“Sure and certain, sir. And I think it must have reached Mr. Paul, if I may say so. He may have overlooked it; perhaps let it fall into some part of his desk, unopened. Why, some years ago, there was a great fuss made about a letter which was sent to Captain Falkner, when he was living at the Hall. He came here one day, complaining to me that a letter sent to him by post, which had money in it, had never been delivered. The trouble there was over that lost letter, sir, I couldn’t tell you. The Captain accused the post-office in London, for it was London it came from, of never having forwarded it; then he accused me of not sending it out with the delivery. After all, it was himself who had mislaid the letter. He had somehow let it fall unnoticed into a deep drawer of his writing-table when it was handed to him with other letters at the morning’s delivery; and there it lay all snug till found, hid away amid a mass of papers. What do you think of that, sir?”
Mr. Preen did not say.
“In all the years I have kept this post-office I can’t call to memory one single letter being lost in the transit,” she ran on, warming in her own cause. “Why, how could it, sir? Once a letter’s sent away safe in the bag, there it must be; it can’t fall out of it. Your letter was so sent away by me, Mr. Preen, and where should it be if Mr. Paul hasn’t got it? Please tell him, sir, from me, that I’d respectfully suggest he should look well about his desk and places.”
Evidently it was not at this side the letter had been lost—if lost it was. Mr. Preen wished the post-mistress good morning, and walked away. Her suggestion had impressed him; he began to think it very likely indeed that Paul had overlooked the letter on its arrival, and would find it about his desk, or table, or some other receptacle for papers.
He drove over to Islip in the gig in the afternoon, taking Oliver with him. Islip reached, he left Oliver in the gig, to wait at the door or drive slowly about as he pleased, while he went into the office to, as he expressed it, “have it out with Paul.”
Not at once, however, could he do that, for Mr. Paul was out; but he saw Tom Chandler.
The offices, situated in the heart of Islip, and not a stone’s throw from the offices of Valentine Chandler, consisted of three rooms, all on the ground floor. The clerks’ room was in front, its windows (painted white, so that no one could see in or out) faced the street; Mr. Paul’s room lay behind it and looked on to a garden. There was also a small slip of a room, not much better than a passage, into which Mr. Paul could take clients whose business was very private indeed. Tom Chandler, about to be made a partner, had a desk in Mr. Paul’s room as well as one in the clerks’ room. It was at the latter that he usually sat.
On this afternoon he was seated at his desk in Mr. Paul’s room when Gervais Preen entered. Tom received him with a smile and a hand-shake, and gave him a chair.
“I’ve come about that letter, Mr. Chandler,” began the visitor; “my letter with the ten-pound bank-note in it, which Mr. Paul denies having received.”
“I assure you no such letter was received by us——”