"PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.

"Cuff Court, off Fleet Street. No. 1.

"October the twenty-second.

"MR. BEDE GREATOREX.

"Sir,--A small leaf has been turned over in the matter of your cheque, lost mysteriously in June last. Leastways in something that might turn out to be connected with it. Remembering back orders, and wishing to act in accordance with the same, I\'d be glad to hold a short interview with you, and would wait upon you at any hour or place you may appoint. Or if it suited your convenience to come to me, I am to be found as above, either this evening or tomorrow evening after seven o\'clock.

"Your obedient servant,

"Jonas Butterby."

The above note, amidst two or three other letters, reached Mr. Bede Greatorex about four o\'clock in the afternoon. He happened to be at his desk in the front room, and was giving some directions to Mr. Brown, who stood by him. As Bede ran his eyes over the lines, a deep flush, a frown, followed by a sickly paleness, overspread his face. Mr. Brown, looking at him quite by accident, remarked the signs of displeasurable emotion, and felt curious to know what the news could be that had caused it. He had, however, no opportunity for prolonged observation, for Bede, carrying the letter in his hand, went into his room and shut the door.

The note angered Bede Greatorex as well as troubled him. Who was this Butterby, that he should be continually crossing his peace? What brought the man to London?--he had gone back to Helstonleigh in the summer, and had never, so far as Bede knew, come up from it since. Was he, Bede, ere he had been a couple of weeks home from his Continental holiday, to be followed up by this troublesome detective, and his life made a worry again? In the moment\'s angry impulse, Bede sat down to his desk-table, and began dashing off an answer, to the effect that he could not accord an interview to Mr. Butterby.

But the pen was arrested ere it had completed the first line. Self-preservation from danger is a feeling implanted more or less strongly within us all. What if this persistent officer, denied to him, betook himself and his news to Mr. Greatorex? Bede was as innocent in regard to the purloining of the cheque and certainly as ignorant of the really guilty party as Butterby could be; he had refunded the forty-four pounds with anything but a hand of gratification; but nevertheless there were grave reasons why the matter should not be reopened to his father.

Catching up the letter, he paced the carpet for a moment or two in deep thought; halted by the window, and read it again. "Yes, I\'ll see him; it will be safer," said he, with decision.

He wrote a rapid note, appointing eleven o\'clock the next morning for the interview at his own office. And then again paused as he was folding it; paused in deliberation.

"Why not go to him?" spoke Bede Greatorex, his eyes fixed on the opposite wall, as if he thought the map there could solve the query. "Yes, I will; I\'ll go tonight. That\'s safest of all."

Noting down the given address, he held M. Butterby\'s letter and his own two answers, perfect and imperfect, over the grate lighted a match, and burnt them to ashes. There was no fire; the weather was uncertain, warm today, cold tomorrow, and the fire was sometimes let go out in a morning as soon as lighted.

Evening came. And at ten minutes past seven Bede Greatorex was on the search for Mr. Butterby. "Cuff Court, Off Fleet Street." He did not know Cuff Court; and supposed that "Off Fleet Street" might indicate some turning or winding beginning in that well-known thoroughfare, and ending it was hard to say where. Bede, however, by dint of inquiry found Cuff Court at last. No. 1 had the appearance of a small private house; as in fact it was. The great Butterby generally lodged there when he came to town. The people residing in it were connections of his and accommodated him; it was, as he remarked, "convenient to places."

Bede was shown upstairs to a small sitting-room. At a square table, examining some papers taken from his open pocketbook, by the light of two gas-burners over head, sat Jonas Butterby; the same thin wiry man as ever, in apparently the same black coat, plaid trousers, and buttoned-up waistcoat; with the same green observant eyes, and generally silent lips. He pushed the papers and pocketbook away into a heap when his visitor appeared, and rose to receive him.

"Take a seat, sir," he said, handing a chair by the hearth opposite his own, and stirring the bit of fire in the grate. "You don\'t object to this, I hope: it ain\'t hardly fire-time yet, but a morsel looks cheery at night."

"I like it," said Bede. He put his hat on a side-table, and unbuttoned a thin overcoat he wore, as he sat down, throwing it a little back from the fine white shirt front, but did not take off his lavender gloves. It had always struck Mr. Butterby that Bede Greatorex was one of the finest and most gentlemanly men he knew, invariably dressed well; it had struck him that far-off time at Helstonleigh, when they met over John Ollivera\'s death chair, and it struck him still. But he was looking ill, worn, anxious; and the detective, full of observation by habit, could not fail to see it.

