by Ellen Wood
“Mr. Bede thinks so himself,” interrupted Butterby. “He charged me specially to look after them; after one of ’em in particular.”
“Which was it?”
“Hurst.”
“Hurst!” repeated Mr. Greatorex in surprise.
“But Mr. Bede is mistaken, sir. It was no more Hurst than it was me.”
Instincts are subtle. And one came unbidden into the mind of the detective officer as he spoke — that he had made a mistake in repeating this to Mr. Greatorex. The truth was — carrying within him his private instructions, and the consciousness that they must be kept private — he found these interviews with the head of the firm slightly embarrassing.
“Why should he suspect Hurst if he—”
The door opened, and the person in question appeared at it — Bede Greatorex. Catching a glimpse of the detective’s head, he was going out of it a vast deal quicker than he had entered; but his father stopped him.
“Bede! Bede! Come in. Come in and shut the door. Here’s a fine thing I have just beard — that you are suspecting one person in particular of having taken the cheque. Over and over again, you have told me there was nobody in particular to be suspected.”
A lightning glance from Bede Greatorex’s fine dark Spanish eyes flashed out on the detective. It said as plainly as glance could speak, “How dare you presume to betray my confidence?”
That gentleman sat unmoved, and nodded a good morning with his customary equanimity.
“Mr. Greatorex — doing me the honour to call upon me to report progress — observed that he fully thought it was one of the clerks in your room we must look to, sir,” spoke Butterby in a slow calm tone. “I told him your opinion was the same; and you had charged me to look well after them, especially Mr. Hurst. That was all.” Bede Greatorex bit his lip in anger. But the communication might have been worse.
“What is there against Hurst?” impatiently asked Mr. Greatorex.
“Nothing at all,” said Bede quietly. “If I said to Mr. Butterby that one of my clerks might have taken the cheque, it was only because access to my room was more obtainable by them than by anybody else I can think of. And of the four, Hurst spends the most money.”
“Hurst has the most money to spend,” observed Mr. Greatorex.
“Of course he has. I make no doubt Hurst is as innocent as I.”
This was very different from suspecting Hurst, from desiring that he should be specially looked after, and perhaps Mr. Greatorex felt the two accounts the least in the world contradictory. The keen-sighted observer sitting by, apparently sharpening the point of his broken lead-pencil, noticed that the eyes of Bede Greatorex never once went openly into the face of his father.
“If it was my case,” thought the officer, “I should tell him the truth out and out. No good going about the bush this way, saying he suspects one and suspects another, when he does not suspect ‘em: far better that old Greatorex should hear the whole and see for himself that it can’t be gone into. He don’t care to worrit the old gentleman: that’s what it is.”
That is just what it was. But Mr. Butterby was not right in all his premises.
“I am fully persuaded that every clerk on my side the house is as innocent as are those on yours, sir,” spoke Bede Greatorex, a kind of tremor in his tone; which tremor did not escape the officer’s notice, or that it was caused by anxious, painful eagerness: and that astute man knew in a moment that old Greatorex must not have his suspicions turned actively on Bede’s employés. “I believe it was Butterby who first mentioned them. Upon that, I ran them over in my mind, and remembered that Hurst was the only one spending much money — he lives in fashionable lodgings as a gentleman. Was it not so, Mr. Butterby?”
The detective was professionally prepared for most accidents. Therefore when Bede Greatorex turned upon him with startling rapidity, a second flash darting forth from his dark eyes, he never moved a muscle. “You are right, sir.”
“Bede,” said Mr. Greatorex, in a still tone of meaning, “if the same facility for getting access to your room attached to the clerks on my side the house, I should not say to you so positively that they were not guilty. You seem to resent the very thought that suspicion can attach to them.”
“Not at all, father. Perhaps I felt vexed that Hurst’s name should have been mentioned to you without grounds.”
