Smithers, in despair at her incapability of answering these three questions at once, as no doubt she ought to have been able to do, or the Doctor would not have asked them, stammered out—
“Mr. North, sir—”
“ ‘Mr. North, sir’! Well, what of ‘Mr. North, sir’? By the by, where is Mr. North? Why isn’t he here to receive us?”
Smithers feels that she is in for it; so, after two or three nervous gulps, and other convulsive movements of the throat, she continues thus—“Mr. North, sir, didn’t come home last night, sir. We sat up for him till one o’clock this morning—last night, sir.”
The rising storm in the Doctor’s face is making Smithers’s English more un-English every moment.
“Didn’t come last night? Didn’t return to my house at the hour of ten, which hour has been appointed by me for the retiring to rest of every person in my employment?” cried the Doctor, aghast.
“No, sir! Nor yet this morning, sir! Nor yet this afternoon, sir! And the West-Indian pupils have been looking out of the window, sir, and would, which we told them not till we were hoarse, sir.”
“The person entrusted by me with the care of my pupils abandoning his post, and my pupils looking out of the window!” exclaimed Dr. Tappenden, in the tone of a man who says—“The glory of England has departed! You wouldn’t, perhaps, believe it; but it has!”
“We didn’t know what to do, sir, and so we thought we’d better not do it,” continued the bewildered Smithers. “And we thought as you was coming back today, we’d better leave it till you did come back—and please, sir, will you take any new-laid eggs?”
“Eggs!” said the Doctor; “new-laid eggs! Go away, Smithers. There must be some steps taken immediately. That young man was my right hand, and I would have trusted him with untold gold; or,” he added, “with my chequebook.”
As he uttered the words “chequebook,” he, as it were instinctively, laid his hand upon the pocket which contained that precious volume; but as he did so, he remembered that he had used the last leaf but one when writing a cheque for a midsummer butcher’s bill, and that he had a fresh book in his desk untouched. This desk was always kept in the study, and the Doctor gave an involuntary glance in the direction in which it stood.
It was a very handsome piece of furniture, ponderous, like the Doctor himself; a magnificent construction of shining walnut-wood and dark green morocco, with a recess for the Doctor’s knees, and on either side of this recess two rows of drawers, with brass handles and Bramah locks. The centre drawer on the left hand side contained an inner and secret drawer, and towards the lock of this drawer the Doctor looked, for this contained his new chequebook. The walnut-wood round the lock of this centre drawer seemed a little chipped; the Doctor thought he might as well get up and look at it; and a nearer examination showed the brass handle to be slightly twisted, as if a powerful hand had wrenched it out of shape. The Doctor, taking hold of the handle to pull it straight, drew the drawer out, and scattered its contents upon the floor; also the contents of the inner drawer, and amongst them the chequebook, half-a-dozen leaves of which had been torn out.
“So,” said the Doctor, “this man, whom I trusted, has broken open my desk, and finding no money, he has taken blank cheques, in the hope of being able to forge my name. To think that I did not know this man!”
To think that you did not, Doctor; to think, too, that you do not even now, perhaps, know half this man may have been capable of.
But it was time for action, not reflection; so the Doctor hurried to the railway station, and telegraphed to his bankers in London to stop any cheques presented in his signature, and to have the person presenting such cheques immediately arrested. From the railway station he hurried, in an undignified perspiration, to the police-office, to institute a search for the missing Jabez, and then returned home, striking terror into the hearts of his household, ay, even to the soul of his daughter, the lovely Jane, who took an extra dose of sal-volatile, and went to bed to read “Lady Clarinda, or the Heartbreaks of Belgravia.”
With the deepening twilight came a telegraphic message from the bank to say that cheques for divers sums had been presented and cashed by different people in the course of the day. On the heels of this message came another from the police-station, announcing that a body had been found upon Halford Heath answering to the description of the missing man.
The bewildered schoolmaster, hastening to the station, recognises, at a glance, the features of his late assistant. The contents of the dead man’s pocket, the empty bottle with the too significant label, are shown him. No, some other hand than the usher’s must have broken open the desk in the study, and the unfortunate young man’s reputation had been involved in a strange coincidence. But the motive for his rash act? That is explained by a most affecting letter in the dead man’s hand, which is found in his desk. It is addressed to the Doctor, expresses heartfelt gratitude for that worthy gentleman’s past kindnesses, and hints darkly at a hopeless attachment to his daughter, which renders the writer’s existence a burden too heavy for him to bear. For the rest, Jabez North has passed a threshold, over which the boldest and most inquisitive scarcely care to follow him. So he takes his own little mystery with him into the land of the great mystery.
There is, of course, an inquest, at which two different chemists, who sold laudanum to Jabez North on the night before his disappearance, give
