“He might have been carried along by the current further east and got to land there.”
“A naked man, sir—without any clothes! There would soon have been word of such a wonder as that—and somebody sent on for the things. We took all that into consideration.”
“I must go down myself at once,” said the lawyer.
“I sent Gibson, sir, the first thing.”
“What’s Gibson to me?” said Mr. Wedderburn, with a sort of roar of trouble, anger, and misery combined. “I must go myself.”
“There are a number of letters,” said Martin, “that might want answering.”
“Letters! when Bob Dalyell’s lying somewhere dead or dying.”
“Oh, sir,” said Martin, “in the midst of life we are in death. If it’s poor Mr. D’yell—and there’s no reasonable doubt on the subject—he’s dead long, long before now.”
Wedderburn made a dash through the air with his clenched fist, as if he had been knocking down a too sympathetic clerk, and took his hat, and darted away.
“Old Pat’s in one of his grandest tempers,” a young clerk permitted himself to say in Mr. Martin’s hearing, as the door closed with a violent swing behind their employer.