When money is lost out of an office, suspicion very frequently falls upon one or more of that office’semployés. Mr. Galloway’s doubts, however, had not yet extended to those employed in his. The letter containing the bank-note had been despatched to Mr. Robert Galloway, at Ventnor, on the Friday. On the Sunday morning, while Mr. Galloway was at breakfast, a short answer was delivered to him from his cousin:—“Your letter has reached me, but not the note; you must have omitted to enclose it,” was the news it contained relative to that particular point. Mr. Galloway knew that he had enclosed the note; there was little doubt that both his clerks could testify that he had done so, for it was done in their presence. How could it have been taken out again? Had it been abstracted while the letter was still in his office?—or on its way to the post?—or in its transmission to Ventnor? “If in the office,” argued Mr. Galloway, “it must have been done before I sealed it; if afterwards, that seal must have been tampered with, probably broken. I’ll drop a note to Robert, and ask the question.” He rose from his breakfast and penned a line to Southampton, where, as he had reason to believe, Mr. Robert Galloway would be on the Monday. It was not Mr. Galloway’s habit to write letters on a Sunday, but he considered that the present occasion justified the act. “I certainly enclosed the note in my letter,” he wrote. “Send me word instantly whether the seal had been tampered with. I stamped it with my private seal.” Mr. Robert Galloway received this on the Monday morning. He did not wait for the post, but forwarded the reply by telegraph—“The seal had not been broken. Will send you back the envelope by first post.” This was the despatch which you saw Mr. Galloway receive in his office.
He went back into his private room, carrying the despatch with him, and there he sat down to think. From the very first, he had not believed the fraud to lie with the post-office—for this reason: had the note been taken out by one of its servants, the letter would almost certainly not have reached its destination; it would have disappeared with the note. He had cast a doubt upon whether Arthur Channing had posted the letters himself. Arthur assured him that he had done so, and Mr. Galloway believed him; the information that the seal of the letter was unbroken was now a further confirmation, had he needed it. At least, it confirmed that the letter had not been opened after it left the office. Mr. Galloway perfectly remembered fastening down the letter. He probably would have sealed it then, but for the commotion that arose at the same moment in the street caused by Mad Nance. There could be no shadow of doubt, so far as Mr. Galloway could see, and so far as he believed, that the abstraction had taken place between the time of his fastening down the envelope and of his sealing it. Who had done it?
“I’ll lay a guinea I know how it happened!” he exclaimed to himself. “Channing was at college—I must have given him permission in a soft moment to take that organ, or I should never have done it, quitting the office daily!—and, Yorke, in his indolent carelessness, must have got gossiping outside, leaving, it is hard to say who, in the office! This comes of poor Jenkins’s fall!”
Mr. Galloway rang his bell. It was answered by Jenkins. “Send Mr. Arthur Channing in,” said Mr. Galloway.
Arthur entered, in obedience. Mr. Galloway signed to him to close the door, and then spoke.
“This is an awkward business, Channing.”
“Very awkward, indeed, sir,” replied Arthur, at no loss to understand what Mr. Galloway alluded to. “I do not see that it was possible for the note to have been taken from the letter, except in its transmission through the post.”
“I tell you it was taken from it before it left this office,” tartly returned Mr. Galloway. “I have my reasons for the assertion. Did you see me put the bank-note into the letter?”
“Of course I did, sir. I was standing by when you did it: I remained by you after bringing you the note from this room.”
“I enclosed the note, and fastened down the envelope,” said Mr. Galloway, pointing the feather of his quill pen at each proposition. “I did not seal it then, because looking at Mad Nance hindered me, and I went out, leaving the letter on Jenkins’s desk, in your charge and Yorke’s.”
“Yes, sir. I placed the letter in the rack in your room, immediately afterwards.”
“And, pray, what loose acquaintances did you and Yorke receive here that afternoon?”
“Not any,” replied Arthur. “I do not know when the office has been so free from callers. No person whatever entered it, except my brother Hamish.”
“That’s all nonsense,” said Mr. Galloway. “You are getting to speak as incautiously as Yorke. How can you tell who came here when you were at college? Yorke would be alone, then.”
“No, Yorke was not,” Arthur was beginning. But he stopped suddenly and hesitated. He did not care to tell Mr. Galloway that Yorke had played truant all that afternoon. Mr. Galloway saw his hesitation, and did not like it.
“Come, what have you to conceal? You and Yorke held a levee here, I suppose? That’s the fact. You had so many fellows in here, gossiping, that you don’t know who may have meddled with the letter; and when you were off to college, they stayed on with Yorke.”
“No, sir. For one thing, I did not take the organ that afternoon. I went, as usual, but Mr. Williams was there himself, so I came back at once. I was only away about ten minutes.”
“And how many did you find with Yorke?”
“Yorke stepped out to speak to some one just before I went to college,” replied Arthur, obliged to allude to it, but determined to say as little as possible. “Hamish was here, sir; you met him coming in as you were going out, and I got him to stay in the office till I returned.”
“Pretty doings!” retorted Mr. Galloway. “Hindering the time of Mr. Hamish Channing, that you and Yorke may kick up your heels elsewhere! Nice trustworthy clerks, both of you!”
“I was obliged to go to college, sir,” said Arthur, in a tone of deprecation.
“Was Yorke obliged to go out?”
“I was back again very shortly, I assure you, sir,” said Arthur, passing over the remark. “And I did not leave the office again until you sent me to the post.”
“Stop!” said Mr. Galloway; “let me clearly understand. As I went out, Hamish came in. Then, you say, Yorke went out; and you, to get to college, left Hamish keeping office! Did any one else come in besides Hamish?”
