Gabriel Chestermarke, after that one
look at his nephew, turned again to the Earl, politely
motioning him to the chair which he had already drawn
forward. And the Earl, whose eyes had been wandering
over the pile of documents on the senior partner’s
desk, glancing curiously at the open door of the strong
room, and generally taking in a sense of some unusual
occurrence, dropped into it and looked expectantly
at the banker.
“There’s nothing wrong?”
he asked suddenly. “You look surprised.”
Gabriel stiffened his already upright figure.
“Surprised yes!”
he answered. “And something more than surprised I
am astonished! Your lordship left the Countess’s
jewels with our manager? May I ask when and
under what circumstances?”
“About six weeks ago,”
replied the Earl promptly. “As a rule the
jewels are kept at my bankers in London. The
Countess wanted them to wear at the Hunt Ball, so
I fetched them from London myself. Then, as we
were going off to the Continent two days after the
ball, and sailing direct from Kingsport to Hamburg,
I didn’t want the bother of going up to town
with them, and I thought of Horbury. So I drove
in here with them one evening the night
before we sailed, as a matter of fact and
asked him to lock them up until our return. And
as I said just now, we only got home the night before
last, and we’re going up to town tomorrow, and
the Countess wants them to take with her. Of
course, you’ve got ’em all right?”
Gabriel Chestermarke spread out his hands.
“I know nothing whatever about
them!” he said. “I never heard of
them being here.”
“Nor I,” affirmed Joseph. “Not
a word!”
Gabriel looked at Neale, and drew Lord Ellersdeane’s
attention to him.
“Our senior clerk Mr.
Neale,” he said. “Neale have
you heard of this transaction?”
“Never!” replied Neale. “Mr.
Horbury never mentioned it to me.”
Gabriel waved his hand towards the open door of the
strong room.
“Any valuables of that sort
would have been in there,” he remarked.
“There is nothing of that sort there beyond
what I and my nephew know of. I am sure your
lordship’s jewels are not there.”
“But Horbury?” exclaimed the
Earl. “Where is he? He would tell you!”
“We don’t know where Mr.
Horbury is,” answered Gabriel “The truth
may as well be told he’s missing.
And so are some of our most valuable securities.”
The Earl slowly looked from one partner
to another. His face flushed, almost as hotly
as if he himself had been accused of theft.
“Oh, come!” he said.
“Horbury, now, of all men! Come come! you
don’t mean to tell me that Horbury’s been
playing games of that sort? There must be some
mistake.”
“I shall be glad to be assured
that I am making it,” said Gabriel coolly.
“But it will be more to the purpose if your lordship
will tell us all about the deposit of these jewels.
And there’s an important matter which
I must first mention. We have not the honour of
reckoning your lordship among our customers.
Therefore, whatever you handed to Horbury was handed
to him privately not to us.”
Joseph Chestermarke nodded his head
at that, and the Earl stirred a little uneasily in
his chair.
“Oh, well!” he said.
“I to tell you the truth, I didn’t
think about that, Mr. Chestermarke. It’s
true I don’t keep any account with you it’s
never seemed er, necessary, you know.
But, of course, I knew Horbury so well he’s
a member of our golf club and our archaeological society that ”
“Precisely,” interrupted
Gabriel, with a bow. “You came to Mr. Horbury
privately. Not to the firm.”
“I came to him knowing that
he was your manager, and a man to be thoroughly trusted,
and that he’d have safes and things in which
he could deposit valuables in perfect safety,”
answered the Earl. “I never reflected for
a moment on the niceties of the matter. I just
explained to him that I wanted those jewels taken
care of, and handed them over. That’s all!”
“And their precise nature?”
asked Gabriel.
“And their value?” added Joseph.
