Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series

“I did, sir. I noticed it particularly in consequence of what had passed. It was sealed with a large red seal.”

“Just so. Well, Mr. Paul declares that letter has not reached him.”

“But it must have reached him,” rejoined Mrs. Sym, fastening her glittering spectacles upon the speaker’s face. “It had Mr. Paul’s address upon it in plain writing, and it went away from here in the bag with the rest of the letters.”

“The letter had a ten-pound note in it.”

Mrs. Sym paused. “Well, sir, if so, that would not endanger the letter’s safety. Who was to know it had? But letters that contain money ought to be registered, Mr. Preen.”

“You are sure it went away as usual from here—all safe?”

“Sure and certain, sir. And I think it must have reached Mr. Paul, if I may say so. He may have overlooked it; perhaps let it fall into some part of his desk, unopened. Why, some years ago, there was a great fuss made about a letter which was sent to Captain Falkner, when he was living at the Hall. He came here one day, complaining to me that a letter sent to him by post, which had money in it, had never been delivered. The trouble there was over that lost letter, sir, I couldn’t tell you. The Captain accused the post-office in London, for it was London it came from, of never having forwarded it; then he accused me of not sending it out with the delivery. After all, it was himself who had mislaid the letter. He had somehow let it fall unnoticed into a deep drawer of his writing-table when it was handed to him with other letters at the morning’s delivery; and there it lay all snug till found, hid away amid a mass of papers. What do you think of that, sir?”

Mr. Preen did not say.

“In all the years I have kept this post-office I can’t call to memory one single letter being lost in the transit,” she ran on, warming in her own cause. “Why, how could it, sir? Once a letter’s sent away safe in the bag, there it must be; it can’t fall out of it. Your letter was so sent away by me, Mr. Preen, and where should it be if Mr. Paul hasn’t got it? Please tell him, sir, from me, that I’d respectfully suggest he should look well about his desk and places.”

Evidently it was not at this side the letter had been lost—if lost it was. Mr. Preen wished the post-mistress good morning, and walked away. Her suggestion had impressed him; he began to think it very likely indeed that Paul had overlooked the letter on its arrival, and would find it about his desk, or table, or some other receptacle for papers.

He drove over to Islip in the gig in the afternoon, taking Oliver with him. Islip reached, he left Oliver in the gig, to wait at the door or drive slowly about as he pleased, while he went into the office to, as he expressed it, “have it out with Paul.”

Not at once, however, could he do that, for Mr. Paul was out; but he saw Tom Chandler.

The offices, situated in the heart of Islip, and not a stone’s throw from the offices of Valentine Chandler, consisted of three rooms, all on the ground floor. The clerks’ room was in front, its windows (painted white, so that no one could see in or out) faced the street; Mr. Paul’s room lay behind it and looked on to a garden. There was also a small slip of a room, not much better than a passage, into which Mr. Paul could take clients whose business was very private indeed. Tom Chandler, about to be made a partner, had a desk in Mr. Paul’s room as well as one in the clerks’ room. It was at the latter that he usually sat.

On this afternoon he was seated at his desk in Mr. Paul’s room when Gervais Preen entered. Tom received him with a smile and a hand-shake, and gave him a chair.

“I’ve come about that letter, Mr. Chandler,” began the visitor; “my letter with the ten-pound bank-note in it, which Mr. Paul denies having received.”

“I assure you no such letter was received by us–”

“It was addressed in a plain handwriting to Mr. Paul himself, and protected by a seal of red wax with my crest upon it,” irritably interrupted the applicant, who hated to be contradicted.

“Mr. Preen, you may believe me when I tell you the letter never reached us,” said Tom, a smile crossing his candid, handsome face, at the other’s irritability.

“Then where is the letter? What became of it?”

“I should say perhaps it was never posted,” mildly suggested Tom.

“Not posted!” tartly echoed Mr. Preen. “Why, I posted it myself; as Dame Sym, over at Duck Brook, can testify. And my son also, for that matter; he stood by and saw me put it into the box. Dame Sym sent it away in the bag with the rest; she remembers the letter perfectly.”

“It never was delivered to us,” said Tom, shaking his head. “If– oh, here is Mr. Paul.”