“Not any one. When I returned from college I inquired of Hamish who had called, and he said no one had called. Then Lady Augusta Yorke drove up, and Hamish went away with her. She was going to the missionary meeting.”
“And you persist in saying that no one came in, after that?”
“No one did come in, sir.”
“Very well. Send Yorke to me.”
Roland made his appearance, a pen behind his ear, and a ruler in his hand.
“More show than work!” sarcastically exclaimed Mr. Galloway. “Now, sir, I have been questioning Mr. Arthur Channing about this unpleasant business, for I am determined to come to the bottom of it. I can get nothing satisfactory from him; so I must try what I can do with you. Have the goodness to tell me how you spent your time on Friday afternoon.”
“On Friday?—let’s see,” began Roland, out of his wits with perplexity as to how he should conceal his afternoon’s absence from Mr. Galloway. “It’s difficult to recollect what one does on one particular day more than another, sir.”
“Oh, indeed! Perhaps, to begin with, you can remember the circumstances of my enclosing the bank-note in the letter, I went into the other room to consult a ‘Bradshaw’—”
“I remember that quite well, sir,” interrupted Roland. “Channing fetched the bank-note from this room, and you put it into the envelope. It was just before we were all called to the window by Mad Nance.”
“After that?” pursued Mr. Galloway.
“After that? I think, sir, you went out after that, and Hamish Channing came in.”
“Who else came in?”
“I don’t remember any one else,” answered Roland, wishing some one would come inthen, and stop the questioning. No such luck, however.
“How many people called in, while Channing was at college, and you were keeping office?” demanded Mr. Galloway.
Roland fidgeted, first on one leg, then on the other. He felt that it must all come out. “What a passion he’ll go into with me!” thought Roland. “It is certain that no one can have touched the bank-note in this office, sir,” he said aloud. “Those poor, half-starved postmen must have helped themselves to it.”
“When I ask for your opinion upon ‘who has helped themselves to it,’ it will be time enough to give it me,” returned Mr. Galloway, drily. “I say that the money was taken from the letter before it left this office, when it was under the charge of you and Channing.”
“I hope you do not suspect us of taking it, sir!” said Roland, going into a heat.
“I suspect that you have been guilty of negligence in some way, Mr. Roland. Could the bank-note drop out of the letter of itself?”
“I suppose it could not, sir.”
“Good! Then it is my business to ascertain, if I can, how it did get out of it. You have not answered my question. Who came into this office, while Channing was at the cathedral, on Friday afternoon?”
“I declare nobody ever had such luck as I,” burst forth Roland, in a tone half comic, half defiant, as he felt he must make a merit of necessity, and confess. “If I get into the smallest scrape in the world, it is safe to come out. The fact is, sir, I was not here, last Friday afternoon, during Channing’s hour for college.”
“What! not at all?” exclaimed Mr. Galloway, who had not suspected that Yorke was absent so long.
“As I say, it’s my luck to be found out!” grumbled Roland. “I can’t lift a finger to-day, if it ought not to be lifted, but it is known to-morrow. I saw one of my chums going past the end of the street, sir, and I ran after him. And I am sorry to say I was seduced into stopping out with him longer than I ought to have done.”
Mr. Galloway stared at Roland. “At what time did you go out?” he asked.
“Just after you did, sir. The bell was going for college.”
“And pray what time did you come in again?”
“Well, sir, you saw me come in. It was getting on for five o’clock.”
“Do you mean to say you had not been in at all, between those hours!”
“It was Knivett’s fault,” grumbled Roland. “He kept me.”
Mr. Galloway sat drumming on his desk, apparently gazing at Roland; in reality thinking. To hear that Mr. Roland Yorke had taken French leave for nearly a whole afternoon, just on the especial afternoon that he ought not to have taken it—Jenkins being away—did not surprise him in the least; it was very much in the line of the Yorkes to do so. To scold or punish Roland for it, would have been productive of little good, since he was sure to do it again the very next time the temptation offered itself. Failing temptation, he would remain at his post steadily enough. No; it was not Roland’s escapade that Mr. Galloway was considering; but the very narrow radius that the affair of the letter appeared to be drawing itself into. If Roland was absent, he could not have had half the town in, to chatter; and if Arthur Channing asserted that none had been in, Mr. Galloway could give credence to Arthur. But then—how had the money disappeared? Who had taken it?
“Channing!” he called out, loudly and sharply.
Arthur, who was preparing to attend the cathedral, for the bell had rung out, hastened in.
“How came you not to tell me when we were speaking of Roland Yorke’s absence, that he remained away all the afternoon?” questioned Mr. Galloway.
Arthur was silent. He glanced once at Roland.
“Well?” cried Mr. Galloway.
“It was better for him to tell you himself, sir; as I conclude he has now done.”
“The fact is, you are two birds of a feather,” stormed Mr. Galloway, who, when once roused, which was not often, would say anything that came uppermost, just or unjust. “The one won’t tell tales of the other. If the one set my office on fire, and then said it was the cat did it, the other would stick to it. Is it true, sir, that he was not at the office during my absence from it on Friday afternoon?” he continued to Arthur.
“That is true.”
“Then who can have taken the money?” uttered Mr. Galloway, speaking what was uppermost in his thoughts.
“Which is as much as to say that I took it,” burst from haughty Roland. “Mr. Galloway, I—”
“Keep quiet, Roland Yorke,” interrupted that gentleman. “I do not suspect you of taking it. I did suspect that you might have got some idlers in here,mauvais sujets, you know, for you call plenty of them friends; but, if you were absent yourself, that suspicion falls to the ground. Again I say, who can have taken the money?”
“It is an utter impossibility that Yorke could have taken it, even were he capable of such a thing,” generously spoke Arthur. “From the time you left the office yourself, sir, until after the letters were taken out of it to be posted, he was away from it.”
