The clock of Helstonleigh Cathedral was striking eight, and the postman
was going his rounds through the Boundaries. Formerly, nothing so common
as a regular postman, when on duty, was admitted within the pale of that
exclusive place. The Boundaries, chiefly occupied by the higher order
of the clergy, did not condescend to have its letters delivered in
the ordinary way, and by the ordinary hands. It was the custom for the
postman to take them to the Boundary-gate, and there put them into the
porter’s great box, just as if he had been posting letters at the town
post-office; and the porter forthwith delivered them at their several
destinations. The late porter, however, had grown, with years, half
blind and wholly stupid. Some letters he dropped; some he lost; some
he delivered at wrong houses; some, he persisted in declaring, when
questioned, had never been delivered to him at all. In short, mistakes
and confusion were incessant; so, the porter was exonerated from that
portion of his duty, and the postman entered upon it. There was a fresh
porter now, but the old custom had not been resumed.
Ring--ring--ring--ring--for one peculiarity of the Boundaries was, that
most of its doors possessed no knockers, only bells--on he went, the
man, on this morning, leaving letters almost everywhere. At length he
came to Mr. Galloway’s, and rang there a peal that it is the delight of
a postman to ring; but when the door was opened, he delivered in only
one letter and a newspaper. The business letters were generally directed
to the office.
Mr. Galloway was half-way through his breakfast. He was no sluggard; and
he liked to devote the whole hour, from eight to nine, to his breakfast
and his Times. Occasionally, as on this morning, he would sit down
before eight, in order that he might have nearly finished breakfast
before the letters arrived. His servants knew by experience that, when
this happened, he was expecting something unusual by the post.
His man came in. He laid the letter and the newspaper by his master’s
side. Mr. Galloway tore open the Times, gave one glance at the price of
the funds and the money article, then put aside the paper, and took up
the letter.
The latter was from his cousin, Mr. Robert Galloway. It contained also
the envelope in which Mr. Galloway had enclosed the twenty-pound note.
“You perceive,” wrote Mr. Robert, “that the seal has not been tampered
with. It is perfectly intact. Hence I infer that you must be in error in
supposing that you enclosed the note.”
Mr. Galloway examined the envelope closely. His cousin had not broken
the seal in opening the letter, but had _cut_ the paper above it. He was
a methodical man in trifles, this Mr. Robert Galloway, and generally did
cut open his envelopes. It had been all the better for him had he learnt
to be methodical with his money.
“Yes; it is as Robert says,” soliloquized Mr. Galloway. “The seal has
not been touched since it went out of my hands; therefore the note must
previously have been extracted from the letter. Now, who did it?”
He sat--his elbow on the table, his chin in his hand, and the envelope
before him. Apparently, he was studying it minutely; in reality he was
lost in thought. “It’s just like the work of a conjuror!” he presently
exclaimed. “Not a caller near the place, that I can find out, and yet
the bank-note vanishes out of the letter! Notes don’t vanish without
hands, and I’ll do as I said yesterday--consult the police. If any one
can come to the bottom of it, it’s Butterby. Had the seal been broken,
I should have given it to the post-office to ferret out; the crime would
have lain with them, and so would the discovery. As it is, the business
is mine.”
He wrote a line rapidly in pencil, folded, called in his man-servant,
and despatched him with it to the police-station. The station was very
near Mr. Galloway’s; on the other side of the cathedral, halfway between
that edifice and the town-hall. In ten minutes after the servant had
left the house, Mr. Butterby was on his road to it.
Mr. Butterby puzzled Helstonleigh. He was not an inspector, he was not a
sergeant, he was not a common officer, and he was never seen in official
dress. Who was Mr. Butterby? Helstonleigh wondered. That he had a great
deal to do with the police, was one of their staff, and received his
pay, was certain; but, what his standing might be, and what his
peculiar line of duty, they could not tell. Sometimes he was absent from
Helstonleigh for months at a time, probably puzzling other towns.
Mr. Galloway would have told you he was a detective; but perhaps Mr.
Galloway’s grounds for the assertion existed only in his own opinion.
For convenience-sake we will call him a detective; remembering, however,
that we have no authority for the term.
Mr. Butterby came forward, a spare, pale man, of middle height, his eyes
deeply set, and his nose turned up to the skies. He was of silent habit;
probably, of a silent nature.
Mr. Galloway recited the circumstances of his loss. The detective sat
near him, his hands on his knees, his head bent, his eyes cast upon
the floor. He did not interrupt the story by a single word. When it
was ended, he took up the envelope, and examined it in equal silence;
examined it with ridiculous minuteness, Mr. Galloway thought, for he
poked, and peered, and touched it everywhere. He held it up to the
light, he studied the postmarks, he gazed at the seal through an
odd-looking little glass that he took from his waistcoat pocket, he
particularly criticised the folds, he drew his fingers along its
edges, he actually sniffed it--all in silence, and with an impassive
countenance.
“Have you the number of the note?” was his first question.
“No,” said Mr. Galloway.
