"You mean to say Mr Medlock told you to steal my letters and give them to him?"

"Yes, and a tanner apiece on 'em, too. But don't you be afraid, he don't get none out of me, not if I swings for it."

"You can go out for a run, Love," said Reginald. "Come back in an hour.

I want to be alone."

"You aren't a-giving me the sack?" asked the boy with falling countenance.

"No, no."

"And you ain't a-goin' to commit soosanside while I'm gone, are yer?" he inquired, with a suspicious glance at Reginald's blanched face.

"No. Be quick and go."

"'Cos if you do, they do say as a charcoal fire--"

"Will you go?" said Reginald, almost angrily, and the boy vanished.

I need not describe to the reader all that pa.s.sed through the poor fellow's mind as he paced up and down the bare office that morning. The floodgates had suddenly been opened upon him, and he felt himself overwhelmed in a deluge of doubt and shame and horror.

It was long before he could collect his thoughts sufficiently to see anything clearly. Why Mr Medlock should take the trouble to prevent his home letters reaching their destination was incomprehensible, and indeed it weighed little with him beside the fact that the man who had given him his situation, and on whom he was actually depending for his living, was the same who could bribe his office-boy to steal his letters. If he were capable of such a meanness, was he to be trusted in anything else? How was Reginald to know whether the money he had regularly remitted to him was properly accounted for, or whether the orders were being conscientiously executed?

Then it occurred to him the whole business of the Corporation had been done in his--Reginald's--name, that all the circulars had been signed by him, and that all the money had come addressed to him. Then there was that awkward mistake about his name, which, accidental or intentional, was Mr Medlock's doing. And beyond all that was the fact that Mr Medlock had taken away the only record Reginald possessed of the names of those who had replied to the circulars and sent money.

He found himself confronted with a mountain of responsibility, of which he had never before dreamed, and for the clearing of which he was entirely dependent on the good faith of a man who had, not a week ago, played him one of the meanest tricks imaginable.

What was he to make of it--what else could he make of it except that he was a miserable dupe, with ruin staring him in the face?

His one grain of comfort was in the names of some of the directors.

Unless that list were fict.i.tious, they would not be likely to allow a concern with which they were identified to collapse in discredit. Was it genuine or not?

His doubts on this question were very speedily resolved by a letter which arrived that very afternoon.

It was dated London, and ran as follows:--

"Cruden Reginald, Esquire.

"Sir,--The attention of the Bishop of S-- having been called to the unauthorised, and, as it would appear, fraudulent use of his name in connection with a company styled the Select Agency Corporation, of which you are secretary, I am instructed, before his lordship enters on legal proceedings, to request you to furnish me with your authority for using his lordship's name in the manner stated. Awaiting your reply by return, I am, sir, yours, etcetera,--

"A. Turner, Secretary."

This was a finishing stroke to the disillusion. In all his troubles and perplexities the good Bishop of S-- had been a rock to lean on for the poor secretary.

But now even that prop was s.n.a.t.c.hed away, and he was left alone in the ruins of his own hopes.

He could see it all at last. As he went back over the whole history of his connection with the Corporation he was able to recognise how at every step he had been duped and fooled; how his very honesty had been turned to account; how his intelligence had been the one thing disliked and discouraged.

And what was to become of him now?

Anything but desert the sinking ship--that question never cost Reginald two thoughts. He would right himself if he could. He would protest his innocence of all fraud or connivance at fraud. He would even do what he could to bring the real offenders to justice; but as long as the Corporation had a creditor left he would be there to face him and suffer the consequence of his own folly and stupidity.

Young Love got little sympathy that day in his reading. Indeed, he could not but notice that something unusual had happened to the "gov'nor," and that being so, not even the adventures of Christian or the unexplored marvels of Robinson Crusoe could satisfy him. He polished up the furniture half a dozen times, and watched Reginald's eye like a dog, ready to catch the first sign of a want or a question.

Presently he could stand it no longer, and said,--"Say, gov'nor, what's up? 'taint nothing along of me, are it?"

"No, my boy," said Reginald. "Is it along of that there Medlock?"

Reginald nodded.

It was well for Mr Medlock that he was not in the room at that moment.

"I'll top 'im, see if I don't," muttered the boy; "I owes 'im one for carting me down 'ere, and I owes 'im four or five now; and you'll see if I don't go for 'im, gov'nor."

"You'd better go back to your home," said Reginald, with a kindly tremor in his voice; "I'm afraid you'll get into trouble by staying with me."

