The Channings: A Story

by Mrs. Henry Wood

CHAPTER XIX. — THE LOSS.

When money is lost out of an office, suspicion very frequently falls upon one or more of that office’s employés. Mr. Galloway’s doubts, however, had not yet extended to those employed in his. The letter containing the bank-note had been despatched to Mr. Robert Galloway, at Ventnor, on the Friday. On the Sunday morning, while Mr. Galloway was at breakfast, a short answer was delivered to him from his cousin:—“Your letter has reached me, but not the note; you must have omitted to enclose it,” was the news it contained relative to that particular point. Mr. Galloway knew that he had enclosed the note; there was little doubt that both his clerks could testify that he had done so, for it was done in their presence. How could it have been taken out again? Had it been abstracted while the letter was still in his office?—or on its way to the post?—or in its transmission to Ventnor? “If in the office,” argued Mr. Galloway, “it must have been done before I sealed it; if afterwards, that seal must have been tampered with, probably broken. I’ll drop a note to Robert, and ask the question.” He rose from his breakfast and penned a line to Southampton, where, as he had reason to believe, Mr. Robert Galloway would be on the Monday. It was not Mr. Galloway’s habit to write letters on a Sunday, but he considered that the present occasion justified the act. “I certainly enclosed the note in my letter,” he wrote. “Send me word instantly whether the seal had been tampered with. I stamped it with my private seal.” Mr. Robert Galloway received this on the Monday morning. He did not wait for the post, but forwarded the reply by telegraph—“The seal had not been broken. Will send you back the envelope by first post.” This was the despatch which you saw Mr. Galloway receive in his office.

He went back into his private room, carrying the despatch with him, and there he sat down to think. From the very first, he had not believed the fraud to lie with the post-office—for this reason: had the note been taken out by one of its servants, the letter would almost certainly not have reached its destination; it would have disappeared with the note. He had cast a doubt upon whether Arthur Channing had posted the letters himself. Arthur assured him that he had done so, and Mr. Galloway believed him; the information that the seal of the letter was unbroken was now a further confirmation, had he needed it. At least, it confirmed that the letter had not been opened after it left the office. Mr. Galloway perfectly remembered fastening down the letter. He probably would have sealed it then, but for the commotion that arose at the same moment in the street caused by Mad Nance. There could be no shadow of doubt, so far as Mr. Galloway could see, and so far as he believed, that the abstraction had taken place between the time of his fastening down the envelope and of his sealing it. Who had done it?

“I’ll lay a guinea I know how it happened!” he exclaimed to himself. “Channing was at college—I must have given him permission in a soft moment to take that organ, or I should never have done it, quitting the office daily!—and, Yorke, in his indolent carelessness, must have got gossiping outside, leaving, it is hard to say who, in the office! This comes of poor Jenkins’s fall!”

Mr. Galloway rang his bell. It was answered by Jenkins. “Send Mr. Arthur Channing in,” said Mr. Galloway.

Arthur entered, in obedience. Mr. Galloway signed to him to close the door, and then spoke.

“This is an awkward business, Channing.”

“Very awkward, indeed, sir,” replied Arthur, at no loss to understand what Mr. Galloway alluded to. “I do not see that it was possible for the note to have been taken from the letter, except in its transmission through the post.”

“I tell you it was taken from it before it left this office,” tartly returned Mr. Galloway. “I have my reasons for the assertion. Did you see me put the bank-note into the letter?”