"Good. The envelope itself is quite an ordinary one, as you see. Now,
can you carry your mind back, and give me any particulars of the
transaction? Can you tell for whom those letters were cut, and what
they stand for?"
Mr Millington put his hand to his forehead. "Let me think a moment,"
he said in the quavering voice of old age. "Let me think for a moment,
and something will come back to me. At my time of life it's a good way
to go back."
Smeaton waited in silence for some little time, and then it seemed the
old man had struck some chord of memory.
Suddenly he sat upright in his easy-chair, and his eyes sparkled. "It
is coming back by degrees," he said in his thin, husky voice; "it is
coming back."
There was another pause, in which it seemed he was trying to arrange his
ideas clearly. Then he spoke slowly but distinctly.
"I remember I had a lot of trouble over the job. The order was first
given to some stationers in the City, but the gentleman was so fussy and
confused in his instructions that they sent him down straight to me. I
thought I understood what he wanted, but I had to engrave it three times
before he was satisfied. That's why I happen to remember it so well."
"Now, do you remember, or did you ever know, the name of this fussy
person who was so hard to please?"
"I ought to remember it," said Millington plaintively. "It was not an
uncommon name either; I should recall it in a moment if I heard it. But
it has escaped me."
Smeaton's face clouded. "That's unfortunate, but it may come back to
you presently. Proper names are the hardest things to remember as we
get on in life."
Millington struggled for a little time longer with the ebbing tide of
reminiscence, but to no purpose.
Smeaton went on another tack.
"Did you bring away from your business any documents or memoranda that
would throw light upon this particular transaction?"
The old man reflected for a little while.
"I'm afraid I was a very poor man of business, sir," he said at length.
"I made rough notes from time to time as I received and executed orders,
but that was all. I trusted to my memory, which in those days was a
good one."
"Have you any of those old note-books left?"
"Yes, I've got some of them upstairs in a couple of boxes which have
never been opened since I left the Clerkenwell Road. Would you like me
to run through them? It would only mean half-a-day's work, or less."
"I should be infinitely obliged if you would, Mr Millington. I will
run down here about the same time to-morrow morning. Just one thing
more before I go. Were you acquainted with your customer's handwriting?
Did you ever receive any letters from him?"
"He wrote me several times with regard to the work I did for him, but I
shouldn't be able to recognise his hand, even if I saw it."
Smeaton left, very much chagrined at the result of his visit.
Next morning he, however, presented himself at Beech Cottage.
Millington received him with an apologetic air. He explained that he
had searched his note-books diligently, but he could find nothing that
referred to the cipher letters, the two C's entwined, or the man who had
ordered them.
"I've a notion," he said, when he had finished his rather rambling
statement, "that the gentleman who gave the order came from Manchester
or Liverpool. But there I may be mixing it up with something else."
And Smeaton left, knowing that nothing more could be got out of him.
The identity of the writer of the threatening letter had yet to be
discovered.
Another point had suddenly occurred to him. Was the man who had had the
cipher engraved the actual writer of the letter? And the greatest point
of all was the whereabouts of the Stolen Statesman: was he dead, or was
he still living?
Smeaton ascended in the lift to his room at Scotland Yard, where a
surprise awaited him, in the shape of a telegram from Varney, handed in
at a village five miles from Horsham, in Sussex, three hours before. It
read:
"Come down here at once. Something unexpected.--Varney."