Works of Ellen Wood, page 853
But he could not find it. Other papers, besides the title-deeds, cheque, and cheque-book, he had placed within, and he went carefully over them all, one by one. Nothing was missing, nothing had apparently been touched, but the cheque certainly was not there. He searched his desk in the front office, quite for form’s sake, for he knew that he had carried the cheque with him to his private room.
“One would think you had been drawing out the deeds,” remarked Mr. Greatorex when he returned.
“I can’t find that cheque,” answered Bede.
“Not find the cheque!” repeated Mr. Greatorex. “What do you mean, Bede?”
Bede gave a short history of the affair. He had been in a hurry; and, instead of staying to put the cheque and cheque-book into his cash-box, had left them loose in his table-desk with the title-deeds and sundry other papers.
“But you locked your desk?” cried Mr. Greatorex.
“Assuredly. I have only unlocked it now. The cheque would be as safe there as in the cash-box.”
“You could not have put it in, Bede; it must be somewhere about.”
“I am just as certain that I put it in, as I am that it is not there now,”
Mr. Greatorex did not believe it. Bede had been for some time showing himself less the keen, exact man of business he used to be. Trifling mistakes, inaccuracies, negligences, would come to light now and again; vexing Mr. Greatorex beyond measure.
“I don’t know what to make of you of late, Bede,” he said after a pause. “You know the complaints we have been obliged to hear. These very title-deeds” — putting his hand on those just brought in— “it was you who examined and passed them. One negligence or another comes cropping up continually, and they may all be traced to you. Is your state of health the cause?”
“I suppose so,” replied Bede, who felt conscious the reproach was merited.
“You had better take some rest for a time. If — .”
“No,” came the hasty interruption, as though the proposal were unpalatable. “Work is better for me than idleness. Put me out of harness, and I should knock up.”
“Bede,” said Mr. Greatorex, in a tone of considerate kindness, but with some hesitation, “it appears to me that you get more of a changed man day by day. You have not been the same since your marriage. I fear the cause, or a great portion of it, lies in her; I fear she gives you trouble. As you know, I have never spoken to you before of this; I have abstained from doing so.”
A flush, that had shown itself in the clear olive face when Mr. Greatorex began to speak, faded to whiteness; the hand, that accidentally touched his father’s, felt fevered in all its veins.
“At least, my wife is not the cause of my illness,” he answered in a low tone.
“I don’t know that, Bede. That a great worry lies on your heart continually, that a kind of restless, nervous anxiety never leaves you by night or by day, is sufficiently plain to me; I know that it can only arise from matters connected with your wife: and I also know that this, and this alone, tells upon your bodily health. Your wife’s extravagance is bringing you care: ruin will surely supervene if you do not check it.”
Bede Greatorex opened his lips to speak, but seemed to think better of it, and closed them again. His brow was knitted into two upright lines.
“Unless you can do so, Bede, I shall be compelled to make an alteration in our arrangements. In justice to myself and to my other children, your name must be withdrawn from the firm. Not yourself and your profits: only the name, as a matter of safety.”
Bede Greatorex bit his lips. His father’s heart ached for him. For a long while Mr. Greatorex had seen that his son’s unhappy state of mind (and that it was unhappy no keen observer, much with him, could mistake) arose through his wife. And he thought Bede a fool for putting up with her.
“You need not be afraid,” said Bede. “I will take care the firm’s interests are not affected.”
“How can you take care?” retorted Mr. Greatorex, in rather a stern tone. “When debts are being made daily in the most reckless manner: debts that you know nothing of, until the bills come trooping in and you are called upon to pay, can you answer for what it will go on to? Can I? Many a richer man than either of us, Bede, has been brought to the Bankruptcy Court through less than this. Ay, and I will tell you what else, Bede — it has brought husbands to the grave. When people remark to me, ‘Your son Bede looks ill,’
I quietly answer ‘Do you think so?” when all the while I am secretly wondering that you can look even as well as you do.”
