But that soon passed, and Pratt began to think. He left his office early, and betook himself to his favourite gymnasium. Exercise did him good—he thought a lot while he was exercising. And once more, instead of going home to dinner, he dined in town, and he sat late over his dinner in a snug corner of the restaurant, and he thought and planned and schemed—and after twilight had fallen on Barford, he went out and made his way to Peel Row. He must see Murgatroyd again—at once.
Halfway along Peel Row, Pratt stopped, suddenly—and with sudden fear. Out of a side street emerged a man, a quiet ordinary-looking man whom he knew very well indeed—Detective-Sergeant Prydale. He was accompanied by a smart-looking, much younger man, whom Pratt remembered to have seen in Beck Street that afternoon—a stranger to him and to Barford. And as he watched, these two covered the narrow roadway, and walked into Murgatroyd’s shop.
XXIV
The Better Half
Under the warming influence of two glasses of rum and water, and lulled by Pratt’s assurance that all would be well, Murgatroyd had carried home his hundred pounds with pretty much the same feeling which permeates a man who, having been within measurable distance of drowning, suddenly finds a substantial piece of timber drifting his way, and takes a firm grip on it. After all, a hundred pounds was a hundred pounds. He would be able to pay his rent, and his rates, and give something to the grocer and the butcher and the baker and the milkman; the children should have some much-needed new clothes and boots—when all this was done, there would be a nice balance left over. And it was Pratt’s affair, when all was said and done, and if any trouble arose, why, Pratt would have to settle it. So he ate his supper with the better appetite which Pratt had prophesied, and he slept more satisfactorily than usual, and next morning he went to the nearest telegraph office and sent off the stipulated telegram to Halstead & Byner in London, and hoped that there was the end of the matter as far as he was concerned. And then, shortly after noon, in walked Mr. Eldrick, one of the tribe which Murgatroyd dreaded, having had various dealings with solicitors, in the way of writs and summonses, and began to ask questions.
Murgatroyd emerged from that ordeal very satisfactorily. Eldrick’s questions were few, elementary, and easily answered. There were no signs of suspicion about him, and Murgatroyd breathed more freely when he was gone. It seemed to him that the solicitor’s visit would certainly wind things up—for him. Eldrick asked all that could be asked, as far as he could see, and he had replied: now, he would probably be bothered no more. His spirits had assumed quite a cheerful tone by evening—but they received a rude shock when, summoned from his little workshop to the front premises, he found himself confronting one man whom he certainly knew to be a detective, and another who might be one. Do what he would he could not conceal some agitation, and Detective-Sergeant Prydale, a shrewdly observant man, noticed it—and affected not to.
“Evening, Mr. Murgatroyd,” he said cheerily. “We’ve come to see if you can give us a bit of information. You’ve had Mr. Eldrick, the lawyer, here today on the same business. You know—this affair of an old clerk of his—Parrawhite?”
“I told Mr. Eldrick all I know,” muttered Murgatroyd.
“Very likely,” replied Prydale, “but there’s a few questions this gentleman and myself would like to ask. Can we come in?”
Murgatroyd fetched his wife to mind the shop, and took the callers into the parlour which she had unwillingly vacated. He knew Prydale by sight and reputation; about Byner he wondered. Finally he set him down as a detective from London—and was all the more afraid of him.
“What do you want to know?” he asked, when the three men were alone. “I don’t think there’s anything that I didn’t tell Mr. Eldrick.”
“Oh, there’s a great deal that Mr. Eldrick didn’t ask,” said Prydale. “Mr. Eldrick sort of just skirted round things, like. We want to know a bit more. This Parrawhite’s got to be found, d’ye see, Mr. Murgatroyd, and as you seem to be the last man who had aught to do with him in Barford, why, naturally, we come to you. Now, to start with, you say he came to you about getting a passage to America? Just so—now, when would that be?”
“Day before he did get it,” answered Murgatroyd, rapidly thinking over the memoranda which Pratt had jotted down for his benefit.
“That,” said Prydale, “would be on the 23rd?”
“Yes,” replied Murgatroyd, “23rd November, of course.”
“What time, now, on the 23rd?” asked the detective.
“Time?” said Murgatroyd. “Oh—in the evening.”
“Bit vague,” remarked Prydale. “What time in the evening?”
“As near as I can recollect,” replied Murgatroyd, “it ’ud be just about half-past eight. I was thinking of closing.”
“Ah!” said Prydale, with a glance at Byner, who had already told him of Parrawhite’s presence at the Green Man on the other side of the town, a good two miles away, at the hour which Murgatroyd mentioned. “Ah!—he was here in your shop at half-past eight on the evening of November 23rd last? Asking about a ticket to America?”
“New York,” muttered Murgatroyd.
“And he came next morning and bought one?” asked the detective.
“I told Mr. Eldrick that,” said Murgatroyd, a little sullenly.
“How much did it cost?” inquired Byner.
“Eight pound ten,” replied Murgatroyd. “Usual price.”
“What did he pay for it in?” continued Prydale.
“He gave me a ten-pound note and I gave him thirty shillings change,” answered Murgatroyd.
“Just so,” assented Prydale. “Now what line might that be by?”
Murgatroyd was becoming uneasy under
