Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 5, 2025
Byner next morning with considerable curiosity. And soon after eleven there was shown in to him, a smart, well-dressed, alert-looking young man, who, having introduced himself as Mr. Gerald Byner, immediately plunged into business. "You can tell me something of James Parrawhite, Mr. Eldrick?" he began. "We shall be glad we've been endeavouring to trace him for some months.
But do you know where Parrawhite has lived lodged?" "No!" replied Pratt. "Some of the others may, though!" "Try to find out quickly," continued Eldrick; "Then, make some excuse to go out take papers somewhere, or something and find if he's left his lodgings! I I don't want to set the police on him. He was a decent fellow, once. See what you can make out, Pratt.
I did and I'll do him the credit to say that he earned his money. But in the end, his natural badness broke out. One afternoon I'm careless about some things I left some money lying in this drawer about forty pounds in notes and gold and next morning Parrawhite never came to business. We've never seen or heard of him since." "You mentioned Pratt," said Collingwood.
"Now then!" he said, when they had walked well into the wilderness. "What is it? And no nonsense!" "You'll get no nonsense from me," sneered Parrawhite. "I'm not that sort. This is what I want to say. I was in Eldrick's office last night all the time you were there with old Bartle." This swift answer went straight through Pratt's defences.
Because he's told me all he knows or says he knows already!" The inquiry agent looked keenly at the solicitor for a moment during which they both kept silence. Then Byner smiled. "You said 'or says he knows," he remarked. "Do you think he didn't tell the truth about Parrawhite?" "I should say now it's quite likely he didn't," answered Eldrick.
And then the anger that had been boiling in Pratt ever since the touch on his arm in the dark lane, burst out in activity, and he turned on his assailant, gripped him by the throat before Parrawhite could move, and after choking and shaking him until his teeth rattled and his breath came in jerking sobs, flung him violently against the masses of stone by which they had been standing.
And what on earth could Eldrick want with him, or with news of him? It would be or might be an uncommonly awkward thing for him, Pratt, if a really exhaustive search were made for Parrawhite. For nobody knew better than himself that one little thing leads to another, and but he forbore to follow out what might have been his train of thought.
For the next-of-kin would never rest until either Parrawhite came to light, or it was satisfactorily established that he was dead and if search begun to be made in Barford, where might not that search end? Unmoved? cool? if Eldrick had turned back, he would have found that Pratt had suddenly given way to a fit of nerves. But that soon passed, and Pratt began to think.
"Whew!" he said. "Twenty thousand for Parrawhite! My good sir if that's so, and if, as you say, you've been advertising " "Advertising in several papers," interrupted Byner. "Dailies, weeklies, provincials. Never had one reply, till your wire." "Then Parrawhite must be dead!" said Eldrick. "Or in gaol, under another name. Twenty thousand pounds waiting for Parrawhite!
And at the close of his meditations, and after some turning over of a diary which lay on his desk, he picked up pen and paper, and drafted an advertisement of his own. "TEN POUNDS REWARD will be paid to any person who can give reliable and useful information as to James Parrawhite, who until November last was a clerk in the employ of Messrs.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking