“I cannot stay—I am going to be married!”
“So I heard,” said the man, lifting his hat and bowing with a grin to Matt. “Glad to see you, miss. How do you do? But the fact is, Mr. Monk, my business won’t keep. Be good enough to step this way.” Full of some unaccountable foreboding, inspired partly by the stranger’s suave, yet determined, manner, partly by the reappearance of the caravan, Monk alighted, and followed the other across the grass to the close vicinity of the house on wheels. The little elderly man followed, and the man who had first spoken went through the ceremony of introduction.
“This is Mr. Monk, sir. Mr. Monk, this gentleman is Mr. Lightwood, of the firm of Lightwood and Lightwood, solicitors, Chester.”
“And you—who the devil are you?” demanded Monk with his old savagery.
“My name is Marshall, Christian name, John, though my friends call me Jack,” answered the other with airy impudence. “John Marshall, governor, of the detective force.”
Monk now went pale indeed. But recovering himself he cried, “I know neither of you. I warned you that I was in haste. What do you want? Out with it!”
The little man now took up the conversation, speaking in a prim business-like voice, and occasionally referring to a large note-book which he carried.
“Mr. Monk, you are, I am informed, the sole heir male of the late Colonel Monk, your cousin by the father’s side, who was supposed to have died in India in the year 1862.”
“Yes, that’s true. What then?”
“On the report of his death, his name being included in an official list of officers killed and wounded in action, and it being understood that he died without lawful issue, you laid claim to the demesne of Monkshurst, in Cheshire, and that of the same name in Anglesea. Your claim was recognized, and in 1864 you took possession.”