"Can't you? It appears to me easily explainable. The supposition that Mr. Dundyke took it out with him that morning must be a mistake. Mr. Hardcastle probably borrowed it from him at breakfast."
"I am quite sure, sir, he did not. I saw my husband put the pencil in its place in the pocket-book, and return the pocket-book to his pocket."
"Then he must have taken it out again when outside the room, and perhaps dropped it. Mr. Hardcastle may have picked it up, and carried it up to the chamber and forgotten it. There are many ways of accounting for that; but it is a pity the pencil was not found before Mr. Hardcastle's departure."
Mrs. Dundyke opened her lips to ask how then could her husband have written the pencilled note afterwards—that he never carried but that one; but she was weary with reiterating the same thing over and over again; and, after all, what Mr. Knowles said was possible. He might have dropped the pencil afterwards; Mr. Hardcastle might have picked it up and carried it to his room; and it certainly might have happened, it was not impossible, that her husband, contrary to custom, had a second pencil in his pocket.
"Shall we send the twenty-pound order to Hardcastle's house and get it cashed for you?" Mr. Knowles asked, when he was leaving. "I fancy that young Hardcastle is not very steady. He is a great deal on the continent, and I have heard he gambles."
Mrs. Dundyke thanked him and handed him the order. "Perhaps you would let the clerk inquire for Mr. Hardcastle's address at the same time, sir?" she said; "and whether he is still at Genoa. I should like to write and ask how he did find the pencil."
But when the order on Hardcastle and Co. was presented—as it was that same day—the house in Leadenhall-street declined to pay it, disclaiming all knowledge of the drawer. Upon the clerk's saying that it had been given by the nephew of Mr. Hardcastle, senior, to Mrs. Dundyke, in liquidation of money borrowed at Geneva, the firm shrugged their shoulders, and recommended the clerk to apply personally to that gentleman, at his residence at Kensington. This information was conveyed to Mrs. Dundyke, and she at once said she should like to go herself.
She went up to Mr. Hardcastle's the next day, and the old gentleman received her very courteously. He was a venerable man with white hair, and was walking up and down the room, which opened to a conservatory. Mrs. Dundyke did not state any particulars at first; she merely said that she had an order on the house in Leadenhall-street for twenty pounds, money borrowed by his nephew; that the house had declined to pay it, and had referred it to him.
"Borrowed money?" he repeated, in a sharp tone, as if the words visibly annoyed him.