"A claim for what?" asked Sir Simon. But Mr. Trace did not answer at once.
"Past salary," he presently said, rousing himself out of a reverie. "I had a great deal of trouble with him. The follow stuck to me like a leech. He claimed a hundred pounds. I would have given it to him willingly, if I'd had it, to be rid of him. Three several times did he tell me he had written over to you."
"But why should he write to me?"
"I conclude for assistance," replied Mr. Trace after another pause. "I know he said he did write, and it never occurred to me to doubt him. He knew of the money you had kindly sent me in answer to my appeal, and possibly thought he might make one on his own score. He was a great rogue."
"I think it possible that he was," returned Sir Simon; somewhat significantly to Mr. Trace's ear, who had applied the epithet in more of a general sense than a particular one. "Did it ever occur to you, Robert, to suspect that Hopper might have been the guilty man at Liverpool? Hopper, and not Paradyne."
"No," cried Mr. Trace in an accent of surprise not mistakable.
"That sharp young son of Paradyne's thought it at the time," observed Sir Simon, who was speaking in accordance with what had been related to him by Mr. Loftus in Boulogne, touching the conversation with George Paradyne. "I don't cast suspicion on the man, mind. I have no cause to do so."
"Nor has anybody else," quietly returned Mr. Trace, taking off his spectacles to wipe them. "A clerk could not have played the game for an hour; I should have found it out at once. Not but that Hopper was villain enough for it."
"Where is he now?"
"Dead."