"Aye, but I remember it quite well," said Mr. Pursey, with a confident nod. "I know it was thirty years ago, 'cause it was the Wilchester Assizes at which the Mallows & Chidforth case was tried. Yes—thirty years. Eighteen hundred and eighty-one was the year. Mallows & Chidforth—aye!"
"Famous case that, sir?" asked Stoner. He was almost bursting with excitement by that time, and he took a big gulp of whisky and water to calm himself. "Something special, sir? Murder, eh?"
"No—fraud, embezzlement, defalcation—I forget what the proper legal term 'ud be," replied Mr. Pursey. "But it was a bad case—a real bad 'un. We'd a working men's building society in Wilchester in those days—it's there now for that matter, but under another name—and there were two better-class young workmen, smart fellows, that acted one as secretary and t'other as treasurer to it. They'd full control, those two had, and they were trusted, aye, as if they'd been the Bank of England! And all of a sudden, something came out, and it was found that these two, Mallows, treasurer, Chidforth, secretary, had made away with two thousand pounds of the society's money. Two thousand pounds!"
"Two thousand pounds?" exclaimed Stoner, whose thoughts went like lightning to the half-sheet of foolscap. "You don't say!"
"Yes—well, it might ha' been a pound or two more or less," said the old man, "but two thousand was what they called it. And of course Mallows and Chidforth were prosecuted—and they got two years. Oh, yes, we remember that case very well indeed in Wilchester, don't we, Maria?"
"And good reason!" agreed Mrs. Pursey warmly. "There were a lot of poor people nearly ruined by them bad young men."
"There were!" affirmed Mr. Pursey. "Yes—oh, yes! Aye—I've often wondered what became of 'em—Mallows and Chidforth, I mean. For from the time they got out of prison they've never been heard of in our parts. Not a word!—they disappeared completely. Some say, of course, that they had that money safely planted, and went to it. I don't know. But—off they went."
"Pooh!" said Myler. "That's an easy one. Went off to some colony or other, of course. Common occurrence, father-in-law. Bert, old sport, what say if we rise on our pins and have a hundred at billiards at the Stag and Hunter—good table there."
Stoner followed his friend out of the little house, and once outside took him by the arm.
"Confound the billards, Dave, old man!" he said, almost trembling with suppressed excitement. "Look here!—d'you know a real quiet corner in the Stag where we can have an hour's serious consultation. You do?—then come on, and I'll tell you the most wonderful story you ever heard since your ears were opened!"