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"I could," Tallente admitted, "but why? I have nothing to say to him. I can't conceive what he could have to say to me. There are always pressmen loitering about Downing Street, who would place the wrong construction on my visit. You saw all the rubbish they wrote because he and I talked together for a quarter of an hour at Mrs. Van Fosdyke's?"
In one hand he carried a long staff; the other clutched an ancient folio; altogether he was something very much out of the common, and Neale, catching sight of him, nudged Betty Fosdyke's elbow and pointed ahead. "One of the sights of Scarnham!" he whispered. "Old Batterley, the antiquary. Never seen with a hat, and never without that cloak, his staff, and a book under his arm.
"Miss Fosdyke's way, my lord so far as I could gather from ten minutes' talk with her is to tell people what to do," answered Polke drily. "She doesn't ask she commands! We're to find her uncle quick. At once. No pains to be spared. Money no object. A hundred pounds, spot cash, to the first man, woman, child, who brings her the least fragment of news of him. That's Miss Fosdyke's method.
"Know nothing of him there the old man and old woman said so, at any rate," answered Polke. "He seems to have cleared out. And now here's fresh bother, though I don't know if it's anything to do with this. Mr. Neale's missing never been seen since six yesterday evening. Miss Fosdyke's anxious " "He was to see me at nine last night," said Betty. "No one has seen him.
Miss Fosdyke's cheeks flushed a little and she held out her hand. "Is it is it Wallie Neale?" she asked. "But I saw you in the bank-house and you didn't speak to me!" "You didn't speak to me," retorted Neale, smiling. "Didn't know you," she answered. "Heavens! how you've grown! But come upstairs. Mrs. Depledge dinner for two, mind. Mr. Neale will dine with me."
"It's all the more surprising," remarked the housekeeper, "because of his going off for his holiday tomorrow. And Miss Fosdyke's coming down from London today to go with him." Neale pricked his ears. Miss Fosdyke was the manager's niece a young lady whom Neale remembered as a mere slip of a girl that he had met years before and never seen since. "I didn't know that," he remarked. "Neither did Mr.
Miss Betty Fosdyke, attired in her smartest, was just entering the portals of Chestermarke's Bank. Mrs. Carswell herself opened the door of the bank-house in response to Miss Fosdyke's ring. She started a little at sight of the visitor, and her eyes glanced involuntarily and, as it seemed to Betty, with something of uneasiness, at the side-door which led into the Chestermarkes' private parlour.
"Fosdyke's Entire represents a lot of pennies. We'll just have a word or two with her." Betty, looking out of her window on the Market-Place, had seen the two men leave Chestermarke's Bank, and was waiting eagerly for their coming. She listened intently to Polke's account of the interview with the partners, and her cheeks glowed indignantly as he brought it to an end. "Shameful!" she exclaimed.
Polke narrated the story of the various happenings since the granting of the search-warrant, and the Earl's face grew graver and graver. "Mr. Polke," he said at last, "I do not like what I am hearing about all this. It's a most suspicious thing that the housekeeper should disappear immediately after Miss Fosdyke's first call this morning, and that she should have had some conversation with Mr.
And this being a wonderfully fine morning, he had formed certain sly designs of luring Betty away into the country, and having the whole day with her. A furtive glance at her, however, showed him that Miss Fosdyke's thoughts and ideas just then were entirely business-like, but a happy inspiration suggested to him that business and pleasure might be combined.
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