“Just like him!” exclaimed Mr. Galloway. “It must have been done while your brother Hamish was waiting in the office. We must ascertain from him who came in.”
“He told me no one came in,” repeated Arthur.
“Rubbish!” testily observed Mr. Galloway. “Some one must have come in; some one with light fingers, too! the money could not go without hands. You are off to college now, I suppose, Channing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When service is over, just go down as far as your brother’s office, and ask him about it.”
“He is as obstinate as any old adder!” exclaimed Roland Yorke to Arthur, when they left Mr. Galloway alone. “The only possible way in which it can have gone, is through that post-office. The men have forked it; as they did Lady Augusta’s pills.”
“He says it was not the post-office,” mused Arthur. “He said—as I understood—that the telegraphic despatch proved to him that it had been taken out here.”
“What an idiot you are!” ejaculated Roland. “Howcoulda despatch tell him who took it, or who did not?—unless it was a despatch from those spirit-rappers—mesmerists, or whatever they call themselves. They profess to show you who your grandmother was, if you don’t know!”
Roland laughed as he spoke. Arthur was not inclined for joking; the affair perplexed him in no ordinary degree. “I wish Mr. Galloway would mention his grounds for thinking the note was taken before it went to the post!” he said.
“He ought to mention them,” cried Roland fiercely. “He says he learns, by the despatch, that the letter was not opened after it left this office. Now, it is impossible that any despatch could tell him that. He talks to me about broad assertions! That’s a pretty broad one. What did the despatch say? who sent it?”
“Would it afford you satisfaction to know, Mr. Roland?” and Roland wheeled round with a start, for it was the voice of Mr. Galloway. He had followed them into the front office, and caught the latter part of the conversation. “Come, sir,” he added, “I will teach you a lesson in caution. When I have sealed letters that contained money after they were previously fastened down with gum, I have seen you throw your head back, Mr. Roland, with that favourite scornful movement of yours. ‘As if gum did not stick them fast enough!’ you have said in your heart. But now, the fact of my having sealed this letter in question, enables me to say that the letter was not opened after it left my hands. The despatch you are so curious about was from my cousin, telling me that the seal reached him intact.”
“I did not know the letter was sealed,” remarked Roland. “But that proves nothing, sir. They might melt the wax, and seal it up again. Every one keeps a stamp of this sort,” he added, stretching his hand out for the seal usually used in the office—an ordinary cross-barred wafer stamp.
“Ah,” said Mr. Galloway, “you are very clever, Master Roland. But I happened to stamp that letter with my own private seal.”
“That alters the case, of course,” said Roland, after a pause. “Sir, I wish you would set me to work to find out,” he impulsively continued. “I’d go to the post-office, and—”
“And there make enough noise for ten, and defeat your own ends,” interrupted Mr. Galloway. “Channing, you will be late. Do not forget to see Hamish.”
“Yes, I must be off,” said Arthur, coming out of his reverie with a start. He had waited to hear about the seal. And now flew towards the cathedral.
“I wish it had not happened!” he ejaculated. “I know Galloway does not suspect me or Yorke: but still I wish it had never happened!”
Hamish Channing sat in his private room; his now; for, in the absence of Mr. Channing, Hamish was master. The insurance office was situated in Guild Street, a principal street, near to the Town Hall. It consisted of an entrance hall, two rooms, and a closet for hanging up coats, and for washing hands. The room on the left of the hall, as you entered, was the principal office; the room on the right, was the private room of Mr. Channing; now used, I say, by Hamish. The upper part of the house was occupied as a dwelling; the people renting it having nothing to do with the office. It was a large, roomy house, and possessed a separate entrance.
Hamish—gay, good-tempered, careless, though he was—ruled the office with a firm hand. There was no familiarity of manner there; the clerks liked him, but they had to defer to him and obey him. He was seated at his desk, deep in some accounts, on this same morning—the one mentioned in the last chapter—when one of the clerks entered, and said that Mr. Arthur Channing was asking to speak to him: for it was Mr. Hamish Channing’s good pleasure not to be interrupted indiscriminately, unless a clerk first ascertained whether he was at liberty to be seen. Possibly Hamish feared treachery might be abroad.
Arthur entered. Hamish pushed his books from him, and stretched himself. “Well, old fellow! you seem out of breath.”
“I came down at a pace,” rejoined Arthur. “College is just over. I say, Hamish, a disagreeable thing has happened at Galloway’s. I have never seen him put out as he is now.”
“Has his hair taken a change again, and come out a lovely rose colour?”
“Iwishyou would not turn everything into joke,” cried Arthur, who was really troubled, and the words vexed him. “You saw a letter on Jenkins’s desk last Friday—the afternoon, you know, that Yorke went off, and you remained while I went to college? There was a twenty-pound note in it. Well, the note has, in some mysterious manner, been abstracted from it.”
Hamish lifted his eyebrows. “What can Galloway expect, if he sends bank-notes in letters?”
“Yes, but this was taken before it left our office. Galloway says so. He sealed it with his private seal, and the letter arrived at his cousin’s intact, the seal unbroken—a pretty sure proof that the note could not have been in it when it was sealed.”
“Who took it out?” asked Hamish.
“That’s the question. There was not a soul near the place, that I can find out, except you and I. Yorke was away, Jenkins was away, and Mr. Galloway was away. He says some one must have come in while you were in the office.”
“Not so much as a ghost came in,” said Hamish.
“Are you sure, Hamish?”
“Sure! I am sure they did not, unless I dropped asleep.Thatwas not an unlikely catastrophe to happen; shut up by myself in that dull office, amidst musty parchments, with nothing to do.”
“Hamish, can you be serious for once? This is a serious matter.”
