Rodney took a slip of paper and a pencil from his pocket. “If you will write down the name of the partner or clerk who is attending at the office and the address, and that of the caretaker of your flat, I will go and send off reply-paid telegrams to them asking for information as to your husband’s whereabouts and I will also reply to Mr. Bradford. It is just possible that Purcell may have gone home after all.”
“It’s very unlikely,” said Margaret. “The flat is shut up, and he would surely have written. Still, we may as well make sure, if you will be so kind. But won’t you have your breakfast first?”
“We’d better waste no time,” he answered; and, pocketing the paper, strode away on his errand.
Little was said until he returned, and even then the breakfast proceeded in a gloomy silence that contrasted strangely with the usual vivacity of the gatherings around that hospitable table. A feeling of tense expectation pervaded the party and a vivid sense of impending disaster. Dreary efforts were made to keep some kind of conversation going, but the talk was colourless and disjointed with long and awkward pauses.
Varney especially was wrapped in deep meditation. Outwardly he preserved an appearance of sympathetic anxiety, but inwardly he was conscious of a strange, rather agreeable excitement, almost of elation. When he looked at Margaret’s troubled face he felt a pang of regret, of contrition; but principally he was sensible of a feeling of power, of knowledge. He sat apart, as it were, godlike, omniscient. He knew all the facts that were hidden from the others. The past lay clear before him to the smallest detail; the involved present was as an open book which he read with ease; and he could even peer confidently into the future.
And these men and the woman before him, and those others afar off; the men at the office, the caretaker, Penfield, the lawyer, and Bradford at his inn in Norfolk; what were they but so many puppets, moving feverishly hither and thither as he, the unseen master-spirit, directed them by a pull at the strings? It was he who had wound them up and set them going, and here he sat, motionless and quiet, watching them do his bidding. He was reminded of an occasion when he had been permitted for a short time to steer a five-thousand-ton steamer. What a sense of power it had given him to watch the stupendous consequences of his own trifling movements! A touch of the little wheel, the movement of a spoke or two to right or left, and what a commotion followed! How the steam gear had clanked with furious haste to obey and the great ship had presently swerved round, responsive to the pressure of his fingers. What a wonderful thing it had been! There was that colossal structure with its enormous burden of merchandise, its teeming population sweating in the stokehold or sleeping in the dark forecastle; its unconscious passengers chatting on the decks, reading, writing or playing cards in saloon or smoking-room; and he had it all in the grasp of one hand, had moved it and turned it about with the mere touch of a finger.
And so it was now. The magical pressure of his finger on the trigger, a few turns of a rope, the hoisting of an iron weight; and behold! the whole course of a human life—probably of several human lives—was changed utterly.
It was a tremendous thought.
In a little over an hour the replies to Rodney’s discreetly worded inquiries had come in. Mr. Purcell had not been home nor had he been heard of at the office. Mr. Penfield had been enquiring as to his whereabouts and so had Mr. Bradford. That was all. And what it amounted to was that Daniel Purcell had disappeared.
“Can’t you remember exactly what Dan said about going to Falmouth, Mr. Varney?” Margaret asked.