"I should like to see those letters, Mr. Smeaton," said Mr. Lindsey.
"Especially the last one."
"They're at my house," answered Smeaton. "I'll bring them down here this afternoon, and show them to you if you'll call in. But now—do you think this man Phillips may have been my father?"
"Well," replied Mr. Lindsey, reflectively, "it's an odd thing that
Phillips, whoever he was, drew five hundred pounds in cash out of the
British Linen Bank at Peebles, and carried it straight away to
Tweedside—where you believe your father came from. It looks as if
Phillips had meant to do something with that cash—to give it to
somebody, you know."
"I read the description of Phillips in the newspapers," remarked Smeaton.
"But, of course, it conveyed nothing to me."
"You've no photograph of your father?" asked Mr. Lindsey.
"No—none—never had," answered Smeaton. "Nor any papers of his—except those bits of letters."
Mr. Lindsey sat in silence for a time, tapping the point of his stick on the floor and staring at the carpet.
"I wish we knew what that man Gilverthwaite was wanting at Berwick and in the district!" he said at last.
"But isn't that evident?" suggested Smeaton. "He was looking in the parish registers. I've a good mind to have a search made in those quarters for particulars of my father."
Mr. Lindsey gave him a sharp look.