“Mr. Martin Pope wants you, sir,” said the clerk again, interrupting at this juncture. Martin Pope’s face came in also, over the clerk’s shoulder. It was red, and he looked in a hurry.
“Hamish, he has had a letter, and is off by the half-past eleven train,” spoke Martin Pope, in some excitement. “You must rush up to the station, if you want a last word with him. You will hardly catch him, running your best.”
Up jumped Hamish, in excitement as great as his friend’s. He closed and locked the desk, caught his hat, and was speeding out of the office, when Arthur, to whom the words had been a puzzle, seized his arm.
“Hamish,didany one come in? It was Mr. Galloway sent me here to ascertain.”
“No, they did not. Should I not tell you if they had? Take care, Arthur. I must fly like the wind. Come away, Pope!”
Arthur walked back to Mr. Galloway’s. That gentleman was out. Roland Yorke was out. But Jenkins, upon whom the unfortunate affair had taken great hold, lifted his face to Arthur, his eyes asking the question that his tongue scarcely presumed to do.
“My brother says no one came in while he was here. It is very strange!”
“Mr. Arthur, sir, if I had repined at all at that accident, and felt it as a misfortune, how this would have reproved me!” spoke Jenkins, in his simple faith. “Why, sir, it must have come to me as a mercy, a blessing; to take me away out of this office at the very time.”
“What do you mean, Jenkins?”
“There’s no telling, sir, but Mr. Galloway might have suspected me. It is the first loss we have had since I have been here, all these years; and—”
“Nonsense!” interrupted Arthur. “You may as well fear that Mr. Galloway will suspect me, or Mr. Yorke.”
“No, sir, you and Mr. Yorke are different; you are gentlemen. Mr. Galloway would no more suspect you, than he would suspect himself. I am thankful I was absent.”
“Be easy, Jenkins,” smiled Arthur. “Absent or present, every one can trust you.”
Mr. Galloway did not return until nearly one o’clock. He went straight to his own room. Arthur followed him.
“I have seen Hamish, sir. He says no person whatever entered on Friday, while he was here alone.”
Mr. Galloway paused, apparently revolving the news. “Hamish must be mistaken,” he answered.
“He told me at the time, last Friday, that no one had been in,” resumed Arthur. “I asked the question when I returned from college, thinking people might have called on business. He said they had not done so; and he says the same now.”
“But look you here, Arthur,” debated Mr. Galloway, in a tone of reasoning. “I suspect neither you nor Yorke; indeed, as it seems, Yorke put himself out of suspicion’s way, by walking off; but if no one came to the office, and yet the notewent, remember the position in which you place yourself. I say I don’t blame you, I don’t suspect you; but I do say that the mystery must be cleared up. Are you certain no person came into the office during your presence in it?”
“I am quite certain of that, sir. I have told you so.”
“And is Hamish equally certain—that no one entered while he was here alone?”
“He says so.” But Arthur’s words bore a sound of hesitation, which Mr. Galloway may or may not have observed. He would have spoken far more positively had Hamish not joked about it.
“‘Says’ will not do for me,” retorted Mr. Galloway. “I should like to see Hamish. You have nothing particular to finish before one o’clock; suppose you run up to Guild Street, and request him to come round this way, as he goes home to dinner? It will not take him two minutes out of his road.”
Arthur departed; choosing the nearest way to Guild Street. It led him through the street Hamish had been careful to avoid on account of a troublesome creditor. Arthur had no such fear. One o’clock struck as he turned into it. About midway down it, what was his astonishment at encountering Hamish! Not hurrying along, dreading to be seen, but flourishing leisurely at his ease, nodding to every one he knew, his sweet smile in full play, and his cane whirling circlets in the air.
“Hamish! I thought this was forbidden ground!”
“So it was, until a day or two ago,” laughed Hamish; “but I have managed to charm the enemy.”
He spoke in his usual light, careless, half-mocking style, and passed his arm within Arthur’s. At that moment a shopkeeper came to his door, and respectfully touched his hat to Hamish. Hamish nodded in return, and laughed again as he walked on with Arthur.
“That was the fiercest enemy in all this street of Philistines, Arthur. See how civil he is now.”
“How did you ‘charm’ him?”
“Oh, by a process known to myself. Did you come down on purpose to escort me home to dinner? Very polite of you!”
“I came to ask you to go round by Mr. Galloway’s office, and to call in and see him. He will not take your word at second hand.”
“Take my word about what?” asked Hamish.
“That the office had no visitors while you were in it the other day. That money matter grows more mysterious every hour.”
“Then I have not time to go round,” exclaimed Hamish, in—for him—quite an impatient accent. “I don’t know anything about the money or the letter. Why should I be bothered?”
“Hamish, youmustgo,” said Arthur, impressively. “Do you know that—so far as can be ascertained—no human being was in the office alone with the letter, except you and I. Were we to shun inquiry, suspicion might fall upon us.”
Hamish drew himself up haughtily, somewhat after the fashion of Roland Yorke. “What absurdity, Arthur! steal a twenty-pound note!” But when they came to the turning where two roads met, one of which led to Close Street, Hamish had apparently reconsidered his determination.
“I suppose I must go, or the old fellow will be offended. You can tell them at home that I shall be in directly; don’t let them wait dinner.”
He walked away quickly. Arthur pursued the path which would take him round the cathedral to the Boundaries. He bent his head in thought. He was lost in perplexity; in spite of what Mr. Galloway urged, with regard to the seal, he could not believe but that the money had gone safely to the post-office, and was stolen afterwards. Thus busied within himself, he had reached the elm-trees, when he ran up against Hopper, the bailiff. Arthur looked up, and the man’s features relaxed into a smile.
