The Channings: A Story

by Mrs. Henry Wood

He wrote a line rapidly in pencil, folded, called in his man-servant, and despatched him with it to the police-station. The station was very near Mr. Galloway’s; on the other side of the cathedral, halfway between that edifice and the town-hall. In ten minutes after the servant had left the house, Mr. Butterby was on his road to it.

Mr. Butterby puzzled Helstonleigh. He was not an inspector, he was not a sergeant, he was not a common officer, and he was never seen in official dress. Who was Mr. Butterby? Helstonleigh wondered. That he had a great deal to do with the police, was one of their staff, and received his pay, was certain; but, what his standing might be, and what his peculiar line of duty, they could not tell. Sometimes he was absent from Helstonleigh for months at a time, probably puzzling other towns. Mr. Galloway would have told you he was a detective; but perhaps Mr. Galloway’s grounds for the assertion existed only in his own opinion. For convenience-sake we will call him a detective; remembering, however, that we have no authority for the term.

Mr. Butterby came forward, a spare, pale man, of middle height, his eyes deeply set, and his nose turned up to the skies. He was of silent habit; probably, of a silent nature.

Mr. Galloway recited the circumstances of his loss. The detective sat near him, his hands on his knees, his head bent, his eyes cast upon the floor. He did not interrupt the story by a single word. When it was ended, he took up the envelope, and examined it in equal silence; examined it with ridiculous minuteness, Mr. Galloway thought, for he poked, and peered, and touched it everywhere. He held it up to the light, he studied the postmarks, he gazed at the seal through an odd-looking little glass that he took from his waistcoat pocket, he particularly criticised the folds, he drew his fingers along its edges, he actually sniffed it—all in silence, and with an impassive countenance.

“Have you the number of the note?” was his first question.

“No,” said Mr. Galloway.

He looked up at this. The thought may have struck him, that, not to take the number of a bank-note, sent by post, betrayed some carelessness for a man of business. Mr. Galloway, at least, inferred this, and answered the look.

“Of course I am in the habit of taking their numbers; I don’t know that I ever did such a thing before, as send a bank-note away without it. I had an appointment, as I tell you, at the other end of the town for a quarter to three; it was of importance; and, when I heard the college strike out the three-quarters—the very hour I ought to have been there—I hurriedly put the note into the folds of the letter, without waiting to take its number. It was not that I forgot to do so, but that I could not spare the time.”

“Have you any means of ascertaining the number, by tracing the note back to whence it may have come into your possession?” was the next question.

Mr. Galloway was obliged to confess that he had none. “Bank-notes are so frequently paid me from different quarters,” he remarked. “Yesterday, for instance, a farmer, renting under the Dean and Chapter, came in, and paid me his half-year’s rent. Another, holding the lease of a public-house in the town, renewed two lives which had dropped in. It was Beard, of the Barley Mow. Now, both these men paid in notes, tens and fives, and they now lie together in my cash drawer; but I could not tell you which particular notes came from each man—no, not if you paid me the worth of the whole to do it. Neither could I tell whence I had the note which I put into the letter.”