Oliver dutifully brought his head in, his face red with stooping. "What was it you asked me, father? I did not quite catch it," he said.
"I asked you if you could remember which day I sent that money to Paul.
But I think I remember now for myself. It was the day after I received the bank-note from Mr. Todhetley. That was Monday. Then I sent the letter to Paul with the bank-note in it on the Tuesday. You sealed it for me."
"I remember quite well that it was Tuesday--two days before the picnic,"
said Oliver.
"Oh, of course; a picnic is a matter to remember anything by," returned Mr. Preen, sarcastically. "Well, Paul says he has never received either money or letter."
"The letter was posted----" began Oliver, but his father impatiently interrupted him.
"Certainly it was posted. You saw me post it."
"It was too late for the evening"s post; Dame Sym said it would go out the next morning," went on Oliver. "Are Paul"s people sure they did not receive it?"
"Paul tells me so. Paul is an exact man, and would not tolerate any but exact clerks about him. He writes positively."
"I suppose Mrs. Sym did not forget to forward it?" suggested Oliver.
"What an idiot you are!" retorted his father, by way of being complimentary. "The letter must have gone out safely enough."
Nevertheless, after Mr. Preen had attended to his other letters and to two or three matters they involved, he put on his hat and went to Mrs.
Sym"s.
The debt for which the money was owing appeared to be a somewhat mysterious one. Robert Derrick, a man who dealt in horses, or in anything else by which he could make money, and attended all fairs near and far, lived about two miles from Islip. One day, about a year back, Derrick presented himself at the office of Mr. Paul, and asked that gentleman if he would sue Gervais Preen for a sum of money, forty pounds, which had been long owing to him. What was it owing for, Mr.
Paul inquired; but Derrick declined to say. Instead of suing him, the lawyer wrote to request Mr. Preen to call upon him, which Mr. Preen did.
He acknowledged that he did owe the debt--forty pounds--but, like Derrick, he evaded the question when asked what he owed it for. Perhaps it was for a horse, or horses, suggested Mr. Paul. No, it was for nothing of that kind, Mr. Preen replied; it was a strictly private debt.
An arrangement was come to. To pay the whole at once was not, Mr. Preen said, in his power; but he would pay it by instalments. Ten pounds every six months he would place in Mr. Paul"s hands, to be handed to Derrick, whom Mr. Preen refused to see. This arrangement Derrick agreed to. Two instalments had already been paid, and one which seemed to have now miscarried in the post was the third.
"Mrs. Sym," began Mr. Preen, when he had dived into the sweet-stuff shop, and confronted the post-mistress behind her counter, "do you recollect, one day last week, my asking you to give me back a letter which I had just posted, addressed to Mr. Paul of Islip, and you refused?"
"Yes, sir, I do," answered Mrs. Sym. "I was sorry, but----"
"Never mind that. What I want to ask you is this: did you notice that letter when you made up the bag?"
"I did, sir. I noticed it particularly in consequence of what had pa.s.sed. 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sage, 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 a.s.sure 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," a.s.sented 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."