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Transcriber's Notes:
   1. Page Scan Source: Google Books
      https://books.google.com/books?id=f0g2AQAAMAAJ
      (University of Wisconsin--Madison)







The Black Patch







By the same Author


THE SILENT HOUSE IN PIMLICO
THE CRIMSON CRYPTOGRAM
THE BISHOP'S SECRET
THE JADE EYE
THE TURNPIKE HOUSE
A TRAITOR IN LONDON
THE GOLDEN WANG-HO
WOMAN THE SPHINX
THE SECRET PASSAGE
THE LONELY CHURCH
THE OPAL SERPENT
THE SILVER BULLET




JOHN LONG, Publisher, London







The Black Patch




By
Fergus Hume
Author of "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab," etc.





London
John Long
13 and 14 Norris Street, Haymarket


[All rights reserved]







First Published in 1906







CONTENTS
CHAP.

1.
IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN.
2.
THE HINTS OF DURBAN.
3.
MR. ALPENNY'S PROPOSAL.
4.
SEEN IN THE LIGHTNING.
5.
MRS. SNOW'S DISCOVERY.
6.
THE INQUEST.
7.
THE INQUEST--continued.
8.
THE WILL.
9.
LADY WATSON.
10.
MRS. LILLY'S STORY.
11.
MAJOR RUCK.
12.
VIVIAN EXPLAINS.
13.
THE EX-BUTLER.
14.
MRS. SNOW'S PAST.
15.
A CURIOUS COINCIDENCE.
16.
AN INTERRUPTION.
17.
A STORY OF THE PAST.
18.
WHAT ORCHARD KNEW.
19.
DURBAN SPEAKS AT LAST.
20.
A GREAT SURPRISE.
21.
LADY WATSON'S STORY.
22.
REVELATION.
23.
NEMESIS.
24.
THE NECKLACE.
25.
WATERLOO.
26.
WHAT TOOK PLACE.







The Black Patch





CHAPTER I
IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN


"Of course he's a wretch, dear; but oh!"--with an ecstatic
expression--"what a nice wretch!"

"I see; you marry the adjective."

"The man, Beatrice, the man. Give me a real man and I ask for nothing
better. But the genuine male is so difficult to find nowadays."

"Really! Then you have been more successful than the majority."

"How sarcastic, how unfriendly! I did look for sympathy."

Beatrice embraced her companion affectionately. "You have it, Dinah. I
give all sympathy and all good wishes to yourself and Jerry. May you be
very happy as Mr. and Mrs. Snow!"

"Oh, we shall, we shall! Jerry would make an undertaker happy!"

"Undertakers generally are--when business is good."

"Oh! you are quite too up-to-date in your talk, Beatrice Hedge."

"That is strange, seeing how I live in a dull country garden like a
snail, or a cabbage."

"Like a wild rose, dear. At least Vivian would say so."

"Mr. Paslow says more than he means," responded Beatrice, blushing
redder than the flower mentioned, "and I dare say Jerry does also."

"No, dear. Jerry hasn't sufficient imagination."

"He ought to have, being a journalist."

"Those are the very people who never imagine anything. They find their
facts on every hedge."

"Is that an unworthy pun on my name?"

"Certainly not, Miss Hedge," said the other with dignity; "Jerry
shan't find anything on you, or in you, save a friend, else I shall
be horribly jealous. As to Vivian, he would murder his future
brother-in-law if he caught him admiring you; and I don't want to begin
my married life with a corpse."

"Naturally. You wisely prefer the marriage service to the burial ditto,
my clever Dinah."

"I'm not clever, and I really don't know how to answer your sharp
speeches, seeing that I am a plain country girl."

"Not plain--oh! not plain. Jerry doesn't think so, I'm sure."

"It's very sweet and flattering of Jerry, but he's mercifully
colour-blind and short-sighted. I am plain, with a pug nose, drab
hair, freckles, and teeny-weeny eyes. You are the reverse, Beatrice,
being all that is lovely--quite a gem."

"Don't tell my father that I am any sort of jewel," remarked Beatrice
dryly, "else he will want to sell me at an impossible price."

Dinah laughed, but did not reply. Her somewhat flighty brain could
not concentrate itself sufficiently to grasp the subtle conversation
of Miss Hedge, so she threw herself back on the mossy stone seat and
stared between half-closed eyelids at the garden. This was necessary,
for the July sunshine blazed down on a mass of colour such as is
rarely seen in sober-hued England. The garden might have been that of
Eden, as delineated by Martin or Doré, from the tropical exuberance
of flower and leaf. But the buildings scattered about this pleasance
were scarcely of the primitive type which Adam and his spouse would
have inhabited: rather were they expressions of a late and luxurious
civilisation.

