Chapter 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."