The portly lawyer came into the room, pushing back his iron-grey hair. He sat down at his own desk-table; Mr. Preen drew his chair so as to face him, and the affair was thoroughly gone into. It cannot be denied that the experienced man of law, knowing how difficult it was to Mr. Preen to find money for his debts and his needs, had allowed some faint doubt to float within him in regard to this reported loss. Was it a true loss?—or an invented one? But old Paul read people’s characters, as betrayed in their tones and faces, tolerably well; he saw that Preen was in desperate earnest, and he began to believe his story.

“Let me see,” said he. “You posted it on Tuesday, the fifteenth. You found it was too late for that night’s post, and would not go off until the morrow morning, when, as Dame Sym says, she despatched it. Then we ought to have received it that afternoon—Wednesday, the sixteenth.”

“Yes,” assented Mr. Preen. “Mrs. Sym wished to respectfully suggest to you, Paul, that you might have overlooked it amidst the other letters at the time it was delivered, and let it drop unseen into some drawer or desk.”

“Oh, she did, did she?” cried old Paul, while Tom Chandler laughed. “Give my respects to her, Preen, and tell her I’m not an old woman. We don’t get many letters in an afternoon, sometimes not any,” he went on. “Can you carry your memory back to that Wednesday afternoon, Chandler?”

“I daresay I shall be able to do so,” replied Tom. “Wednesday, the sixteenth.—Was not that the day before the picnic at Aunt Cramp’s?”

“What on earth has the picnic to do with it?” sharply demanded Mr. Preen. “All you young men are alike. Oliver could only remember the date of my posting the letter by recalling that of the picnic. You should be above such frivolity.”

Tom Chandler laughed. “I remember the day before the picnic for a special reason, sir. MacEveril asked for holiday that he might go to it. I told him he could not have the whole day, we were too busy, but perhaps he might get half of it; upon which he said half a day was no good to him, and gave me some sauce. Yes, that was Wednesday, the sixteenth; and now, having that landmark to go by, I may be able to trace back other events and the number of letters which came in that afternoon.”

“Is MacEveril back yet?” asked Preen.

“No,” replied Paul. “The captain does not know where he is; no one does know, that I’m aware of. Look here, Preen; as this letter appears to be really lost, and very unaccountably, since Mrs. Sym is sure she sent it off, and I am sure it was never delivered to me, I shall go to our office here now, and inquire about it. Will you come with me?”

Mr. Preen was only too glad to go to any earthly place that was likely to afford news of his ten-pound note, for the loss would be his, and he knew not where he should find another ten pounds to satisfy the insatiable Derrick.

They proceeded along the pavement together, passing Oliver, who was slowly parading the gig up and down the street. His sad face—unusually sad it looked—had a sort of expectancy on it as he turned his gaze from side to side, lest by some happy chance it might catch the form of Emma Paul. Emma might be going to marry another; but, all the same, Oliver could not drop her out of his heart.

They disclaimed all recollection of the letter at the post-office. Had it been for a private individual it might have been remembered, but Mr. Paul had too many letters to allow of that, unless something special called attention to any one of them. Whether the letter in question had reached them by the Islip bag, or whether it had not, they could not say; but they could positively affirm that, if it had, it had been sent out to Mr. Paul.

In returning they overtook the postman on his round, with the afternoon delivery: a young, active man, who seemed to skim over the ground, and was honest as the day.

“Dale,” said Lawyer Paul, “there has been a letter lost, addressed to me. I wonder whether you chanced to notice such a letter?” And he mentioned the details of the case.

“One day is like another to me in its round of duties, you see, sir,” observed the man. “Sealed with a big red seal, you say, sir? Well, it might be, but that’s nothing for me to go by; so many of your letters are sealed, sir.”

The lawyer returned to his office with Mr. Preen, and entered his own room. Tom Chandler heard them and came swiftly through the door which opened from the clerks’ department, a smile of satisfaction on his face.

“I remember all about the letters that were brought in on Wednesday week,” said he. “I can recall the whole of the circumstances; they were rather unusual.”