He looked up at this. The thought may have struck him, that, not to take
the number of a bank-note, sent by post, betrayed some carelessness for
a man of business. Mr. Galloway, at least, inferred this, and answered
the look.
“Of course I am in the habit of taking their numbers; I don’t know that
I ever did such a thing before, as send a bank-note away without it. I
had an appointment, as I tell you, at the other end of the town for a
quarter to three; it was of importance; and, when I heard the college
strike out the three-quarters--the very hour I ought to have been
there--I hurriedly put the note into the folds of the letter, without
waiting to take its number. It was not that I forgot to do so, but that
I could not spare the time.”
“Have you any means of ascertaining the number, by tracing the note back
to whence it may have come into your possession?” was the next question.
Mr. Galloway was obliged to confess that he had none. “Bank-notes are
so frequently paid me from different quarters,” he remarked. “Yesterday,
for instance, a farmer, renting under the Dean and Chapter, came in,
and paid me his half-year’s rent. Another, holding the lease of a
public-house in the town, renewed two lives which had dropped in. It was
Beard, of the Barley Mow. Now, both these men paid in notes, tens and
fives, and they now lie together in my cash drawer; but I could not tell
you which particular notes came from each man--no, not if you paid me
the worth of the whole to do it. Neither could I tell whence I had the
note which I put into the letter.”
“In this way, if a note should turn out to be bad, you could not return
it to its owner.”
“I never took a bad note in my life,” said Mr. Galloway, speaking
impulsively. “There’s not a better judge of notes than myself in the
kingdom; and Jenkins is as good as I am.”
Another silence. Mr. Butterby remained in the same attitude, his head
and eyes bent. “Have you given me all the particulars?” he presently
asked.
“I think so. All I remember.”
“Then allow me to go over them aloud,” returned the detective; “and,
if I make any mistake or omission, have the goodness to correct me:--On
Friday last, you took a twenty-pound note out of your cash drawer, not
taking or knowing its number. This note you put within the folds of a
letter, and placed both in an envelope, and fastened the envelope down,
your two clerks, Channing and Yorke, being present. You then went out,
leaving the letter upon one of the desks. As you left, Hamish Channing
came in. Immediately following upon that, Yorke went out, leaving the
brothers alone. Arthur departed to attend college, Hamish remaining
in the office. Arthur Channing soon returned, finding there was no
necessity for him to stay in the cathedral; upon which Hamish left.
Arthur Channing remained alone for more than an hour, no one calling
or entering the office during that period. You then returned yourself;
found the letter in the same state, apparently, in which you had
left it, and you sealed it, and sent Arthur Channing with it to the
post-office. These are the brief facts, so far as you are cognizant of
them, and as they have been related to you?”
“They are,” replied Mr. Galloway. “I should have mentioned that Arthur
Channing carried the letter into my private room before he left the
office for college.”
“Locking the door?”
“Oh dear, no! Closing the door, no doubt, but not locking it. It would
have been unusual to do so.”
“Jenkins was away,” observed the detective in a tone of abstraction,
which told he was soliloquizing, rather than addressing his companion.
Mr. Galloway rather fired up at the remark, taking it in a different
light from that in which it was spoken.
“Jenkins was at home at the time, confined to his bed; and, had he not
been, I would answer for Jenkins’s honesty as I would for my own. Can
you see any possible solution to the mystery?”
“A very possible one,” was the dry answer. “There is no doubt whatever
upon my mind, that the theft was committed by Arthur Channing.”
Mr. Galloway started up with an exclamation of surprise, mingled with
anger. Standing within the room was his nephew Mark. The time had gone
on to nine, the hour of release from school; and, on running past Mr.
Galloway’s with the rest of the boys, Mark had dutifully called in. Mark
and his brothers were particularly fond of calling in, for their uncle
was not stingy with his sixpences, and they were always on the look-out.
Mr. Mark did not get a sixpence this time.
“How dare you intrude upon me in this sly way, sir? Don’t you see I am
engaged? I will have you knock at my room door before you enter. Take
yourself off again, if you please!”
Mark, with a word of deprecation, went off, his ears pricking with the
sentence he had heard from the detective--Arthur Channing the thief!
Mr. Galloway turned again to the officer. He resented the imputation.
“The Channings are altogether above suspicion, from the father
downwards,” he remonstrated. “Were Arthur Channing dishonestly inclined,
he has had the opportunity to rob me long before this.”
“Persons of hitherto honourable conduct, honest by nature and by habit,
have succumbed under sudden temptation or pressing need,” was the
answer.
“Arthur Channing is in no pressing need. He is not hard up for money.”
A smile actually curled the detective’s lip. “A great many more young
men are harder up for money than they allow to appear. The Channings
are in what may be called difficulties, through the failure of their
Chancery suit, and the lad must have yielded to temptation.”
Mr. Galloway could not be brought to see it. “You may as well set on
and suspect Hamish,” he resentfully said. “He was equally alone with the
letter.”
“No,” was the answer of the keen officer. “Hamish Channing is in
a responsible position; he would not be likely to emperil it for a
twenty-pound note; and he could not know that the letter contained
money.” Mr. Butterby was not cognizant of quite the facts of the case,
you see.
