by Ellen Wood
“I don’t much like this one clause, Hanborough,” he said. “Just read it; it’s very short. Would it be binding on the other party?”
They were both reading the clause, heads together, when Mr. Paul was heard speaking in haste. “Chandler! Tom Chandler! Come here directly” — and Tom turned and went at once.
“Is Hanborough there?” cried Mr. Paul.
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell him to come in also; no time to lose.”
Mr. Paul wanted them to witness his signature to a deed which had to go off by the evening post. That done, he detained them for a minute upon some other matter; after which, Hanborough left the room. Chandler turned to follow him.
“Bring the letters in as soon as they come,” said Mr. Paul. “There may be one from Burnaby.”
“Oh, they have come,” replied Tom; and he went into the other room and brought the letters to the lawyer.
It was this which Tom Chandler now related to his master and to Mr. Preen. By dint of exercising his own memory and referring to his day-book, Mr. Paul was enabled to say that the letters that past afternoon were four in number, and to state from whom they came. There was no letter amongst them from Mr. Preen; none at all from Duck Brook. So there it was: the letter seemed to have mysteriously vanished; either out of the post bag despatched by Mrs. Sym, or else after its arrival at Islip. The latter was of course the more probable; since, as Dame Sym had herself remarked, once a letter was shut up in the bag, there it must remain; it could not vanish from it.
But, assuming this to be the case, how and where had it vanished? From the Islip post-office? Or from the postman’s hands when carrying it out for delivery? Or from Mr. Paul’s front room?
They were yet speaking when Dale the postman walked in. He came to say that he had been exercising his mind upon the afternoons of the past week and could now distinguish Wednesday from the others. He recalled it by remembering that it was the afternoon of the accident in the street, when a tax-cart was overturned and the driver had broken his arm; and he could positively say that he had that afternoon delivered the letters to Mr. Chandler himself.
“Yes, yes, we remember all that ourselves, Dale,” returned Mr. Paul, somewhat testily. “The thing we want you to remember is, whether you observed amidst the letters one with a large red seal.”
Dale shook his head. “No, sir, I did not. The letters lay one upon another, address upwards, and I took no particular notice of them. There were four or five of them, I should think.”
“Four,” corrected the lawyer. “Well, that’s all, Dale, for the present. The letter is lost, and we must consider what to do in the matter.”
Yes, it was all very well to say that to Dale, but what could they do? How set about it? To begin with, Preen did not know the number of the note, but supposed he might get it from Mr. Todhetley. He stayed so long in discussion with the lawyer, that his son, waiting in the gig outside, grew tired and the horse impatient.
Oliver was almost ready to die of weariness, when an acquaintance of his came out of the Bell. Fred Scott; a dashing young fellow, who had more money than brains.
“Get up,” said Oliver. And Scott got into the gig.
They were driving slowly about and talking fast, when two young ladies came into view at the end of the street. Oliver threw the reins to his friend, got out in a trice and met them. No need to say that one of them was Emma Paul.
“I beg your pardon,” said Oliver to her, lifting his hat from his suddenly flushed face, as he shook hands with both of them. “I left two books at your house yesterday: did you get them? The servant said you were out.”
“Oh, yes, I had them; and I thank you very much,” answered Emma, with a charming smile: whilst Mary MacEveril went away to feast her eyes at the milliner’s window. “I have begun one of them already.”
“Jane said you would like to read them; and so — I — I left them,” returned Oliver, with the hesitating shyness of true love.
“It is very kind of you, Sir. Oliver, to bring them over, and I am sorry I was not at home,” said Emma. “When are you and Jane coming to see me?”
With her dimpled face all smiles, her blue eyes beaming upon him, her ready handshake still tingling in his pulses, her cordial tones telling of pleasure, how could that fascinated young man do otherwise than believe in her? The world might talk of her love for Tom Chandler: he did not and would not believe it held a grain of truth. Oh, if he could but know that she loved him! Mary MacEveril turned.
