Seated in his private office he wetted the flap of the stolen letter,
and waited patiently till the adhesive gum could be loosened. He took
out Edward’s note, the accounts, the rosebud, and the photographs,
regarding them with the keenest interest and anxiety.
The note, the accounts, the rosebud, and his own photograph, he restored
to their places again. The other photograph he took between his finger
and thumb, and held it towards the bars of the grate. There he held it
for half-a-minute or more, meditating.
‘It is a great risk to run, even for such an end,’ he muttered.
Suddenly, impregnated with a bright idea, he jumped up and left the
office for the front parlour. Taking up an album of portraits, which lay
on the table, he searched for three or four likenesses of the lady who
had so lately displaced Cytherea, which were interspersed among the
rest of the collection, and carefully regarded them. They were taken in
different attitudes and styles, and he compared each singly with that he
held in his hand. One of them, the one most resembling that abstracted
from the letter in general tone, size, and attitude, he selected from
the rest, and returned with it to his office.
Pouring some water into a plate, he set the two portraits afloat upon
it, and sitting down tried to read.
At the end of a quarter of an hour, after several ineffectual attempts,
he found that each photograph would peel from the card on which it was
mounted. This done, he threw into the fire the original likeness and the
recent card, stuck upon the original card the recent likeness from the
album, dried it before the fire, and placed it in the envelope with the
other scraps.
The result he had obtained, then, was this: in the envelope were now two
photographs, both having the same photographer’s name on the back and
consecutive numbers attached. At the bottom of the one which showed his
own likeness, his own name was written down; on the other his wife’s
name was written; whilst the central feature, and whole matter to which
this latter card and writing referred, the likeness of a lady mounted
upon it, had been changed.
Mrs. Manston entered the room, and begged him to come to breakfast. He
followed her and they sat down. During the meal he told her what he had
done, with scrupulous regard to every detail, and showed her the result.
‘It is indeed a great risk to run,’ she said, sipping her tea.
‘But it would be a greater not to do it.’
‘Yes.’
The envelope was again fastened up as before, and Manston put it in
his pocket and went out. Shortly afterwards he was seen, on horseback,
riding in a direction towards Tolchurch. Keeping to the fields, as well
as he could, for the greater part of the way, he dropped into the road
by the vicarage letter-box, and looking carefully about, to ascertain
that no person was near, he restored the letter to its nook, placed the
key in its hiding-place, as he had promised the postman, and again rode
homewards by a roundabout way.