"There's a fine to-do at Smith and Walker's, sir, this morning. I just met their head-clerk as I was coming here."
I sprang up in bed as if I had been shot, the old fancies and dread of the previous night returning with full force.
"Smith and Walker's!" I cried; "what is the matter there?"
"Well, sir, I couldn't quite make out the particulars, he was in such a hurry; but old Mr. Thorneley's been found dead in his room this morning, and they suspect there has been foul play. Mr. Griffiths--that's the clerk--was going off to Scotland Yard. It's a terrible thing, an't it, sir, to be hurried off so quick? and none of the best of lives too, if one may believe what folks say. It's shocked you, sir, I see; and so it did me, for I thought of Mr. Atherton and what a blow like it would be to him."
Whiter and whiter I felt my face was getting, and a feeling of dead sickness seized me. The man whom I had seen and spoken with but such few short hours since lay dead! the secret of whose life I possessed, knowing what I now knew of him, and what had been left untold hanging like a black shadow of doubt around me; he was gone from whence there was no returning,--he was standing face to face with his Creator and his Judge!
By this time Hardy had left the room, and I proceeded hastily to dress myself, feeling that more was coming than I wotted of then, and that the fearful storm which was gathering would quickly burst.
Scarcely was I dressed when I heard a loud double-knock at the office-door, and directly after Hardy's voice demanding admittance. I opened my door.
"Sir, there is a police-officer who wishes to see you immediately."
I went out into the sitting-room. A detective in plain clothes was there; I had known the man in another business formerly.
"What do you want with me, Jones?"