“Seeing no one here, I concluded I was mistaken; and I have never thought of it from that hour to this,” continued the clerk. “No, not even when it came out that a letter had been lost with a bank-note in it.”
Tom nodded his head several times, as much as to say that was when the thief must have come in. “And now, Hanborough, I’ll tell you something in turn,” he went on. “Dale put the letters into my hand that afternoon, as you know; and I laid them on your desk here while showing you that clause in the mortgage deed. Later, when I took up the letters to carry them to Mr. Paul, an idea struck me that the packet felt thinner. It did indeed. I of course supposed it to be only fancy, and let it slip from my mind. I have never thought of it since—as you say by the green door—until this afternoon.”
Michael Hanborough, who had put his spectacles on again, turned them upon his young master, and dropped his voice to a whisper.
“Who is it that—that we may suspect, sir?”
“Say yourself, Hanborough.”
“I’m afraid to say. Is it—MacEveril?”
“It looks like it,” replied Tom, in the same low tone. “But while there are reasons for suspecting him, there are also reasons against it,” he added, after a pause. “MacEveril was in debt, petty little odds and ends of things which he owes about the place and elsewhere; that’s one reason why money would be useful to him. Then his running away looks suspicious; and another reason is that there’s positively no one else to suspect. All that seems to tell against him; but on the other hand, MacEveril, though random and heedless, is a gentleman and has a gentleman’s instincts, and I do not think he would be guilty of such a thing.”
“Well, and I can’t think it, either,” said Michael Hanborough; “despite his faults and his saucy tongue, I liked him. He did not come in again that afternoon till half-past five, I remember. I told him he was late; he answered, laughing, that he had dropped asleep over his tea—though I didn’t believe a word of it.”
“If MacEveril really took the letter, how had he ascertained that it contained money?” mused Tom Chandler. “Hanborough, at present I think this suspicion had better lie entirely between ourselves.”
“Yes, Mr. Chandler, and so do I. Perhaps a few days may bring forth something to confirm or dispel it.”