It was fine to see the flash of scorn in the boy's face as he said,--

"Oh yus, me go 'ome and leave yer! Walker--I stays 'ere."

"Very well, then," said Reginald, with a sigh. "We may as well go on with the book. Suppose you read me about Giant Despair."

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

THE SHADES LOSE SEVERAL GOOD CUSTOMERS.

It would be unfair to Samuel Shuckleford to say that he had no compunction whatever in deciding upon a course of action which he knew would involve the ruin of Reginald Cruden.

He did not like it at all. It was a nuisance; it was a complication likely to hamper him. He wished his mother and sister would be less gushing in the friendships they made. What right had they to interfere with his business prospects by tacking themselves on to the family of a man who was afterwards to turn out a swindler?

Yes, it was a nuisance; but for all that it must not be allowed to interfere with the course that lay before the rising lawyer. Business is business after all, and if Cruden is a swindler, whose fault is it if Cruden's mother breaks her heart? Not S.S.'s, at any rate. But S.S.'s fault it would be if he made a mess of this "big job"! That was a reproach no one should lay at his door.

Samuel may not have been quite the Solomon he was wont to estimate himself. Still, to do him justice once more, he displayed no little ability in tracing out the different frauds of the Select Agency Corporation and establishing Reginald's guilt conclusively in his own mind.

It all fitted in like a curious puzzle. His sudden mysterious departure from London--his change of name--the selection of Liverpool as headquarters--the distribution of the circulars among unsuspecting schoolmistresses in the south of England--the demand for money to be enclosed with the order--and the fiction of the dispatch of the goods from London. What else could it point to but a deliberate, deeply-laid scheme of fraud? The further Samuel went, the clearer it all appeared, and the less compunction he felt for running to earth such a scoundrel.

But he was going to do nothing in a hurry. S.S. was not the man to dish himself by showing his cards till he was sure he had them all in his hand. Possibly Cruden was not alone in the swindle. He might have accomplices. Even his mother and brother--who can answer for the duplicity of human nature?--might know more of his operations than they professed to know. He might have confederates among his old companions at the _Rocket_, or even among his old school acquaintances. Yes; there was plenty to go into before Samuel put down his foot, and who knew better how to go into it than S.S.?

So he kept his own counsel, and, except for cautioning his mother and sister to "draw off" from the undesirable connection, and intimidating the maid-of-all-work at Number 6, Dull Street, by most horrible threats of the penalties of the law, to detain and give to him every letter bearing the Liverpool postmark which should from that time forward come to the house, no matter to whom addressed--for in his zeal it was easy to forget that by such a proceeding he was sailing uncommonly close to the wind himself--showed no sign of taking any immediate step either in this or any other matter.

Had he been aware that one Sniff, of the Liverpool detective police, had some days ago arrived, by a series of independent and far more artistic investigations, at as much knowledge as he himself possessed of the doings of the Corporation, Samuel would probably have been content to make the most of the cards he held before the chance of using them at all had slipped by.

It is doubtful, however, whether in any case he would have succeeded in forestalling the wary Mr Sniff. That gentleman had discovered in a few hours what it had taken Samuel days of patient grubbing to unearth. And his discoveries would have decidedly astonished the self-complacent little pract.i.tioner. He would have been astonished, for instance, to hear that the Liverpool post-office had received instructions from the Home Office to hand over every letter addressed to Cruden Reginald, 13, Shy Street, to the police. He would also have been astonished if he had known that a detective in plain clothes dined every evening at the Shades, near to the table occupied by Mr Durfy and his friends; that the hall-porter of Weaver's Hotel was a representative of the police in disguise, and that representatives of the police had called on business at the _Rocket_ office, had brushed up against Blandford at street- corners, and had even taken the trouble to follow him--Samuel Shuckleford--here and there in his evening's perambulations.

Yes, small job as it was in Mr Sniff's estimation, he knew the way to go about it, and had a very good notion what was the right scent to go on and what the wrong.

The one thing that did put him out at first was Reginald's absolutely truthful replies to all the pleasant clergyman's questions. This really did bother Mr Sniff. For when a swindler is face to face with his victim the very last thing you expect of him is straightforward honesty.

So when Reginald had talked about Weaver's Hotel and Mr John Smith, and had mentioned the number of orders that had arrived, and the account of money that had accompanied them, and had even confided the amount of his own salary, Mr Sniff had closed one of his mental eyes and said to himself, "Yes; we know all about that."