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"If you have time, you might give me a detailed statement. I hardly know what you have done. It won't take a couple of minutes." Mr. Taynton glanced at the clock likewise, and then put down his hat again. "I can just spare the time," he said, "but I must get home by twelve; I have unfortunately come out without my latchkey, and I do not like keeping the servants up."
You began by losing a large sum in South Africans " "We began," corrected Mr. Taynton, gently. He was looking at the other quite calmly; his face expressed no surprise at all; if there was anything in his expression beyond that of quiet kindness, it was perhaps pity. "I said 'you," said Mills in a hectoring tone, "and I will soon explain why.
What time ought he to have got in?" "He was to have got to Falmer," said Mr. Taynton with a little emphasis on the last word, "at a quarter to seven. He spoke of walking from there." Morris looked at him with a furtive sidelong glance. "Why, I I might have met him there," he said. "I went up there again after I left you to tell Sir Richard you would call to-morrow."
Taynton was prolonging his hour of quietude after lunch, and encroaching thereby into the time he daily dedicated to exercise.
But it passed in a second, and Morris still very pale, very quiet spoke to him. "Where is he?" he asked. "I must see him at once. It won't keep." Then he sprang up, his rage again mastering him. "What shall I do it with?" he said. "What shall I do it with?" For the moment Mr. Taynton forgot himself and his anxieties. "Morris, you don't know what you are saying," he cried.
Taynton, on his arrival back at Brighton that afternoon, devoted a couple of solitary hours to such thoughts as these, and others to which this tragedy naturally gave rise and then with a supreme effort of will he determined to think no more on the subject.
High colour flamed in his face, his black eyes sparkled with vivid dangerous light, and he had no salutation for his old friend. "I've come on a very unpleasant business," he said, his voice not in control. Mr. Taynton got up. He had only had one moment of preparation and he thought, at any rate, that he knew for certain what this unpleasant business must be. Evidently Mills had given him away.
Taynton certainly, as he stepped out beneath the stars, with the sea lying below him, felt, in his delicate and sensitive nature, the charm of the hour, and being a good if not a brisk walker, he determined to go home on foot. And he stepped westward very contentedly.
And what is true of the community is true also of the individual, and thus in three days from this dreadful morning of the inquest, Mr. Taynton, after attending the funeral of the murdered man, was very actively employed, since the branch of the firm in London, deprived of its head, required supervision from him.
"I have written to Sir Richard, demanding, in common justice, that he should see me, should tell me what he has heard against me, and who told him. I don't think he will refuse. I don't see how he can refuse. I have asked him to see me to-morrow afternoon." Mr. Taynton mentally examined this in all its bearings. Apparently it satisfied him. "You have acted wisely and providently," he said.
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