"I don't know anything about it, and I don't think the governor does. It was supposed he was an old hanger-on of old Davenport's, since the time Davenport was abroad. Davenport himself, as far as I could find out, never volunteered information about Fahey; and, you know, he wasn't the kind of man you'd care to ask unnecessary questions. He was about the closest man in the county. I never had any business to do with him, but I've kept my ears open."
"He died very rich, I suppose?"--with a laugh. "A friend of mine is already greatly interested in the widow."
"Ah, no wonder! She's a fine woman--the finest woman in these parts. I often saw her. You might do worse than try your luck there yourself, Mr. O'Brien. If he left her the bulk of his fortune she will be very well off. He had no one else in the world but his brother, who is crack-brained, I believe; and the dead man was very rich--made a whole fortune abroad, in various kinds of speculations, both in Europe and America."
"What did he speculate in chiefly?"
"I don't know. All kinds of stocks and shares. They say he had some plan never before adopted, and out of which he made money as fast as he liked, and this plan he never would tell any one. At all events, for more than ten years before he settled down here he had been wandering pretty well over the whole civilized world. Every one who knew of his great business cleverness wondered why he retired before fifty, but he said he had enough for a lifetime, and that his asthma was too bad for him to go on any longer. But somehow it leaked out that he got a great fright about some bank on the Continent in which he had a large sum of money--I think ten thousand pounds--lodged to his credit."
"Do you remember the story, Gorman?"
"I do."
"Well, tell it to me. But, for heaven's sake, first send out the boy and order that man with the tin whistle to go away. Here's sixpence for him."
"Not fond of music! I thought you were." He took the coin, and despatched the boy. "The Bank of England had its own reasons for keeping the thing quiet at the time, and it never came fully before the public, as the criminal was never discovered. Mr. Davenport gave notice to the foreign bank that on a certain day he would require the ten thousand he had lodged there, and that the more Bank of England notes he found in the packet, the better he should be pleased.
"On the day he had named he called and got the money, and that very evening started for London with the cash. This was an unusual mode of proceeding, but most of his ways were unusual, if not odd. On his arrival the Bank declared several of the one hundred pound notes in his packet to be forgeries, and a few tens were also spurious.