The Talleyrand Maxim Part 29

Pratt gave his old employer a look--confidential and significant.

"Explains why he took that money out of your desk," he said. "You remember--forty odd pounds. He'd use some of that for his pa.s.sage-money.

America eh? Now--I suppose he's vanished for good, then--it's not very likely he'll ever be heard of from across there."

Eldrick laughed--meaningly, of set purpose.

"We don't know that he's gone there," he observed. "He mightn't get beyond Liverpool, you know. Anyhow, we're going to make a very good search for him here in Barford, first. We've nothing but Murgatroyd's word for his having set out for Liverpool."

"What's he wanted for?" asked Pratt as unconcernedly as possible. "Been up to something?"

"No," answered Eldrick, as he turned on his heel. "A relation has left him twenty thousand pounds. That's what he's wanted for--and why he must be found--or his death proved."

He gave Pratt another quick glance and went off--to return to the hotel and Byner, to whom he at once gave a faithful account of what had just taken place.

"And he didn't turn a hair," he remarked. "Cool as a cuc.u.mber, all through! If your theory is correct, Pratt's a cleverer hand than I ever took him for--and I've always said he was clever."

"Didn't show anything when you mentioned Murgatroyd?" asked Byner.

"Not a shred of a thing!" replied Eldrick.

"Nor when you spoke of the twenty thousand pounds?"

"No more than what you might call polite and interested surprise!"

Byner laughed, threw away the end of a cigar, and rose out of his lounging posture.

"Now, Mr. Eldrick," he said, leaning close to the solicitor, "between ourselves, do you know what I'm going to do--next--which means at once?"

"No," replied Eldrick.

"The police!" whispered Byner. "That's my next move. Just now! Within a few minutes. So--will you give me a couple of notes--one to the princ.i.p.al man here--chief constable, or police superintendent, or whatever he is; and another to the best detective there is here--in your opinion. They'll save me a lot of trouble."

"Of course--if you wish it," answered Eldrick. "But you don't mean to say you're going to have Pratt arrested--on what you know up to now?"

"Not at all!" replied Byner. "Much too soon! All I want is--detective help of the strictly professional kind. No--we'll give Mr. Pratt a little more rope yet--for another four-and-twenty-hours, say. But--it'll come! Now, who is the best local detective--a quiet, steady fellow who knows how to do his work un.o.btrusively?"

"Prydale's the man!" said Eldrick "Detective-Sergeant Prydale--I've had reason to employ him, more than once. I'll give you a note to him, and one to Superintendent Waterson."

He went over to a writing-table and scribbled a few lines on half-sheets of notepaper which he enclosed in envelopes and handed to Byner.

"I don't know what line you're taking," he said, "nor where it's going to end--exactly. But I do know this--Pratt never turned a hair when I let out all that to him."

But if Eldrick went away from his old clerk's fine new offices thinking that Pratt was quite unperturbed and unmoved by the news he had just acquired, he was utterly mistaken. Pratt was very much perturbed, deeply moved, not a little frightened. He had so schooled himself to keep a straight and ever blank expression of countenance in any sudden change of events that he had shown nothing to Eldrick--but he was none the less upset by the solicitor's last announcement. Twenty thousand pounds was lying to be picked up by Parrawhite--or by Parrawhite's next-of-kin!

What an unhappy turn of fortune! For the next-of-kin would never rest until either Parrawhite came to light, or it was satisfactorily established that he was dead--and if search begun to be made in Barford, where might not that search end? Unmoved?--cool?--if Eldrick had turned back, he would have found that Pratt had suddenly given way to a fit of nerves.

But that soon pa.s.sed, 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.

Half-way 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.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE BETTER HALF

Under the warming influence of two gla.s.ses of rum and water, and lulled by Pratt's a.s.surance 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 appet.i.te 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sage 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.