A TRAGEDY

III.—MYSTERY

I

Thomas Chandler possessed a clear, retentive memory by nature, and he had done nothing to cloud it. After his master, Lawyer Paul—soon to be no longer his master, but his partner—had gone out with Mr. Preen to make inquiries at the post-office for the missing letter, he sat down to bring his memory into exercise.

Carrying his thoughts back to the Wednesday afternoon, some ten days ago, when the letter ought to have been delivered at Mr. Paul’s office, and was not—at least, so far as could be traced at present—he had little difficulty in recalling its chief events, one remembered incident leading up to another.

Then he passed into the front room, and spoke for some minutes with Michael Hanborough, a steady little man of middle age, who had been with Mr. Paul over twenty years. There was one clerk under him, Tite Batley (full name Titus), and there had been young Richard MacEveril. The disappearance of the latter had caused the office to be busy just now, Michael Hanborough especially so. He was in the room alone when Mr. Chandler entered.

“You have not gone to tea yet, Mr. Hanborough!”

“No, sir. I wanted to finish this deed, first. Batley’s gone to his.”

“Look here, Hanborough, I want to ask you a question or two. That deed’s in no particular hurry, for I am sure Mr. Paul will not be ready to send it off to-day,” continued Mr. Chandler. “There’s going to be a fuss over that letter of Preen’s, which appears to have been unaccountably lost. I have been carrying my thoughts back to the Wednesday afternoon when it ought to have been delivered here, and I want you to do the same. Try and recollect anything and everything you can, connected with that afternoon.”

“But, Mr. Chandler, the letter could not have been delivered here; Mr. Paul says so,” reasoned Michael Hanborough, turning from his desk while he spoke and leaning his elbow upon it.

His desk stood between the window and the door which opened from the passage; the window being at his right hand as he sat. Opposite, beside the other window, was Mr. Chandler’s desk. A larger desk, used by MacEveril and young Batley, crossed the lower end of the room, facing the window; and near it was the narrow door that opened to Mr. Paul’s room.

Thomas Chandler remained talking with Hanborough until he saw the lawyer and Mr. Preen return, when he joined them in the other room. They mentioned their failure at the post-office, and he then related to them what he had been able to recall.

Wednesday afternoon, the sixteenth of June, had been distinguished in Mr. Paul’s office by a little breeze raised by Richard MacEveril. Suddenly looking up from his writing, he disturbed Mr. Chandler, who was busy at his desk, by saying he expected to have holiday on the morrow for the whole day. Hanborough was just then in Mr. Paul’s room; Batley was out. Batley had been sent to execute a commission at a distance, and would not be back till evening.

“Oh, indeed!” responded Tom Chandler, laughing at MacEveril’s modest request, so modestly put. “What else would you like, Dick?”

Dick laughed too. “That will serve me for the present moment, Mr. Chandler,” said he.

“Well, Dick, I’m sorry to deny you, but you can’t have it. You have a conscience to ask it, young man, when you know the Worcester Sessions are close at hand, and we are so busy here we don’t know which way to turn!”

“I mean to take it,” said Dick.

“But I don’t mean you to; understand that. See here, Dick: I won’t be harder than I’m obliged; I should like to go to the pic-nic myself, though there’s no chance of that for me. Come here in good time in the morning, get through as much work as you can, and I daresay we can let you off at one o’clock. There!”

This concession did not satisfy MacEveril. When Mr. Hanborough came in from the other room he found the young man exercising his saucy tongue upon Tom Chandler, calling him a “Martinet,” a “Red Indian Freebooter,” and other agreeable names, which he may have brought with him from Australia. Tom, ever sweet-tempered, took it all pleasantly, and bade him go on with his work.

That interlude passed. At half-past four o’clock MacEveril went out, as usual, to get his tea, leaving Chandler and Hanborough in the office, each writing at his own desk. Presently the former paused; looked fixedly at the mortgage-deed he was engaged upon, and then got up to carry it to the old clerk. As he was crossing the room the postman came in, put a small pile of letters into Mr. Chandler’s hand, and went out again. Tom looked down at the letters but did not disturb them; he laid them down upon Mr. Hanborough’s desk whilst he showed him the parchment.

“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.”