The girl grew deadly white. “Oh, don’t do that—don’t send us to prison!” she implored, clasping her hands together. “We haven’t touched a penny of Miss Monroe’s money yet, and we don’t want to touch a penny, if you’ll only let us off! Oh, pray, pray, pray be merciful!”
Loveday looked at Mr. Hawke.
He rose from his chair. “I think the best thing you can do,” he said, “will be to get back home to your mother at Cork as quickly as possible, and advise her never to play such a risky game again. Have you any money in your purse? No—well then here’s some for you, and lose no time in getting home. It will be best for Miss Monroe—Mrs. Danvers I mean—to come to my house and claim her own property there. At any rate, there it will remain until she does so.”
As the girl, with incoherent expressions of gratitude, left the room, he turned to Loveday.
“I should like to have consulted Mrs. Hawke before arranging matters in this way,” he said a little hesitatingly; “but still, I don’t see that I could have done otherwise.”
“I feel sure Mrs. Hawke will approve what you have done when she hears all the circumstance of the case,” said Loveday.
“And,” continued the old clergyman, “when I write to Sir George, as, of course, I must immediately, I shall advise him to make the best of a bad bargain, now that the thing is done. ‘Past cure should be past care;’ eh, Miss Brooke? And, think! what a narrow escape my nephew, Jack, has had!”
The Ghost of Fountain Lane
“Will you be good enough to tell me how you procured my address?” said Miss Brooke, a little irritably. “I left strict orders that it was to be given to no one.”
“I only obtained it with great difficulty from Mr. Dyer; had, in fact, to telegraph three times before I could get it,” answered Mr. Clampe, the individual thus addressed. “I’m sure I’m awfully sorry to break into your holiday in this fashion, but—but pardon me if I say that it seems to be one in little more than name.” Here he glanced meaningly at the newspapers, memoranda and books of reference with which the table at which Loveday sat was strewn.
She gave a little sigh.
“I suppose you are right,” she answered; “it is a holiday in little more than name. I verily believe that we hard workers, after a time, lose our capacity for holiday-keeping. I thought I was pining for a week of perfect laziness and sea-breezes, and so I locked up my desk and fled. No sooner, however, do I find myself in full view of that magnificent sea-and-sky picture than I shut my eyes to it, fasten them instead on the daily papers and set my brains to work, con amore, on a ridiculous case that is never likely to come into my hands.”
That “magnificent sea-and-sky picture” was one framed by the windows of a room on the fifth floor of the Métropole, at Brighton, whither Loveday, overtaxed in mind and body, had fled for a brief respite from hard work. Here Inspector Clampe, of the Local District Constabulary, had found her out, in order to press the claims of what seemed to him an important case upon her. He was a neat, dapper-looking man, of about fifty, with a manner less brusque and businesslike than that of most men in his profession.
“Oh pray drop the ridiculous case,” he said earnestly, “and set to work, ‘con amore,’ upon another far from ridiculous, and most interesting.”
“I’m not sure that it would interest me one quarter so much as the ridiculous one.”
“Don’t be sure till you’ve heard the particulars. Listen to this.” Here the inspector took a newspaper-cutting from his pocketbook and read aloud as follows:
“ ‘A cheque, the property of the Rev. Charles Turner, Vicar of East Downes, has been stolen under somewhat peculiar circumstances. It appears that the Rev. gentleman was suddenly called from home by the death of a relative, and thinking he might possibly be away some little time, he left with his wife four blank cheques, signed, for her to fill in as required. They were made payable to self or bearer, and were drawn on the West Sussex Bank. Mrs. Turner, when first questioned on the matter, stated that as soon as her husband had departed, she locked up these cheques in her writing desk. She subsequently, however, corrected this statement, and admitted having left them on the table while she went into the garden to cut some flowers. In all, she was absent, she says, about ten minutes. When she came in from cutting her flowers, she immediately put the cheques away. She had not counted them on receiving them from her husband, and when, as she put them into her Davenport, she saw there were only three, she concluded that that was the number he had left with her. The loss of the cheque was not discovered until her husband’s return, about a week later on. As soon as he was aware of the fact, he telegraphed to the West Sussex Bank to stop payment, only, however, to make the unpleasant discovery that the cheque, filled in to the amount of six hundred pounds, had been presented and cashed (in gold) two days previously. The clerk who cashed it took no particular notice of the person presenting it, except that he was of gentlemanly appearance, and declares himself to be quite incapable of identifying him. The largeness of the amount raised no suspicion in the mind of the clerk, as Mr. Turner is a man of good means, and since his marriage, about