“We shut the door when the steed’s stolen, Mr. Arthur,” was his salutation. “Now that my pockets are emptied of what would have done no good to your brother, I come here to meet him at the right time. Just to show folks—should any be about—that I did know my way here; although it unfortunately fell out that I always missed him.”
He nodded and winked. Arthur, completely at sea as to his meaning, made some trifling remark in answer.
“He did well to come to terms with them,” continued Hopper, dropping his voice. “Though it was only a five pound, as I hear, and a promise for the rest, you see they took it. Ten times over, they said to me, ‘We don’t want to proceed to extremities with Hamish Channing.’ I was as glad as could be when they withdrew the writ. I do hope he will go on smooth and straight now that he has begun paying up a bit. Tell him old Hopper says it, Mr. Arthur.”
Hopper glided on, leaving Arthur glued to the spot. Begun to pay up! Paid five pounds off one debt! Paid (there could be no doubt of it) partially, or wholly, the “enemy” in the proscribed street! What did it mean? Every drop of blood in Arthur Channing’s body stood still, and then coursed on fiercely. Had he seen the cathedral tower toppling down upon his head, he had feared it less than the awful dread which was dawning upon him.
He went home to dinner. Hamish went home. Hamish was more gay and talkative than usual—Arthur was silent as the grave. What was the matter, some one asked him. His head ached, was the answer; and, indeed, it was no false plea. Hamish did not say a syllable about the loss at table; neither did Arthur. Arthur was silenced now.
It is useless to attempt to disguise the fear that had fallen upon him. You, my reader, will probably have glanced at it as suspiciously as did Arthur Channing. Until this loophole had appeared, the facts had been to Arthur’s mind utterly mysterious; they now shone out all too clearly, in glaring colours. He knew that he himself had not touched the money, and no one else had been left with it, except Hamish. Debt! what had the paltry fear of debt and its consequences been compared with this?
Mr. Galloway talked much of the mystery that afternoon; Yorke talked of it; Jenkins talked of it. Arthur barely answered; never, except when obliged to do so; and his manner, confused at times, for he could not help its being so, excited the attention of Mr. Galloway. “One would think you had helped yourself to the money, Channing!” he crossly exclaimed to him once, when they were alone in the private room.
“No, sir, I did not,” Arthur answered, in a low tone; but his face flushed scarlet, and then grew deadly pale. If a Channing, his brother, had done it—why, he felt himself almost equally guilty; and it dyed his brow with shame. Mr. Galloway noticed the signs, and attributed them to the pain caused by his question.
“Don’t be foolish, Arthur. I feel sure of you and Yorke. Though, with Yorke’s carelessness and his spendthrift habits, I do not know that I should have been so sure of him, had he been left alone with the temptation.”
“Sir!” exclaimed Arthur, in a tone of pain, “Yorke did not touch it. I would answer for his innocence with my life.”
“Don’t I say I do not suspect him, or you either?” testily returned Mr. Galloway. “It is the mystery of the affair that worries me. If no elucidation turns up between now and to-morrow morning, I shall place it in the hands of the police.”
The announcement scared away Arthur’s caution; almost scared away his senses. “Oh! pray, pray, Mr. Galloway, do not let the police become cognizant of it!” he uttered, in an accent of wild alarm. And Mr. Galloway stared at him in very amazement; and Jenkins, who had come in to ask a question, stared too.
“It might not produce any good result, and would cause us no end of trouble,” Arthur added, striving to assign some plausible explanation to his words.
“That is my affair,” said Mr. Galloway.
When Arthur reached home, the news had penetrated there also. Mrs. Channing’s tea-table was absorbed with it. Tom and Charles gave the school version of it, and the Rev. Mr. Yorke, who was taking tea with them, gave his. Both accounts were increased by sundry embellishments, which had never taken place in reality.
“Not a soul was ever near the letter,” exclaimed Tom, “except Arthur and Jenkins, and Roland Yorke.”
“The post-office must be to blame for this,” observed Mr. Channing. “But you are wrong, Tom, with regard to Jenkins. He could not have been there.”
“Mark Galloway says his uncle had a telegraphic despatch, to say the post-office knew nothing about it,” exclaimed Charles.
“Much you know about it, Miss Charley!” quoth Tom. “The despatch was about the seal: it was not from the post-office at all. They have not accused the post-office yet.”
Arthur let them talk on; headache the excuse for his own silence. It did ache, in no measured degree. When appealed to, “Was it this way, Arthur?” “Was it the other?” he was obliged to speak, so that an accurate version of the affair was arrived at before tea was over. Constance alone saw that something unusual was the matter with him. She attributed it to fears at the absence of Hamish, who had been expected home to tea, and did not come in. Constance’s own fears at this absence grew to a terrific height. Had he beenarrested?
She beckoned Arthur from the room, for she could no longer control herself. Her lips were white, as she drew him into the study, and spoke. “Arthur, what has become of Hamish? Has anything happened to him?”
“Happened to him!” repeated Arthur, vaguely, too absorbed in his own sad thoughts to reply at once.
“Has—he—been—taken?”
“Taken! Hamish? Oh, you mean for debt!” he continued, his heart beating, and fully aroused now. “There is no further fear, I believe. He has managed to arrange with the people.”
“How has he contrived it?” exclaimed Constance, in wonder.
Arthur turned his face away. “Hamish does not make me his confidant.”
Constance stole her hand into his. “Arthur, what is the matter with you this evening? Is it that unpleasant affair at Mr. Galloway’s?”
He turned from her. He laid his face upon the table and groaned in anguish. “Be still, Constance! You can do no good.”
“Butwhatis it?” uttered Constance in alarm. “You surely do not fear that suspicion should be cast on you, or on Hamish—although, as it appears, you and he were alone in the office with the letter?”
