"MY DEAR SIR,--Robert Derrick is getting troublesome. He has been
here three times in as many days, pressing for ten pounds, the
instalment of your debt now due to him. Will you be good enough to
transmit it to me, that I may pay and get rid of him.
"Truly yours, JOHN PAUL."
This letter, written by Lawyer Paul of Islip, came to Mr. Preen by the
Thursday morning post, just a week after the picnic. It put him into a
temper.
"What do Paul's people mean by their carelessness?" he exclaimed
angrily, as he snatched a sheet of paper to pen the answer.
"DEAR MR. PAUL,--I don't know what you mean. I sent the money to
you ten days ago--a bank-note, enclosed in a letter to yourself.
"Truly yours, G. PREEN."
Calling Oliver from his breakfast, Mr. Preen despatched this answer by
him at once to the post-office. There was no hurry whatever, since the
day mail had gone out, and it would lie in Mrs. Sym's drawer until
towards evening, but an angry man knows nothing of patience.
The week since the picnic had not been productive of any particular
event, except a little doubt and trouble regarding Dick MacEveril.
Mr. Paul was so much annoyed, at Dick's taking French leave to absent
himself from the office that day, that he attacked him with hot words
when he entered it on the Friday morning. Dick took it very coolly--old
Paul said "insolently," and retorted that he wanted a longer holiday
than that, a whole fortnight, and that he must have it. Shortly and
sharply Mr. Paul told him he could not have it, unless he chose to have
it for good.
Dick took him at his word. Catching up his hat and stick, he went out of
the office there and then, and had not since appeared at it. Not only
that: during the Friday he disappeared also from Islip. Nobody knew for
certain whither he had gone, or where he was: unless it might be London.
He had made no secret of what he wanted a holiday for. Some young fellow
whom he had known in Australia had recently landed at the docks and was
in London, and Dick wanted to go up to see him.
Deprived of his friend, and deprived of his heart's love, Oliver
Preen was in a bad case. The news of Emma Paul's engagement to Thomas
Chandler, and the news that Chandler was to have a share in her father's
business, had been made public; the speedy marriage was already talked
of. No living person saw what havoc it was making of Oliver Preen. Jane
found him unnaturally quiet. He would sit by the hour together and never
say a word to her or to anyone else, apparently plunged in what might be
either profound scientific calculations or grim despondency. It was as
if he had the care of the world upon his mind, and at times there would
break from him a sudden long-drawn sigh. Poor Oliver! Earth's sunshine
had gone out for him with sweet Emma Paul.
She had not been faithless, like the Faithless Emma of the song, for
she had never cared for anyone but Tom Chandler, had never given the
smallest encouragement to another. Oliver had only deluded himself.
To his heart, filled and blinded with its impassioned love, her open,
pleasing manners had seemed to be a response, and so he had mistaken
her. That was all.
But this is sentiment, which the world, having grown enlightened of
late years, practically despises; and we must go on to something more
sensible and serious.
The answer sent by Mr. Preen to John Paul of Islip brought forth an
answer in its turn. It was to the effect that Mr. Paul had not seen
anything of the letter spoken of by Mr. Preen, or of the money it was
said to contain.
This reached Duck Brook on the Saturday morning. Mr. Preen, more puzzled
this time than angry, could not make it out.
"Oliver," said he, "which day was it last week that I wrote that letter
to Paul of Islip, enclosing a ten-pound note?"
"I don't remember," carelessly replied Oliver. They had not yet settled
to work, and Oliver was stretched out at the open window, talking to a
little dog that was leaping up outside.
"Not remember!" indignantly echoed Mr. Preen. "My memory is distracted
with a host of cares, but yours has nothing to trouble it. Bring your
head in, sir, and attend to me properly."
Oliver dutifully brought his head in, his face red with stooping. "What
was it you asked me, father? I did not quite catch it," he said.
"I asked you if you could remember which day I sent that money to Paul.
But I think I remember now for myself. It was the day after I received
the bank-note from Mr. Todhetley. That was Monday. Then I sent the
letter to Paul with the bank-note in it on the Tuesday. You sealed it
for me."
"I remember quite well that it was Tuesday--two days before the picnic,"
said Oliver.
"Oh, of course; a picnic is a matter to remember anything by," returned
Mr. Preen, sarcastically. "Well, Paul says he has never received either
money or letter."
"The letter was posted----" began Oliver, but his father impatiently
interrupted him.
"Certainly it was posted. You saw me post it."
"It was too late for the evening's post; Dame Sym said it would go out
the next morning," went on Oliver. "Are Paul's people sure they did not
receive it?"
"Paul tells me so. Paul is an exact man, and would not tolerate any but
exact clerks about him. He writes positively."
"I suppose Mrs. Sym did not forget to forward it?" suggested Oliver.
"What an idiot you are!" retorted his father, by way of being
complimentary. "The letter must have gone out safely enough."
Nevertheless, after Mr. Preen had attended to his other letters and to
two or three matters they involved, he put on his hat and went to Mrs.
