Mr. Sheldon had occasion to see Captain Paget early the following day, and questioned him closely about his protégé‘s movements. He had found Valentine a very useful tool in sundry intricate transactions of the commercial kind, and he expected his tools to be ready for his service. He was therefore considerably annoyed by Valentine’s abrupt departure.

“I think young Hawkehurst might have told me he was going out of town,” he said. “What the deuce has taken him off in such a hurry?”

“He is going to see some mysterious old aunt at Dorking, from whom he seems to expect money,” the Captain answered carelessly. “I daresay I can do what you want, Sheldon.”

“Very likely. But how comes that young fellow to have an aunt at Dorking? I fancy I’ve heard him say he was without a relative or a friend in the world — always excepting yourself.”

“The aunt may be another exception; some poor old soul that he’s half ashamed to own, I daresay — the inmate of an almshouse, perhaps. Val’s expectations may be limited to a few pounds hoarded in a china teapot.”

“I should have thought Hawkehurst the last man in the world to care about looking after that sort of thing. I could have given him plenty to do if he had stopped in town. He and my brother George are uncommonly intimate, by the bye,” added Mr. Sheldon meditatively. It was his habit to be rather distrustful of his brother and of all his brother’s acquaintance. “I suppose you can give me Hawkehurst’s address, in case I should want to write to him?” he said.

“He told me to send my letters to the post-office, Dorking,” answered the Captain, “which really looks as if the aunt’s residence were something in the way of an almshouse.”

No more was said about Valentine’s departure. Captain Paget concluded his business with his patron and departed, leaving the stockbroker leaning forward upon his desk in a thoughtful attitude and scribbling purposeless figures upon his blotting-paper.

“There’s something queer in this young man running away from town; there’s some mystification somewhere,” he thought. “He has not gone to Dorking, or he would scarcely have told Lotta that he was going a hundred and fifty miles from town. He would be likely to be taken off his guard by her questions, and would tell the truth. I wonder whether Paget is in the secret. His manner seemed open enough; but that sort of man can pretend anything. I’ve noticed that he and George have been very confidential lately. I wonder whether there’s any underhand game on the cards between those two.”

The game of which Mr. Sheldon thought as he leant over his blotting-paper was a very different kind of game from that which really occupied the attention of George and his friend.

“I’ll go to his lodgings at once,” he said to himself by-and-by, rising and putting on his hat quickly in his eagerness to act upon his resolution. “I’ll see if he really has left town.”

The stockbroker hailed the first empty hansom to be seen in the crowded thoroughfare from which his shady court diverged. In less than an hour he alighted before the door of the house in which Captain Paget lodged.

“Is Mr. Hawkehurst in?” he asked of the girl who admitted him.

“No, sir; he’s just left to go into the country. He hasn’t been gone ten minutes. You might a’most have met him.”

“Do you know where he has gone?”

“I heard say it was Dorking, sir.”

“Humph! I should like to have seen him before he went. Did he take much luggage?”

“One portmanter, sir.”

“I suppose you didn’t notice where he told the man to drive?”

“Yes, sir; it was Euston-square.”

“Ah! Euston-square. I’ll go there, then, on the chance of catching him,” said Mr. Sheldon.

He bestowed a donation upon the domestic, reentered his hansom, and told the man to drive to Euston-square “like a shot.”

“So! His destination is Dorking, and he goes from Euston-square!” muttered Mr. Sheldon, in sombre meditation, as the hansom rattled and rushed, and jingled and jolted, over the stones. “There’s something under the cards here.”

Arrived at the great terminus, the stockbroker made his way to the down platform. There was a lull in the day’s traffic, and only a few listless wretches lounging disconsolately here and there, with eyes ever and anon lifted to the clock. Amongst these there was no Valentine Hawkehurst.

Mr. Sheldon peered into all the waiting-rooms, and surveyed the refreshment-counter; but there was still no sign of the man he sought. He went back to the ticket-office; but here again all was desolate, the shutters of the pigeon-holes hermetically closed, and no vestige of Valentine Hawkehurst.

The stockbroker was disappointed, but not defeated. He returned to the platform, looked about him for a few moments, and then addressed himself to a porter of intelligent aspect.

“What trains have left here within the last half-hour?” he asked.

“Only one, sir; the 2.15 down, for Manchester.”

“You didn’t happen to notice a dark-eyed, dark-haired young man among the passengers — second class?” asked Mr. Sheldon.

“No, sir. There are always a good many passengers by that train; I haven’t time to notice their faces.”

The stockbroker asked no further questions. He was a man who did not care to be obliged to others for information which he could obtain for himself. He walked straight to a place where the time-tables were pasted on the wall, and ran his finger along the figures till he came to those he wanted.

The 2.15 train was a fast train, which stopped at only four places — Rugby, Ullerton, Murford, and Manchester.

“I daresay he has gone to Manchester,” thought Mr. Sheldon —“on some racing business most likely, which he wants to keep dark from his patron the Captain. What a fool I am to trouble myself about him, as if he couldn’t stir without meaning mischief to me! But I don’t understand the friendship between him and George. My brother George is not likely to take up any man without some motive.”

After these reflections Mr. Sheldon left the station and went back to his office in another hansom, still extremely thoughtful and somewhat disquieted.

“What does it matter to me where they go or what they do?” he asked himself, impatient of some lurking weakness of his own; “what does it matter to me whether those two are friendly or unfriendly? They can do me no harm.”

There happened to be a kind of lull in the stormy regions of the Stock Exchange at the time of Valentine Hawkehurst’s departure. Stagnation had descended upon that commercial ocean, which is such a dismal waste of waters for the professional speculator in its hour of calm. All the Bulls in the zoological creation would have failed to elevate the drooping stocks and shares and first-preference bonds and debentures, which hung their feeble heads and declined day by day, the weaker of them threatening to fade away and diminish to a vanishing-point, as it seemed to some dejected holders who read the Stock–Exchange lists and the money article in the Times with a persistent hopefulness which struggled against the encroachments of despair. The Bears had been busy, but were now idle — having burnt their fingers, commercial gentlemen remarked. So Bulls and Bears alike hung listlessly about a melancholy market, and conversed together dolefully in corners; and the burden of all their lamentations was to the effect that there never had been such times, and things never had been so bad, and it was a question whether they would ever right themselves. Philip Sheldon shared in the general depression. His face was gloomy, and his manner for the time being lost something of its brisk, business-like cheerfulness. The men who envied his better fortunes watched him furtively ............