“Well,” said Charley, “you have great powers: telegraphy and a cordon of spies, I have no doubt. All you require is something to set the mechanism at work, and I tell you frankly I am ready to supply that something liberally.”
“You would not consider those two notes ill spent for a little certain information, I suppose, sir?”
“No, nor double!” said Charley hastily.
“Good,” said Mr Whittrick; and rising, he took a whistle from the mouth of a speaking-tube in the wall, whispered a few words, and then applied his ear.
The answer came in half a minute; and then he gave some other order, replugged the tube, and sitting down, made some remark touching the present ministry.
“But I am keeping you,” said Charley, who took the remark as an intimation that he might go. “Tell me when I may come again?” he said, rising.
“Stop a bit—stop a bit, Mr Vining: I never like doing things in a hurry. Let’s economise time; and we can now you are here,” said Mr Whittrick. “It may save my sending to Long’s Hotel, and wasting time, and men, and cab-hire, and perhaps not then to find you. I shall have a reply directly to a question I have asked. And, besides, you have entirely omitted to give me the young lady’s age and name.—Ah, Smith, that will do,” he said, as a clerk entered the room with a sheet of paper.
The clerk left the room; and then, after running through the manuscript note, Mr Whittrick took out a double eyeglass, rubbed it leisurely, and then fixed it by its spring upon the bridge of his nose.
“You’d be surprised, Mr Vining,” he said, “what a deal of difficulty I have to get clerks who write a plain legible hand. I’m a terrible scrawler myself; but then my writing has to keep up with my thoughts, and has to struggle hard, with the certainty of failure always before it. But my clerks are well paid to do nothing else but copy; and really at times, either from hurry or carelessness, their stuff is almost undecipherable. But let me see; I think I have managed this, though.”
“Is that anything relating to my search?” said Charley excitedly.