers. First had come the crushing blow that the Cutty Sark had been sighted coming up the coast of Kent; then her arrival in the Port of London, and the knowledge that he had lost his bet. Then, day after day, the wait without news when he wondered if he had lost the vessel and his friend Barnikel too.
At the wharf it did not take Barnikel long to explain. Sadly the old mariner told him how, trying to outstrip the Cutty Sark, he had got caught in a storm, lost a mast and had to put in to a South American port for a refit. “We were ahead of her once,” he said defensively. And glancing across to where the sleek, three-masted Cutty Sark lay quietly at her moorings he sighed. “I know it now if I didn’t before: no vessel afloat will ever catch that one.”
“She’s ruined me,” the earl said bleakly, and left.
There was really nothing left for him to do now, he reflected as the cab took him slowly home. The Regent’s Park house would have to go of course. It was far too expensive. The thought of sharing a smaller house with Lady Muriel was not a happy one, however. Perhaps, he reflected, he should go to live in France. The English pound went a long way on the Continent and many an English gentleman was able to keep up appearances in France or Italy when they might have been severely embarrassed back at home.
In a grim but thoughtful mood he arrived back at the house, to be greeted with the news, unusual but not unwelcome, that his half-sister had gone out. “She didn’t say when she was returning, my lord,” the butler added.
Glad of some time to be alone with his thoughts, St James went upstairs to his library, and sat down in the big armchair.
It was some minutes before he noticed something odd. The door to the closet where the safe was had been left ajar. He got up slowly and went to close it. But as he did so, with a frown of surprise, he noticed that the safe was open. It was also empty.
“The jewels!” he cried. How had a thief got in? He was rushing to summon the butler when he saw his keys on the library table. Beside them was a single sheet of white paper on which, scrawled in his sister’s large and childish hand, were just three words: I HAVE GONE.
With a howl of bitter rage, the poor Earl of St James cursed them all. He damned Mabel, and Nancy, and Gorham Dogget, and Barnikel.
“And damn you, too!” he cried. “You cursed Cutty Sark!”
It was just as well that the earl did not witness the scene which took place when Barnikel returned to his wife Charlotte at Camberwell that evening. After she had fed him, and made him his favourite grog, and sat him very comfortably down by the fireside, and affectionately stroked his hoary old beard, she remarked: “I’m sorry it didn’t go better, but there’s one compensation.”
“What’s that?”
“We made a tidy bit of money.”
“How do you mean?”
“I put a bet on the race. Well, I had our son do it for me.”
“You bet on me? Like St James?”
“No, dear. I bet on the Cutty Sark.”
“You bet against your own husband, woman?”
“Well, somebody had to. I knew you couldn’t win. The Cutty Sark had too much sail.” She smiled. “We made a thousand pounds!”
After a long pause, Captain Barnikel started to laugh into his grog. “You’re as bad as your old Guv’nor sometimes!” he chuckled.
“I hope,” she said, “I am.”
The arrangement agreed between Esther Silversleeves and Lucy was very simple. As soon as they had both recovered their composure, Esther found that she could think with a clarity she had not known she possessed.
“You are sure the girl knows nothing?” she asked Lucy.
“Nothing at all,” Lucy promised.
“Then tell her that you found me through an agency,” Esther ordered. “But you must tell her that since my own maiden name happened to be the same as yours, I do not think it appropriate that she should be a Dogget. She will have to change it.” She considered. “Let her be Ducket. That