“Well, bless my soul!” he said; “I cannot make out what all this means. There is a mystery somewhere. Why won’t Leslie Gilroy confess the truth? Well, if I don’t get to the bottom of this thing my name’s not Charles Parker. I believe—yes, I cannot help believing—that somehow the girl is innocent; but appearances are much against her.”
He opened a certain drawer in a cabinet which stood behind his desk, took from it a letter, and began to read. The letter ran as follows:
“Dear Mr. Parker:
“I am in great trouble and perplexity. I have got into a terrible scrape here, and only you can get me out again. I dare not confide in mother; you alone can help me. Will you give my friend, Annie Colchester, sixty pounds for me, and will you give it in notes and gold? I will never do what I have done again if only you will trust and forgive me this time. I cannot imagine how I have been led into these terrible debts; but I can only say I will never incur another. Please give the money to Annie at once, for the matter is most urgent.
“Your affectionate friend,
“Leslie Gilroy.”
“There,” said the good merchant to himself, “there is her own letter—her own statement in black and white. She got into a scrape, went in debt, and wanted me to give her money. Well, if it were only debt—the ordinary girlish wish to possess herself of fal-lals and finery—why, I could forgive the child. There’s a look on her face which makes it hard for any man to withstand her; but the thing is this: she has not made a full statement; she did not want money for ordinary debts; she had another reason, and she would not divulge it. Why did she write to me as she did? What can be up? ’Pon my word! I feel quite frightened. There’s that mother of hers, the best of good women, and that noble young fellow her brother, and the rest of ’em; plenty of character, plenty of go, plenty of spirit, nothing mean or underhand about one of them; and there’s Leslie, whom all the rest look up to as the straightest of the straight and the best of the best, and who has about the most open face I ever looked into; and yet, if this letter is true, she is a sly, cunning little rogue, as sly and cunning as can be. I pity the mother, that I do: but there, is the girl guilty? Isn’t there some explanation of this extraordinary mystery?”
Mr. Parker looked again at the letter, then he folded it up and was about to put it back into his cabinet when he saw the paper on which Leslie had scribbled her request to him that day, lying on the floor. He stooped and picked it up, and the next moment his red face had turned
pale, for Leslie’s scribble, carelessly written as it was, seemed to him to be written in a decidedly different hand from that of the letter. A moment later, all eagerness, quite trembling with excitement, the shrewd man of business was comparing both writings. There was a strong resemblance; most of the capitals were formed in the same way, but there was also a distinct difference.
With pursed-up lips and a wise shake of his head, Mr. Parker slipped the letter and the scrap of paper into his pocket, and left the office. On his way out he spoke to his head clerk:
“Hudson, don’t expect me back to-day. I shall return at my usual hour to-morrow.”
“Something has happened to annoy the chief very considerably,” thought the clerk to himself as Mr. Parker’s back disappeared through the doorway.
A moment later the great tea-merchant found himself in the street, the next he had hailed a hansom, and given the address of Mrs. Gilroy’s house in West Kensington.