George could not laugh, but he tried to smile. Nothing could lend the subject of his uncle's suspense and anxiety even a collaterally amusing effect for him, and this statement puzzled him.
"What on earth can I have to do with the matter?" he said. "The man must be travelling very far indeed out of the right tracks. No one in the world, as it is pretty plain, can be more ignorant of Felton's affairs than I am. He must be on a totally wrong scent; and if he has blundered in this way, it is only waste of time and money to employ him."
"Well," said Cunningham, a little disappointed that George did not enjoy the keenness of the capital joke as much as he did, "you must settle all that with him yourself, and find out from him, if you can--and, by Jove, I doubt it--how Paul Ward has got mixed up in your cousin's affairs (if he has got mixed up in them--and, mind, I don't feel sure even of that--he certainly did not say so) without your being a party to the transaction. I just gave Tatlow your address in Piccadilly, and told him you'd be there in a day or two."
"What did he say?" asked George, whose sense of mystification was increasing.
"Said he should call every day until you arrived,--no doubt he has been there to-day, or you'll find him there when you get home,--and disappeared, having got all the information I chose to give him, but not what he wanted; which is, I take it, the correct thing to do to a detective who observes the laws of discretion too absolutely."
Cunningham was laughing his jolly laugh, and George was wondering what Tatlow meant, when the entrance of a third individual on office business interrupted the friends' talk. George took leave, and went down-stairs. Arrived at the door, he stopped, ran up the first flight of dirty stairs again, and turned into a small room, dimly lighted by a dirty skylight, to the right of the first landing. In this sanctuary, strong smelling of dust, size, and printer's ink, lay files, bound and unbound, of the Mercury. A heavy volume was open on the clumsy thick-legged table which filled up the centre of the room. It contained the files of the newspaper for the first half of the current year.
"Let me see," said George, "she was not quite sure about the 22nd; but it must have been about that date."
Then he turned the leaves, and scanned the columns of advertisements, until he found in one the warning which Clare Carruthers had sent to Paul Ward. His eyes filled with tears as he read it. He called up one of the office people, and had a copy of the paper of that date looked for, out of which he carefully cut the advertisement, and consigned it to the keeping of the pocketbook which he always carried about him. He placed the little slip of printed paper in the same compartment in which Clare Carruthers's unconscious gift had so long lain hidden. As George threw open the doors of the hansom in which he had been driven from the Mercury office to Piccadilly, Jim Swain came to the wheel, and, touching his tousled head, asked if he might speak to him.
"Certainly," said George, getting out; "any message from Mr. Routh?"
"No, sir," said Jim, "it's not; it's somethin' very partic'lar, as I as 'ad to say to you this long time. It ain't rightly about myself--and--"