Sym's.
The debt for which the money was owing appeared to be a somewhat
mysterious one. Robert Derrick, a man who dealt in horses, or in
anything else by which he could make money, and attended all fairs near
and far, lived about two miles from Islip. One day, about a year back,
Derrick presented himself at the office of Mr. Paul, and asked that
gentleman if he would sue Gervais Preen for a sum of money, forty
pounds, which had been long owing to him. What was it owing for, Mr.
Paul inquired; but Derrick declined to say. Instead of suing him, the
lawyer wrote to request Mr. Preen to call upon him, which Mr. Preen did.
He acknowledged that he did owe the debt--forty pounds--but, like
Derrick, he evaded the question when asked what he owed it for. Perhaps
it was for a horse, or horses, suggested Mr. Paul. No, it was for
nothing of that kind, Mr. Preen replied; it was a strictly private debt.
An arrangement was come to. To pay the whole at once was not, Mr. Preen
said, in his power; but he would pay it by instalments. Ten pounds every
six months he would place in Mr. Paul's hands, to be handed to Derrick,
whom Mr. Preen refused to see. This arrangement Derrick agreed to. Two
instalments had already been paid, and one which seemed to have now
miscarried in the post was the third.
"Mrs. Sym," began Mr. Preen, when he had dived into the sweet-stuff
shop, and confronted the post-mistress behind her counter, "do you
recollect, one day last week, my asking you to give me back a letter
which I had just posted, addressed to Mr. Paul of Islip, and you
refused?"
"Yes, sir, I do," answered Mrs. Sym. "I was sorry, but----"
"Never mind that. What I want to ask you is this: did you notice that
letter when you made up the bag?"
"I did, sir. I noticed it particularly in consequence of what had
passed. It was sealed with a large red seal."
"Just so. Well, Mr. Paul declares that letter has not reached him."
"But it must have reached him," rejoined Mrs. Sym, fastening her
glittering spectacles upon the speaker's face. "It had Mr. Paul's
address upon it in plain writing, and it went away from here in the
bag with the rest of the letters."
"The letter had a ten-pound note in it."
Mrs. Sym paused. "Well, sir, if so, that would not endanger the letter's
safety. Who was to know it had? But letters that contain money ought to
be registered, Mr. Preen."
"You are sure it went away as usual from here--all safe?"
"Sure and certain, sir. And I think it must have reached Mr. Paul, if
I may say so. He may have overlooked it; perhaps let it fall into some
part of his desk, unopened. Why, some years ago, there was a great fuss
made about a letter which was sent to Captain Falkner, when he was
living at the Hall. He came here one day, complaining to me that a
letter sent to him by post, which had money in it, had never been
delivered. The trouble there was over that lost letter, sir, I couldn't
tell you. The Captain accused the post-office in London, for it was
London it came from, of never having forwarded it; then he accused me of
not sending it out with the delivery. After all, it was himself who had
mislaid the letter. He had somehow let it fall unnoticed into a deep
drawer of his writing-table when it was handed to him with other letters
at the morning's delivery; and there it lay all snug till found, hid
away amid a mass of papers. What do you think of that, sir?"
Mr. Preen did not say.
"In all the years I have kept this post-office I can't call to memory
one single letter being lost in the transit," she ran on, warming in her
own cause. "Why, how could it, sir? Once a letter's sent away safe in
the bag, there it must be; it can't fall out of it. Your letter was so
sent away by me, Mr. Preen, and where should it be if Mr. Paul hasn't
got it? Please tell him, sir, from me, that I'd respectfully suggest he
should look well about his desk and places."
Evidently it was not at this side the letter had been lost--if lost it
was. Mr. Preen wished the post-mistress good morning, and walked away.
Her suggestion had impressed him; he began to think it very likely
indeed that Paul had overlooked the letter on its arrival, and would
find it about his desk, or table, or some other receptacle for papers.
He drove over to Islip in the gig in the afternoon, taking Oliver with
him. Islip reached, he left Oliver in the gig, to wait at the door or
drive slowly about as he pleased, while he went into the office to, as
he expressed it, "have it out with Paul."
Not at once, however, could he do that, for Mr. Paul was out; but he saw
Tom Chandler.
The offices, situated in the heart of Islip, and not a stone's throw
from the offices of Valentine Chandler, consisted of three rooms, all on
the ground floor. The clerks' room was in front, its windows (painted
white, so that no one could see in or out) faced the street; Mr. Paul's
room lay behind it and looked on to a garden. There was also a small
slip of a room, not much better than a passage, into which Mr. Paul
could take clients whose business was very private indeed. Tom Chandler,
about to be made a partner, had a desk in Mr. Paul's room as well as one
in the clerks' room. It was at the latter that he usually sat.
On this afternoon he was seated at his desk in Mr. Paul's room when
Gervais Preen entered. Tom received him with a smile and a hand-shake,
and gave him a chair.
"I've come about that letter, Mr. Chandler," began the visitor; "my
letter with the ten-pound bank-note in it, which Mr. Paul denies having
received."
