When Quixtus went to Lincoln’s Inn Fields one morning and found, instead of his partner, a letter from him stating that he had gone abroad and would remain there without an address for an indefinite time, Quixtus was surprised. When he had summoned the managing clerk and together they had opened Marrable’s safe, both he and the clerk were bewildered; and after he had spent an hour or two with a chartered accountant, for whom he had hurriedly telephoned, he grew sick from horror and amazement. Later in the day he heard through the police that a warrant was out for Samuel Marrable’s arrest. In the course of time he learned that Samuel Marrable had done everything that a solicitor should not do. He had misappropriated trust-funds; he had made away with bearer-bonds; he had falsified accounts; he had forged transfers; he had speculated in wild-cat concerns; he had become the dupe of a gang of company promoters known throughout the City as “Gehenna Unlimited.” He had robbed the widow; he had robbed the orphan; he had robbed the firm; he had robbed with impunity for many years; but when, in desperation, he had tried to rob “Gehenna Unlimited,” they were too much for him. So Samuel Marrable had fled the country.
Thus fell the first thunderbolt. Quixtus saw the fair repute of “Quixtus and Son” shattered in an instant, his own name tarnished, himself—and this was the most cruel part of the matter—betrayed and fooled by the man in whom he had placed his boundless trust. Marrable, whom he had known since he was a child of five; with whom he had gone to pantomimes, exhibitions, and such like junketings when he was a boy; who had first guided his reluctant feet through the mazes of the law; who had stood with him by his father’s death-bed; who was bound to him by all the intimacies of a lifetime; on whose devotion he had counted as unquestioningly as a child on his mother’s love—Marrable to be a rogue and a rascal, not a man at his wits’ end yielding to a sudden temptation, but a deliberate, systematic villain—it was all but unthinkable. Yet here were irrefragable proofs, as the law took its course. And all through the nightmare time that followed until the trial—for the poor fugitive was soon hunted down and haled back to London—when his days were spent in helpless examination of confusing figures and bewildering transactions, the insoluble human problem was uppermost in his mind. How could the man have done these things? Marrable had sobbed over his father’s grave and had put his arm affectionately round his shoulders and led him away to the mourning coach. Marrable had stood with him by another open grave, that of his dead wife, and had comforted him with affectionate sympathy. To the very end not a sinister look had appeared in his honest, capable eyes. On the very day of his flight he had lunched with Quixtus in the Savoy grill-room. He had laughed and jested and told Quixtus a funny story or two. When they parted:
“Shall I see you at the office this afternoon? No? Well good-bye, Ephraim. God bless you.”
He had smiled and waved a cheery hand. How could a man shower upon another his tears, his sympathy, his laughter, his implied loyalty, his blessings, and all the time be a treacherous scoundrel working his ruin? All his knowledge of Prehistoric Man would not answer the question.
“I wonder whether there are many people in the world like Marrable?” he questioned.
And from that moment he began to look at all clear-eyed honest folk and speculate, in a dreary way, whether they were like Marrable.
The family honour being imperilled, duty summoned him to an interview with Matthew Quixtus, his father’s elder brother, the head of the family, and owner of a large estate at Croxton, in Devonshire, and other vast possessions. He paid him a week-end visit. The old man, nearly ninety, received him with every mark of courtesy. He went out of his way to pay deference to him as a man of high position in the learned world. Instead of the “Mr. Ephraim,” which had been his designation in the house ever since the “Master Ephraim” had been dropped in the dim past, it was pointedly as “Dr. Quixtus” that butler and coachman and the rest of the household heard him referred to. Quixtus, who had always regarded his uncle as a fiery ancient, hot with family pride and quick to quarrel on the point of honour, was greatly relieved by his unexpected suavity of demeanour. He listened to his nephew’s account of the great betrayal with a kindly smile, and wasted upon him bottles of the precious ’54 port which the butler, with appropriate ritual, only brought up for the Inner Brotherhood of Dionysus. On all previous occasions, Ephraim, at whose deplorably uncultivated palate the old man had shrugged pitying shoulders, had been treated to an unconsidered vintage put upon the table after dinner rather as a convention than (in the host’s opinion) as a liquid fit for human throttle. He was sympathetic over the disaster and alluded to Marrable in picturesquely old-world terms of depreciation.
“It’ll cost you a pretty penny, one way or the other,” said he.
“I shall have to make good the losses. I dare say I can make arrangements extending over a period of years.”
“Fly kites, eh? Well, I shan’t live for ever. But I’m not dead yet. By George, sir, no!” and his poor old hand shook pitifully as he raised his glass to his lips. “My grandfather—your great grandfather lived to be a hundred and four.”
“It will be a matter of pride and delight to all who know you,” said Quixtus smiling and bowing, glass in hand, across the table, “if you champion the modern world and surpass him in longevity.”
“The property will come in very handy though, won’t it?” asked the old man.
“I confess,” said Quixtus, “that, if I pay the liabilities out of my own resources, I may be somewhat embarrassed.”
“And what will you do with yourself when you’ve shut up the shop?”
“I shall devote myself more closely to my favourite pursuits.”
The old man nodded and finished his glass of port.
“A damned gentlemanly occupation,” said he, “without any confounded modern commercialism about it.”
Quixtus was pleased. Hitherto his uncle had not regarded his anthropological studies with too sympathetic an eye. He had lived, all his life, a country gentleman, looking shrewdly after his estates, building cottages, draining fields, riding to hounds and shooting all things that were to be shot in their season. In science and scholarship he took no interest. It was therefore all the more gratifying to Quixtus to hear his studious scheme of life so heartily commended. The end of the visit was marked by the same amenity as the beginning, and Quixtus returned to town somewhat strengthened for the