“As to their nature,”
replied the Earl, “there was my wife’s
coronet, her diamond necklace, and the Ellersdeane
butterfly, of which I suppose all the world’s
heard heirloom, you know. It’s
a thing that can be worn in a lady’s hair or
as a pendant diamonds, of course. As
to their value well, I had them valued
some years ago. They’re worth about a hundred
thousand pounds.”
Gabriel turned to his desk and began
to arrange some papers on it, and Neale, who was watching
everything with close attention, saw that his fingers
trembled a little. He made no remark, and the
silence was next broken by Joseph Chestermarke’s
soft accents.
“Did Horbury give your lordship
any receipt, or acknowledgment that he had received
these jewels on deposit?” he asked. “I
mean, of course, in our name?”
The Earl twisted sharply in his chair,
and Neale fancied that he saw a shade of annoyance
pass over his good-natured face.
“Certainly not!” he answered.
“I should never have dreamt of asking for a
receipt from a man whom I knew as well as I knew or
thought I knew Horbury. The whole
thing was just as if well, as if I should
ask any friend to take care of something for me for
a while.”
“Did Horbury know what you were
giving him?” asked Joseph.
“Of course!” replied the
Earl. “As a matter of fact, he’d never
seen these things, and I took them out of their case
and showed them to him.”
“And he said he would lock them
up? in our strong room?” suggested
the soft voice.
“He said nothing about your
strong room,” answered the Earl. “Nor
about where he’d put them. That was understood.
It was understood a tacit understanding that
he’d take care of them until our return.”
“Did your lordship give him
the date of your return?” persisted Joseph,
with the thorough-going air of a cross-examiner.
“Yes I told him exactly
when we should be back,” replied the Earl.
“The twelfth of May day before yesterday.”
Joseph moved away from the sideboard
towards the hearth, and leaning against the mantelpiece
threw a glance at the strong room.
“The jewels are not in our possession,”
he said, half indolently. “There is nothing
of that sort in there. There are two safes in
the outer room of the bank I should say
that Mr. Neale here knows everything that is in them.
Do you know anything of these jewels, Neale?”
“Nothing!” said Neale. “I never
heard of them.”
Gabriel looked up from his papers.
“None of us have heard of them,”
he remarked. “Horbury could not have put
them in this strong room without my knowledge.
They are certainly not there. The safes my nephew
mentioned just now are used only for books and papers.
Your lordship’s casket is not in either.”
The Earl rose slowly from his chair.
It was evident to Neale that he was more surprised
than angry: he looked around him as a man looks
whose understanding is suddenly brought up against
something unexplainable.
“All I know is that I handed
that casket to Mr. Horbury in his own dining-room
one evening some weeks ago,” he said. “That’s
certain! So I naturally expect to find it here.”
“And it is not here that
is equally certain,” observed Gabriel. “What
is also certain is that our manager trusted
in more than he should have been! is missing,
and many of our valuable securities with him.
Therefore ”
He spread his hands again with an
expressive gesture and once more bent over his papers.
Once more there was silence. Then the Earl started as
if a thought had suddenly occurred to him.
“I say!” he exclaimed,
“don’t you think Horbury may have put those
jewels away in his own house?”
Joseph Chestermarke smiled a little derisively.
“A hundred thousand pounds’ worth!”
he said softly. “Not very likely!”
“But he may have a safe there,”
urged the Earl. “Most people have a safe
in their houses nowadays they’re so
handy, you know, and so cheap. Don’t you
think that may be it?”
“I am not familiar with Horbury’s
domestic arrangements,” said Gabriel. “I
have not been in his house for some years. But
as we are desirous of giving your lordship what assistance
we can, we will go into the house and see if there
is anything of the sort. Just tell the housekeeper
we are coming in, Neale.”
The Earl nodded to Mrs. Carswell as
she received him and the two partners in the adjacent
hall.
“This lady will remember my
calling on Mr. Horbury one evening a few weeks ago,”
he said. “She saw me with him in that room.”
“Certainly!” assented
Mrs. Carswell, readily enough. “I remember
your lordship calling on Mr. Horbury very well.
