“The governor did say something about Mr. Thompson going to the Bank with him,” Spencer went on. “I wonder now if Mr. Bechcombe went out by the private door, and Mr. Thompson and he met in the passage and they went off to the Bank together.”
“I don't know,” John Walls said slowly. “It is a funny sort of thing anyway. I tell you what, Spencer, I shall go round and knock at the private door.”
“What's the good of that?” Spencer objected sensibly. “If he's out it will make no difference. And if he is in and won't answer at one door he won't at the other.”
“Well, anyway, I shall try,” John Walls persisted. His rather florid face was several degrees paler than usual as he went through the clerks' office. Man and boy, all his working life had been spent in the Bechcombes' office, and he had become through long years of association personally attached to Luke Bechcombe. Within the last few minutes, though there seemed no tangible ground for it, he had become oppressed by a strange feeling, a prevision of some evil, a certainty that all was not well with his chief.
The private door into Mr. Bechcombe's office opened into a passage at right angles with the door by which clients were admitted to the waiting-rooms and to the clerks' offices.
John Walls knocked first tentatively, then louder, still without the slightest response.
By this time he had been joined by Spencer, who seemed to have caught the infection of the elder man's pallor. He looked at the keyhole.
“Of course the governor has gone out. But I wonder whether the key is in its place?”
He stooped and somewhat gingerly applied his eye to the hole. Then he jerked his head up with an inaudible exclamation.
“What—what do you see?” Walls questioned with unconscious impatience. Then as he gazed at the bent back of his junior that queer foreboding of his grew stronger.