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Why the setting off to Eldrick & Pascoe's office as soon as the letter was written? It all looked as if the old man had found some document, the contents of which related to the Mallathorpe family, and was anxious to communicate its nature to Mrs. Mallathorpe, and to his own solicitor, as soon as possible.
He was half-way along that lane when a stealthy foot stole to his side, and a hand was laid on his arm just as stealthily came the voice of one of his fellow-clerks at Eldrick & Pascoe's. "A moment, Pratt! I've been waiting for you. I want a word or two in private!" Pratt started when he heard that voice and felt the arresting hand.
As for the bee, having sucked its fill of honey, it visited the teasle and thence made a straight line to Mrs. Pascoe's patch, once more directing the tourists' gaze to the old woman's print dress and white apron, for she had come to the door of the cottage and was standing there. There she stood, shading her eyes and looking out to sea. For the millionth time, perhaps, she looked at the sea.
The proprietor there faced me silently for a moment, treasuring a jest he was going to give me when I was sufficiently impatient for it. "Come to see whether your boots are done? Well, they ain't. Pascoe's gone. Christened his boat this morning, and pushed off. Gone for a trial trip. Gone down river." "Good Lord," I said, or something of the sort.
He instantly seized hold of Pascoe's wife, and with the assistance of another of his men dragged her from the fellow's grasp. Pascoe at the same time levelled a blow at his head with one of their iron-wood paddles, that sent him reeling backwards, and they saw him no more.
Once, when waiting for Pascoe, who was out getting a little beer, I glanced at the volumes, and supposed they bore some relation to the picture of the ship; perhaps once they had been owned by that legendary brother of Pascoe's, a sailor, of whom I had had a misty apprehension. It would be difficult to say there had been a direct word about him.
This was infinitely better than they could have managed the business themselves, indeed they could not have contrived matters half so well, for they had previously made a present of the youngest of the horses to the king of Boossa, but most likely, owing to Pascoe's misrepresentation, or rather his misinterpretation, the monarch was not made sensible of the circumstance.
"That's it," answered Pratt, "And he hasn't turned up this morning, and we think he's left the town. Owe you anything, missis?" "Nay, nothing much," she replied. "Ten shillings 'ud cover it, mister." Pratt gave her half a sovereign. It was not out of consideration for her, nor as a concession to Parrawhite's memory: it was simply to stop her from coming down to Eldrick & Pascoe's.
Already suspicion was in Collingwood's mind vague and indefinable, but there. He was half inclined to go straight back to Eldrick & Pascoe's and tell Eldrick what Jabey Naylor had just told him. But he reflected that while Naylor went out to post the letter, the old bookseller might have put the paper elsewhere; locked it up in his safe, perhaps.
It was a murky interior shut in from the day, a litter of petty tools and nameless rubbish on a ruinous bench, a disorder of dilapidated boots, that mean gas jet, a smell of leather; and there old Pascoe's hammer defiantly and rapidly attacked its circumstances, driving home at times, and all unseen, more than those rivets.
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