“Emma, are you not coming? We have that silk to match, you know.”
With another handshake, another sweet smile, she went away with Mary. Oliver said adieu, his heart on his lips. All his weariness was gone, lost in a flood of sunshine.
Mr. Preen was seen, coming along. Scott got out of the gig, and Oliver got into it. Preen took his seat and the reins, and drove off.
Mr. Paul went home to dinner at the usual hour that evening, but the clerks remained beyond the time for closing. Work had been hindered, and had to be done. Batley was the first to leave; the other two lingered behind, talking of the loss.
“It is the most surprising thing that has happened for a long while,” remarked Hanborough. He had locked his desk and had his hat and gloves at his elbow. “That letter has been stolen, Mr. Chandler; it has not been accidentally lost.”
“Ay,” assented Tom. “Stolen — I fear — from here. From this very room that you and I are standing in, Hanborough.”
“My suspicions, sir, were directed to the Islip post-office.”
“I wish mine were,” said Tom. “I don’t think — think, mind, for we cannot be sure — that the post-office is the right quarter to look to. You see the letters were left here on your desk, while we were occupied with Mr. Paul in his room. About two minutes, I suppose, we stayed with him; perhaps three. Did anyone come in during that time, Hanborough, and take the letter?”
Mr. Hanborough drew off his spectacles, which he wore out of doors as well as in; he was sure to take them off when anything disturbed him.
“But who would do such a thing?” he asked.
Tom laughed a little. “You wouldn’t, old friend, and I wouldn’t; but there may be people in the neighbourhood who would.”
Doubts were presenting themselves to Michael Hanborough’s mind: he did not “see” this, as the saying runs. “Why should anyone single out that one particular letter to take, and leave the rest?” he resumed.
“That point puzzles me,” remarked Tom. “If the letter was singled out, as you put it, from the rest, I should say the thief must have known it contained money: and who could, or did, know that? I wish I had carried the letters in with me when Mr. Paul called to me!”
“If the letters had been left alone for a whole day in our office, I should never have supposed they were not safe,” said the clerk, impulsively. “But, now that my attention has been drawn to this, I must mention something, Mr. Chandler.”
“Yes. Go on.”
“When the master called me in after you, I followed you in through that door,” he began, pointing to the door of communication between the two rooms. “But I left it by the other, the passage door, chancing to be nearest to it at the moment. As I went out, I saw the green baize door swinging, and supposed that someone had come in; MacEveril, perhaps, from his tea. But he had not done so. I found neither him nor anyone else; the room here was vacant as when I left it.”
The green baize door stood in the passage, between the street door, always open in the daytime, and the door that led into the front office.
“Seeing no one here, I concluded I was mistaken; and I have never thought of it from that hour to this,” continued the clerk. “No, not even when it came out that a letter had been lost with a bank-note in it.”
Tom nodded his head several times, as much as to say that was when the thief must have come in. “And now, Hanborough, I’ll tell you something in turn,” he went on. “Dale put the letters into my hand that afternoon, as
you know; and I laid them on your desk here while showing you that clause in the mortgage deed. Later, when I took up the letters to carry them to Mr. Paul, an idea struck me that the packet felt thinner. It did indeed. I of course supposed it to be only fancy, and let it slip from my mind. I have never thought of it since — as you say by the green door — until this afternoon.”
Michael Hanborough, who had put his spectacles on again, turned them upon his young master, and dropped his voice to a whisper.
“Who is it that — that we may suspect, sir?”
“Say yourself, Hanborough.”
“I’m afraid to say. Is it — MacEveril?”
“It looks like it,” replied Tom, in the same low tone. “But while there are reasons for suspecting him, there are also reasons against it,” he added, after a pause. “MacEveril was in debt, petty little odds and ends of things which he owes about the place and elsewhere; that’s one reason why money would be useful to him. Then his running away looks suspicious; and another reason is that there’s positively no one else to suspect. All that seems to tell against him; but on the other hand, MacEveril, though random and heedless, is a gentleman and has a gentleman’s instincts, and I do not think he would be guilty of such a thing.”
“Well, and I can’t think it, either,” said Michael Hanborough; “despite his faults and his saucy tongue, I liked him. He did not come in again that afternoon till half-past five, I remember. I told him he was late; he answered, laughing, that he had dropped asleep over his tea — though I didn’t believe a word of it.”
“If MacEveril really took the letter, how had he ascertained that it contained money?” mused Tom Chandler. “Hanborough, at present I think this suspicion had better lie entirely between ourselves.”
“Yes, Mr. Chandler, and so do I. Perhaps a few days may bring forth something to confirm or dispel it.”
II
Preen was a great deal too anxious and restless to let the following day pass over quietly; and on that Sunday afternoon when we were all sitting in the garden at Crabb Cot, under the scent and shade of the large syringa trees, he walked in. His little dark face looked darker than ever, the scowl of pain on his brow deeper.
“No, I can’t take anything,” he said, in answer to the Squire’s hospitable offers of having wine, or ale, or lemonade brought out. “Thirsty? Yes, I am thirsty, Squire, but it is with worry, not with the walk. Wine and lemonade won’t relieve that.”
And, sitting down to face us, in a swinging American chair, which Tod had brought out for his own benefit, Gervais Preen surprised us with the history of his mysterious loss, and inquired whether the Squire could give him the number of the note.
“Yes, I can,” replied the Squire; “my name is on the note also; you made me write it, you know. How on earth has it got lost?”
“It is just one of those things there’s no accounting for,” said Preen, bending forward in his earnestness. “The letter left Duck Brook in safety; I posted it myself, and Mrs. Sym took notice of it when she shut it up in the bag. That is as far as it can be traced. The Islip post-office, though not remembering it in particular, have no doubt it reached them, as it could not have been lost from the bag, or that they sent it out for delivery to Mr. Paul by Dale, who is cautious and trustworthy. Paul declares it never reached him; and of course he is trustworthy. Dale says, and it is a fact, that he delivered the letters that afternoon into Mr. Chandler’s own hands. One cannot see where to look for a weak point, you perceive, Todhetley.”
The Squire was rubbing his face, the account having put it into a white heat. “Bless my heart!” cried he. “It reminds me of that five-pound note of mine which was changed in the post for a stolen one! You remember that, Johnny.”
“Yes, sir, that I do.”
“Wednesday, the sixteenth, was the day it ought to have reached old Paul!” exclaimed Tod, who was balancing himself on the branch of a tree. “Why, that was the day before the pic-nic!”
“And what if it was?” retorted Preen, enraged that everybody should bring up that pic-nic in conjunction with his loss. “The pic-nic had nothing to do with my bank-note and letter.”
“Clearly not,” agreed Tod, laughing at his ire.
“I should advertise, Preen,” said the Squire, “and I should call in the detectives. They — —”
“I don’t like detectives,” growled Preen, interrupting him, “and I think advertising might do more harm than good. I must get my money back somehow; I can’t afford to lose it. But as to those detectives —— Mercy upon us!”
In the ardour of declamation, Mr. Preen had bent a little too forward. The chair backed from under him, and he came down upon the grass, hands and knees. Tod choked with laughter, and dashed off to get rid of it. The man gathered himself up.
“Nasty tilting things, those chairs are!” he exclaimed. “Please don’t trouble, ma’am,” for Mrs. Todhetley had sprung forward; “there’s no harm done. And if you don’t mind giving me the number of the note to-day, Squire, I shall be much obliged.”
He declined to stay for tea, saying he wanted to get back home. When he and the Squire went indoors, we talked of the loss; Mrs. Todhetley thought it strangely unaccountable.