One night after dinner your lordship was
here an hour or so.”
Gabriel Chestermarke opened the door
of the dining-room an old-fashioned apartment
which looked out on a garden and orchard at the rear
of the house.
“Mrs. Carswell,” he said,
as they all went in, “has Mr. Horbury a safe
in this room, or in any other room? You know what
I mean.”
But the housekeeper shook her head.
There was no safe in the house. There was a plate-chest there
it was, standing in a recess by the sideboard; she
had the key of it.
“Open that, at any rate,”
commanded Gabriel. “It’s about as
unlikely as anything could be, but well leave nothing
undone.”
There was nothing in the plate-chest
but what Gabriel expected to find there. He turned
again to the housekeeper.
“Is there anything in this house cupboard,
chest, trunk, anything in which Mr. Horbury
kept valuables?” he asked. “Any place
in which he was in the habit of locking up papers,
for instance?”
Mrs. Carswell again shook her head.
No, she knew of no such place or receptacle.
There was Mr. Horbury’s desk, but she believed
all its drawers were open. Her belief proved
to be correct: Gabriel himself opened drawer
after drawer, and revealed nothing of consequence.
He turned to the Earl with another expressive spreading
out of his hands.
“I don’t see what more
we can do to assist your lordship,” he said.
“I don’t know what more can be done.”
“The question is so
it seems to me what is to be done,”
replied the Earl, whose face had been gradually growing
graver. “What, for instance, are you going
to do, Mr. Chestermarke? Let us be plain with
each other. You disclaim all liability in connection
with my affair?”
“Most certainly!” exclaimed
Gabriel. “We know nothing of that transaction.
As I have already said, if Horbury took charge of your
lordship’s property, he did so as a private individual,
not on our behalf, not in his capacity as our manager.
If your lordship had been a customer of ours ”
“That would have been a very
different matter,” said Joseph. “But
as we have never had any dealings with your lordship ”
“We have, of course, no liability
to you,” concluded Gabriel. “The true
position of the case is that your lordship handed your
property to Horbury as a friend, not as manager of
Chestermarke’s Bank.”
“Then let me ask you, what are
you going to do?” said the Earl. “I
mean, not about my affair, but about finding your
manager?”
Gabriel looked at his nephew: Joseph shook his
head.
“So far,” said Joseph,
“we have not quite considered that. We are
not yet fully aware of how things stand. We have
a pretty good idea, but it will take another day.”
“You don’t mean to tell
me that you’re going to let another day elapse
before doing something?” exclaimed the Earl.
“Bless my soul! I’d have had
the hue and cry out before noon today, if I’d
been you!”
“If you’d been Chestermarke’s
Bank, my lord,” remarked Joseph, in his softest
manner, “that’s precisely what you would
not have done. We don’t want it noised
all over the town and neighbourhood that our trusted
manager has suddenly run away with our money and
your jewels in his pocket.”
There was a curious note half-sneering,
half-sinister in the junior partner’s
quiet voice which made the Earl turn and look at him
with a sudden new interest. Before either could
speak, Neale ventured to say what he had been wanting
to say for half an hour.
“May I suggest something, sir?”
he said, turning to Gabriel.
“Speak speak!”
assented Gabriel hastily. “Anything you
like!”
“Mr. Horbury may have met with
an accident,” said Neale. “He was
fond of taking his walks in lonely places there
are plenty outside the town. He may be lying
somewhere even now helpless.”
“Capital suggestion! much
obliged to you,” exclaimed the Earl. “Gad!
I wonder we never thought of that before! Much
the most likely thing. I can’t believe
that Horbury ”
Before he could say more, the door
of the dining-room was thrown open, a clear, strong
voice was heard speaking to some one without, and in
walked a handsome young woman, who pulled herself up
on the threshold to stare out of a pair of frank grey
eyes at the four startled men.