“Understand me, Mr. Butterby,” spoke the elderly gentleman sharply. “I expect to have this matter better attended to than it has been. And I repeat to you that I think the clerks in my son’s room should be — I do not say suspected, but sufficiently thought of. It is monstrous to know that a theft like this can have been openly committed in a professional man’s house, and you officers should avow yourselves at fault We may be losing some of our clients’ deeds next.”
The detective glanced at Mr. Bede Greatorex, and was answered, as he thought, by the faintest of signs in return. It was not the first time he had been concerned in cases where sons wished things kept from knowledge of fathers.
“We don’t give it up, sir. Allow us more time, and perhaps we may satisfy you better.”
“I shall expect you to do so,” returned Mr. Greatorex with sufficient emphasis. And the officer rose to quit his presence.
“Go round by the other door to my room, and wait.”
Surely these words were breathed into Mr. Butterby’s ear! Faint though the whisper was, he could not have fancied it. Bede Greatorex was crossing his path at the moment, as if he wished to look from the window.
Fancy or not, the officer acted upon it. Going round by the street to the professional entrance, and so on up the passage to the private room. When Bede Greatorex returned to it, he saw him seated against the wall, underneath the map of London.
“You did wrong to mention Mr. Hurst to my father,” Bede began with imperative quickness, as he slipped the bolt of the middle door.
“That’s as it may be,” was the rejoinder, cool as usual. “If there’s not some outlet of suspicion given to your father, it will be just this, Mr. Bede Greatorex — that he’ll make one for himself. Leastways, that’s my opinion.”
“Be it so. I do not want it to take the direction of my clerks.”
“He lays the blame on us: says we are lax, or else incapable; and it is only natural he should think so. Anyway there’s no harm done about Mr. Hurst: you made it right with him there. Do you suspect Hurst still, sir?”
“Yes. At least more than I do any one of the others.”
Mr. Butterby put his hands on his knees and bent a little forward. “If you wish me to do you any service in this, sir, you must not keep me quite so much in the dark. What I want to get at, Mr. Bede Greatorex, is the true reason of your pitching upon Hurst yourself.”
“I cannot give it to you,” said Bede promptly. “What I told you at our first interview, I repeat now — that the suspicion against him is but a faint one. Still it is sufficient to raise a doubt; and I have no reason to doubt the other three. Jenner is open and honest as the day; Brown valuable and trustworthy; and Mr. Yorke must of course be exempt.”
“Oh, of course, he must,” dryly acquiesced the detective with a cough. He knew he was sure of Roland in this case, but he thought Bede Greatorex might not have spoken so confidently had he been cognizant of a certain matter connected with the past.
“I would not much mind answering for Jenner myself,” remarked Mr. Butterby. “Brown seems all right too.”
“Brown’s honesty has been sufficiently proved. Very large sums have passed through his hands habitually, and he has never wronged us by a shilling. Had he wished to help himself, he would have done it before now: he has had the opportunity.”
“Then that leaves us back at Hurst again. Where is your objection, sir, to the doubt of him being mentioned to your father?”
A kind of startled look crossed Bede’s face: a look of fear: and he spoke hastily.
“Have you forgotten what I said? That the fact of Mr. Hurst’s knowing he was s
uspected (assuming he is guilty) would be attended with danger. Awful danger, too. If it were possible to disclose all to my father, he would forfeit a great deal that he holds dear in life, rather than incur it.”
“Well it seems to me that I can be of little use in this matter,” said Butterby, turning somewhat crusty. “I have had dangerous secrets confided to me in my life-time, sir; and the parties they were told of are none the wiser or the worse for it yet.”
“And I wish I could confide this to you,” said Bede, steadily and candidly. “I’d be glad enough to get it out of my keeping, for I don’t know what to do with it. If no one but myself were concerned; if I could disclose it to you without the risk of injuring others, you should hear it this next minute. For their sakes, Mr. Butterby, my lips are tied. I dare not speak.”
“Does he mean his wife, or doesn’t he?” thought Butterby. And the question was not solvable. “I’ll look after Hurst a bit,” he said aloud. “Truth to tell, I considered him the safest of them all, in spite of your opinion, Mr. Bede Greatorex, and have let him be. He shall get a little of my private attention now. And so shall one of the others,” the detective mentally added.