As the days went on, and the bank-note did not turn up, Mr. Preen fell into the depths of gloom. He had lost no time in proceeding to the Old Bank, at Worcester — from whence Mr. Todhetley had drawn the note, in conjunction with other notes — recounting to its principals the history of its loss, and giving in its number, together with the information that Mr. Todhetley’s name was written on it. The bank promised to make inquiries of other banks, and to detain the note should it be paid in.
“As if that were likely!” groaned Preen. “A rogue filching a note would not go and pay it into the place it came from.”
Thomas Chandler was gazetted the partner of Mr. Paul, the firm to be known henceforth as Paul and Chandler. In the first private conference that the young man held with his partner, he imparted to him the suspicions which he and Hanborough held of Dick MacEveril. For as that erratic gentleman continued to absent himself, and the time was going on without bringing a shadow of doubt upon anyone else, the new partner felt that in duty he must speak to his chief and elder. Old Paul was overwhelmed.
“What a dreadful thing!” he exclaimed testily. “And why couldn’t you or Hanborough mention this before?”
“Well,” said Tom, “for one thing I was always expecting something might crop up to decide it one way or another; and, to tell the truth, sir, I cannot bring myself to believe that MacEveril did it.”
“He is a villainous young dog for impudence, but — to do such a thing as that? No, I can hardly think it, either,” concluded the lawyer.
That same evening, after his dinner, Mr. Paul betook himself to Oak Mansion, to an interview with his old friend, Captain MacEveril. Not to accuse that scapegrace nephew of the Captain’s to his face, but to gather a hint or two about him, if any might be gathered.
The very first mention of Dick’s name set the old sailor off. His right foot was showing symptoms of gout just then; between that and Dick he had no temper at all. Calming down presently, he called his man to produce tobacco and grog. They sat at the open window, smoking a pipe apiece, the glasses on a stand between them, and the lame foot upon a stool. For the expost-captain made a boast that he did not give in to that enemy of his any more than he had ever given in to an enemy at a sea-fight. The welcome evening breeze blew in upon them through the open bow window, with the sweet-scent of the July roses; and the sky was gorgeous with the red sunset.
“Where is Dick, you ask,” exploded the Captain. “How should I know where he is? Hang him! When he has taken his fill of London shows with that Australian companion of his, he’ll make his way back again here, I reckon. Write? Not he. He knows he’d get a letter back from me, Paul, if he did.”
Leading up to it by degrees, talking of this and that, and especially of the mysterious loss of Preen’s note, the lawyer spo
ke doubtingly of whether it could have been lost out of his own office, and, if so, who had taken it. “That young rascal would not do such a thing, you know, MacEveril,” he carelessly remarked.
“What, Dick? No, no, he’d not do that,” said the Captain, promptly. “Though I’ve known young fellows venture upon queer things when they were hard up for money. Dick’s honest to the backbone. Had he wanted money to travel with, he’d have wormed it out of my wife by teasing, but he wouldn’t steal it.”
“About that time, a day or so before it, he drew out the linings of his pockets as he sat at his desk, and laughingly assured Hanborough, that he had not a coin of ready money in the world,” remarked Mr. Paul.
“Like enough,” assented the Captain. “Coin never stays in his pockets.”
“I wonder where he found the money to travel with?”
“Pledged his watch and chain maybe,” returned the Captain with composure. “He would be quite equal to that. Stockleigh, the fellow he is with in London, had brought home heaps of gold, ’twas said; he no doubt stands treat for Dick.”
John Paul did not, could not, say anything more definite. He thought of nothing else as he walked home; now saying to himself that Dick had stolen the money, now veering over to the Captain’s opinion that Dick was incapable of doing so. The uncertainty bothered him, and he hated to be bothered.
The man to whom the money was owing, Robert Derrick, was becoming very troublesome. Hardly a day passed but he marched into Mr. Paul’s office, to press for payment, threatening to take steps if he did not get it shortly. The morning following the lawyer’s visit to Captain MacEveril, he went in again, vowing it was for the last time, for that he should cite Mr. Preen before the County Court.