“Nevertheless,” Mr. Bonamy resumed in the same even, pitiless tone, “when Mr. Lindo referred to these letters—which he kept, I should add, in a locked cupboard in his library—he found that the first in date, and the most important of them all, had been mutilated.”
The curate’s brow cleared. “What on earth,” he broke out, “has this to do with me, Mr. Bonamy?” And he laughed—a laugh of relief and triumph. The lawyer’s last words had lifted a weight from his heart. They had found a mare’s nest after all.
“Quite so!” the archdeacon chimed in with good-natured fussiness. “What has all this to do with the matter in hand, or with Mr. Clode, Mr. Bonamy? I fail to see.”
“In a moment I will show you,” the lawyer answered. Then he paused, and, taking a letter-case form his pocket, leisurely extracted from it a small piece of paper. “I will first ask Mr. Clode,” he continued, “to tell us if he supplied Mr. Lindo with the names of a firm of Birmingham solicitors.”
“Certainly I did,” replied the curate haughtily.
“And you gave him their address, I think?”
“I did.”
“Perhaps you can tell me, then, whether that is the address you wrote for him,” continued the lawyer smoothly, as he held out the paper for the curate’s inspection.
“It is,” Clode answered at once. “I wrote it for Mr. Lindo, in my own room, and gave it him there. But I fail to see what all this has to do with the point you have raised,” he continued with considerable heat.
“It has just this to do with it, Mr. Clode,” the lawyer answered drily, a twinkle in his eyes—“that this address is written on the reverse side of the very piece of paper which is missing from Mr. Lindo’s letter—the important letter I have described. And I wish to ask you, and I think it will be to your interest to give as clear an answer to the question as possible, how you came into possession of this scrap of paper.”