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A young and wizened-looking clerk was already at work in the outer room. "I will see no one this morning, Maunders," said Mr. Jarvice as he pressed through. "Very well, sir. There are a good number of letters," replied the clerk. "They must wait," said Mr. Jarvice, and entering his private room he shut the door.
He sat with his elbows on the arms of his chair and his hands folded beneath his chin, quite still, but with a queer look of alertness upon his whole person. "Yes, I see," said Mr. Hine, as he turned the proposal over in his mind. "Do you agree?" asked Jarvice. "Yes," said Walter Hine. "Very well," said Jarvice, all his old briskness returning.
"This interview is concluded," he said. "There's the door." "I owe it to a friend, Captain Barstow," Hine continued, in desperation. "A thousand pounds. He has written for it. He says that debts of honor between gentlemen " But he got no further, for Mr. Jarvice broke in upon his faltering explanations with a snarl of contempt. "Barstow! You poor little innocent.
Such was Sylvia's reward for engaging in a struggle which she loathed for the salvation of Walter Hine. She was jubilantly claimed by him as his little girl in a money-lender's office. Mr. Jarvice swore aloud. "Who is she?" he asked, sternly. A faint sense of shame came over Walter Hine.
Jarvice was not an impressionable man, but his hands grew cold while he imagined Garratt Skinner watching the development of his little scheme the tour abroad with the pleasant companion, the things which were to happen on the tour watching and waiting until the fitting moment had come, when all was over, for him to step in and demand the price of his silence and hold Mr.
"But ask for Mr. Driver. Tell him the whole proposal frankly, and ask his advice." "Driver?" said Hine, fingering the envelope. "Hadn't I ought to see one of the partners?" Mr. Jarvice smiled. "You have a business head, Mr. Hine, that's very clear. I'll let you into a secret. Mr. Driver is rather like yourself something of a rebel, Mr. Hine.
Walter Hine was troubled with doubts of quite another kind. "But you come in somewhere," he said, bluntly. "On'y I'm hanged if I see where." "Of course I come in, my young friend," replied Jarvice, frankly. "I or my executors. For we may have to wait a long time. I propose that you execute in my favor a post-obit on your uncle's life, giving me well, we may have to wait a long time.
Then he rang for his clerk and bade him post it, but the voice he used was one which the clerk did not know, so that he pushed his head forward and peered through the shadows to make sure that it was his master who spoke. Two days afterward Garratt Skinner paid a long visit to Mr. Jarvice, and that some agreement was reached between the two men shortly became evident.
Never was there a letter more innocent in its appearance than that which Jarvice wrote in his inner office on that summer afternoon. Yet even at the last he hesitated whether he should seal it up or no. The sun went down, shadows touched with long cool fingers the burning streets; shadows entered into that little inner office of Mr. Jarvice. But still he sat undecided at his desk.
There had been trouble in his regiment, some years before, in which the chief figures had been a subaltern and a money-lender. Jarvice was the name of the money-lender an unusual name. Just such a man would be likely to be Garratt Skinner's confederate and backer. Chayne ran over the story in his mind again, by this new light. It certainly strengthened the argument that the Mr.
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