"So am I, Leah, though the mystery attending the transaction is as great as ever; indeed, more so."
It certainly was. They went down again, and I sat musing over the problem. But nothing could I make out of it. One moment I argued that the individual taking it (whomsoever it might be) must have had temporary need of funds, and, the difficulty over, had now restored the money. The next, I wondered whether anyone could have taken the bag inadvertently, and had now discovered it. I locked the bag safely up, wrote a letter to George Coney, and then went out to confide the news to Arthur Lake.
Taking the short cuts and passages that lead from Essex Street to the Temple, as I generally did when bound for Lake's chambers, I was passing onwards, when I found myself called to—or I thought so. Standing still in the shade, leaning against the railings of the Temple Gardens, was a slight man of middle height: and he seemed to say "Charley."
Glancing in doubt, half stopping as I did so, yet thinking I must have been mistaken, I was passing on, when the voice came again.
"Charley!"
I stopped then. And I declare that in the revulsion it brought me you might have knocked me down with a feather; for it was Tom Heriot.
"I was almost sure it was you, Charles," he said in a low voice; "but not quite sure."
I had not often had such a scare as this. My heart, with pain and dismay, beat as if it meant to burst its bonds.
"Can it possibly be you?" I cried. "What brings you here? Why have you come again?"
"Reached London this morning. Came here when dusk set in, thinking I might have the luck to see you or Lake, Charley."