“I will make a note of the address, at any rate,” said Thorndyke, and, having done so, he asked: “As to your husband’s banking account; do you happen to know if any considerable sum has been drawn out quite lately, or if any cheques have been presented since he disappeared?”
“His current account is intact,” she replied. “I have an account at the same bank and I saw the manager a couple of days ago. Of course, he was not very expansive, but he did tell me that no unusual amounts had been withdrawn and that no cheque has been presented since the 21st of June, when Dan drew a cheque for me. It is really rather odd, especially as the balance is somewhat above the average. Don’t you think so?”
“I do,” he answered. “It suggests that your husband’s disappearance was unpremeditated and that extreme precautions are being taken to conceal his present whereabouts. But the mystery is what he is living on if he took no considerable sum with him and has drawn no cheques since. However, we had better finish with the general questions. You don’t appear to know much about your husband’s present affairs; what do you know of his past?”
“Not a great deal; and I can think of nothing that throws any light on his extraordinary conduct in taking himself off as he has done. I met him at Maidstone about six years ago. He was then employed in the office of a large paper mill—Whichboy’s mill, I think it was—as a clerk or accountant. He had then recently come down from Cambridge and seemed in rather low water. After a time, he left Whichboy’s and went to London, and very shortly his circumstances began to improve in a remarkable way. It was then that he began his present business, which I know included the making of loans because he lent my father money; in fact it was through these transactions and his visits on business to my father that the intimacy grew which resulted finally in our marriage. He then seemed, as he always has, to be a keen business man, very attentive to the main chance, not at all sentimental in his dealings, and, as I have said, not overscrupulous as to his methods.”
Thorndyke nodded gravely but made no comment. The association of loans to the father with marriage with an evidently not infatuated daughter seemed to throw a sufficiently suggestive light on Daniel Purcell’s methods.
“And as to his personal habits and tastes?” he asked.
“He has always been reasonably temperate, though he likes good living and has a robust appetite; and he really has no vices beyond a rather unpleasant temper and excessive keenness on money. His principal interest is in boating, yachting and fishing; he does not bet or gamble, and his relations with women have always seemed to be perfectly correct.”
“You spoke of his exceptional intimacy with Mr. Varney. Is the friendship of long standing?”
“Yes, quite. They were school-fellows, they were at Cambridge together and they both came down about the same time and for a similar reason. Both their fathers got suddenly into financial difficulties. Dan’s father was a stockbroker, and he failed suddenly, either through some unlucky speculations or through the default of a client. Mr. Varney’s father was a clergyman, and he, too, lost all his money, and at about the same time. I have always suspected that there was some connexion between the two failures, but I have never heard that there actually was. Dan is as close as an oyster, and, of course, Mr. Varney has never referred to the affair.”
“Mr. Varney is not associated with your husband in business?”