“Who remarks on it?” asked Bede.
“Who! Many people. Only the other night, when Henry Ollivera was here, he spoke of it.”
“Let Henry Ollivera concern himself with his own affairs,” was the fierce answer. “Does he want to be a—”
Bede’s voice dropped to an inaudible whisper. But the concluding words had sounded like— “curse amongst us.”
“Bede! Did you say curse?”
“I said king,” answered Bede. His nostrils were working, his lips were quivering, his chest was heaving; all with a passion he was trying to suppress. Mr. Greatorex looked at him, and waited. He had seen Bede in these intemperate fits of anger before: sometimes for no apparent cause.
“We will go back to the starting-point, this cheque, Bede,” he quietly said. “You must have overlooked it. Go and search your desk again.”
Bede was leaving the room when he met a servant coming to it with a message. Mr. Yorke had called, and wished to see Mr. Greatorex for a couple of minutes: his business was important.
The notion of Roland Yorke and important business being in connexion, brought a smile to the face of Mr. Greatorex. He told the servant to sent him in.
But instead of Roland, it was the son of Sir Richard Yorke who advanced. A very fashionable gentleman in evening dress, small and slight, with white hands, a lisp, and a silky moustache. He had come about the cheque.
Sir Richard, fatigued with his visit to the city, had gone straight home to Portland Place, after receiving the cheque from Mr. Greatorex, and sent his son to the bankers’ to get it cashed: a branch office of the London and Westminster. The clerk, before he cashed it, looked at it rather attentively, and then went away for a minute.
“We have cashed one cheque before to-day, sir, precisely similar to this,” he said on his return. “Would Sir Richard be likely to have two cheques from Greatorex and Greatorex in one day, each drawn for the same amount — forty-four pounds?”
“Greatorex and Greatorex are my father’s men of business: he went to get some money for them to-day, I know; I suppose he chose to receive it in two cheques instead of one,” replied Mr. Yorke haughtily, for he deemed the question an impertinence. “Sir Richard may have wished to pay the half of it away.”
The clerk counted out the money and said no more. The cheques were undoubtedly genuine, the first made out in the well-known hand of Bede Greatorex, the last in that of his father, and the clerk supposed it was all right. Mr. Yorke sent the money up to Sir Richard when he got home, and went out again. At dinner-time, he mentioned what the clerk had said— “Insolent fellah!” — and the old baronet, who knew of the fact of two cheques having been drawn, took alarm.
“He’d not let me wait an instant; sent me off here before I’d well tasted my soup,” grumbled Mr. Yorke. “One of you had better come and see him if the cheque has been lost and cashed; or he’ll ask me five hundred questions which I can’t answer, and fret himself into a fit. He has had one fit, you know. As to the cheque, it must have got into the hands of some clever thief, who made haste to reap the benefit of it.”
“And your desk must have been picked, Bede, if you are sure you put it in,” observed Mr. Greatorex.
“I am sure of that,” answered Bede. “But I don’t see how the desk can have been picked. Not a thing in it was displaced, and the lock is uninjured.”
Bede had a frightful headache — which was the cause of his looking somewhat worse than usual that evening, so Mr. Greatorex went to Sir Richard Yorke’s. And in coming home he passed round by Scotland Yard.
On the following morning, sitting in his room, he held a conference with his two sons, whom he had not seen on his return the previous night.
“They think at Scotland Yard it must inevitably have been one of the clerks in your room, Bede,” said Mr. Greatorex.
“One would think it, but that it seems so very unlikely,” answered Bede. “Brown and Jenner have been with us quite long enough for their honesty to be proved; and the other two are gentlemen.”
“Their theory is this; that some one, possessing easy access to your private room, opened the desk with a false key.”
“For the matter of that, the clerks on our side the house could obtain nearly if not quite as easy access to Bede’s room through its other door,” observed Frank Greatorex.
