Jervis produced the necessary tools, and Mr. Tracy wrote the little note.
"I have told him how attentive you have been," he said to the valet, "and perhaps you will allow me——"
Another guinea changed hands, and Jervis was profuse in his expressions of gratitude; none the less he seemed a shade uneasy.
"Of course, anything that I have said," he began, but Mr. Tracy cut him short.
"Absolutely between ourselves, I assure you; ab-so-lutely between ourselves," and, with a sagacious nod of the head, the old fellow began to take his departure. At the door he hesitated a moment, for a card tray caught his eye. "Some of these young men are terrible sticklers for etiquette," he said, scrutinising it closely; "perhaps I ought to add my card to these," and while fumbling in his pocket for his card-case he contrived to get a glimpse of Mrs. Sinclair's card, which Jervis had brought up the day before the tragedy. He had not time to see the number of the house, but The Vale, South Kensington, was quite enough for his immediate needs, and as he turned into Piccadilly Circus he gave utterance to a little sound, half grunt, half chuckle, expressive of the utmost satisfaction.
"It's cost me two guineas and a wholly unnecessary suit of clothes, but I shall be very much astonished if it doesn't prove a good investment. Still, if it doesn't, the estate can bear it. 'Pon my word, if my name weren't Tracy, I should think it must be Slater!"
Well pleased with himself, he climbed on to the top of a Putney omnibus, and employed the time occupied in the journey to South Kensington Station in arranging his mental notes. He had already heard enough to verify the impression gleaned from Ralph that Melville was an inveterate gambler, and that was quite enough to explain Sir Geoffrey's hitherto incomprehensible action in disinheriting his younger nephew.
"It only shows how even an experienced old lawyer like myself can be taken in by a plausible young rascal," he thought with much humility. "I dare say he is a waster, who tired Sir Geoffrey out. It will be interesting to try to ascertain presently how much he did have out of the old man in the last year or two. Three hundred and fifty pounds in six weeks isn't bad to begin with, and I don't think there can be any doubt of his having had that."
Assuming Ralph's story to be accurate in every particular, there yet remained one point which puzzled Mr. Tracy. If Sir Geoffrey had resented Melville's fraud in the matter of the alleged loan to his brother so hotly as to be within an ace of prosecuting him for getting money under false pretences, why had he relented so suddenly and given unquestioning hospitality to an extravagant gambler and swindler whom, even prior to the last fraud, he had formally discarded and renounced? What was the method which Melville's ingenuity had devised to overcome Sir Geoffrey's expressed determination? At present, Mr. Tracy could not conjecture, but already he knew enough to make him want to know more, and in journeying, as he was now doing, to see what manner of place The Vale, South Kensington, might be, he was acting on reason rather than impulse, albeit the reason was hard to define precisely.
At the station he descended from the omnibus and walked into the Fulham Road, finding it necessary to ask more than once where The Vale was to be found; it is, indeed, not an easy spot to discover, although the ground occupied by the several houses and their gardens is so considerable. Just as he had lighted upon the archway forming the entrance to the place, an empty carriage emerged, and Mr. Tracy asked the coachman if he knew which was Mrs. Sinclair's house.