The Greatest Thrillers of Fergus Hume. Fergus Hume

a severe nervous shock,’ said Graham, sharply, ‘and it will take some time for you to recover from it. This visitor brought you bad news, I suppose?’

      ‘No!’ said the bishop, wincing, ‘he did not.’

      ‘Well! well! keep your own secrets. I can do no more, so I’ll say good-night,’ and he held out his hand.

      Dr Pendle took it and retained it within his own for a moment. ‘Your allusion to the ring of Polycrates, Graham!’

      ‘What of it?’

      ‘I should throw my ring into the sea also. That is all.’

      ‘Ha! ha! You’ll have to travel a considerable distance to reach the sea, bishop. Good-night; good-night,’ and Graham, smiling in his dry way, took himself out of the room. As he glanced back at the door he saw that the bishop was again staring dully at the reading lamp. Graham shook his head at the sight, and closed the door.

      ‘It is mind, not matter,’ he thought, as he put on hat and coat in the hall; ‘the cupboard’s open and the skeleton is out. My premonition was true—true. Æsculapius forgive me that I should be so superstitious. The bishop has had a shock. What is it? what is it? That visitor brought bad news! Hum! Hum! Better to throw physic to the dogs in his case. Mind diseased: secret trouble: my punishment is greater than I can bear. Put this and that together; there is something serious the matter. Well! well! I’m no Paul Pry.’

      ‘Is his lordship better?’ said the soft voice of Cargrim at his elbow.

      Graham wheeled round. ‘Much better; good-night,’ he replied curtly, and was off in a moment.

      Michael Cargrim, the chaplain, was a dangerous man. He was thin and pale, with light blue eyes and sleek fair hair; and as weak physically as he was strong mentally. In his neat clerical garb, with a slight stoop and meek smile, he looked a harmless, commonplace young curate of the tabby cat kind. No one could be more tactful and ingratiating than Mr Cargrim, and he was greatly admired by the old ladies and young girls of Beorminster; but the men, one and all—even his clerical brethren—disliked and distrusted him, although there was no apparent reason for their doing so. Perhaps his too deferential manners and pronounced effeminacy, which made him shun manly sports, had something to do with his masculine unpopularity; but, from the bishop downward, he was certainly no favourite, and in every male breast he constantly inspired a desire to kick him. The clergy of the diocese maintained towards him a kind of ‘Dr Fell’ attitude, and none of them had more to do with him than they could help. With all the will in the world, with all the desire to interpret brotherly love in its most liberal sense, the Beorminster Levites found it impossible to like Mr Cargrim. Hence he was a kind of clerical Ishmael, and as dangerous within as he looked harmless without.

      How such a viper came to warm itself on the bishop’s hearth no one could say. Mrs Pansey herself did not know in what particular way Mr Cargrim had wriggled himself—so she expressed it—into his present snug position. But, to speak frankly, there was no wriggling in the matter, and had the bishop felt himself called upon to explain his business to anyone, he could have given a very reasonable account of the election of Cargrim to the post of chaplain. The young man was the son of an old schoolfellow, to whom Pendle had been much attached, and from whom, in the earlier part of his career, he had received many kindnesses. This schoolfellow—he was a banker—had become a bankrupt, a beggar, finally a suicide, through no fault of his own, and when dying, had commended his wife and son to the bishop’s care. Cargrim was then fifteen years of age, and being clever and calculating, even as a youth, had determined to utilise the bishop’s affection for his father to its fullest extent. He was clever, as has been stated; he was also ambitious and unscrupulous; therefore he resolved to enter the profession in which Dr Pendle’s influence would be of most value. For this reason, and not because he felt a call to the work, he entered holy orders. The result of his wisdom was soon apparent, for after a short career as a curate in London, he was appointed chaplain to the Bishop of Beorminster.

      So far, so good. The position, for a young man of twenty-eight, was by no means a bad one; the more so as it gave him a capital opportunity of gaining a better one by watching for the vacancy of a rich preferment and getting it from his patron by asking directly and immediately for it. Cargrim had in his eye the rectorship of a wealthy, easy-going parish, not far from Beorminster, which was in the gift of the bishop. The present holder was aged and infirm, and given so much to indulgence in port wine, that the chances were he might expire within a few months, and then, as the chaplain hoped, the next rector would be the Reverend Michael Cargrim. Once that firm position was obtained, he could bend his energies to developing into an archdeacon, a dean, even into a bishop, should his craft and fortune serve him as he intended they should. But in all these ambitious dreams there was nothing of religion, or of conscience, or of self-denial. If ever there was a square peg which tried to adapt itself to a round hole, Michael Cargrim, allegorically speaking, was that article.

      With all his love for the father, Dr Pendle could never bring himself to like the son, and determined in his own mind to confer a benefice on him when possible, if only to get rid of him; but not the rich one of Heathcroft, which was the delectable land of Cargrim’s desire. The bishop intended to bestow that on Gabriel; and Cargrim, in his sneaky way, had gained some inkling of this intention. Afraid of losing his wished-for prize, he was bent upon forcing Dr Pendle into presenting him with the living of Heathcroft; and to accomplish this amiable purpose with the more certainty he had conceived the plan of somehow getting the bishop into his power. Hitherto—so open and stainless was Dr Pendle’s life—he had not succeeded in his aims; but now matters looked more promising, for the bishop appeared to possess a secret which he guarded even from the knowledge of his wife. What this secret might be, Cargrim could not guess, in spite of his anxiety to do so, but he intended in one way or another to discover it and utilise it for the furtherance and attainment of his own selfish ends. By gaining such forbidden knowledge he hoped to get Dr Pendle well under his thumb; and once there the prelate could be kept in that uncomfortable position until he gratified Mr Cargrim’s ambition. For a humble chaplain to have the whip-hand of a powerful ecclesiastic was a glorious and easy way for a meritorious young man to succeed in his profession. Having come to this conclusion, which did more credit to his head than to his heart, Cargrim sought out the servant who had summoned the bishop to see the stranger. A full acquaintance with the circumstances of the visit was necessary to the development of the Reverend Michael’s ingenious little plot.

      ‘This is a sad thing about his lordship’s indisposition, said he to the man in the most casual way, for it would not do to let the servant know that he was being questioned for a doubtful purpose.

      ‘Yes, sir,’ replied the man. ”Tis mos’ extraordinary. I never knowed his lordship took ill before. I suppose that gentleman brought bad news, sir.’

      ‘Possibly, John, possibly. Was this gentleman a short man with light hair? I fancy I saw him.’

      ‘Lor’, no, Mr Cargrim. He was tall and lean as a rake; looked like a military gentleman, sir; and I don’t know as I’d call him gentry either,’ added John, half to himself. ‘He wasn’t what he thought he was.’

      ‘A decayed clergyman, John?’ inquired Cargrim, remembering Graham’s description.

      ‘There was lots of decay but no clergy about him, sir. I fancy I knows a parson when I sees one. Clergymen don’t have scars on their cheekses as I knows of.’

      ‘Oh, indeed!’ said Cargrim, mentally noting that the doctor had spoken falsely. ‘So he had a scar?’

      ‘A red scar, sir, on the right cheek, from his temple to the corner of his mouth. He was as dark as pitch in looks, with a military moustache, and two black eyes like gimblets. His clothes was shabby, and his looks was horrid. Bad-tempered too, sir, I should say, for when he was with his lordship I ‘eard his voice quite angry like. It ain’t no clergy as ‘ud speak like that to our bishop, Mr Cargrim.’

      ‘And his lordship was taken ill when this visitor departed, John?’

      ‘Right off, sir. When I got back to the library after showing him out