CHAPTER XIV
THE SHEET OF FIGURES
At that time Stoner had been in the employment of Mallalieu andCotherstone for some five or six years. He was then twenty-seven yearsof age. He was a young man of some ability--sharp, alert, quick atfigures, good at correspondence, punctual, willing: he could run thebusiness in the absence of its owners. The two partners appreciatedStoner, and they had gradually increased his salary until it reached thesum of two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence per week. In theiropinion a young single man ought to have done very well on that:Mallalieu and Cotherstone had both done very well on less when they wereclerks in that long vanished past of which they did not care to think.But Stoner was a young man of tastes. He liked to dress well. He likedto play cards and billiards. He liked to take a drink or two at theHighmarket taverns of an evening, and to be able to give hisfavourite barmaids boxes of chocolate or pairs of gloves now andthen--judiciously. And he found his salary not at all too great, and hewas always on the look-out for a chance of increasing it.
Stoner emerged from Mallalieu & Cotherstone's office at his usual hourof half-past five on the afternoon of the day on which the reward billswere put out. It was his practice to drop in at the Grey Mare Inn everyevening on his way to his supper, there to drink a half-pint of bitterale and hear the news of the day from various cronies who were to be metwith in the bar-parlour. As he crossed the street on this errand on thisparticular evening, Postick, the local bill-poster, came hurrying out ofthe printer's shop with a bundle of handbills under his arm, and as hesped past Stoner, thrust a couple of them into the clerk's hand.
"Here y'are, Mr. Stoner!" he said without stopping. "Something for youto set your wits to work on. Five hundred reward--for a bit o' brainwork!"
Stoner, who thought Postick was chaffing him, was about to throw thehandbills, still damp from the press, into the gutter which he wasstepping over. But in the light of an adjacent lamp he caught sight ofthe word _Murder_ in big staring capitals at the top of them. Beneath ithe caught further sight of familiar names--and at that he folded up thebills, went into the Grey Mare, sat down in a quiet corner, and readcarefully through the announcement. It was a very simple one, andplainly worded. Five hundred pounds would be paid by Mr. Tallington,solicitor, of Highmarket, to any person or persons who would affordinformation which would lead to the arrest and conviction of themurderer or murderers of the deceased Kitely.
No one was in the bar-parlour of the Grey Mare when Stoner first enteredit, but by the time he had re-read the handbill, two or three men ofthe town had come in, and he saw that each carried a copy. One of them,a small tradesman whose shop was in the centre of the Market Square,leaned against the bar and read the terms of the reward aloud.
"And whose money might that be?" he asked, half-sneeringly. "Who'sthrowing brass round in that free-handed fashion? I should want to knowif the money's safe before I wasted my time in trying to get it."
"Money'll be all right," observed one of the speaker's companions."There's Lawyer Tallington's name at the foot o' that bill. He wouldn'tput his name to no offer o' that sort if he hadn't the brass in hand."
"Whose money is it, then?" demanded the first speaker. "It's not aGovernment reward. They say that Kitely had no relatives, so it can't bethem. And it can't be that old housekeeper of his, because they sayshe's satisfied enough that Jack Harborough's the man, and they've gothim. Queer do altogether, I call it!"
"It's done in Harborough's interest," said a third man. "Either that, orthere's something very deep in it. Somebody's not satisfied andsomebody's going to have a flutter with his brass over it." He turnedand glanced at Stoner, who had come to the bar for his customaryhalf-pint of ale. "Your folks aught to do with this?" he asked. "Kitelywas Mr. Cotherstone's tenant, of course."
Stoner laughed scornfully as he picked up his tankard.
"Yes, I don't think!" he sneered. "Catch either of my governors wastingfive hundred pence, or five pence, in that way! Not likely!"
"Well, there's Tallington's name to back it," said one of the men. "Weall know Tallington. What he says, he does. The money'll be there--ifit's earned."
Then they all looked at each other silently, surmise and speculation inthe eyes of each.
