The clock of Helstonleigh Cathedral was striking eight, and the postman was going his rounds through the Boundaries. Formerly, nothing so common as a regular postman, when on duty, was admitted within the pale of that exclusive place. The Boundaries, chiefly occupied by the higher order of the clergy, did not condescend to have its letters delivered in the ordinary way, and by the ordinary hands. It was the custom for the postman to take them to the Boundary-gate, and there put them into the porter’s great box, just as if he had been posting letters at the town post-office; and the porter forthwith delivered them at their several destinations. The late porter, however, had grown, with years, half blind and wholly stupid. Some letters he dropped; some he lost; some he delivered at wrong houses; some, he persisted in declaring, when questioned, had never been delivered to him at all. In short, mistakes and confusion were incessant; so, the porter was exonerated from that portion of his duty, and the postman entered upon it. There was a fresh porter now, but the old custom had not been resumed.
Ring—ring—ring—ring—for one peculiarity of the Boundaries was, that most of its doors possessed no knockers, only bells—on he went, the man, on this morning, leaving letters almost everywhere. At length he came to Mr. Galloway’s, and rang there a peal that it is the delight of a postman to ring; but when the door was opened, he delivered in only one letter and a newspaper. The business letters were generally directed to the office.
Mr. Galloway was half-way through his breakfast. He was no sluggard; and he liked to devote the whole hour, from eight to nine, to his breakfast and his Times. Occasionally, as on this morning, he would sit down before eight, in order that he might have nearly finished breakfast before the letters arrived. His servants knew by experience that, when this happened, he was expecting something unusual by the post.
His man came in. He laid the letter and the newspaper by his master’s side. Mr. Galloway tore open the Times, gave one glance at the price of the funds and the money article, then put aside the paper, and took up the letter.
The latter was from his cousin, Mr. Robert Galloway. It contained also the envelope in which Mr. Galloway had enclosed the twenty-pound note. “You perceive,” wrote Mr. Robert, “that the seal has not been tampered with. It is perfectly intact. Hence I infer that you must be in error in supposing that you enclosed the note.”
Mr. Galloway examined the envelope closely. His cousin had not broken the seal in opening the letter, but had cut the paper above it. He was a methodical man in trifles, this Mr. Robert Galloway, and generally did cut open his envelopes. It had been all the better for him had he learnt to be methodical with his money.
“Yes; it is as Robert says,” soliloquized Mr. Galloway. “The seal has not been touched since it went out of my hands; therefore the note must previously have been extracted from the letter. Now, who did it?”
He sat—his elbow on the table, his chin in his hand, and the envelope before him. Apparently, he was studying it minutely; in reality he was lost in thought. “It’s just like the work of a conjuror!” he presently exclaimed. “Not a caller near the place, that I can find out, and yet the bank-note vanishes out of the letter! Notes don’t vanish without hands, and I’ll do as I said yesterday—consult the police. If any one can come to the bottom of it, it’s Butterby. Had the seal been broken, I should have given it to the post-office to ferret out; the crime would have lain with them, and so would the discovery. As it is, the business is mine.”
He wrote a line rapidly in pencil, folded, called in his man-servant, and despatched him with it to the police-station. The station was very near Mr. Galloway’s; on the other side of the cathedral, halfway between that edifice and the town-hall. In ten minutes after the servant had left the house, Mr. Butterby was on his road to it.
Mr. Butterby puzzled Helstonleigh. He was not an inspector, he was not a sergeant, he was not a common officer, and he was never seen in official dress. Who was Mr. Butterby? Helstonleigh wondered. That he had a great deal to do with the police, was one of their staff, and received his pay, was certain; but, what his standing might be, and what his peculiar line of duty, they could not tell. Sometimes he was absent from Helstonleigh for months at a time, probably puzzling other towns. Mr. Galloway would have told you he was a detective; but perhaps Mr. Galloway’s grounds for the assertion existed only in his own opinion. For convenience-sake we will call him a detective; remembering, however, that we have no authority for the term.
Mr. Butterby came forward, a spare, pale man, of middle height, his eyes deeply set, and his nose turned up to the skies. He was of silent habit; probably, of a silent nature.
Mr. Galloway recited the circumstances of his loss. The detective sat near him, his hands on his knees, his head bent, his eyes cast upon the floor. He did not interrupt the story by a single word. When it was ended, he took up the envelope, and examined it in equal silence; examined it with ridiculous minuteness, Mr. Galloway thought, for he poked, and peered, and touched it everywhere. He held it up to the light, he studied the postmarks, he gazed at the seal through an odd-looking little glass that he took from his waistcoat pocket, he particularly criticised the folds, he drew his fingers along its edges, he actually sniffed it—all in silence, and with an impassive countenance.
“Have you the number of the note?” was his first question.
“No,” said Mr. Galloway.
He looked up at this. The thought may have struck him, that, not to take the number of a bank-note, sent by post, betrayed some carelessness for a man of business. Mr. Galloway, at least, inferred this, and answered the look.
“Of course I am in the habit of taking their numbers; I don’t know that I ever did such a thing before, as send a bank-note away without it. I had an appointment, as I tell you, at the other end of the town for a quarter to three; it was of importance; and, when I heard the college strike out the three-quarters—the very hour I ought to have been there—I hurriedly put the note into the folds of the letter, without waiting to take its number. It was not that I forgot to do so, but that I could not spare the time.”
“Have you any means of ascertaining the number, by tracing the note back to whence it may have come into your possession?” was the next question.
Mr. Galloway was obliged to confess that he had none. “Bank-notes are so frequently paid me from different quarters,” he remarked. “Yesterday, for instance, a farmer, renting under the Dean and Chapter, came in, and paid me his half-year’s rent. Another, holding the lease of a public-house in the town, renewed two lives which had dropped in. It was Beard, of the Barley Mow. Now, both these men paid in notes, tens and fives, and they now lie together in my cash drawer; but I could not tell you which particular notes came from each man—no, not if you paid me the worth of the whole to do it. Neither could I tell whence I had the note which I put into the letter.”
“In this way, if a note should turn out to be bad, you could not return it to its owner.”
“I never took a bad note in my life,” said Mr. Galloway, speaking impulsively. “There’s not a better judge of notes than myself in the kingdom; and Jenkins is as good as I am.”
Another silence. Mr. Butterby remained in the same attitude, his head and eyes bent. “Have you given me all the particulars?” he presently asked.
“I think so. All I remember.”
“Then allow me to go over them aloud,” returned the detective; “and, if I make any mistake or omission, have the goodness to correct me:—On Friday last, you took a twenty-pound note out of your cash drawer, not taking or knowing its number. This note you put within the folds of a letter, and placed both in an envelope, and fastened the envelope down, your two clerks, Channing and Yorke, being present. You then went out, leaving the letter upon one of the desks. As you left, Hamish Channing came in. Immediately following upon that, Yorke went out, leaving the brothers alone. Arthur departed to attend college, Hamish remaining in the office. Arthur Channing soon returned, finding there was no necessity for him to stay in the cathedral; upon which Hamish left. Arthur Channing remained alone for more than an hour, no one calling or entering the office during that period. You then returned yourself; found the letter in the same state, apparently, in which you had left it, and you sealed it, and sent Arthur Channing with it to the post-office. These are the brief facts, so far as you are cognizant of them, and as they have been related ............