They were both reading the clause, heads together, when Mr. Paul was heard speaking in haste. “Chandler! Tom Chandler! Come here directly”—and Tom turned and went at once.
“Is Hanborough there?” cried Mr. Paul.
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell him to come in also; no time to lose.”
Mr. Paul wanted them to witness his signature to a deed which had to go off by the evening post. That done, he detained them for a minute upon some other matter; after which, Hanborough left the room. Chandler turned to follow him.
“Bring the letters in as soon as they come,” said Mr. Paul. “There may be one from Burnaby.”
“Oh, they have come,” replied Tom; and he went into the other room and brought the letters to the lawyer.
It was this which Tom Chandler now related to his master and to Mr. Preen. By dint of exercising his own memory and referring to his day-book, Mr. Paul was enabled to say that the letters that past afternoon were four in number, and to state from whom they came. There was no letter amongst them from Mr. Preen; none at all from Duck Brook. So there it was: the letter seemed to have mysteriously vanished; either out of the post bag despatched by Mrs. Sym, or else after its arrival at Islip. The latter was of course the more probable; since, as Dame Sym had herself remarked, once a letter was shut up in the bag, there it must remain; it could not vanish from it.
But, assuming this to be the case, how and where had it vanished? From the Islip post-office? Or from the postman’s hands when carrying it out for delivery? Or from Mr. Paul’s front room?
They were yet speaking when Dale the postman walked in. He came to say that he had been exercising his mind upon the afternoons of the past week and could now distinguish Wednesday from the others. He recalled it by remembering that it was the afternoon of the accident in the street, when a tax-cart was overturned and the driver had broken his arm; and he could positively say that he had that afternoon delivered the letters to Mr. Chandler himself.