“Yes. But you forget, Frank, that none of them on our side the house knew of the cheque having been drawn out and left there. Jelf will be in by-and-by.”
The morning’s letters, presently delivered, lay before Mr. Greatorex in a stack, and he began to look at them one by one before opening; his common custom. He came to one addressed to Bede, marked “Private” on both sides, and tossed it to his son!
Bede opened it. There was an inner envelope, sealed, and addressed and marked just like the outer one, which Bede opened in turn. Frank Greatorex, standing near his brother, was enabled to see that but a few lines formed its contents. Almost in a moment, before Bede could have read the whole, he crushed the letter together and thrust it into his pocket. Frank laughed.
“Your correspondent takes his precautions, Bede. Was he afraid that Mrs. Bede—”
The words were but meant in jest, but Frank did not finish them. Bede turned from the room with a kind of staggering movement, his face blanched, his whole countenance livid with some awful terror. Frank simply stared after him, unable to say another word.
“What was that?” cried Mr. Greatorex, looking up at the abrupt silence.
“I don’t know,” said Frank. “Bede seems moonstruck with that letter he has had. It must contain tidings of some bother or other.”
“Then rely upon it, it is connected with his wife,” severely spoke Mr. Greatorex.
The news relating to the cheque fell upon the office like a clap of thunder. Every clerk in it felt uncomfortable, especially those attached to Mr. Bede’s department. The clerk at the bank, who had cashed the cheque, was questioned. It had been presented at the bank early in the afternoon, about half-past one o’clock he said, or between that and two. He had not taken notice of the presenter, but seemed to remember that he was a tall dark man, with black whiskers. Had taken it and cashed it quite as a matter of course; making no delay or query; it was a common thing for strangers, that is strangers to the bank, to present the cheques of Greatorex and Greatorex. No; he had not taken the number of the notes, for the best of all possible reasons — that he had paid it in gold, as requested. This clerk happened also to be the one to whom Sir Richard Yorke’s son had presented the second cheque; he spoke to that gentleman of the fact of having cashed one an hour or two before, exactly similar; but Mr. Yorke seemed to intimate that it was all right; in short appeared offended at the subject being named to him.
At present that comprised all the information they possessed.
It was Mr. Bede Greatorex who made the communication to the clerks in his room. He was sitting at his desk in the front office when they arrived, — an unusual circumstance; and when all were assembled and had settled to their several occupations, then he entered upon it. The cheque he had drawn out, as they might remember, on the previous morning for Sir Richard Yorke, and which he had locked up subsequently in his table-desk in the other room, had been abstracted from it, and cashed at the bank. He spoke in a quiet, friendly manner, just in the same tone he might have related it to a friend, not appearing to cast the least thought of possible suspicion upon any one of them. Nevertheless, no detective living could have watched their several demeanours, as they heard it, more keenly than did Mr. Bede Greatorex.
The clerks seemed thunderstruck. Three of them gazed at him, unable for the moment to shape any reply; the other burst out at once.
“The cheque gone! Stolen out of the desk, and cashed at the bank! My goodness! Who took it, sir?”
That the words came from nobody but Roland, you may be sure. Mr. Bede Greatorex went on to give a few explanatory details; and Roland’s next movement was to rush into the adjoining room without asking permission, and give a few tugs to the lid of the table-desk. Back he clattered in a commotion.
And here let it be remarked, en passant, that it is somewhat annoying to have to apply so frequently the word “clatter” to Roland’s progress, imparting no doubt a good deal of unnecessary sameness. But there is really no other graphic expression that can be found to describe it. His steps were quick, and the soles of his boots made noise enough for ten.
“I say, Mr. Bede Greatorex,” he exclaimed, “it is no light hand that could open that desk without a key. I’ve had experience in lifting weights over at Port Natal when helping to load the ships with coal—”
“Kindly oblige me by making less noise, Mr. Yorke,” came the interrupting reproof.