“Unsuspected by Hurst himself,” enjoined Bede, a shade of anxiety in his voice.
Could Mr. Butterby have been suspected of so far forgetting professional dignity as to indulge in winks, it might have seemed that he answered by one, as he rose from his chair.
“I’ll just take a look in upon them now,” he remarked. “And let me advise you, sir, to get your father into a more reasonable frame of mind, if possible. If he calls in fresh aid, as he threatens, there might be the dickens to pay.”
Bede Greatorex crossed the room hastily, as though he meant to guard the middle door, and spoke in a low tone.
“I do not care that they should know you have been with me. Not for the world would I let it come to their knowledge that I doubt either of them.”
“Now do you suppose I am a young gosling?” demanded Butterby. “You have done me the honour to confide this private business to my hands, Mr. Bede Greatorex, and you may safely leave it in ‘em. After being at the work so many years, there’s not much left for me to be taught.” He departed by the passage, treading lightly, and halted when he came to the clerks’ door. He was in deep thought. This matter which, as he phrased it, Mr. Bede Greatorex had done him the honour to put into his hands, was no such great matter after all; a mere trifle in professional quarters: but few things had so much puzzled the detective. Not in his way to discovery: that, as it seemed to him, would be very easy, could he pursue it openly. Bede Greatorex puzzled him; his ambiguous words puzzled him; the thing itself puzzled him. In most cases Mr. Butterby could at least see where he was; in this he stood in a sea-encompassed fog, not understanding where he was going, or what he was in search of.
Giving the swing-door a dash backwards, as though he had just entered, he went into the room. Mr. Brown was at his desk, Roland Yorke at his; but the other two were absent. So if the visit had been intended as a special one to Josiah Hurst, it was a decided failure.
When was the great Butterby at fault? He had just looked in upon them “in passing,” he said, to give the good-morrow, and enquire how they relished the present state of the thermometer, which he should pronounce melting. How did Mr. Yorke like it?
Mr. Yorke, under the circumstances of not knowing whether he stood on his head or his heels, had not thought about the thermometer. Since the receipt of a letter that morning, containing the news that one, whom he cared for more than a brother, might probably be coming to London shortly on a visit, Roland had been three parts mad with joy. He was even genial to the intruder, his bête noire.
“Is it you, Butterby? How are you getting on, Butterby? Take a stool if you like, Butterby.”
“Can’t stop,” said Butterby. “Just meant to give a nod round and go out again. Not come in on business to-day. You look spruce, Mr. Yorke.”
“I’ve got on my Sunday suit,” answered Roland — who in point of fact was uncommonly well got-up, and had a rosebud in his button-hole. “Carrick’s tailor has not a bad cut. You have heard of red-letter days, old Butterby: this is one for me. One should not put on one’s every-day coat on such occasions: they don’t come too often.”
“Got a fortune bequeathed?” enquired Mr. Butterby.
“It’s better than that,” said enthusiastic Roland, who in these moments, when his heart and affections were touched, could but be more impulsively genuine than ever. “Somebody’s coming to London; somebody that you know, Butterby.”
“Mr. Galloway, perhaps’
“No; you are wrong this time,” returned Roland, not in the least taken aback: though perhaps the detective, to judge by his significant tone, meant that he should be. “You’d not see me dressed up for him. There are two men in Helstonleigh I’d put on shirtsleeves to welcome, rather than a good coat: the one is old Galloway, the other William Yorke. Guess again.”
Instead of doing anything of the sort, by which perhaps his professional reserve might have been compromised, Mr. Butterby turned his attention on the manager. Pursuing his work steadily, he had taken no heed of Mr. Butterby, beyond a civil salute at first.
“You’ve not heard more of this mysterious loss, I suppose?”
“Nothing more, sir,” was Mr. Brown’s answer, looking up full at the speaker, perhaps to show that he did not shrink from intercourse with a detective officer. “It seems strange, though, that we should not.”
