A pause. Presently Mr. Knowles went on.
"When the letter came from that clergyman—Prattleton, wasn't his name?—saying that Mr. Dundyke was missing, and asking for the particulars of the money we had forwarded to him, we could not understand it. 'Missing!' cried old Mr. Knowles, who happened to have come to Fenchurch-street that day, 'one talks of a child being missing, but not of a man.' And when Mr. Prattleton's second letter came to us, giving some of the facts, I assure you we could with difficulty give credence to them."
"There is one little point I did not know of, sir; the sending to you for a fifty-pound note. My husband told me he was sending for the thirty pounds, but he did not say anything of the other. I cannot think why he sent for it."
Mr. Knowles took out his pocket-book.
"I happen to have Mr. Dundyke's letter, which was preserved quite accidentally, not being a strictly business one. You see, he only asks for the fifty pounds in a postscript, as if it were an afterthought. In fact, he says as much:" and Mrs. Dundyke's eyes filled as she looked on the well-known characters.
"P.S. Upon second thoughts, I doubt whether the 30l. will be enough for me. Be so good as to send me a 50l. note in addition to it; in halves as the other."
"Which accordingly we did," resumed Mr. Knowles, as Mrs. Dundyke returned him the letter. "And that note, you say, has not been traced?"
"No, sir, it has not."
"Well, it is altogether most strange. Of course whoever found the pocket-book (if the supposition that it was picked up on the bank of the lake be correct) may be keeping the fifty-pound note by him, but the probability is that he would have got rid of it at once, as he did the others."
"The most singular point to my mind throughout, sir, is the finding of the pencil-case in Mr. Hardcastle's room," said Mrs. Dundyke. "I can't get over that."