"Mr. Penhallow," Mr. Gridley began at once, "I have come on a very grave matter, in which you are interested as well as myself, and I wish to lay the whole of it before you as explicitly as I can, so that we may settle this night before I go what is to be done. I am afraid the good standing of your partner, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, is concerned in the matter. Would it be a surprise to you, if he had carried his acuteness in some particular case like the one I am to mention beyond the prescribed limits?"
The question was put so diplomatically that there was no chance for an indignant denial of the possibility of Mr. Bradshaw's being involved in any discreditable transaction.
"It is possible," he answered, "that Bradshaw's keen wits may have betrayed him into sharper practice than I should altogether approve in any business we carried on together. He is a very knowing young man, but I can't think he is foolish enough, to say nothing of his honesty, to make any false step of the kind you seem to hint. I think he might on occasion go pretty near the line, but I don't believe he would cross it."
"Permit me a few questions, Mr. Penhallow. You settled the estate of the late Malachi Withers, did you not?"
"Mr. Wibird and myself settled it together."
"Have you received any papers from any of the family since the settlement of the estate?"
"Let me see. Yes; a roll of old plans of the Withers Place, and so forth,—not of much use, but labelled and kept. An old trunk with letters and account-books, some of them in Dutch,—mere curiosities. A year ago or more, I remember that Silence sent me over some papers she had found in an odd corner,—the old man hid things like a magpie. I looked over most of them,—trumpery not worth keeping,—old leases and so forth."
"Do you recollect giving some of them to Mr. Bradshaw to look over?"
"Now I come to think of it, I believe I did; but he reported to me, if I remember right, that they amounted to nothing."
"If any of those papers were of importance, should you think your junior partner ought to keep them from your knowledge?"