"WILDING AND CO."
This letter despatched to the post, the subject dropped at once out of Vendale"s mind. He had other and far more interesting matters to think of. Later in the day he paid the visit to Obenreizer which had been agreed on between them. Certain evenings in the week were set apart which he was privileged to spend with Marguerite--always, however, in the presence of a third person. On this stipulation Obenreizer politely but positively insisted. The one concession he made was to give Vendale his choice of who the third person should be. Confiding in past experience, his choice fell unhesitatingly upon the excellent woman who mended Obenreizer"s stockings. On hearing of the responsibility entrusted to her, Madame Dor"s intellectual nature burst suddenly into a new stage of development. She waited till Obenreizer"s eye was off her--and then she looked at Vendale, and dimly winked.
The time pa.s.sed--the happy evenings with Marguerite came and went. It was the tenth morning since Vendale had written to the Swiss firm, when the answer appeared, on his desk, with the other letters of the day:
"Dear Sirs. We beg to offer our excuses for the little mistake which has happened. At the same time, we regret to add that the statement of our error, with which you have favoured us, has led to a very unexpected discovery. The affair is a most serious one for you and for us. The particulars are as follows:
"Having no more champagne of the vintage last sent to you, we made arrangements to credit your firm to the value of six cases, as suggested by yourself. On taking this step, certain forms observed in our mode of doing business necessitated a reference to our bankers"
book, as well as to our ledger. The result is a moral certainty that no such remittance as you mention can have reached our house, and a literal certainty that no such remittance has been paid to our account at the bank.
"It is needless, at this stage of the proceedings, to trouble you with details. The money has unquestionably been stolen in the course of its transit from you to us. Certain peculiarities which we observe, relating to the manner in which the fraud has been perpetrated, lead us to conclude that the thief may have calculated on being able to pay the missing sum to our bankers, before an inevitable discovery followed the annual striking of our balance. This would not have happened, in the usual course, for another three months. During that period, but for your letter, we might have remained perfectly unconscious of the robbery that has been committed.
"We mention this last circ.u.mstance, as it may help to show you that we have to do, in this case, with no ordinary thief. Thus far we have not even a suspicion of who that thief is. But we believe you will a.s.sist us in making some advance towards discovery, by examining the receipt (forged, of course) which has no doubt purported to come to you from our house. Be pleased to look and see whether it is a receipt entirely in ma.n.u.script, or whether it is a numbered and printed form which merely requires the filling in of the amount. The settlement of this apparently trivial question is, we a.s.sure you, a matter of vital importance. Anxiously awaiting your reply, we remain, with high esteem and consideration,
"DEFRESNIER & CIE."
Vendale had the letter on his desk, and waited a moment to steady his mind under the shock that had fallen on it. At the time of all others when it was most important to him to increase the value of his business, that business was threatened with a loss of five hundred pounds. He thought of Marguerite, as he took the key from his pocket and opened the iron chamber in the wall in which the books and papers of the firm were kept.
He was still in the chamber, searching for the forged receipt, when he was startled by a voice speaking close behind him.
"A thousand pardons," said the voice; "I am afraid I disturb you."
He turned, and found himself face to face with Marguerite"s guardian.
"I have called," pursued Obenreizer, "to know if I can be of any use.
Business of my own takes me away for some days to Manchester and Liverpool. Can I combine any business of yours with it? I am entirely at your disposal, in the character of commercial traveller for the firm of Wilding and Co."
"Excuse me for one moment," said Vendale; "I will speak to you directly."
He turned round again, and continued his search among the papers. "You come at a time when friendly offers are more than usually precious to me," he resumed. "I have had very bad news this morning from Neuchatel."
"Bad news," exclaimed Obenreizer. "From Defresnier and Company?"
"Yes. A remittance we sent to them has been stolen. I am threatened with a loss of five hundred pounds. What"s that?"
Turning sharply, and looking into the room for the second time, Vendale discovered his envelope case overthrown on the floor, and Obenreizer on his knees picking up the contents.
"All my awkwardness," said Obenreizer. "This dreadful news of yours startled me; I stepped back--" He became too deeply interested in collecting the scattered envelopes to finish the sentence.
"Don"t trouble yourself," said Vendale. "The clerk will pick the things up."
"This dreadful news!" repeated Obenreizer, persisting in collecting the envelopes. "This dreadful news!"
"If you will read the letter," said Vendale, "you will find I have exaggerated nothing. There it is, open on my desk."
He resumed his search, and in a moment more discovered the forged receipt. It was on the numbered and printed form, described by the Swiss firm. Vendale made a memorandum of the number and the date. Having replaced the receipt and locked up the iron chamber, he had leisure to notice Obenreizer, reading the letter in the recess of a window at the far end of the room.
"Come to the fire," said Vendale. "You look perished with the cold out there. I will ring for some more coals."
Obenreizer rose, and came slowly back to the desk. "Marguerite will be as sorry to hear of this as I am," he said, kindly. "What do you mean to do?"
"I am in the hands of Defresnier and Company," answered Vendale. "In my total ignorance of the circ.u.mstances, I can only do what they recommend.
The receipt which I have just found, turns out to be the numbered and printed form. They seem to attach some special importance to its discovery. You have had experience, when you were in the Swiss house, of their way of doing business. Can you guess what object they have in view?"
Obenreizer offered a suggestion.
"Suppose I examine the receipt?" he said.
"Are you ill?" asked Vendale, startled by the change in his face, which now showed itself plainly for the first time. "Pray go to the fire. You seem to be shivering--I hope you are not going to be ill?"