"I\'m uncommon glad you\'ve come in, Mr. Bede Greatorex. From a fresh turn some business I\'m engaged on has took today, I\'m not sure but I shall have to go back to Helstonleigh the first thing in the morning. Shall know by late post tonight."

"Are you living in London?"

"Not I. I come up to it only yesterday, expecting to stop a week or so. Now I find I may have to go back tomorrow: the chances is about equal one way and t\'other. But if I do, I should not have got to see you this time, sir, and must have come up again for it."

"I felt very much inclined to say I\'d not see you," answered Bede, candidly. "We are busy just now, and I would a great deal rather let the whole affair relating to the cheque drop entirely, than be at the trouble of raking it up again. The loss of the money has been ours, and, of course, we must put up with it. I began a note to you to this effect; but it struck me while I was writing that you might possibly be carrying your news to my father."

"No, I shouldn\'t have done that. It concerns you, so to say, more than him. Been well lately, Mr. Bede Greatorex?"

"As well as I usually am. Why?"

"Well, sir, you are looking, if I might make bold to say it, something like a shadder. Might a\'most see through you."

"I have been doing too much lately. Mrs. Bede Greatorex and myself were on the Continent for two months, rushing about from kingdom to kingdom, and from place to place, seeing the wonders, and taking what the world calls a holiday--which is more wearing than any hard work," Bede condescended to explain, but in rather a haughty tone, for he thought it did not lie in the detective\'s legitimate province to offer remarks upon him. "In regard to business, Mr. Butterby: unless you have anything very particular to communicate, I would rather not hear it. Let the affair drop."

"But I should not be doing my duty either way, to you or to me, in letting it drop," returned Butterby. "If anything worse turned up later, I might get called over the coals for it at headquarters."

"Be so good as to hasten over what you have to say, then," said Bede, taking out his watch and looking at it with anything but marked courtesy.

It produced no effect on Mr. Butterby. If his clients chose to be in a hurry, he rarely was. But in his wide experience, bringing, as he generally did, all keen observation to bear, he felt convinced of one thing--that the gentleman before him dreaded the communication he had to make, and, for that reason and no other, wished to shun it.

"When that cheque was lost in the summer, Mr. Bede Greatorex, you did me the honour to put a little matter into my hands, confiding to me your confident opinion that one of your clerks must have been the purloiner of it, if not on his own score, on somebody else\'s that he was acting for. You asked me to give an eye privately to the four. Not having got any satisfactory news from me up to the present time, you have perhaps thought that I have been neglecting the charge, and let it fall through."

"Oh, if it concerns them, I\'ll be glad to hear you!" briskly spoke Bede Greatorex; and to the acute ear listening, the tone seemed to express relief as well as satisfaction. "Have you found out that one of them did take it?"

"Not exactly. What I have found out, though, tells me that it is not improbable."

"Go on, please," said Bede impatiently. "Was it Hurst?"

"Now don\'t you jump to conclusions in haste, Mr. Bede Greatorex; and you must just pardon me for giving you the advice. It\'s a good rule to be observed in all cases; and if you\'d been in my part of the law as long as I have, you\'d not need to be told it. My own opinion was, that young Hurst was not one to help himself to money, or anything else that wasn\'t his; but of course when you----"

"Stop an instant," interrupted Bede Greatorex, starting up as a thought occurred to him, and looking round in alarm. "This house is small, the walls are no doubt thin; can we be overheard?"

"You may sit down again in peace, sir," was the phlegmatic answer. "It was a child of twelve, or so, that showed you up, wasn\'t it?"

"Yes."

"Well, except her, and her missis--who is as deaf as a stone post, poor thing, though she is my cousin--there\'s not a living soul in the house. The husband and son never get home till ten. As to the walls, they are seven times thicker than some modern ones, for the old house was built in substantial days. And if not--trust me for being secure and safe, and my visitors too, wherever I may stop, Mr. Bede Greatorex."

"It was for Hurst\'s sake I spoke," said Bede, in the light of a rather lame apology. "It may suit me to hush it up, even though you tell me he is guilty."

"When you desired me to look after your clerks, and gave me your reasons--which I couldn\'t at first make top nor tail of, and am free to confess have not got to the bottom of yet--my own judgment was that young Hurst was about the least likely of all to be guilty," pursued the officer, in his calmest and coolest manner. "However, as you persisted in your opinion, I naturally gave in to it, and looked up Hurst effectually. Or got him looked up; which amounts to the same thing."

