'No! After all these years?'

'I wrote out the particulars of the case--briefly. Yesterday I took the paper to the commissionaires' barrack in the Strand and offered a reward for the recovery of the man who had cashed the cheque. That same evening the man presented himself and claimed the reward. He remembered the thing very well--for this reason: the gentleman who employed him first sent him with a bag to a Parcel Delivery Office: he did not look at the address. The gentleman was staying at the Cecil Hotel. Now the commissionaire was a one-armed man. Because he had only one arm, the gentleman--who was a pleasant-spoken gentleman--gave him ten shillings for his trouble, which was nine shillings more than his proper pay. The gentleman sent him to the Bank with this cheque to cash, and he returned with seven hundred and twenty pounds in ten-pound notes. Then it was that the gentleman--who seems to have been a free-handed gentleman--gave him the ten shillings. The man says that he would know that gentleman anywhere. He was old, and had grey hair. He says that he should know him wherever he saw him. What do you think of that?'

'Well--it is something, if you could find that old man.'

'Why, of course it was Checkley--grey-haired Checkley. We'll catch that old fox, yet. Beware of Checkley. He's a Fox. He's a Worm. He's a creeping Centipede. When the old man goes, you must make Checkley pack.'

CHAPTER X

A MYSTERIOUS DISCOVERY

On Monday morning the Unexpected happened. It came with more than common malignity. In fact, nothing more threatening to the persons chiefly concerned in the calamity could have happened, though at first they were happily spared the comprehension of its full significance.

There is a wide-spread superst.i.tion--so wide that it must be true--that at those rare moments when one feels foolishly happy, at peace with all the world, at peace with one's own conscience, all injuries forgiven, the future stretched out before like a sunlit peaceful lake, some disaster, great or small, is certainly imminent. 'Don't feel too happy,'

says Experience Universal. The G.o.ds resent the happiness of man. Affect a little anxiety. a.s.sume a certain sadness. Restrain that dancing leg.

If you must shake it, do so as if by accident, or as if in terror--for choice, shake it over an open grave in the churchyard. Stop singing that song of joy; try the Lamentation of a Sinner instead. So will the G.o.ds be deceived. Above all, never allow yourself to believe that the Devil is dead. He is not even asleep. By carefully observing these precautions, a great many misfortunes may be averted. If, for instance, George had gone home soberly on Sunday night instead of carrying on like a schoolboy in playtime, obviously happy, and so inviting calamity, perhaps he would never have been connected--as he afterwards became--with this disaster.

You have heard that Mr. Dering was a man of method. Every morning he arrived at his office at a quarter before ten: he hung up his coat and hat in a recess behind the door: he then opened his safe with his own hand. Checkley had already laid out the table with a clean blotting-pad, pens, and letter-paper: he had also placed the letters of the day upon the pad. The reading of the letters began the day's work. The lawyer read them, made notes upon them, rang for his shorthand clerk, and dictated answers. These dispatched, he turned to the standing business.

This morning, with the usual routine, he was plodding through the letters of the day, taking up one after the other, and reading half mechanically. Presently he opened one, and looked at the heading. 'Ellis & Northcote,' he said. 'What do they want?' Then he suddenly stopped short and started. Then he began the letter again, and again he stopped short. It was from his brokers in the City, and it recommended a certain advantageous investment. That was not in itself very extraordinary. But it contained the following remarkable pa.s.sage: 'You have made such great transfers and so many sales during the last few months that you have probably more profitable uses for money in your own business. But if you should have a few thousands available at the present moment, it is a most favourable opportunity----'

'Great transfers and many sales?' asked Mr. Dering, bewildered. 'What transfers? What sales does he mean?'

He turned over the pages of his Diary. He could find no transactions of the kind at all. Then he reflected again. 'I can remember no transfers,'

he murmured. 'Is this another trick of memory?'

Finally, he touched the bell upon his table.

'Checkley,' said Mr. Dering, on the appearance of the ancient clerk, 'I have got a letter that I don't understand at all. I told you that my memory was going. Now you see. Here is a letter about transfers and sales of stock. What transfers? I don't understand one word of it. My memory is not only going--it is gone.'