“It is absurd to suspect Arthur Channing.”
“Which is the more absurd--to suspect him, or to assume that the
bank-note vanished without hands? forced its own way through the
envelope, and disappeared up the chimney in a whirlwind?” asked the
officer, bringing sarcasm to his aid. “If the facts are as you have
stated, that only the two Channings had access to the letter, the guilt
must lie with one of them. Facts are facts, Mr. Galloway.”
Mr. Galloway admitted that facts _were_ facts, but he could not be
brought to allow the guilt of Arthur Channing. The detective rose.
“You have confided the management of this affair to me,” he observed,
“and I have no doubt I shall be able to arrive at a satisfactory
conclusion. One more question I must ask you. Is it known to your clerks
that you have not the number of the note?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Then I fear you stand little chance of ever seeing it again. That fact
known, no time would be lost in parting with it; they’d make haste to
get it safe off.”
Not an instant did Mr. Butterby take for consideration upon quitting Mr.
Galloway. With a sharp, unhesitating step, as though his mind had been
made up for a month past as to what his course must be, he took his way
to the house of Mr. Joe Jenkins. That gentleman, his head still tied up,
was just leaving for the office, and Mr. Butterby encountered him coming
through the shop.
“Good morning, Jenkins. I want a word with you alone.”
Jenkins bowed, in his civil, humble fashion; but “a word alone” was more
easily asked than had, Mrs. Jenkins being all-powerful, and burning with
curiosity. The officer had to exert some authority before he could get
rid of her, and be left at peace with Jenkins.
“What sources of expense has Arthur Channing?” demanded he, so abruptly
as to startle and confuse Jenkins.
“Sources of expense, sir?” he repeated.
“What are his habits? Does he squander money? Does he go out in an
evening into expensive company?”
“I’m sure, sir, I cannot tell you anything about it,” Jenkins was mildly
beginning. He was imperatively interrupted by the detective.
“I ask _to know_. You are aware that I possess authority to compel you
to speak; therefore, answer me without excuse or circumlocution; it will
save trouble.”
“But indeed, sir, I really do _not_ know,” persisted Jenkins. “I
should judge Mr. Arthur Channing to be a steady, well-conducted young
gentleman, who has no extravagant habits at all. As to his evenings, I
think he spends them mostly at home.”
“Do you know whether he has any pressing debts?”
“I heard him say to Mr. Yorke one day, that a twenty-pound note would
pay all he owed, and leave him something out of it,” spoke Jenkins in
his unconscious simplicity.
“Ah!” said Mr. Butterby, drawing in his lips, though his face remained
impassive as before. “When was this?”
“Not long ago, sir. About a week, it may have been, before I met
with that accident--which accident, I begin to see now, sir, happened
providentially, for it caused me to be away from the office when that
money was lost.”
“An unpleasant loss,” remarked the officer, with apparent carelessness;
“and the young gentlemen must feel it so--Arthur Channing especially.
Yorke, I believe, was out?”
“He does feel it very much, sir. He was as agitated about it yesterday
as could be, when Mr. Galloway talked of putting it into the hands of
the police. It is a disagreeable thing to happen in an office, you know,
sir.”
A slight pause of silence was made by the detective ere he rejoined.
“Agitated, was he? And Mr. Roland Yorke the same, no doubt?”
“No, sir; Mr. Roland does not seem to care much about it. He thinks
it must have been taken in its transit through the post-office, and I
cannot help being of the same opinion, sir.”
Another question or two, and Jenkins attended Mr. Butterby to the door.
He was preparing to follow him from it, but a peremptory female voice
arrested his departure.
“Jenkins, I want you.”
“It is hard upon half-past nine, my dear. I shall be late.”
“If it’s hard upon half-past ten, you’ll just walk here. I want you, I
say.”
Meek as any lamb, Mr. Jenkins returned to the back parlour, and was
marshalled into a chair. Mrs. Jenkins closed the door and stood before
him. “Now, then, what did Butterby want?”
“I don’t know what he wanted,” replied Jenkins.
“You will sit there till you tell me,” resolutely replied the lady. “I
am not going to have police inquisitors making mysterious visits inside
my doors, and not know what they do it for. You’ll tell me every word
that passed, and the sooner you begin, the better.”
“But I am ignorant myself of what he did want,” mildly deprecated
Jenkins. “He asked me a question or two about Mr. Arthur Channing, but
why I don’t know.”
Leaving Mrs. Jenkins to ferret out the questions one by one--which,
you may depend upon it, she would not fail to do, and to keep Jenkins a
prisoner until it was over--and leaving Mr. Butterby to proceed to the
house of the cathedral organist, whither he was now bent, to ascertain
whether Mr. Williams did take the organ voluntarily, and (to Arthur)
unexpectedly, the past Friday afternoon, we will go on to other matters.
Mr. Butterby best knew what bearing this could have upon the case.
Police officers sometimes give to their inquiries a strangely wide
range.