Johnny Ludlow Fifth Series Part 33

"He come in after Mrs. Hannah and the other had gone," she replied, taking a moment's pause. "Close upon it; I'd hardly shut my door on them when I had to open it to him."

"Did he go out again?"

"Not he, sir. He eat his supper, telling me in a grumbling tone about the extra work he'd had to do in the greenhouses and places, because the other man had took holiday best part o' the day. And then he went up to bed. Right tired he seemed."

We left her fitting the pieces of the basin together, and went home. "It wasn't Monk," said Tod. "But now--where to look for the right man, Johnny?"

Look as we might, we did not find him. Phoebe was better in a day or two, but the convulsive fits stuck to her, coming on at all sorts of unexpected times. Old Duff thought it might end in insanity.

And that's what came of Watching for the Shadows on St. Mark's Eve!

SANKER'S VISIT.

His name was Sanker, and he was related to Mrs. Todhetley. Not expecting to go home for the holidays--for his people lived in some far-off district of Wales, and did not afford him the journey--Tod invited him to spend them with us at d.y.k.e Manor: which was uncommonly generous, for he disliked Sanker beyond everything. Having plenty of money himself, Tod could not bear that a connection of his should be known as nearly the poorest and meanest in the school, and resented it awfully. But he could not be ill-natured, for all his prejudices, and he asked Sanker to go home with us.

"It's slow there," he said; "not much going on in summer besides haymaking; but it may be an improvement on this. So, if you'd like to come, I'll write and tell them."

"Thank you," said Sanker; "I should like it very much."

Things had been queer at school as the term drew to its close. Petty pilferings were taking place; articles and money alike disappeared. Tod lost half-a-sovereign; one of the masters some silver; Bill Whitney put sevenpence halfpenny and a set of enamelled studs into his desk one day, never to see either again; and Snepp, who had been home to his sister's marriage, lost a piece of wedding-cake out of his box the night he came back. There was a thief in the school, and no clue to him. One might mentally accuse this fellow, another that; but not a shadow of proof was there against any. Altogether we were not sorry to get away.

But the curious thing was, that soon after we got home pilferings began there. Ned Banker was well received; and Tod, regarding himself in the capacity of host, grew more cordial with him than he had been at school.

It was a sort of n.o.blesse oblige feeling. Sanker was sixteen; stout and round; not tall; with pale eyes and a dull face. He was to be a clergyman; funds at his home permitting. His father lived at some mines in Wales. Tod wondered in what capacity.

"Mr. Sanker was a gentleman born and bred," explained Mrs. Todhetley.

"He never had much money; but what little it was he lost, speculating in this very mine. After that, when he had nothing in the world left to live upon, and a wife and several young children to keep, he was thankful to take a situation as over-looker at a small yearly salary."

We had been home about a week when the first thing was missed. At one side of the house, in a sort of nook, was a square room, its gla.s.s-doors opening on the gravel-path that skirted the hedge of the vegetable garden. Squire Todhetley kept his farming accounts there and wrote his letters. A barometer and two county maps, Worcestershire and Warwickshire, on its walls, a square of matting on its floor, an upright bureau, a table, some chairs; and there you have the picture of the room.

One afternoon--mind! we did not know this for a week after, but it is as well to tell of it as it occurred--he was sitting at the table in this room, his account-books, kept in the bureau, open before him; his inkstand and cash-box at hand. Lying near the cash-box was a five-pound note, open; the Squire had put it out for Dwarf Giles to get changed at Alcester. He was writing an order for some things that Giles would have to bring back, when Rimmell, who acted as working bailiff on the estate, came to the gla.s.s-doors, open to the warm June air, saying he had received an offer for the wheat that had spurted. The Squire stepped outside on the gravel-path while he talked with Rimmell, and then strolled round with him to the fold-yard. He was away--that is, out of sight of the room--about three minutes, and when he got back the note was gone.

He could not believe his own eyes. It was a calm day; no wind stirring.

He lifted the things on the table; he lifted the matting on the floor; he shook his loose coat; all in vain. Standing at the door, he shouted aloud; he walked along the path to the front of the house, and shouted there; but was not answered. So far as could be seen, no person whatever was about who could have come round to the room during his short absence.