'Memory going? Nonsense,' the old man shook his head. 'No--no; your memory is all right. Mine is as clear as a bell. So's yours. You eat hearty. So do I. You sleep well. So do I. We're both as hale and hearty as ever.'

'No--no. My memory is not what it was. I've told you so a dozen times. I lose myself sometimes. Yesterday, when the clock struck twelve, I thought it was only ten. I had lost two hours. And sometimes when I walk home, I lose recollection of the walk afterwards.'

'Tut, tut; n.o.body of your age is such a young man as you. Why, you walk like five-and-twenty. And you eat hearty--you eat very hearty.' His words were encouraging, but he looked anxiously at his master. Truly, there was no apparent decay in Mr. Dering. He sat as upright: he looked as keen: he spoke as clearly, as ever.

'Well--about this letter. My friend Ellis, of Ellis & Northcote, writes to me about something or other, and speaks of my effecting great transfers and sales of stock lately. What does he mean?'

'You haven't bought or sold any stock lately, that I know of.'

'Well, you would have known.--Have we had to make any investments for clients of late? There was the Dalton-Smith estate.'

'That was eleven months ago.'

'I suppose he must mean that--he can't mean anything else. Yes, that is it. Well--I've got a Partner now, so that it matters less than it would have done--had my memory played me tricks with no other responsible man in the place.'

'You didn't want a partner,' said Checkley jealously. 'You had ME.'

'He must mean that,' Mr. Dering repeated. 'He can't mean anything else.

However--has my Bank book been made up lately?'

'Here it is. Made up last Friday. Nothing been in or out since.'

Mr. Dering had not looked at his book for three or four months. He was well served: his people took care of his Bank book. Now he opened it, and began to run his finger up and down the pages.

'Checkley,' he said, 'what has happened to Newcastle Corporation Stock?

The dividends were due some weeks ago. They are not paid yet. Is the town gone bankrupt? And--eh? Where is Wolverhampton? And--and----' He turned over the paper quickly. 'Checkley, there is something wrong with the book. Not a single dividend of anything entered for the last four months. There ought to have been about six hundred pounds in that time.'

'Queer mistake,' said Checkley. 'I'll take the book round to the Bank, and have it corrected.'

'A very gross and careless mistake, I call it. Tell the manager I said so. Let it be set right at once, Checkley--at once--and while you wait.

And bring it back to me.'

The Bank was in Chancery Lane, close to the office. The old clerk went off on his errand.

'A very careless mistake,' the lawyer repeated; 'any clerk of mine who committed such a mistake should be dismissed at once.' In fact, the certainty of full and speedy justice kept Mr. Dering's clerks always at a high level of efficiency.

He returned to the letters, apparently with no further uneasiness.

After ten minutes, Checkley taking longer than he expected, Mr. Dering became aware that his attention was wandering. 'Great transfers and many sales,' he repeated. 'After all, he must mean the investment of that Dalton-Smith money. Yet that was only a single transaction. What can he mean? He must have made a mistake. He must be thinking of another client. It's his memory, not mine, that is confused. That's it--his memory.'

The large open safe in the corner was filled with stacks of paper tied up and endorsed. These papers contained, among other things, the securities for the whole of Mr. Dering's private fortune, which was now very considerable. Even the greatest City magnate would feel for Mr.

Dering the respect due to wealth if he knew the amount represented by the contents of that safe. There they were, the leases, agreements, mortgages, deeds, bonds, conveyances, shares, all the legal doc.u.ments by which the wicked man is prevented from seizing and appropriating the rich man's savings. Formerly the rich man kept his money in a box with iron bands. He locked up the box and put it in a recess in the cellar contrived in the stone wall. If he was only a bourgeois, it was but a little box, and he put it in a secret place (but everybody knew the secret) at the head of his bed. If he were a peasant, he tied his money up in a clout and put it under the hearthstone. In any case, thieves broke in and stole those riches. Now, grown wiser, he has no box of treasures at all: he lends it all in various directions and to various a.s.sociations and companies. Every rich man is a money-lender: he is either Shylock the Great or Shylock the Less, according to the amount he lends. Thieves can steal nothing but paper which is no use to them. As we grow wiser still, we shall have nothing at all in any house that can be of any use to any thief, because everything in the least valuable will have its papers, without the production of which nothing of value will be bought or sold. And all the gold and silver, whether forks or mugs, will be lodged in the Bank. Then everybody will become honest, and the Eighth Commandment will be forgotten.