"Tell you what!" suddenly observed the little tradesman, as if struckwith a clever idea. "It might be young Bent! Five hundred pound isnaught to him. This here young London barrister that's defendingHarborough is stopping with Bent--they're old schoolmates. Happen he'spersuaded Bent to do the handsome: they say that this barrister chap'sright down convinced that Harborough's innocent. It must be Bent'sbrass!"
"What's Popsie say?" asked one of the younger members of the party,winking at the barmaid, who, having supplied her customers' needs, wasleaning over a copy of the handbill which somebody had laid on the bar."Whose brass can it be, Popsie?"
The barmaid stood up, seized a glass and a cloth, and began to polishthe glass with vigor.
"What's Popsie say?" she repeated. "Why, what she says is that you're alot of donkeys for wasting your time in wondering whose brass it is.What does it matter whose brass it is, so long as it's safe? What youwant to do is to try and earn it. You don't pick up five hundred poundsevery day!"
"She's right!" said some man of the group. "But--how does anybody starton to them games?"
"There'll be plenty o' starters, for all that, my lads!" observed thelittle tradesman. "Never you fear! There'll be candidates."
Stoner drank off his ale and went away. Usually, being given to gossip,he stopped chatting with anybody he chanced to meet until it was closeupon his supper-time. But the last remark sent him off. For Stoner meantto be a starter, and he had no desire that anybody should get away infront of him.
The lodging in which Stoner kept his bachelor state was a quiet andeminently respectable one. He had two small rooms, a parlour and abedchamber, in the house of a widow with whom he had lodged ever sincehis first coming to Highmarket, nearly six years before. In the tinyparlour he kept a few books and a writing-desk, and on those eveningswhich he did not spend in playing cards or billiards, he did a littleintellectual work in the way of improving his knowledge of French,commercial arithmetic, and business correspondence. And that night, hissupper being eaten, and the door closed upon his landlady, he lightedhis pipe, sat down to his desk, unlocked one of its drawers, and from anold file-box drew out some papers. One of these, a half-sheet of ruledfoolscap, he laid in front of him, the rest he put back. And then,propping his chin on his folded hands, Stoner gave that half-sheet along, speculative inspection.
If anybody had looked over Stoner's shoulder they would have seen himgazing at a mass of figures. The half-sheet of foolscap was covered withfigures: the figuring extended to the reverse side. And--what alooker-on might not have known, but what Stoner knew very well--thefigures were all of Cotherstone's making--clear, plain, well-formedfigures. And amongst them, and on the margins of the half-sheet, andscrawled here and there, as if purposelessly and carelessly, was oneword in Cotherstone's handwriting, repeated over and over again. Thatword was--_Wilchester_.
Stoner knew how that half-sheet of foolscap had come into hispossession. It was a half-sheet which he had found on Cotherstone's deskwhen he went into the partners' private room to tidy things up on themorning after the murder of Kitely. It lay there, carelessly tossedaside amongst other papers of clearer meaning, and Stoner, after oneglance at it, had carefully folded it, placed it in his pocket, taken ithome, and locked it up, to be inspected at leisure.
He had had his reasons, of course, for this abstraction of a paper whichrightfully belonged to Cotherstone. Those reasons were a littledifficult to explain to himself in one way; easy enough to explain, inanother. As regards the difficulty, Stoner had somehow or other got avague idea, that evening of the murder, that something was wrong withCotherstone. He had noticed, or thought he noticed, a queer look on oldKitely's face when the ex-detective left the private room--it was a lookof quiet satisfaction, or triumph, or m
alice; any way, said Stoner, itwas something. Then there was the fact of Cotherstone's curiousabstraction when he, Stoner, entered and found his employer sitting inthe darkness, long after Kitely had gone--Cotherstone had said he wasasleep, but Stoner knew that to be a fib. Altogether, Stoner had gaineda vague feeling, a curious intuition, that there was something queer,not unconnected with the visit of Cotherstone's new tenant, and when heheard, next morning, of what had befallen Kitely, all his suspicionswere renewed.
