The Heart of a Mystery

by T. W. Speight

Edward sighed involuntarily. If John had but known the truth, what would he not have thought and said! After a little further conversation the two men parted, with renewed expressions of good-will.

It was with a confluence of emotions which he would have found it impossible to analyze that John Brancker left home for the Bank. The familiar streets seemed as fresh and strange to him as if his feet had not trodden their pavements for years. On his way he met more than one friend who stopped and shook hands with him, and would fain have detained him, had he not been in a hurry to keep his appointment; others there were who greeted him with a smile and a cheery "Good-morning;" while others again--such as merely knew him by sight--stared him hard in the face as they drew near, and then turned to stare again when he had passed.

On reaching the Bank he avoided the general office, and going straight to the door of Mr. Avison's room, he knocked. A sigh that was half a sob caught his breath as he passed the unforgotten door of Mr. Hazeldine's room. What had not he gone through since he set eyes on it last!

A voice, which he recognized as Mr. Avison's, bade him enter, and he went in.

The Banker was a tall chin, grizzled man, with a natural stoop of the shoulders, a high, narrow forehead, features pinched by chronic ill-health, cold and somewhat glassy-looking eyes, a long upper lip, and a hard yet querulous-looking mouth. He was an able financier, and loved his profession; and it was only in obedience to his doctor's positive orders that he had torn himself away from it even for a time. He was a man who prided himself on being strictly just in his dealings with others; but your very just men are liable to forget that there is another goddess called Mercy, who is twin-sister to her at whose shrine they bend the knee. This was a fact which Mr. Avison either did not know, or else failed to recognize. Without being himself aware of it, he was what is commonly called a "hard man." For the ordinary weaknesses and foibles of his fellows he had nothing but a sort of cold contempt. Temptations such as those which are supposed to follow in the train of riches passed him by and left him unmoved. There were many points of resemblance, both mental and ethical, between Mr. Avison and Edward Hazeldine.

Although John Brancker had been acquitted by a jury of his countrymen, the banker felt far from satisfied in his own mind that John, without being the actual criminal, was not, in some way or other, privy to the crime. What fortified him in this opinion was the conviction, of which he could not rid himself, that the combined robbery and murder could only have been perpetrated by someone, or with the aid and connivance of someone, who had an intimate knowledge of the interior economy of the Bank. But even with such a conviction strong in his mind, there would have been no reason why, in his thoughts, he should have connected John Brancker with the crime, rather than any other member of his staff, had it not been for those other links of circumstantial evidence which made the case as against him seem so black, while failing to cast a shadow of suspicion on anyone else. By right, both of position and length of service, John Brancker ought, in the ordinary course of events, to have succeeded to Mr. Hazeldine's post; but with such a disquieting suspicion holding possession of his mind, and refusing to be dislodged, Mr. Avison felt that it was altogether out of the question for him to induct John into the onerous duties of managing-clerk. If only at his trial he had been able to disprove, or otherwise explain away, those damaging items of evidence which, when considered as a whole, made up such a black indictment against him, why, in that case he, Mr. Avison, would have been the first man in the world to do him justice. As the case stood, however----.

"Take a seat, Mr. Brancker," said Mr. Avison, indicating a chair on the other side of the table, facing his own. "Of course, I need scarcely tell you how heartily glad I am that the jury, by their verdict, have exonerated you from all share or participation in the murder of our poor friend Hazeldine, and--and in the robbery which formed not the least mysterious feature of the case." Then Mr. Avison paused to cough. With that ugly suspicion lurking in the background, had he any right, he asked himself, to congratulate Brancker on the result of the trial? Would it not have been much more satisfactory if the criminal had been tracked down and convicted, even though he should have been proved to be the man now sitting opposite him? But it was not an opportune moment for putting casuistical questions to himself.

"After, however, having taken all the circumstances of the affair into consideration, which I have done most carefully," he resumed, "it has seemed to me, Mr. Brancker, that you would be much more comfortable, in time to come, and more at your ease in every way, if a situation were found for you elsewhere, where you would be altogether removed from the painful associations connected with your late sphere of labor and its surroundings, which cannot fail to cling to your memory as long as you live. In view of all this, I have much pleasure in informing you that I have been able to obtain for you a situation in a Bank in the West of England in which my half-cousin, Mr. Pencathlow, is a chief partner. Your new position will be somewhat more of a subordinate one than the one you have held with us, but with your industry and ability, you cannot fail to rise, and that rapidly. The salary, too, will be rather less than the one you have been in receipt of for some years past, but I am given to understand that----"

"Pardon me, Mr. Avison," said John, with an unwonted break in his voice, as he bent forward and laid a hand heavily on the table, "but does all this mean that you are anxious to dispense with my services?"

"I have not said so, Brancker, and I think you have no right to draw any such inference," responded the Banker, with a slight flushing of his sallow cheeks. "What I have done has been out of pure consideration for you and your interests."