United States or Equatorial Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He shall press it! if he can find Carstairs. And I think you'd better tell us what you know, Portlethorpe. Things have got to come out." "I've no objection to telling you and Mr. Moneylaws what we know," answered Mr. Portlethorpe. "After all, it is, in a way, common knowledge to some people, at any rate.
It's every evident that, after leaving Moneylaws, he ran his yacht in somewhere on the Scottish coast, and turned her adrift; or, which is more likely, fell in with that fisher-fellow Robertson at Largo, and bribed him to tell a cock-and-bull tale about the whole thing made his way to Edinburgh next morning, and possessed himself of the rest of his securities, after which, he clears out, to be joined somewhere by his wife, who, if what Hollins told us last night is true and it no doubt is, carried certain valuables off with her!
"Will you tell Sir Gilbert that Mr. Moneylaws, clerk to Mr. Lindsey, solicitor, wishes to see him on important business?" I answered, looking him hard in the face. "I think he'll be quick to see me when you give him that message." He stared and growled at me a second or two before he went off with an ill grace, leaving me on the steps.
So I packed off the two junior clerks and the office lad, and locked up, and went away myself and in the street outside I met Sir Gilbert Carstairs. He was coming along in our direction, evidently deep in thought, and he started a little as he looked up and saw me. "Hullo, Moneylaws!" he said in his off-hand fashion. "I was just wanting to see you.
"We'll do our best, ma'am," said Mr. Lindsey. "As you're next of kin there oughtn't to be much difficulty, and I'll hurry matters up for you as quickly as possible. What I want this morning is for you to see all there is in this chest; he seems to have had no other belongings than this and his clothes here at Mrs. Moneylaws', at any rate.
A page lad came along with a telegram in his hand asking was there any gentleman there of the name of Moneylaws? I took the envelope from him in a whirl of wonder, and tore it open, feeling an unaccountable sense of coming trouble.
Except that he is Sir Gilbert Carstairs, nobody in these parts knows anything about him how should they? We, I suppose, know more than anybody and we know just a few bare facts." "I think you'll have to let me know what these bare facts are," remarked Mr. Lindsey. "And Moneylaws, too. Moneylaws has a definite charge to bring against this man and he'll bring it, if I've anything to do with it!
Here's Sir Gilbert Carstairs in my room yonder. He's wanting a steward somebody that can keep accounts, and letters, and look after the estate, and he's been looking round for a likely man, and he's heard that Lindsey's clerk, Hugh Moneylaws, is just the sort he wants and, in short, the job's yours, if you like to take it. And, my lad, it's worth five hundred a year and a permanency, too!
He shook his big head solemnly at that, and something like a smile came about the corners of his lips. "They're not in Glasgow, nor near it," he answered readily, "but where all the police in England and in Scotland, too, for that matter 'll find it hard to get speech with them. Out of hand, Moneylaws! out of hand, d'ye see for the police!"
Lindsey looked at both of them in a way that he had of looking at people of whose abilities he had no very great idea but there was some indulgence in the look on this occasion. "Well, now that things have come to this pass," he said, "and after Sir Gilbert's deliberate attempt to get rid of Moneylaws to murder him, in fact I don't mind telling you the truth.
Word Of The Day