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He knew that Pratt was almost certain to see Eldrick's advertisement in his own name; now he wanted Pratt to see another advertisement of the same nature in another name.
It was this certainty which made Byner appear extraordinarily cool and collected, when next day, about noon, he walked into Eldrick's private room, where Collingwood was at that moment asking the solicitor what was being done. The certainty was now established, and it seemed to Byner that it would have been a queer thing if he had not always had it.
Nine o'clock brought the office-boy; a quarter-past nine brought the clerks; at ten o'clock Eldrick walked in. According to custom, Pratt went into Eldrick's room with the letters, and went through them with him. One of them contained a legal document over which the solicitor frowned a little. "Ask Parrawhite's opinion about that," he said presently, indicating a marked paragraph.
Let him attend to his business, and leave possibilities until they came nearer. "All the same." he mused, as he drew near the town again, "I'm pretty sure I shall come back here next spring I feel like it." He called in at Eldrick's office on his way to the hotel, to take some documents which had been preparing for him.
Nesta Mallathorpe, looking very dignified and almost stately in her mourning, was obviously angry, indignant, and agitated. But Pratt was as cool and as fully at his ease as if he were back in Eldrick's office, receiving the everyday ordinary client. He swept his door open and executed his politest bow and was clever enough to pretend that he saw nothing of his visitor's agitation.
Collingwood looked on in silence while Eldrick turned over the pages of the big book which his partner took down from a shelf. He wondered at Eldrick's apparent and almost eager interest. "Halstead & Byner are not solicitors," announced Eldrick presently. "They must be inquiry agents or something of that sort. Anyway, I'll write to them, Pascoe, at once."
And when he had made a handsome present to the housekeeper, a suitable one to the shop-boy, and paid his grandfather's last debts, he was free to depart a richer man by some five-and-twenty thousand pounds than when he hurried down to Barford in response to Eldrick's telegram. He sat in Eldrick's office one afternoon, winding up his affairs with him.
But he affected not to see anything, and he went on talking rapidly. "Complete change in the arrangements at the last minute," he said. "I've just been writing about it. So as that's off, I think I shall follow Eldrick's advice, and take chambers in Barford for a time, and see how things turn out. I'm going into Barford now, to see Eldrick about all that."
The solicitor hastily drew out the enclosure, glanced it over, and turned sharply to Collingwood with a muttered exclamation. "Good gracious!" he said. "That man Cobcroft was right! There was a duplicate! And here it is!" Mrs. Mallathorpe had come nearer. The sight of the half sheet of foolscap in Eldrick's hands seemed to fascinate her.
Nor had he carried the folded paper in his pocket to Eldrick's when Jabey Naylor went out to post the letter, Antony had placed the folded paper and the American letter together in the book and left them there.
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