“Thieves are clever when they are professional ones; and I’ve got to think it was no less a man did the job for Mr. Greatorex,” said Butterby, in quite a fatherly tone of confidence. “There has been a regular band of ’em at work lately in London; and in spite of opinions when I was here last, I say they might have gone in through the passage straight and bold, and done the job easy, and you unsuspicious young men, shut up in this here first room, never have heard a sound of what was going on.”
“I think that is how it must have been; failing the other thought — that Mr. Bede Greatorex took the cheque abroad and dropped it,” said the manager with quiet decision.
“Of course. And unless I’m mistaken, Mr. Bede thinks the same. I should like to have three minutes’ chat with you some evening, Mr. Brown, all by our two selves. You are naturally anxious for discovery, so am I: there’s no knowing but what something or other may come out between us.”
Perhaps to any eye save the watchful one of a police-officer, the slight hesitation before replying might have passed unnoticed. Mr. Brown had no particular wish to be questioned; it was no affair of his, and he thought the detective and Mr. Bede Greatorex quite enough to manage the matter without him. But, when his answer came, it was spoken readily.
“Whenever you please. I am generally at home by eight o’clock.”
He gave his new address — Mrs. Jones’s. At which the crafty detective expressed surprise, inwardly knowing the very day and hour when Mr. Brown had moved in.
“There! Do you live there? The Joneses and I used to be old acquaintances; knew ’em well when they were at Helstonleigh. Knew Dicky must be making a mess of it long before the smash came. You’ll see me then, Mr. Brown, one of these first evenings.”
“Don’t be in a hurry, Butterby,” spoke Roland, who had been amusing himself by trying how far he could tilt his stool backwards without capsizing, while he listened. “It’s not old Galloway, it’s Arthur Channing.”
“Is there anything so remarkable in Arthur Channing’s coming to London?” questioned Butterby.
“To me there is. I tell you it is a red-letter day in my life, and I’ve not had many such since I sailed from Port Natal. If I were not in this confounded old office, with one master in the next room and another there” — flinging a ball of paper at the manager— “I should sing and dance and leap my joy off. Three copies have I begun to take of a musty old will, and spoilt ’em all. Brown says I’m out of my senses; ask him.”
“You
never were famous for not spoiling copies — or for particular industry, either, you know, Mr. Yorke.” The rejoinder rather nettled Roland. “I’d rather be famous for nothing, than for what you are famed for in Helstonleigh, Butterby — taking up the wrong man. It was not your fault that Arthur Channing didn’t get transported.”
“Nor yours,” quietly retorted Mr. Butterby.
“There! Go on. Bring it all out. If you’ve come to do it, do it, Butterby. I told you to, the other night. And when Arthur Channing is in London, you put up a prayer every morning not to meet him at Charing Cross. The sight of him couldn’t be pleasant to your mind, and passers-by might see your brow redden: which for a bold, fear-nothing police-detect—”
“Is Mr. Bede Greatorex in?”
The interrupting questioner was the Reverend Henry William Ollivera. As he entered, the first man his eyes fell on was Butterby. It was a mutual recognition: and they had not met since that evening in Butterby’s rooms on the occasion of the clergyman’s visit to Helstonleigh.
Before a minute had well elapsed, as it seemed to the two spectators, they were deep in that calamity of the past, recalling some of its details, lamenting the non-success that had attended the endeavour to trace it out. It did not much interest Roland, and his mind also was filled to the brim with matter more agreeable. Apparently it did not interest Brown the manager, for he kept his head bent on his work. In the midst of it Bede Greatorex came in.
“I tell you, Mr. Officer, my faith has never wavered, or my opinion changed,” the clergyman was saying with emotion, scarcely interrupting himself to nod a salutation to Bede. “My brother did not commit suicide. He was barbarously murdered; as every instinct warned me at the time, and warns me still. The waiting seems long; the time rolls by, day after day, year after year: weariness has to be subdued, patience cherished; but, that the hour of elucidation will come, is as sure as that you and I stand here, facing each other.”
