CHAPTER XX
INSIDE THE LAWYER'S OFFICE
Gerald opened the letter. The flap of the envelope bore the embossedname and address of the lawyer. The contents read:
I shall be pleased to see you if you will give me a call to-morrow between ten and eleven o'clock, with reference to your letter of yesterday's date.
Gerald was pleased too. He just chuckled with glee. He did not fearobtaining the situation. And then the smile left his face.
His theory that the lawyer had the nineteen thousand pounds had receivedrather a rude shock. A man with that money would not trouble about themere saving of a clerk's salary.
Anyway, he thought he would be in touch with the man who last dealt withJosh Todd.
In Todd's letter to his wife, he had spoken of Loide as a "cute thief."Was there anything in that?
There would be the letter books and office papers open to him. If he wasunable to get an answer to that question, surely it would be his ownfault.
He was in Liverpool Street between ten and eleven o'clock next morning.Saw the lawyer and settled with him.
He was to begin his duties on Monday--three days after. The lawyer wassatisfied with his appearance, and did not ask for references.
He could not very well do so, as the man was giving him his services.Moreover, things were fitting so tightly with Mr. Loide that anything aclerk could filch would not be worth looking at.
When a man's income is suddenly reduced it hurts. Hurts badly.
Loide was experiencing that. At present his little luxuries were knockedoff, and in the future he foresaw a difficulty in the procuration ofeven necessaries.
He had been wont to take home from the city fish shop a middle cut ofsalmon. Now he took the--perhaps as toothsome but certainlycheaper--fresh herring.
As with the fish, so with all things. His economy was of the studiedkind. It had to be.
The cutting off of the twenty pounds a week did not unfortunately meanthat sum only. Money breeds money, and Mr. Loide was an excellentbreeder--sixty pet cent. breed.
He liked to lend a man a five or ten pound note for a week, and chargehim one or two guineas for the loan. If you work that out you will findit quite a big percentage.
Mr. Loide did not need to do so. He knew. He had done it so often. Itwas a big source of revenue to him.
Indeed money lending was the profitable part of his business. He hadfound it so much so, that he had neglected the more legitimate but lessprofitable legal work.
The result was that that had slowly filtered away. It had not mattered abit so long as the thousand pounds a year was coming in. In the courseof the year his interest enabled him to double it.
So it will be seen that honesty--strictly speaking--if the best wascertainly not the most profitable policy with Mr. Loide.
Wipe that nearly forty pounds a week away from his income, and--well,wipe the naught off the forty, and you get at about what his legal workbrought him in now.
Four pounds a week is not colossal wealth. It comes very, very hard on aman to have to live on it who has been living on ten times as much.
Loide found it so. Cold, flinty, bed rock bottom hardness.
On Monday morning Gerald took his first step on the trail, and his seatin Loide's office.
There was not much work to do. Gerald saw that at a glance.
There was no acting about the matter. His employer was poor. What did itmean?
Round the walls of the outer office were black tin boxes, with--real andimaginary--names of clients printed on the flap doors thereof in whiteletters.
You turned the key and the flap fell down, enabling you to get at thecontents. One in particular had a great charm for the new clerk. Hefixed his eyes on it with an eager I-wonder-what's-inside-you sort ofglance.
It bore the name of Depew.
The locks were poor things. Evidenced by the fact that one key on thebunch seemed to open them all.
Loide kept the bunch in his trousers pocket. If he wanted a paper from aparticular box, he would ring his bell, give the keys and ask for thepaper to be brought to him.
That seemed to take the pebbles out of Gerald's part--smoothed hiscourse a trifle.
Why? Because he knew it would enable him to examine the Depew papers.
The next time he was asked to get a paper, he first opened the Depewflap, and closed it again without turning the key.
He kept the flap in position by a small wedge of paper. It was handythat way.
Mr. Loide would go to lunch at one o'clock, and Gerald proposed devotingthat hour to an examination of the Depew papers.
He was not the kind of young man to let the grass grow to any extremelength under his feet.
"If you are learning, you should commence at the beginning. Mount theladder from the lowest rung, and you will know then what the work islike."
So spake the lawyer to Gerald. It was in connection with the letterbook.
The indexing of it was in arrear, and Gerald's business was to bringthat index up to date.
The lawyer showed him how. He had a system of his own, had Loide. Inaddition to the name of the sender of the letter, the letter itself wasindexed under the name of the action or matter.
It was a good way, because when Loide made out his bills of costs, hedid not miss a single letter he could charge for.
There was perhaps no man in the City of London who could make out abetter bill of costs than Loide.
There were rivals in his profession who said that if you blew your nosein his office, he clapped down six and eightpence, while if you wipedyour feet on his door-mat, it meant three and six.
But then rivals will say anything, won't they? And again, if there isany reputation for truthfulness in the legal profession, it is not aworld-wide one.
Its patron saint is the father of lies.
So it was that, with the letter book in his hand, at his own desk,Gerald turned up in the index "Depew."
There were two entries; one he found applied to a letter sent to Depewin America, which had brought him over, and the other to a series ofletters connected with the winding up of the affair.
The letter to Depew he read, and was not a whit the wiser. Then he tookon a perusal of the others.
He started at the last, and proposed to work his way back.
He was surprised to find the last letter of so recent a date. And whenhe saw it was to the governor of the Bank of England, and read in itthat Loide was stopping the numbers of the notes for nineteen thousandpounds, he stopped himself.
Stopped right there and did nothing but look out of the windowblankly--he was so unutterably amazed.
That he had struck a tangled web he knew quite well. That when he was inthe lawyer's office he was in the meshes of that web, he guessed.
But he had not expected the spider to give him such a facer as this. Heknew--knew most certainly now that Loide did not possess the missingmoney.
He was depressed, his heart sank a bit, he had been so sure--so sure.Chicken counting before hatchment is a poor game anyway. Gerald indorsedthat.
When lunch time came, he did not even open the tin box with "Depew" onit. It had ceased to interest him.
He knew it would not help him along a bit. He sat there all the timethinking.
His theory of Todd's disappearance shaped differently now.
He somehow felt convinced that the lawyer had had a hand in the man'smurder, and he tried to piece things together so that he could accountfor the notes being missing.
His short acquaintance with the lawyer did not favor the idea that hewas a man to lose things.
Then ideas came to him. He thought he had struck the solution.
There had been a quarrel about the division of the spoil--the nineteenthousand pounds--between Loide and the man who was lying with histhroat cut on the boat. Or Loide had perhaps murdered him for possessionof the whole sum.
He had been disappointed to find that his victim had not the notes inhis possessi
on, had probably given them to a friend in London to mindtill his return from America.
The moment Loide got back to London he would stop the notes.
He tallied the date of the murder and the date of the letter to thebank. They fitted his idea.
Gerald was aware that where there had been a mere hill, there was amountain for him to climb now; but he was not dismayed. There was Tessiefor certain, and a possible _dot_ on the top of that mountain. Itssummit was worth reaching.
He meant getting there--he was full up to the brim with excelsior.
He was debating now whether he should keep up the farce of clerkship anylonger, or blossom forth--for surprise purposes--as a New Yorkdetective, and see what he could frighten out of Loide.
Then he determined to wait a little longer, till he had seen thepassenger agent at Eldon Street.
That individual had been away ill, and would be at the office, it wasthought, to-morrow or the day after. Gerald decided to wait till then.