And again, they could scarcely be called buildings in the accepted
sense of the word, as they had been constructed to run on iron rails,
at the tail of a locomotive. To be plain, seven railway carriages, with
their wheels removed, did duty for dwellings, and very odd they looked
amidst surroundings alien to their original purpose. A Brixton villa
would scarcely have seemed more out of place in the Desert of Sahara.

Placed in an irregular circle, like Druidical stones, the white-painted
woodwork of these derelicts was streaked fantastically with creepers,
which, spreading even over the arched roofs, seemed to bind them to the
soil. Titania and her fastidious elves might have danced on the smooth
central sward, in the middle of which appeared a chipped sundial,
upheld by three stone ladies, unclothed, battered, and unashamed.
At the back of these ingeniously contrived huts bloomed flowers in
profusion: tall and gaudy hollyhocks, vividly scarlet geraniums, lilies
of holy whiteness, and thousands--as it truly seemed--of many-hued
poppies. The wide beds, whence these blossoms sprang, stretched back
to a girdle of lofty trees, and were aglow with the brilliant flowers
of the nasturtium. The trees which shut in this sylvan paradise from
the crooked lane rose from a tangled jungle of coarse grasses, nettles,
darnels, and oozy weedy plants, whose succulence betrayed the presence
of a small pond gorgeous with water-lilies. Paths led through the
miniature forest, winding in and out and round about, so as to make
the most of the small space; and the whole was bounded by a high brick
wall, mellow and crumbling, but secure for all that, seeing it was
topped with iron spikes and bits of broken bottles. One heavy wooden
gate, at present bolted and barred, admitted the outside world from the
lane into this Garden of Alcinous.

Almost the entire population of the Weald knew of this Eden--that is,
by hearsay--for no one entered the jealous gate, unless he or she
came to do business with the eccentric character who had created the
domain. Jarvis Alpenny was a miser, hence the presence of disused rail
carriages, which saved him the trouble and cost of building a house.
In The Camp--so the place was called--he had dwelt for fifty years,
and he was as much a recluse as a man well could be, who made his
income by usury. It seemed odd, and was odd, that a money-lender
should not only dwell in, but carry on his peculiarly urban profession
in, so rural a locality as the Weald of Sussex. Nevertheless, Alpenny
did as large a business as though he had occupied some grimy office
in the heart of London. Indeed, he really made more money, as the
very seclusion of the place attracted many needy people who wished
to borrow money secretly. As the local railway station was but three
miles distant, these secretive clients came very easily to this rustic
Temple of Mammon. Any one could stay in Brighton without arousing the
curiosity of friends; and it was surely natural to make excursions
into the bowels of the land! Jarvis Alpenny showed a considerable
knowledge of human nature in thus isolating his habitation; for the
more difficult people find it to obtain what they want, the more do
they value that which they obtain.

Alpenny called Beatrice his daughter. He would have spoken more
correctly had he called her his stepdaughter, for that she was. And
apart from the difference in the name, no one would have believed that
the wizen, yellow-faced, sharp-featured miser was the father of so
beautiful a girl. She dwelt in The Camp like an imprisoned princess,
and no dragon could have guarded her more fiercely than did Durban,
the sole servant and factotum of the settlement, as it might truly be
called. Alpenny himself might have passed for the wicked magician who
held the aforesaid princess spell-bound in his enchanted domain. But
as the Fairy Prince always discovers Beauty, however closely confined,
so had Beatrice Hedge been discovered by Vivian Paslow. He was a poor
country gentleman who dwelt in a two-miles distant grange; and his only
sister, confessing to the biblical name of Dinah, was the decidedly
plain girl who had just whispered to Beatrice how she had become
engaged, on the previous day, to Gerald Snow. That Gerald was the son
of a somewhat needy vicar, and possessed an objectionable mother, made
no difference to Dinah, who was very much in love and very voluble on
the subject.

"Of course," resumed Miss Paslow, after a pause in the conversation, "I
and Jerry will be horribly poor. Vivian has no money and I have less.
Mr. Snow the vicar has only a fifth-rate living, and Mrs. Snow is a
screw like your father."

"Dinah!" Beatrice winced and  at these plain words.

"Well, Mr. Alpenny is a screw, and only your stepfather after all. As
to Mrs. Snow--oh, my gracious"--with expressive pantomime--"I'm glad
Jerry and I won't have to depend upon her for food. Whenever the poor
famished darling comes to Convent Grange, I simply rush to make him a
glass of egg and milk in case he tumbles off his chair."

"That may be emotion, caused by the sight of you Dinah."

"How nasty, how untrue! No! I did the tumbling when he proposed
yesterday. He proposed so