“Sit down yonder and write the receipt,” said the lawyer, shortly. “You know how to word it.”
So Derrick wrote the receipt and went off with the ten pounds. And Gervais Preen said a few words of real thanks to Mr. Paul in a low tone, when he heard of it.
On Tuesday morning, the thirteenth of July, exactly four weeks to the day since the bank-note left Mr. Preen’s hands, he had news of it. The Old Bank at Worcester wrote to him to say that the missing note had been paid in the previous day, Monday, by a well-known firm of linen-drapers in High Street. Upon which the bank made inquiry of this firm as to whence they received the note, and the answer, readily given, was that they had had it from a neighbour opposite—the silversmith. The silversmith, questioned in his turn, replied with equal readiness that it had been given him in payment of a purchase by young Mr. Todhetley.
Preen, hardly believing his eyes, went off with all speed to Islip, and laid the letter before Lawyer Paul.
“What does it all mean?” he asked. “How can young Todhetley have had the note in his possession? I am going on to Crabb Cot to show the Squire the letter.”
“Stop, stop,” said the far-seeing lawyer, “it won’t do to take this letter to Todhetley. Let us consider, first of all, how we stand. There must be some mistake. The bank and the silversmith have muddled matters between them; they may have put young Todhetley’s name into it through seeing his father’s on the bank-note. I will write at once to Worcester and get it privately inquired into. You had better leave it altogether in my hands, Preen, for the present.” A proposal Preen was glad to agree to.
Lawyer Paul wrote to another lawyer in Worcester with whom he was on friendly terms, Mr. Corles; stating the particulars of the case. That gentleman lost no time in the matter; he made the inquiries himself, and speedily wrote back to Islip.
There had been no mistake, as Mr. Paul had surmised. The linen-drapers, a long-established and respectable firm, as Paul knew, had paid the note into the Old Bank, with other monies, in the ordinary course of business; and the firm repeated to Mr. Corles that they had received it from their neighbour, the silversmith.
The silversmith himself was from home at this time; he was staying at Malvern for his health, going to Worcester on the market days only, Saturdays and Wednesdays, when the shop expected to be busy. He had one shopman only, a Mr. Stephenson, who took charge in his master’s absence. Stephenson assured Mr. Corles that he had most positively taken the note from Squire Todhetley’s son. Young Mr. Todhetley had gone into the shop, purchased some trifling article, giving the note in payment, and received the change in gold. Upon referring to his day-book, Stephenson found that the purchase was made and the note paid to him during the morning of Thursday, the seventeenth of June.
When this communication from Mr. Corles reached Islip, it very much astonished old Paul. “Absurd!” he exclaimed, flinging it upon his table when he had read it; then he took it up and read it again.