“Be still, I say, Constance,” he wailed. “There is nothing for it but to—to—to bear. You will do well to ask no more about it.”
A faint dread began to dawn upon her. “You and Hamish were alone with the letter!” the echo of the words came thumping against her brain. But she beat it off. Suspect a Channing! “Arthur, I need not ask if you are innocent; it would be a gratuitous insult to you.”
“No,” he quietly said, “you need not ask that.”
“And—Hamish?” she would have continued, but the words would not come. She changed them for others.
“How do you know that he has paid any of his debts, Arthur?”
“I heard it. I—”
At that moment they heard something else—Hamish’s voice in the hall. In the impulse of the moment, in the glad revulsion of feeling—for, if Hamish were safe in the hall, he could not be in prison—Constance flew to him, and clasped her hands round his neck. “Oh, Hamish, Hamish! thank Heaven that you are here!”
Hamish was surprised. He went with Constance into the study, where Arthur had remained. “What do you mean, Constance? What is the matter?”
“I am always fearful,” she whispered; “always fearful; I know you owe money, and that they might put you in prison. Hamish, I think of it by night and by day.”
“My pretty sister!” cried Hamish, caressingly, as he smoothed her hair, just as Constance sometimes smoothed Annabel’s: “that danger has passed for the present.”
“If you were arrested, papa might lose his post,” she murmured.
“I know it; it is that which has worried me. I have been doing what I could to avert it. Constance, these things are not for you. Who told you anything about them?”
“Never mind. I—”
“What will you give me for something I have found?” exclaimed Annabel, bursting in upon them, her hands behind her, and her eyes dancing. “It is one of your treasures, Hamish.”
“Then give it me, Annabel. Come! I am tired; I cannot play with you this evening.”
“I won’t give it you until you guess what it is.”
Hamish was evidently in no mood for play. Annabel danced round and about him, provokingly eluding his grasp. He caught her suddenly, and laid his hands upon hers. With a shriek of laughing defiance, she flung something on the floor, and four or five sovereigns rolled about.
It was Hamish’s purse. She had found it on the hall table, by the side of his hat and gloves, left there most probably inadvertently. Hamish stooped to pick up the money.
“See how rich he is!” danced Annabel; “after telling us he was as poor as a church mouse! Where has it all come from?”
Never had they seen Hamish more annoyed. When he had secured the money, he gave a pretty sharp tap to Annabel, and ordered her, in a ringing tone of command, not to meddle with his things again. He quitted the room, and Annabel ran after him, laughing and defiant still.
“Where has it all come from?” The words, spoken in innocence by the child, rang as a knell on the ears of Constance and Arthur Channing. Constance’s very heart turned sick—sick as Arthur’s had been since the meeting with Hopper under the elm-trees.
The clock of Helstonleigh Cathedral was striking eight, and the postman was going his rounds through the Boundaries. Formerly, nothing so common as a regular postman, when on duty, was admitted within the pale of that exclusive place. The Boundaries, chiefly occupied by the higher order of the clergy, did not condescend to have its letters delivered in the ordinary way, and by the ordinary hands. It was the custom for the postman to take them to the Boundary-gate, and there put them into the porter’s great box, just as if he had been posting letters at the town post-office; and the porter forthwith delivered them at their several destinations. The late porter, however, had grown, with years, half blind and wholly stupid. Some letters he dropped; some he lost; some he delivered at wrong houses; some, he persisted in declaring, when questioned, had never been delivered to him at all. In short, mistakes and confusion were incessant; so, the porter was exonerated from that portion of his duty, and the postman entered upon it. There was a fresh porter now, but the old custom had not been resumed.
Ring—ring—ring—ring—for one peculiarity of the Boundaries was, that most of its doors possessed no knockers, only bells—on he went, the man, on this morning, leaving letters almost everywhere. At length he came to Mr. Galloway’s, and rang there a peal that it is the delight of a postman to ring; but when the door was opened, he delivered in only one letter and a newspaper. The business letters were generally directed to the office.
Mr. Galloway was half-way through his breakfast. He was no sluggard; and he liked to devote the whole hour, from eight to nine, to his breakfast and his Times. Occasionally, as on this morning, he would sit down before eight, in order that he might have nearly finished breakfast before the letters arrived. His servants knew by experience that, when this happened, he was expecting something unusual by the post.
His man came in. He laid the letter and the newspaper by his master’s side. Mr. Galloway tore open the Times, gave one glance at the price of the funds and the money article, then put aside the paper, and took up the letter.
The latter was from his cousin, Mr. Robert Galloway. It contained also the envelope in which Mr. Galloway had enclosed the twenty-pound note. “You perceive,” wrote Mr. Robert, “that the seal has not been tampered with. It is perfectly intact. Hence I infer that you must be in error in supposing that you enclosed the note.”
Mr. Galloway examined the envelope closely. His cousin had not broken the seal in opening the letter, but hadcutthe paper above it. He was a methodical man in trifles, this Mr. Robert Galloway, and generally did cut open his envelopes. It had been all the better for him had he learnt to be methodical with his money.
“Yes; it is as Robert says,” soliloquized Mr. Galloway. “The seal has not been touched since it went out of my hands; therefore the note must previously have been extracted from the letter. Now, who did it?”
He sat—his elbow on the table, his chin in his hand, and the envelope before him. Apparently, he was studying it minutely; in reality he was lost in thought. “It’s just like the work of a conjuror!” he presently exclaimed. “Not a caller near the place, that I can find out, and yet the bank-note vanishes out of the letter! Notes don’t vanish without hands, and I’ll do as I said yesterday—consult the police. If any one can come to the bottom of it, it’s Butterby. Had the seal been broken, I should have given it to the post-office to ferret out; the crime would have lain with them, and so would the discovery. As it is, the business is mine.”