"Without imparting any hint of my reasons for it?" again anxiously and imperatively interrupted Bede Greatorex. And it nettled the detective.

"I\'d like to ask you a question, Mr. Bede Greatorex, and to have it answered, sir. Do you think I should be fit for my post unless I had more \'cute discretion about me than ordinary folks, such as--excuse me--you? Why, my whole work, pretty nigh, is made up of ruses and secresy, and pitching people off on wrong scents. Says I to my friend--him that I sets about the job?--\'that young Mr. Hurst has been making a undesirable acquaintance, quite innocent, lately; he may get drawed into unpleasant consequences afore he knows it; and as I\'ve a respect for his father, a most skilful doctor of physic, I should like to warn the young man in time, if there\'s danger. You just turn him, inside out; watch all he does and all he doesn\'t do, and let me know it.\' Well, sir, Hurst was turned inside out, so to say; if we\'d stripped his skin off him, we couldn\'t have seen more completely into his in\'ard self and his doings than we did see; and the result was (leastways, the opinion I came to), that I was right and you were wrong. He had no more hand in the taking of that there cheque, or in any other part of the matters you hinted at, than this pocketbook here of mine had. And when I tell you that, Mr. Bede Greatorex, you may believe it."

A short silence ensued. Bede Greatorex\'s left elbow rested on the table; his hand, the glove off now, was pressing his temple as if in reflective thought, the beautiful diamond ring on his little finger glittering in the gas-light. His mother had given the ring to him when she was dying, expressing a hope that he would wear it always in remembrance of her. It appeared to Bede almost as a religious duty to obey, though few men hated ornaments in connection with himself, so much as he. His eyes were fixed on the fire; Mr. Butterby\'s on him.

"Well, Mr. Greatorex, Hurst being put out of the field, I naturally went on to the others. Jenner I never suspected at all, \'twas not him; and I felt morally sure, in spite of his impudence to me, that this time it was not Roland Yorke. Notwithstanding, I looked a little after both those gents; and I found that it was not either of \'em."

"What do you mean by \'this time\' in connection with Mr. Yorke?" inquired Bede, catching up the words, which, perhaps, had been an inadvertent slip.

Butterby coughed. But he was not a bad man at heart, and had no intention of doing gratuitous damage even to impudent Roland.

"Oh well, come Mr. Bede Greatorex--a young fellow who has been out on the spec to Port Natal, seeing all sorts of life, is more likely, you know, to tumble into scrapes than steady-natured young fellows who have never been let go beyond their mothers\' apron-strings."

"True," assented Bede Greatorex. "But in spite of his travelling experiences, Roland Yorke appears to me to be one of the most unsophisticated young men I know. In the ways of a bad world he is as a very boy."

"He is just one of them shallow-natured, simple-minded chaps that never will be bad," pronounced Butterby, "except in the matter of impudence. He has got enough of that to set up trading on in Cheapside. What he\'d have been, but for having got pulled up by a unpleasant check or two, I\'m not prepared to say. Well, sir, them three being disposed of--Hurst, Jenner, and Yorke--there remained only Mr. Brown, your manager. And it is about him I\'ve had the honour to solicit an interview with you."

Bede turned his eyes inquiringly from the fire to Mr. Butterby.

"You said from the first you did not suspect Mr. Brown. No more did I. You thought it couldn\'t be him; he has been some years with you, and his honesty and faithfulness had been sufficiently tested. I\'m sure I had no reasons to think otherwise, except one. Which was this: I could not find out anything about Mr. Brown prior to some three or four years back; his appearance on the stage of life, so to say, seemed to date from then. However, sir, by your leave, we\'ll put Brown aside for a minute, and go on to other people."

Mr. Butterby paused almost as though he expected his hearer to give the leave in words. Bede said nothing, only waited in evident curiosity, and the other resumed.

"There was a long-established firm in Birmingham, Johnson and Teague. Accountants ostensibly, but did a little in bill-broking and what not; honest men, well thought of, very respectable. Johnson (who had succeeded his father) was a man under forty; Teague was old. Old Teague had never married, but he had a great-nephew, in the office, Samuel Teague; had brought him up, and loved him as the apple of his eye. A nice young fellow in public, a wild spendthrift in private; that\'s what Sam Teague was. His salary was two hundred a year, and he lived free at his uncle\'s residence, outside Birmingham. His spendings were perhaps four hundred beyond the two. Naturally ............