The Channings

“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, you must go,” 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 been arrested?

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.”

“But what is 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.

CHAPTER XXI. – MR. BUTTERBY

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 had cut the 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 facts were facts, 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.”