"Not I!" said Obenreizer. "Perhaps I have caught cold. Your English climate might have spared an admirer of your English inst.i.tutions. Let me look at the receipt."
Vendale opened the iron chamber. Obenreizer took a chair, and drew it close to the fire. He held both hands over the flames. "Let me look at the receipt," he repeated, eagerly, as Vendale reappeared with the paper in his hand. At the same moment a porter entered the room with a fresh supply of coals. Vendale told him to make a good fire. The man obeyed the order with a disastrous alacrity. As he stepped forward and raised the scuttle, his foot caught in a fold of the rug, and he discharged his entire cargo of coals into the grate. The result was an instant smothering of the flame, and the production of a stream of yellow smoke, without a visible morsel of fire to account for it.
"Imbecile!" whispered Obenreizer to himself, with a look at the man which the man remembered for many a long day afterwards.
"Will you come into the clerks" room?" asked Vendale. "They have a stove there."
"No, no. No matter."
Vendale handed him the receipt. Obenreizer"s interest in examining it appeared to have been quenched as suddenly and as effectually as the fire itself. He just glanced over the doc.u.ment, and said, "No; I don"t understand it! I am sorry to be of no use."
"I will write to Neuchatel by to-night"s post," said Vendale, putting away the receipt for the second time. "We must wait, and see what comes of it."
"By to-night"s post," repeated Obenreizer. "Let me see. You will get the answer in eight or nine days" time. I shall be back before that. If I can be of any service, as commercial traveller, perhaps you will let me know between this and then. You will send me written instructions? My best thanks. I shall be most anxious for your answer from Neuchatel. Who knows? It may be a mistake, my dear friend, after all. Courage!
courage! courage!" He had entered the room with no appearance of being pressed for time. He now s.n.a.t.c.hed up his hat, and took his leave with the air of a man who had not another moment to lose.
Left by himself, Vendale took a turn thoughtfully in the room.
His previous impression of Obenreizer was shaken by what he had heard and seen at the interview which had just taken place. He was disposed, for the first time, to doubt whether, in this case, he had not been a little hasty and hard in his judgment on another man. Obenreizer"s surprise and regret, on hearing the news from Neuchatel, bore the plainest marks of being honestly felt--not politely a.s.sumed for the occasion. With troubles of his own to encounter, suffering, to all appearance, from the first insidious attack of a serious illness, he had looked and spoken like a man who really deplored the disaster that had fallen on his friend. Hitherto Vendale had tried vainly to alter his first opinion of Marguerite"s guardian, for Marguerite"s sake. All the generous instincts in his nature now combined together and shook the evidence which had seemed unanswerable up to this time. "Who knows?" he thought. "I may have read that man"s face wrongly, after all."
The time pa.s.sed--the happy evenings with Marguerite came and went. It was again the tenth morning since Vendale had written to the Swiss firm; and again the answer appeared on his desk with the other letters of the day:
"Dear Sir. My senior partner, M. Defresnier, has been called away, by urgent business, to Milan. In his absence (and with his full concurrence and authority), I now write to you again on the subject of the missing five hundred pounds.
"Your discovery that the forged receipt is executed upon one of our numbered and printed forms has caused inexpressible surprise and distress to my partner and to myself. At the time when your remittance was stolen, but three keys were in existence opening the strong-box in which our receipt-forms are invariably kept. My partner had one key; I had the other. The third was in the possession of a gentleman who, at that period, occupied a position of trust in our house. We should as soon have thought of suspecting one of ourselves as of suspecting this person. Suspicion now points at him, nevertheless. I cannot prevail on myself to inform you who the person is, so long as there is the shadow of a chance that he may come innocently out of the inquiry which must now be inst.i.tuted. Forgive my silence; the motive of it is good.
"The form our investigation must now take is simple enough. The handwriting of your receipt must be compared, by competent persons whom we have at our disposal, with certain specimens of handwriting in our possession. I cannot send you the specimens for business reasons, which, when you hear them, you are sure to approve. I must beg you to send me the receipt to Neuchatel--and, in making this request, I must accompany it by a word of necessary warning.
"If the person, at whom suspicion now points, really proves to be the person who has committed this forger and theft, I have reason to fear that circ.u.mstances may have already put him on his guard. The only evidence against him is the evidence in your hands, and he will move heaven and earth to obtain and destroy it. I strongly urge you not to trust the receipt to the post. Send it to me, without loss of time, by a private hand, and choose n.o.body for your messenger but a person long established in your own employment, accustomed to travelling, capable of speaking French; a man of courage, a man of honesty, and, above all things, a man who can be trusted to let no stranger sc.r.a.pe acquaintance with him on the route. Tell no one--absolutely no one--but your messenger of the turn this matter has now taken. The safe transit of the receipt may depend on your interpreting _literally_ the advice which I give you at the end of this letter.
"I have only to add that every possible saving of time is now of the last importance. More than one of our receipt-forms is missing--and it is impossible to say what new frauds may not be committed if we fail to lay our hands on the thief.
Your faithful servant ROLLAND, (Signing for Defresnier and Cie.)
Who was the suspected man? In Vendale"s position, it seemed useless to inquire.
Who was to be sent to Neuchatel with the receipt? Men of courage and men of honesty were to be had at Cripple Corner for the asking. But where was the man who was accustomed to foreign travelling, who could speak the French language, and who could be really relied on to let no stranger sc.r.a.pe acquaintance with him on his route? There was but one man at hand who combined all those requisites in his own person, and that man was Vendale himself.