He wrote a line rapidly in pencil, folded, called in his man-servant, and despatched him with it to the police-station. The station was very near Mr. Galloway’s; on the other side of the cathedral, halfway between that edifice and the town-hall. In ten minutes after the servant had left the house, Mr. Butterby was on his road to it.
Mr. Butterby puzzled Helstonleigh. He was not an inspector, he was not a sergeant, he was not a common officer, and he was never seen in official dress. Who was Mr. Butterby? Helstonleigh wondered. That he had a great deal to do with the police, was one of their staff, and received his pay, was certain; but, what his standing might be, and what his peculiar line of duty, they could not tell. Sometimes he was absent from Helstonleigh for months at a time, probably puzzling other towns. Mr. Galloway would have told you he was a detective; but perhaps Mr. Galloway’s grounds for the assertion existed only in his own opinion. For convenience-sake we will call him a detective; remembering, however, that we have no authority for the term.
Mr. Butterby came forward, a spare, pale man, of middle height, his eyes deeply set, and his nose turned up to the skies. He was of silent habit; probably, of a silent nature.
Mr. Galloway recited the circumstances of his loss. The detective sat near him, his hands on his knees, his head bent, his eyes cast upon the floor. He did not interrupt the story by a single word. When it was ended, he took up the envelope, and examined it in equal silence; examined it with ridiculous minuteness, Mr. Galloway thought, for he poked, and peered, and touched it everywhere. He held it up to the light, he studied the postmarks, he gazed at the seal through an odd-looking little glass that he took from his waistcoat pocket, he particularly criticised the folds, he drew his fingers along its edges, he actually sniffed it—all in silence, and with an impassive countenance.
“Have you the number of the note?” was his first question.
“No,” said Mr. Galloway.
He looked up at this. The thought may have struck him, that, not to take the number of a bank-note, sent by post, betrayed some carelessness for a man of business. Mr. Galloway, at least, inferred this, and answered the look.
“Of course I am in the habit of taking their numbers; I don’t know that I ever did such a thing before, as send a bank-note away without it. I had an appointment, as I tell you, at the other end of the town for a quarter to three; it was of importance; and, when I heard the college strike out the three-quarters—the very hour I ought to have been there—I hurriedly put the note into the folds of the letter, without waiting to take its number. It was not that I forgot to do so, but that I could not spare the time.”
“Have you any means of ascertaining the number, by tracing the note back to whence it may have come into your possession?” was the next question.
Mr. Galloway was obliged to confess that he had none. “Bank-notes are so frequently paid me from different quarters,” he remarked. “Yesterday, for instance, a farmer, renting under the Dean and Chapter, came in, and paid me his half-year’s rent. Another, holding the lease of a public-house in the town, renewed two lives which had dropped in. It was Beard, of the Barley Mow. Now, both these men paid in notes, tens and fives, and they now lie together in my cash drawer; but I could not tell you which particular notes came from each man—no, not if you paid me the worth of the whole to do it. Neither could I tell whence I had the note which I put into the letter.”
“In this way, if a note should turn out to be bad, you could not return it to its owner.”
“I never took a bad note in my life,” said Mr. Galloway, speaking impulsively. “There’s not a better judge of notes than myself in the kingdom; and Jenkins is as good as I am.”
Another silence. Mr. Butterby remained in the same attitude, his head and eyes bent. “Have you given me all the particulars?” he presently asked.
“I think so. All I remember.”
“Then allow me to go over them aloud,” returned the detective; “and, if I make any mistake or omission, have the goodness to correct me:—On Friday last, you took a twenty-pound note out of your cash drawer, not taking or knowing its number. This note you put within the folds of a letter, and placed both in an envelope, and fastened the envelope down, your two clerks, Channing and Yorke, being present. You then went out, leaving the letter upon one of the desks. As you left, Hamish Channing came in. Immediately following upon that, Yorke went out, leaving the brothers alone. Arthur departed to attend college, Hamish remaining in the office. Arthur Channing soon returned, finding there was no necessity for him to stay in the cathedral; upon which Hamish left. Arthur Channing remained alone for more than an hour, no one calling or entering the office during that period. You then returned yourself; found the letter in the same state, apparently, in which you had left it, and you sealed it, and sent Arthur Channing with it to the post-office. These are the brief facts, so far as you are cognizant of them, and as they have been related to you?”
“They are,” replied Mr. Galloway. “I should have mentioned that Arthur Channing carried the letter into my private room before he left the office for college.”
“Locking the door?”
“Oh dear, no! Closing the door, no doubt, but not locking it. It would have been unusual to do so.”
“Jenkins was away,” observed the detective in a tone of abstraction, which told he was soliloquizing, rather than addressing his companion. Mr. Galloway rather fired up at the remark, taking it in a different light from that in which it was spoken.
“Jenkins was at home at the time, confined to his bed; and, had he not been, I would answer for Jenkins’s honesty as I would for my own. Can you see any possible solution to the mystery?”
“A very possible one,” was the dry answer. “There is no doubt whatever upon my mind, that the theft was committed by Arthur Channing.”
Mr. Galloway started up with an exclamation of surprise, mingled with anger. Standing within the room was his nephew Mark. The time had gone on to nine, the hour of release from school; and, on running past Mr. Galloway’s with the rest of the boys, Mark had dutifully called in. Mark and his brothers were particularly fond of calling in, for their uncle was not stingy with his sixpences, and they were always on the look-out. Mr. Mark did not get a sixpence this time.
“How dare you intrude upon me in this sly way, sir? Don’t you see I am engaged? I will have you knock at my room door before you enter. Take yourself off again, if you please!”
Mark, with a word of deprecation, went off, his ears pricking with the sentence he had heard from the detective—Arthur Channing the thief!
