The Captain suggested calling in a detective, but Mr. Northcourt dissuaded him from pursuing this course of action, at any rate, for the present, inasmuch as he failed to see proof that there had been foul play in the matter. For, if Makepeace had had any hand, directly or indirectly, in removing the letter from the safe, why was he so anxious and ready to restore it to its rightful owner? However, he promised the Captain that he would lose no opportunity of trying to discover a clue to the mystery, and told him that, if anything came to his knowledge at all bearing upon what had happened, he would not fail to communicate with him immediately.
[CHAPTER VII]
A WALK THROUGH BORROWDALE
A FEW days later, and during the first week of the new year, Captain Fortescue was once more to be seen at the large railway station in Sheffield. He was doing what he had never done in the whole course of his life before; he was taking a third-class ticket. He was a poor man now, and he felt that he must act as one.
It was a new experience for him to be obliged to pull himself up at every turn when he was on the point of spending little sums of money. Instead of buying, as before, several books and papers at the stall, he contented himself with a copy of one paper only; instead of ordering a luncheon basket, he was carrying in his pocket a small packet of sandwiches which old Elkington had carefully wrapped up for him that morning; instead of coming to the station in a cab, he had made use of a public conveyance.
All this was new and strange to him, and yet he did not mind it in the least; he had endured the hard life in the war without a murmur, and the cessation of these little luxuries was to him a very trivial matter; but he did feel a pang of regret when he had to give the porter a small coin instead of his former generous tip, and when he slipped a penny into the box of the blind man at the station gate, instead of the shilling which he had usually given him when he passed by. He must be just before he was generous, he said to himself.
When the train started, Kenneth Fortescue was soon engrossed in his newspaper; he was glad of anything to turn his thoughts from the errand upon which he was going. For he was on his way into Cumberland to fulfil his promise to his father, and to break the intelligence of her heavy loss to poor Mrs. Douglas. He had had some difficulty in finding her address; he remembered that he had been so filled with horror at his father's disclosure that he had never asked him where she was now living. He had hunted through the old man's papers in vain; he had discovered her address in York, but his father had intimated that she was not there at the present time, and he failed to find any recent address.
However, the old butler, on being questioned, told him that he had several times addressed letters for his master to Mrs. Douglas, and that he could therefore quite distinctly remember her address. He wrote it carefully on a piece of paper, and Captain Fortescue took it from his waistcoat pocket and looked at it more than once during the journey. In the old man's trembling handwriting, he read these words—
"Mrs. Douglas, Fernbank, Rosthwaite,
"nr. Keswick."
Kenneth, much as he wished to get this dreaded visit over, had postponed it until after the new year. He knew that he was the bearer of bad tidings, and, with his usual thoughtfulness for others, he was unwilling that the evil news should come as a cloud across their happiness at Christmas and the New Year.