Which Roland seemed not to heed in the least. He tilted himself on to a high stool in the middle of the room, his legs dangling, just as though he had been at a free-and-easy meeting; and there he sat, staring in consternation.
“Will the bank know the fellow again that cashed it?”
“My opinion is that the desk was opened with a key in the ordinary way,” observed Mr. Bede Greatorex, referring to a previous remark of Roland’s, but passing over his present question.
“Perhaps you left your keys about?” suggested Roland.
“I did not leave them about, Mr. Yorke. I had them with me.”
“Well, this is a go! I say!” he resumed, with quite a burst of excitement, his eyes beaming, his face glowing, “who’ll be at the loss of the money? Old Dick Yorke?”
“Ah, that is a nice question,” said Bede Greatorex.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” interposed Mr. Brown, who had been very thoughtful. “Don’t you think you must be mistaken in supposing you put the cheque in the desk? I could understand it all so easily if—”
“I know I put it in my desk, and left it there locked up,” said Mr. Bede Greatorex, stopping the words. “What were you about to say?”
“If you had carried the cheque out inadvertently, and dropped it in the street,” concluded Mr. Brown, “it would have been quite easy to understand then. Some unprincipled man might have picked it up, and made off at once to the bank with it, hazarding the risk.”
“But I did nothing of the sort,” said Bede: and Mr. Brown shock his head, as if he were hard of conviction.
“Of course there’s not much difference in the degree of guilt, but many a man who would not for the world touch a locked desk might appropriate a picked-up cheque, sir.”
“I tell you, the cheque was taken from my desk,” reiterated Mr. Bede Greatorex, slightly irritated at the persistency.
“Well, sir, then all I can say is, that it is an exceedingly disagreeable thing for every one of us,” said the head-clerk.
“I do not wish to imply that it is,” said Bede Greatorex. “Mr. Yorke, allow me to suggest that sitting on that stool will not do your work.”
“I hope old Dick will be the one to lose it!” cried Roland, with fervour, as he quitted the stool for his place by Mr. Hurst. “Forty-four pounds! it’s stunning. He’s the meanest old chap alive, Mr. Greatorex. I’d almost have taken it myself from him.”
“Did you take it?” questioned Hurst in a whisper.
“What’s that?” retorted Roland.
He faced Hurst as he spoke, waiting for a reply. All in a moment the proud countenance and bearing changed. The face fell, the clear eyes looked away, the brow became suffused with crimson. Hurst saw the signs, and felt sorry for what he had said; had said in thoughtlessness rather than in any real meaning. For he knew that it had recalled to Roland Yorke a terrible escapade of his earlier life.
CHAPTER XIII.
Taking the Place of Jelf.
“IT will stick in my gizzard for ever. I can see that. An awful clog, it is, when a fellow has dropped into mischief once in his life, and repented and atoned for it, that it must be cast in his teeth always; cropping up at any hour, like a dead donkey in the Thames; I might as well have stayed at Port Natal!”
Such was the inward soliloquy of Mr. Roland Yorke as he bent over his writing after that overwhelming question of Hurst’s, “Did you take it?” Hurst, really grieved at having hurt his feelings, strove to smooth away what he had said.
“I beg your pardon, old fellow,” he whispered. “On my honour I spoke without thought.”
“I dare say you did!” retorted Roland.
“I meant no harm, Roland; I did not indeed. Nothing connected with the past occurred to me.”
“You know it did” was the answer, and Roland turned his grieved face full on Hurst. “You know you wanted to bring up that miserable time when I stole the twenty-pound note from old Galloway, and let the blame of it fall on Arthur Channing. Because I took that, you think I have taken this!”
“Hush! You’ll have them hear you, Yorke.”
“That’s what you want. Why don’t you go and tell them?” demanded Roland, who was working himself into a passion. “Proclaim it aloud. Ring the bell, as the town-crier does at home on a market-day. Call Greatorex and Brown and Jenner up from their desks. Where’s the good of taunting me in private?”