"I assure you no such letter was received by us----"
"It was addressed in a plain handwriting to Mr. Paul himself, and
protected by a seal of red wax with my crest upon it," irritably
interrupted the applicant, who hated to be contradicted.
"Mr. Preen, you may believe me when I tell you the letter never reached
us," said Tom, a smile crossing his candid, handsome face, at the
other's irritability.
"Then where is the letter? What became of it?"
"I should say perhaps it was never posted," mildly suggested Tom.
"Not posted!" tartly echoed Mr. Preen. "Why, I posted it myself; as Dame
Sym, over at Duck Brook, can testify. And my son also, for that matter;
he stood by and saw me put it into the box. Dame Sym sent it away in the
bag with the rest; she remembers the letter perfectly."
"It never was delivered to us," said Tom, shaking his head. "If---- oh,
here is Mr. Paul."
The portly lawyer came into the room, pushing back his iron-grey hair.
He sat down at his own desk-table; Mr. Preen drew his chair so as to
face him, and the affair was thoroughly gone into. It cannot be denied
that the experienced man of law, knowing how difficult it was to Mr.
Preen to find money for his debts and his needs, had allowed some faint
doubt to float within him in regard to this reported loss. Was it a true
loss?--or an invented one? But old Paul read people's characters, as
betrayed in their tones and faces, tolerably well; he saw that Preen was
in desperate earnest, and he began to believe his story.
"Let me see," said he. "You posted it on Tuesday, the fifteenth. You
found it was too late for that night's post, and would not go off until
the morrow morning, when, as Dame Sym says, she despatched it. Then we
ought to have received it that afternoon--Wednesday, the sixteenth."
"Yes," assented Mr. Preen. "Mrs. Sym wished to respectfully suggest to
you, Paul, that you might have overlooked it amidst the other letters at
the time it was delivered, and let it drop unseen into some drawer or
desk."
"Oh, she did, did she?" cried old Paul, while Tom Chandler laughed.
"Give my respects to her, Preen, and tell her I'm not an old woman. We
don't get many letters in an afternoon, sometimes not any," he went on.
"Can you carry your memory back to that Wednesday afternoon, Chandler?"
"I daresay I shall be able to do so," replied Tom. "Wednesday, the
sixteenth.--Was not that the day before the picnic at Aunt Cramp's?"
"What on earth has the picnic to do with it?" sharply demanded Mr.
Preen. "All you young men are alike. Oliver could only remember the date
of my posting the letter by recalling that of the picnic. You should be
above such frivolity."
Tom Chandler laughed. "I remember the day before the picnic for a
special reason, sir. MacEveril asked for holiday that he might go to
it. I told him he could not have the whole day, we were too busy, but
perhaps he might get half of it; upon which he said half a day was
no good to him, and gave me some sauce. Yes, that was Wednesday, the
sixteenth; and now, having that landmark to go by, I may be able to
trace back other events and the number of letters which came in that
afternoon."
"Is MacEveril back yet?" asked Preen.
"No," replied Paul. "The captain does not know where he is; no one does
know, that I'm aware of. Look here, Preen; as this letter appears to
be really lost, and very unaccountably, since Mrs. Sym is sure she sent
it off, and I am sure it was never delivered to me, I shall go to our
office here now, and inquire about it. Will you come with me?"
Mr. Preen was only too glad to go to any earthly place that was likely
to afford news of his ten-pound note, for the loss would be his, and
he knew not where he should find another ten pounds to satisfy the
insatiable Derrick.
They proceeded along the pavement together, passing Oliver, who was
slowly parading the gig up and down the street. His sad face--unusually
sad it looked--had a sort of expectancy on it as he turned his gaze from
side to side, lest by some happy chance it might catch the form of Emma
Paul. Emma might be going to marry another; but, all the same, Oliver
could not drop her out of his heart.
They disclaimed all recollection of the letter at the post-office. Had
it been for a private individual it might have been remembered, but Mr.
Paul had too many letters to allow of that, unless something special
called attention to any one of them. Whether the letter in question had
reached them by the Islip bag, or whether it had not, they could not
say; but they could positively affirm that, if it had, it had been sent
out to Mr. Paul.
In returning they overtook the postman on his round, with the afternoon
delivery: a young, active man, who seemed to skim over the ground, and
was honest as the day.
"Dale," said Lawyer Paul, "there has been a letter lost, addressed
to me. I wonder whether you chanced to notice such a letter?" And he
mentioned the details of the case.
"One day is like another to me in its round of duties, you see, sir,"
observed the man. "Sealed with a big red seal, you say, sir? Well, it
might be, but that's nothing for me to go by; so many of your letters
are sealed, sir."
The lawyer returned to his office with Mr. Preen, and entered his own
room. Tom Chandler heard them and came swiftly through the door which
opened from the clerks' department, a smile of satisfaction on his face.
"I remember all about the letters that were brought in on Wednesday
week," said he. "I can recall the whole of the circumstances; they were
rather unusual."