So much for the difficult reasons which had made him appropriate thehalf-sheet of foolscap. But there was a reason which was not difficult.It lay in the presence of that word _Wilchester_. If not of the finestdegree of intellect, Stoner was far from being a fool, and it had nottaken him very long to explain to himself why Cotherstone had scribbledthe name of that far-off south-country town all over that sheet ofpaper, aimlessly, apparently without reason, amidst his figurings. _Itwas uppermost in his thoughts at the time_--and as he sat there, pen inhand, he had written it down, half-unconsciously, over and overagain.... There it was--_Wilchester_--Wilchester--Wilchester.
The reiteration had a peculiar interest for Stoner. He had never heardCotherstone nor Mallalieu mention Wilchester at any time since his firstcoming into their office. The firm had no dealings with any firm atWilchester. Stoner, who dealt with all the Mallalieu & Cotherstonecorrespondence, knew that during his five and a half years' clerkship,he had never addressed a single letter to any one at Wilchester, neverreceived a single letter bearing the Wilchester post-mark. Wilchesterwas four hundred miles away, far off in the south; ninety-nine out ofevery hundred persons in Highmarket had never heard the name ofWilchester. But Stoner had--quite apart from the history books, and thegeography books, and map of England. Stoner himself was a Darlingtonman. He had a close friend, a bosom friend, at Darlington, namedMyler--David Myler. Now David Myler was a commercial traveller--a smartfellow of Stoner's age. He was in the service of a Darlington firm ofagricultural implement makers, and his particular round lay in themarket-towns of the south and south-west of England. He spent aconsiderable part of the year in those districts, and Wilchester was oneof his principal headquarters: Stoner had many a dozen letters ofMyler's, which Myler had written to him from Wilchester. And only a yearbefore all this, Myler had brought home a bride in the person of aWilchester girl, the daughter of a Wilchester tradesman.
So the name of Wilchester was familiar enough to Stoner. And now hewanted to know what--what--what made it so familiar to Cotherstone thatCotherstone absent-mindedly scribbled it all over a half-sheet offoolscap paper?
But the figures? Had they any connexion with the word? This was thequestion which Stoner put to himself when he sat down that night in hisparlour to seriously consider if he had any chance of winning that fivehundred pounds reward. He looked at the figures again--more carefully.The truth was that until that evening he had never given much attentionto those figures: it was the word Wilchester that had fascinated him.But now, summoning all his by no means small arithmetical knowledge tohis aid, Stoner concentrated himself on an effort to discover whatthose figures meant. That they were a calculation of some sort he hadalways known--now he wanted to know of what.
The solution of the problem came to him all of a sudden--as the solutionof arithmetical problems often does come. He saw the whole thing quiteplainly and wondered that he had not seen it at a first glance. Thefigures represented nothing whatever but three plain and common sums--incompound arithmetic. Cotherstone, for some reason of his own, had takenthe sum of two thousand pounds as a foundation, and had calculated (1st)what thirty years' interest on that sum at three and a half per cent.would come to; and (2nd) what thirty years' interest at five per cent.would come to; and (3rd) what the compound interest on two thousandpounds would come to--capital and compound interest--in the same period.The last reckoning--the compound interest one--had been crossed over andout with vigorous dashes of the pen, as if the calculator had beenappalled on discovering what an original sum of two thousand pounds,left at compound interest for thirty years, would be transformed into inthat time.
All this was so much Greek to Stoner. But he knew there was something init--something behind those figures. They might refer to some Corporationfinancial business--Cotherstone being Borough Treasurer. But--they mightnot. And why were they mixed up with Wilchester?
For once in a way, Stoner took no walk abroad that night. Usually, evenwhen he stopped in of an evening, he had a brief stroll to the GreyMare and back last thing before going to bed. But on this occasion heforgot all about the Grey Mare, and Popsie the barmaid did not come intohis mind for even a second. He sat at home, his feet on the fender, hiseyes fixed on the dying coals in the grate. He thought--thought so hardthat he forgot that his pipe had gone out. The fire had gone out, too,when he finally rose and retired. And he went on thinking for a longtime after his head had sought his pillow.
"Well, it's Saturday tomorrow, anyway!" he mused at last. "Which islucky."
Next day--being Saturday and half-holiday--Stoner attired himself in hisbest garments, and, in the middle of the afternoon, took train forDarlington.