Mrs. Malton was scrubbing when they entered. She staggered up to her weary feet, bobbed and apologized.
“Mrs. Malton,” said her employer abruptly, “you are a good woman. Now listen to me,” as she would have protested, “I’m leaving. I’m paying my rent now. At the office. This morning.” Mrs. Malton’s eyes filled with tears. “The van will come for this furniture to-morrow. Be here to see that it is loaded. It’s going down to Dorset. No, don’t interrupt. Here is five pounds. Are you married?”
Mrs. Malton said that she was a widow. He asked her if she had children. There were two living: one in the Army, and the other married down Hackney way.
“Mrs. Malton, if you are well advised you will arrange your affairs at home, and take the train from Waterloo Station to a place called Patcham. If you are well advised you will take the train to-day week at ten in the morning, and at Patcham you shall be met; and there you shall be shown my house and certain duties attached to it. And if it suits you, you can stay.”
Mrs. Malton made no terms. Nor did it occur to her that virtue could be rewarded in this world. For in her station of life reward is unknown, as is in higher stations virtue. She simply thought that God, in Whom she believed (for she had been brought up in a very old-fashioned way on the lonely edge of an Essex march) had sent Mr. Petre with a gift, and in her philosophy that was not reward but good luck.
Her employer turned to go, and then suddenly remembered.
“Mrs. Malton, when you get to Patcham, you must not ask for me as Mr. Petre. You must ask for me as Mr. Blagden. I am Mr. Blagden now. Good-by.”
Mrs. Malton, returning to her task, mused on the common madness of the wealthy, and humbly thanked Heaven for her good fortune.
Peter Blagden took Thompson with him as he settled for the rent, gave the order for the moving of the furniture, and the address, went back to his rooms; sent Martin down to meet the furniture at Harrington, bade him be back on Thursday without fail, and then disappeared into that happy inn of his, with Thompson attendant. By ten of the Friday he was back in London; by eleven precisely, after a heavy struggle with his nerves, he was at the door of the Bank, in a good roomy motor, hired from Rimington’s over the river.
A box of steel, burnished, about two feet and a half by two, lined with some dull bronze metal, and having a curious set of three fastenings of a sort he had never seen before, was awaiting him. There was a swing handle at either end. A man could lift it easily enough. The printed securities it contained, each batch just like the last, were handed out with the reverent care which a superstitious age might have shown to the body of a saint; they were in three thin flat bundles of 100 each, tied and docketed; and twenty over.