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Horbury left his house at a quarter to eight on Saturday evening and has not been heard of since. No more, Neale. And now," he concluded, with a bow to the Earl, "your lordship will excuse my partner and myself if we return to a singularly unpleasant task." Lord Ellersdeane and Neale left the bank-house and walked towards the police-station.
Underneath all these ancient structures were queer nooks and corners, secret passages and stairs, hiding-places, cellarings going far beneath the gardens at the backs of the houses: Neale, as a boy, had made many an exploration in them, especially beneath the bank-house, which was a veritable treasury of concealed stairways and cunningly contrived doors in the black oak of the panellings.
As Lord Ellersdeane there knows being, as his lordship is, a member of our society the bank-house is so old that underneath it there may be such matters as old wells, old drains. Now, supposing Horbury had discovered some way under the present house, some secret passage or something, and that he went down into it on Sunday eh?
As soon as he walked out of the door of the house in which he lodged he saw his two fellow-clerks, Shirley and Patten, standing on the steps of the hall by which entrance was joined to the bank and to the bank-house. They stood there looking about them. Now they looked towards Finkleway a narrow street which led to the railway station at the far end of the town.
He stood in the outer hall trying to make up his mind about something. He wanted to speak to Betty Fosdyke to talk to her. She had evidently not recognized him when she came so suddenly into the dining-room of the bank-house. But why should she, he asked himself? they had only met once, when both were children, and she had no doubt forgotten his very existence. Still
My memory is not quite as good as it was, but I have a recollection that when I was a boy, well over seventy years ago I am, as your lordship is aware, nearer ninety than eighty there were hiding-places discovered in the bank-house at the time Matthew Chestermarke, grandfather of the present Gabriel, had it altered: in fact, I am quite sure I was taken by my father to see them.
Batterley suggests, we'll have to examine that bank-house. It's all nonsense allowing the Chestermarkes to have their own way about everything! It's time we examined Horbury's effects." Starmidge turned to Betty. "Did you succeed in getting in there, Miss Fosdyke?" he asked. "No!" replied Betty. "Mr. Joseph Chestermarke absolutely refused me admittance, and his uncle told me to go to a solicitor."
We read the story of our yesterdays as it unfolds itself in the current chronicle; the ascent to the bank-house, the descent to the mad-house, and, over the glittering paraphernalia that follows to the tomb, we reflect upon the money-zealot's progress; the dizzy height, the dazzling array, the craze for more and more and more; then the temptation and fall, millions gone, honor gone, reason gone the innocent and the gentle, with the guilty, dragged through the mire of the prison, and the court and we draw back aghast.
Horbury's disappearance, and of the loss of your lordship's jewels, and he says that an explanation of the whole thing may be got if we search the bank-house." "Thoroughly!" said Batterley, with a warning shake of his big head. "Thoroughly thoroughly, Mr. Polke! No use just walking through the rooms, and seeing what any housemaid would see the thing must be done properly.
Polke's compliments, and would he be so good as to come to the bank-house and help us a bit? he'll know what I mean. Bring him back with you." The constable went away, and Polke, after rubbing one of his mutton-chop whiskers for awhile with an air of great abstraction, returned to the study. There Mr.
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