"Well, I don't think you may. That is to say, my reason for asking it can have nothing to do with yours for replying to it. If you have had no hand in any such payment, there is an end of it, and I need not take up your time by saying anything more on the subject."
"I am not prepared to go that length, Mr. Vavasor,—not altogether to go that length,—ugh—ugh—ugh."
"Then, will you tell me what you have done in the matter?"
"Well,—upon my word, you've taken me a little by surprise. Let me see. Pinkle,—Pinkle." Pinkle was a clerk who sat in an inner room, and Mr. Tombe's effort to call him seemed to be most ineffectual. But Pinkle understood the sound, and came. "Pinkle, didn't we pay some money into Hock and Block's a few weeks since, to the credit of Mr. George Vavasor?"
"Did we, sir?" said Pinkle, who probably knew that his employer was an old fox, and who, perhaps, had caught something of the fox nature himself.
"I think we did. Just look Pinkle;—and, Pinkle,—see the date, and let me know all about it. It's fine bright weather for this time of year, Mr. Vavasor; but these easterly winds!—ugh—ugh—ugh!"
Vavasor found himself sitting for an apparently interminable number of minutes in Mr. Tombe's dingy chamber, and was coughed at, and wheezed at, till he begun to be tired of his position; moreover, when tired, he showed his impatience. "Perhaps you'll let us write you a line when we have looked into the matter?" suggested Mr. Tombe.
"I'd rather know at once," said Vavasor. "I don't suppose it can take you very long to find out whether you have paid money to my account, by order of Mr. Grey. At any rate, I must know before I go away."
"Pinkle, Pinkle!" screamed the old man through his coughing; and again Pinkle came. "Well, Pinkle, was anything of the kind done, or is my memory deceiving me?" Mr. Tombe was, no doubt, lying shamefully, for, of course, he remembered all about it; and, indeed, George Vavasor had learned already quite enough for his own purposes.
"I was going to look," said Pinkle; and Pinkle again went away.