"It"s gone," he said, in an amazed voice.
"Gone?" repeated Prudence. "What has gone?"
"The map," said the captain, tumbling his beard. "I put it in this end pigeon-hole the other night after showing it and I haven"t touched it since; and it"s gone."
"But you burnt it!" said Prudence, with an astonished laugh.
The captain started. "No; I was going to," he said, eyeing her in manifest confusion.
"But you said that you had," persisted his niece.
"Yes," stammered the captain, "I know I did, but I hadn"t. I was just looking ahead a bit, that was all. I went to the bureau just now to do it."
Miss Drewitt eyed him with mild reproach. "You even described how you did it," she said, slowly. "You said that Mount Lonesome turned into a volcano. Wasn"t it true?"
"Figure o" speech, my dear," said the unhappy captain; "I"ve got a talent for description that runs away with me at times."
His niece gazed at him in perplexity.
"You know what Chalk is," said Captain Bowers, appealingly. "I was going to do it yesterday, only I forgot it, and he would have gone down on his knees for another sight of it. I don"t like to seem disobliging to friends, and it seemed to me a good way out of it. Chalk is so eager- it"s like refusing a child, and I hurt his feelings only the other day."
"Perhaps you burnt it after all and forgot it?" said Prudence.
For the first time in her knowledge of him the captain got irritable with her. "I"ve not burnt it," he said, sharply. "Where"s that Joseph?
He must know something about it!"
He moved to the foot of the staircase, but Miss Drewitt laid a detaining hand on his arm.
"Joseph was in the room when you said that you had burnt it," she exclaimed. "You can"t contradict yourself like that before him. Besides, I"m sure he has had nothing to do with it."
"Somebody"s got it," grumbled her uncle, pausing.
He dropped into his chair and looked at her in consternation. "Good heavens! Suppose they go after it," he said, in a choking voice.
"Well, it won"t be your fault," said Prudence. "You haven"t broken your word intentionally."
But the captain paid no heed. He was staring wild-eyed into vacancy and rumpling his grey hair until it stood at all angles. His face reflected varying emotions.
"Somebody has got it," he said again.
"Whoever it is will get no good by it," said Miss Drewitt, who had had a pious upbringing.
"And if they"ve got the map they"ll go after the island," said the captain, pursuing his train of thought.
"Perhaps they won"t find it after all," said Prudence.
"Perhaps they won"t," said the captain, gruffly.
He got up and paced the room restlessly. Prudence, watching him with much sympathy, had a sudden idea.
"Edward Tredgold was in here alone this afternoon," she said, significantly.
"No, no," said the captain, warmly. "Whoever has got it, it isn"t Edward Tredgold. I expect the talk about it has leaked out and somebody has slipped in and taken it. I ought to have been more careful."
"He started when you said that you had burnt it," persisted Miss Drewitt, unwilling to give up a theory so much to her liking. "You mark my words if his father and Mr. Chalk and that Mr. Stobell don"t go away for a holiday soon. Good-night."
She kissed him affectionately under the left eye-a place overlooked by his beard-and went upstairs again. The captain filled his pipe and, resuming his chair, sat in a brown study until the clock of the neighbouring church struck two.
It was about the same time that Mr. Chalk fell asleep, thoroughly worn out by the events of the evening and a conversation with Mr. Stobell and Mr. Tredgold, whom he had met on the way home waiting for him.
The opinion of Mr. Tredgold senior, an opinion in which Mr. Stobell fully acquiesced, was that Mr. Chalk had ruined everything by displaying all along a youthful impetuosity sadly out of place in one of his years and standing. The offender"s plea that he had thought it best to strike while the iron was hot only exposed him to further contumely.
"Well, it"s no good talking about it," said Mr. Tredgold, impatiently.
"It"s all over now and done with."
"Half a million clean chucked away," said Mr. Stobell.
Mr. Chalk shook his head and, finding that his friends had by no means exhausted the subject, suddenly bethought himself of an engagement and left them.
Miss Vickers, who heard the news from Mr. Joseph Tasker, received it with an amount of amazement highly gratifying to his powers as a narrator. Her strongly expressed opinion afterwards that he had misunderstood what he had heard was not so agreeable.
"I suppose I can believe my own ears?" he said, in an injured voice.
"He must have been making fun of them all," said Selina. "He couldn"t have burnt it-he couldn"t."
"Why not?" inquired the other, surprised at her vehemence.
Miss Vickers hesitated. "Because it would be such a silly thing to do,"
she said, at last. "Now, tell me what you heard all over again-slow."
Mr. Tasker complied.
"I can"t make head or tail of it," said Miss Vickers when he had finished.
"Seems simple enough to me," said Joseph, staring at her.
"All things seem simple when you don"t know them," said Miss Vickers, vaguely.
She walked home in a thoughtful mood, and for a day or two went about the house with an air of preoccupation which was a source of much speculation to the family. George Vickers, aged six, was driven to the verge of madness by being washed. Three times in succession one morning; a gag of well-soaped flannel being applied with mechanical regularity each time that he strove to point out the unwashed condition of Martha and Charles. His turn came when the exultant couple, charged with having made themselves dirty in the shortest time on record, were deprived of their breakfast. Mr. Vickers, having committed one or two minor misdemeanours unchallenged, attributed his daughter"s condition to love, and began to speak of that pa.s.sion with more indulgence than he had done since his marriage.
Miss Vickers"s" abstraction, however, lasted but three days. On the fourth she was herself again, and, having spent the day in hard work, dressed herself with unusual care in the evening and went out.
The evening was fine and the air, to one who had been at work indoors all day, delightful. Miss Vickers walked briskly along with the smile of a person who has solved a difficult problem, but as she drew near the Horse and Groom, a hostelry of retiring habits, standing well back from the road, the smile faded and she stood face to face with the stern realities of life.
A few yards from the side-door Mr. Vickers stood smoking a contemplative pipe; the side-door itself had just closed behind a tall man in corduroys, who bore in his right hand a large mug made of pewter.
"Ho!" said Selina, "so this is how you go on the moment my back is turned, is it?"