'Yes, that will be a good way.' Captain Hampton wrote a line or two on a piece of paper. It was headed—A Reward.—The cabman who took a man with several boxes from——'What is the address, Jacob, where the man lodged?'
'Twelve, Hawthorn Street.'
'From Hawthorn Street, Islington, on the evening of the 15th July, can earn one pound by calling upon Captain Hampton, 150 Jermyn Street.'
'That will do it,' the boy said, as the advertisement was read out.
'Well, I will get a hundred of these struck off at once, then you can set to work.'
Having gone to a printer's and ordered the handbills, which were to be ready in an hour, Captain Hampton went with the boy and bought his clothes.
'Now, Jacob, you will go back to the printer's in an hour's time and wait until you get the handbills. Here are five shillings to pay for them; then take a 'bus at the Circus for Islington and distribute the handbills at all the cab stands in the neighbourhood. I shan't want you any more to-day, but if I am at home when you come in you can let me know how you have got on. Be in by half-past nine always. You had better go on at your night school; you have nothing to do after dark and there is nowhere for you to sit here. There is no reason why you should not go on working there as usual.'
'All right, Captain; if you says so in course I will go, but I hates it worse nor poison.'
On his return Captain Hampton read the paper and wrote some letters, and was just starting to go out to lunch when Mr. Hawtrey was shown in.
'I am very glad I have caught you, Ned; I meant to tell you I would come round after seeing Levine. This business will worry me into my grave. This morning Dorothy declared that the thing must be fought out. Her objection to going into court has quite vanished. She says that it is the only chance there is of getting to the bottom of things, and that if that is not done we must go away to China or Siberia, or some out-of-the-way place where no one will know her. Then I went to Levine. Danvers called for me and took me there. I wrote to him last night and asked him to do so. Nothing could have been more polite than Levine's manner—I should say he would be a charming fellow at a dinner table. I went into the whole thing with him, he took notes while I was talking, and asked a question now and then; of course, I told him our last notion, that there must be somebody about exactly like Dorothy in face and figure. "And dress, too?" he asked, with a little sort of emphasis. "Yes, and dress too," I said. When I had done he simply said that it was a singular case, which I could have told him well enough, and that he should like to take a little time to think it over. His present idea was that I had best pay the money. I told him that I did not care a rap about the money, but that if this thing got about, the fact that I had compromised it would be altogether ruinous to my daughter. He said, "I think you can rely upon it that Gilliat will preserve an absolute silence. I can assure you that jewellers get to know a great many curious family histories, and it is part of their business to be discreet." "Yes," I said, "but don't you see if, as I believe, this fellow Truscott got up the first persecution purely to revenge what he believes is a grievance against me—if that is so, and if he has any connection with this second business, you may be sure that somehow or other he will get something nasty about it put in one of these gutter journals." That silenced him, and he again said he would think it over. When I got up to go he asked Danvers to wait a few minutes, as he took it that if the matter went into court he would, as a matter of course, be retained on our side. So I came away by myself and drove here. The worst of it is, I believe that the man thinks that Dorothy did it. Of course, as he does not know her he is not altogether to be blamed, but it is deucedly annoying to have to do with a man who evidently thinks your daughter is a thief.'