Among Mr. Dering's papers were share certificates, bonds, and scrip of various kinds, amounting in all to a great many thousands. Of this money a sum of nearly thirteen thousand pounds belonged to Elsie, but was still in her guardian's name. This, of course, was the fortune which had fallen so unexpectedly into the girl's hands. The rest, amounting to about twenty-five thousand pounds, was his own money. It represented of course only a part, only a small part, of his very respectable fortune.

Mr. Dering, whose memory, if it was decaying, was certainly clear on some points, looked across the room at the open safe, and began to think of the papers representing their investments. He remembered perfectly all the different Corporation Stock. All the water, gas, railway shares, the Indian Stock and the Colonial Stock: the Debenture companies and the Trading companies. He was foolish, he thought, to be disturbed by a mere mistake of the broker: his recent lapses of memory had made him nervous: there could be nothing wrong: but that clerk at the Bank ought to be dismissed for carelessness. There could be nothing wrong: for the sake of a.s.surance he would turn out the papers: but there could be nothing wrong.

He knew very well where they were; everything in his office had its place: they were all tied up together in a bulky parcel, bestowed upon a certain shelf or compartment of the safe. He pushed back his chair, got up, and walked over to the safe.

Strange! The papers were not in their place. Again he felt the former irritation at having forgotten something. It was always returning: every day he seemed to be forgetting something. But the certificates must be in the safe. He stood irresolutely looking at the piles of papers, trying to think how they could have been displaced. While he was thus wondering and gazing, Checkley came back, Bank-book in hand.

'There is something wrong,' he said. 'No dividends at all have been paid to your account for the last three months. There is no mistake at the Bank. I've seen the manager, and he's looked into it, and says there can't be any mistake about the entries.'

'No dividends? What is the meaning of it, Checkley? No dividends? Why, there's thirty-eight thousand pounds worth of stock. The certificates are kept here in the safe; only, for some reason or other, I can't find them at the moment. They must be in the safe somewhere. Just help me to find them, will you?'

He began to search among the papers, at first a little anxiously, then nervously, then feverishly.

'Where are they?' he cried, tossing over the bundles. 'They must be here. They must be here. Let us turn out the whole contents of the safe.

We must find them. They have never been kept in any other place. n.o.body has touched them or seen them except myself.'

The old clerk pulled out all the papers in the safe and laid them in a great pile on the table. When there was nothing left in the safe, they began systematically to go through the whole. When they had finished, they looked at each other blankly.

Everything was there except the certificates and scrip representing the investment of thirty-eight thousand pounds. These alone could not be found. They examined every packet: they opened every bundle of papers: they looked into every folded sheet of parchment or foolscap. The certificates were not in the safe. 'Well,' said the clerk at last, 'they're not here, you see.--Now then!'

In the midst of their perplexity happened a thing almost as surprising and quite as unexpected as the loss of the certificates. Among the papers was a small round parcel tied up with red tape. Checkley opened it. 'Bank-notes,' he said, and laid it aside. They were not at the moment looking for bank-notes, but for certificates. When he was satisfied that these were not in the safe, and had thrown, so to speak, the responsibility of finding out the cause of their absence upon his master, he took up once more this bundle. It was, as he had said, a bundle of bank-notes rolled up and tied round. He untied the knot and laid them flat, turning up the corners and counting. 'Curious,' he said; 'they're all ten-pound notes--all ten-pound notes: there must be more than fifty of them. And the outside one is covered with dust. What are they?'