The lad turned to a book which stood with others in a rack over the chimney-piece, and tapped it with his finger.
"Yes, sir—because Mr. Bartle gave orders when I first came here that a register of every letter sent out was to be kept—I've always entered them in this book."
"And this letter you're talking about—to whom was it addressed?"
"Miss Mallathorpe, Normandale Grange, sir."
"You went and posted it at once?"
"That very minute, sir."
"Was it soon afterwards that Mr. Bartle went out?"
"He went out as soon as I came back, sir."
"And you never saw him again?"
Jabey shook his head.
"Not alive, sir," he answered. "I saw him when they brought him back."
"How long had he been out when you heard he was dead?"
"About an hour, sir—just after six it was when they told Mrs. Clough and me. He went out at ten minutes past five."
Collingwood got up. He gave the lad's shoulder a friendly squeeze.
"All right!" he said. "Now you seem a smart, intelligent lad—don't mention a word to any one of what we've been talking about. You have not mentioned it before, I suppose? Not a word? That's right—don't. Come in again tomorrow morning to see if I want you to be here as usual. I'm going to put a manager into this shop."
When the boy had gone Collingwood locked up the shop from the house side, put the key in his pocket, and went into the kitchen.
"Mrs. Clough," he said. "I want to see the clothes which my grandfather was wearing when he was brought home last night. Where are they?"
"They're in that little room aside of his bed-chamber, Mestur Collingwood," replied the housekeeper. "I laid 'em all there, on the clothes-press, just as they were taken off of him, by Lawyer Eldrick's orders—he said they hadn't been examined, and wasn't to be, till you came. Nobody whatever's touched 'em since."
Collingwood went upstairs and into the little room—a sort of box-room opening out of that in which the old man lay. There were the clothes; he went through the pockets of every garment. He found such things as keys, a purse, loose money, a memorandum book, a bookseller's catalogue or two, two or three letters of a business sort—but there was no big folded paper, covered with writing, such as Jabey Naylor had described.
The mention of that paper had excited Collingwood's curiosity. He rapidly summed up what he had learned. His grandfather had found a paper, closely written upon, in a book which had been the property of John Mallathorpe, deceased. The discovery had surprised him, for he had given voice to an exclamation of what was evidently astonishment. He had put the paper in his pocket. Then he had written a letter—to Mrs. Mallathorpe of Normandale Grange. When his shop-boy had posted that letter, he himself had gone out—to his solicitor. What, asked Collingwood, was the reasonable presumption? The old man had gone to Eldrick to show him the paper which he had found.
He lingered in the little room for a few minutes, thinking. No one but Pratt had been with Antony Bartle at the time of his seizure and sudden death. What sort of a fellow was Pratt? Was he honest? Was his word to be trusted? Had he told the precise truth about the old man's death? He was evidently a suave, polite, obliging sort of fellow, this clerk, but it was a curious thing that if Antony Bartle had that paper, whatever it was—in his pocket when he went to Eldrick's office it should not be in his pocket still—if his clothing had really remained untouched. Already suspicion was in Collingwood's mind—vague and indefinable, but there.
He was half inclined to go straight back to Eldrick & Pascoe's and tell Eldrick what Jabey Naylor had just told him. But he reflected that while Naylor went out to post the letter, the old bookseller might have put the paper elsewhere; locked it up in his safe, perhaps. One thing, however, he, Collingwood, could do at once—he could ask Mrs. Mallathorpe if the letter referred to the paper. He was fully acquainted with all the facts of the Mallathorpe history; old Bartle, knowing they would interest his grandson, had sent him the local newspaper accounts of its various episodes. It was only twelve miles to Normandale Grange—a motor-car would carry him there within the hour. He glanced at his watch—just ten o 'clock.
An hour later, Collingwood found himself standing in a fine oak-panelled room, the windows of which looked out on a romantic valley whose thickly wooded sides were still bright with the red and yellow tints of autumn. A door opened—he turned, expecting to see Mrs. Mallathorpe. Instead, he found himself looking at a girl, who glanced inquiringly at him, and from him to the card which he had sent in on his arrival.
CHAPTER IV
THE FORTUNATE POSSESSORS
Collingwood at once realized that he was in the presence of one of the two fortunate young people who had succeeded so suddenly—and, according to popular opinion, so unexpectedly—to John Mallathorpe's wealth. This was evidently Miss Nesta Mallathorpe, of whom he had heard, but whom he had never seen. She, however, was looking at him as if she knew him, and she smiled a little as she acknowledged his bow.
"My mother is out in the grounds, with my brother," she said, motioning Collingwood towards a chair. "Won't you sit down, please?—I've sent for her; she will be here in a few minutes."
Collingwood sat down; Nesta Mallathorpe sat down, too, and as they looked at each other she smiled again.
"I have seen you before, Mr. Collingwood," she said. "I knew it must be you when they brought up your card."
Collingwood used his glance of polite inquiry to make a closer inspection of his hostess. He decided that Nesta Mallathorpe was not so much pretty as eminently attractive—a tall, well-developed, warm-coloured young woman, whose clear grey eyes and red lips and general bearing indicated the possession of good health and spirits. And he was quite certain that if he had ever seen her before he would not have forgotten it.
"Where have you seen me?" he asked, smiling back at her.
"Have you forgotten the mock-trial—year before last?" she asked.
Collingwood remembered what she was alluding to. He had taken part, in company with various other law students, in a mock-trial, a breach of promise case, for the benefit of a certain London hospital, to him had fallen one of the principal parts, that of counsel for the plaintiff. "When I saw your name, I remembered it at once," she went on. "I was there—I was a probationer at St. Chad's Hospital at that time."
"Dear me!" said Collingwood, "I should have thought our histrionic efforts would have been forgotten. I'm afraid I don't remember much about them, except that we had a lot of fun out of the affair. So you were at St. Chad's?" he continued, with a reminiscence of the surroundings of the institution they were talking of. "Very different to Normandale!"
"Yes," she replied. "Very—very different to Normandale. But when I was at St. Chad's, I didn't know that I—that we should ever come to Normandale."
"And now that you are here?" he asked.
The girl looked out through the big window on the valley which lay in front of the old house, and she shook her head a little.
"It's very beautiful," she answered, "but I sometimes wish I was back at St. Chad's—with something to do. Here—there's nothing to do but to do nothing." Collingwood realized that this was not the complaint of the well-to-do young woman who finds time hang heavy—it was rather indicative of a desire for action.
"I understand!" he said. "I think I should feel like that. One wants—I suppose—is it action, movement, what is it?"
"Better call it occupation—that's a plain term," she answered. "We're both suffering from lack of occupation here, my brother and I. And it's bad for us—especially for him."
Before Collingwood could think of any suitable reply to this remarkably fresh and candid statement, the door opened, and Mrs. Mallathorpe came in, followed by her son. And the visitor suddenly and immediately noticed the force and meaning of Nesta Mallathorpe's