Mr. Galloway turned again to the officer. He resented the imputation. “The Channings are altogether above suspicion, from the father downwards,” he remonstrated. “Were Arthur Channing dishonestly inclined, he has had the opportunity to rob me long before this.”
“Persons of hitherto honourable conduct, honest by nature and by habit, have succumbed under sudden temptation or pressing need,” was the answer.
“Arthur Channing is in no pressing need. He is not hard up for money.”
A smile actually curled the detective’s lip. “A great many more young men are harder up for money than they allow to appear. The Channings are in what may be called difficulties, through the failure of their Chancery suit, and the lad must have yielded to temptation.”
Mr. Galloway could not be brought to see it. “You may as well set on and suspect Hamish,” he resentfully said. “He was equally alone with the letter.”
“No,” was the answer of the keen officer. “Hamish Channing is in a responsible position; he would not be likely to emperil it for a twenty-pound note; and he could not know that the letter contained money.” Mr. Butterby was not cognizant of quite the facts of the case, you see.
“It is absurd to suspect Arthur Channing.”
“Which is the more absurd—to suspect him, or to assume that the bank-note vanished without hands? forced its own way through the envelope, and disappeared up the chimney in a whirlwind?” asked the officer, bringing sarcasm to his aid. “If the facts are as you have stated, that only the two Channings had access to the letter, the guilt must lie with one of them. Facts are facts, Mr. Galloway.”
Mr. Galloway admitted that factswerefacts, but he could not be brought to allow the guilt of Arthur Channing. The detective rose.
“You have confided the management of this affair to me,” he observed, “and I have no doubt I shall be able to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. One more question I must ask you. Is it known to your clerks that you have not the number of the note?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Then I fear you stand little chance of ever seeing it again. That fact known, no time would be lost in parting with it; they’d make haste to get it safe off.”
Not an instant did Mr. Butterby take for consideration upon quitting Mr. Galloway. With a sharp, unhesitating step, as though his mind had been made up for a month past as to what his course must be, he took his way to the house of Mr. Joe Jenkins. That gentleman, his head still tied up, was just leaving for the office, and Mr. Butterby encountered him coming through the shop.
“Good morning, Jenkins. I want a word with you alone.”
Jenkins bowed, in his civil, humble fashion; but “a word alone” was more easily asked than had, Mrs. Jenkins being all-powerful, and burning with curiosity. The officer had to exert some authority before he could get rid of her, and be left at peace with Jenkins.
“What sources of expense has Arthur Channing?” demanded he, so abruptly as to startle and confuse Jenkins.
“Sources of expense, sir?” he repeated.
“What are his habits? Does he squander money? Does he go out in an evening into expensive company?”
“I’m sure, sir, I cannot tell you anything about it,” Jenkins was mildly beginning. He was imperatively interrupted by the detective.
“I askto know. You are aware that I possess authority to compel you to speak; therefore, answer me without excuse or circumlocution; it will save trouble.”
“But indeed, sir, I really donotknow,” persisted Jenkins. “I should judge Mr. Arthur Channing to be a steady, well-conducted young gentleman, who has no extravagant habits at all. As to his evenings, I think he spends them mostly at home.”
“Do you know whether he has any pressing debts?”
“I heard him say to Mr. Yorke one day, that a twenty-pound note would pay all he owed, and leave him something out of it,” spoke Jenkins in his unconscious simplicity.
“Ah!” said Mr. Butterby, drawing in his lips, though his face remained impassive as before. “When was this?”
“Not long ago, sir. About a week, it may have been, before I met with that accident—which accident, I begin to see now, sir, happened providentially, for it caused me to be away from the office when that money was lost.”
“An unpleasant loss,” remarked the officer, with apparent carelessness; “and the young gentlemen must feel it so—Arthur Channing especially. Yorke, I believe, was out?”
“He does feel it very much, sir. He was as agitated about it yesterday as could be, when Mr. Galloway talked of putting it into the hands of the police. It is a disagreeable thing to happen in an office, you know, sir.”
A slight pause of silence was made by the detective ere he rejoined. “Agitated, was he? And Mr. Roland Yorke the same, no doubt?”
“No, sir; Mr. Roland does not seem to care much about it. He thinks it must have been taken in its transit through the post-office, and I cannot help being of the same opinion, sir.”
Another question or two, and Jenkins attended Mr. Butterby to the door. He was preparing to follow him from it, but a peremptory female voice arrested his departure.
“Jenkins, I want you.”
“It is hard upon half-past nine, my dear. I shall be late.”
“If it’s hard upon half-past ten, you’ll just walk here. I want you, I say.”
Meek as any lamb, Mr. Jenkins returned to the back parlour, and was marshalled into a chair. Mrs. Jenkins closed the door and stood before him. “Now, then, what did Butterby want?”
“I don’t know what he wanted,” replied Jenkins.
“You will sit there till you tell me,” resolutely replied the lady. “I am not going to have police inquisitors making mysterious visits inside my doors, and not know what they do it for. You’ll tell me every word that passed, and the sooner you begin, the better.”
“But I am ignorant myself of what he did want,” mildly deprecated Jenkins. “He asked me a question or two about Mr. Arthur Channing, but why I don’t know.”
Leaving Mrs. Jenkins to ferret out the questions one by one—which, you may depend upon it, she would not fail to do, and to keep Jenkins a prisoner until it was over—and leaving Mr. Butterby to proceed to the house of the cathedral organist, whither he was now bent, to ascertain whether Mr. Williams did take the organ voluntarily, and (to Arthur) unexpectedly, the past Friday afternoon, we will go on to other matters. Mr. Butterby best knew what bearing this could have upon the case. Police officers sometimes give to their inquiries a strangely wide range.