“I have no doubt Denny can furnish you with what you want. I will write to him by to-night’s post, and advise you of the result the moment I hear from him.”
Denis Boyd, in view of his promise to Alec Clare, could not help feeling annoyed at the turn the affair had taken; and yet, as he put it to himself, what harm could come of his furnishing Sir Gilbert with the information he asked for? Apparently the only purpose for which the baronet required his son’s address was that he might thereby be enabled to inform him that a certain legacy was awaiting his instructions. Really, when he, Boyd, came to think of it, Alec ought to be very grateful to him, and doubtless would be were he made aware of the circumstances, for having had it in his power to do him such a capital turn.
His brief note to his father was to the effect that young Clare, who passed in the States under the name of “John Alexander,” was at the time the writer met him, residing at Pineapple City, a town on the borders of Lake Michigan, in the State of the same name; and, further, that he was engaged in business there, his partner being an Englishman of the name of Travis.
This note was at once forwarded by Colonel Boyd to Sir Gilbert, who lost no time in taking it in person to Mr. Page.
As it happened, the lawyer about that time had occasion to send a confidential member of his staff to America, to make certain inquiries in the interests of one of his clients; so it was decided that, instead of trusting to the chances of a letter reaching Alec through the medium of the post, the clerk in question, Winch by name, should proceed as far as Pineapple City, seek out “Mr. John Alexander,” and deliver into his hands the communication which would be entrusted to him for that purpose.
The letter referred to was written by Mr. Page, and was read and approved of by Sir Gilbert before being sealed up. It was nothing more than a briefly worded intimation to the effect that two thousand pounds, being the amount of the late Mrs. Fleming’s legacy to her godson, was awaiting his disposal in the hands of the executors at such and such an address. But the baronet had no knowledge of the little private note from the same pen which the lawyer contrived to smuggle into the envelope. In it he reproached Alec for having allowed so long a time to pass without communicating with him, begging him at once to repair the omission, and assuring him that in the writer he had a friend who might always be relied upon to keep a watchful eye over his interests.
Mr. Winch started on his long journey in due course. He would attend, first of all, to that other business which was taking him across the Atlantic, and then make the best of his way to Pineapple City.
Mr. Winch was an undersized, podgy man, with a round full-moon sort of face and cold fish-like eyes of no hue in particular, to which a pair of spectacles lent a still more vacuous expression. He was clean shaven, always dressed in well-worn black, and, wet or fine, was never seen without a serviceable alpaca umbrella. He had been Mr. Page’s confidential clerk for many years, and that gentleman esteemed him highly. Behind that Dutch-clock-like mask of a face was a complex-working brain which delighted in secrets and mysteries, and occasionally went so far as to imagine them where none existed. Although his employer had never told him so—for that was one of the few matters which the lawyer kept to himself—Mr. Winch had not the least doubt in his mind that the John Alexander to whom the letter of which he was the bearer was addressed and the heir of Withington Chase, who had set out on his travels upwards of four years ago and had never returned, were one and the same person. The name alone had been enough to furnish him with the first hint. He seemed to scent a most delightful mystery. Mr. Winch was jubilant, although, to look at him, nobody would have guessed it.
What, then, must have been his feelings—indeed, it is not too much to say that a tear blurred his spectacles—as on the morning of the twenty-first day after his departure from Liverpool he stood in the telegraph office at Pineapple City and wrote out the following cablegram, addressed to Mr. Page:
“J. A. killed. Steamboat explosion—September 18th. Am returning at once.”