Striding back to the room, he went through it, and up the pa.s.sage to the hall, his boots creaking. Molly was in the kitchen, singing over her work; Phoebe and Hannah were heard talking upstairs; and Mrs.

Todhetley stood in the store-room, doing something to the last year's pots of jam. She said, on being questioned, that no one had pa.s.sed to the pa.s.sage leading to the Squire's room.

It happened at that moment, that I, coming home from the d.y.k.e, ran into the hall, full b.u.t.t against the Squire.

"Johnny," said he, "where are you all? What are you up to?"

I had been at the d.y.k.e all the afternoon with Tod and Hugh; they were there still. Not Sanker: he was outside, on the lawn, reading. This I told the pater, and he said no more. Later, when we came to know what had happened, he mentioned to us that, at this time, no idea of robbery had entered his head; he thought one of us might have hidden the money in sport.

So much an impossibility did it appear of the note's having been lifted by human hands, that the Squire went back to his room in a maze. He could only think that it must have attached itself to his clothes, and dropped off them in the fold-yard. What had become of it, goodness knew; whether it had fluttered into the pond, or the hens had scratched it to pieces, or the turkeys gobbled it up; he searched fruitlessly.

That was on a Thursday. On the following Thursday, when Tod was lying on the lawn bench on his back, playing with his tame magpie, and teasing Hugh and Lena, the pater's voice was heard calling to him in a sharp, quick tone, as if something was the matter. Tod got up and went round by the gravel-path to whence the sound came, and I followed. The Squire was standing at the window of the room, half in, half out.

"I don't want you, Johnny. Stay, though," he added, after a moment, "you may as well be told--why not?"

He sat down in his place at the table. Tod stood just inside the door, paying more attention to the magpie, which he had brought on his arm, than to his father: I leaned against the bureau. There was a minute's silence, waiting for the Squire to speak.

"Put that wretched bird down," he said; and we knew something had put him out, for he rarely spoke with sharpness to Tod.

Tod sent the magpie off, and came in. The first day we got home from school, Tod had rescued the magpie from Goody Picker's grandson; he caught him pulling the feathers out of its tail; gave him sixpence for it, and brought it home. A poor, miserable, half-starved thing, that somebody had taught to say continually, "Now then, Peter." Tod meant to feed it into condition; but the pater had not taken kindly to the bird; he said it would be better dead than alive.

"What was that I heard you boys talking of the other day, about some petty pilferings in your school?" he asked, abruptly. And we gave him the history.

"Well, as it seems to me, the same thing is going on here," he continued, looking at us both. "Johnny, sit down; I can't talk while you sway about like that."

"The same thing going on here, sir?"

"I say that it seems so," said the pater, thrusting both his hands deep into his trousers' pockets, and rattling the silver in them. "Last Thursday, this day week, a bank-note lay on my table here. I just went round to the yard with Rimmell, and when I got back the note was gone."

"Where did it go to?" asked Tod, practically.

"That is just the question--where? I concluded that it must have stuck to my coat in some unaccountable way, and got lost out-of-doors. I don't conclude so now."

Tod seemed to take the news in his usual careless fashion, and kept privately telegraphing signs to the magpie, sitting now on the old tree-stump opposite.

"Yes, sir. Well?"

"I think now, Joe, that somebody came in at these open doors, and _took_ the note," said the pater, impressively. "And I want to find out who it was."

"Now then, Peter!" cried the bird, hopping down on the gravel; at which Tod laughed. The Squire got up in a rage, and shut the doors with a bang.

"If you can't be serious for a few moments, you had better say so. I can tell you this is likely to turn out no laughing business."

Tod turned his back to the gla.s.s-doors, and left the magpie to its devices.

"Whoever it was, contrived to slip round here from the front, during my temporary absence; possibly without ill intention: the sight of the note lying open might have proved too strong a temptation for him."

"Him!" put in Tod, critically. "It might have been a woman."

"You might be a jacka.s.s: and often are one," said the pater. And it struck us both, from the affable retort, that his suspicions were pointing to some particular person of the male gender.

"This morning, after breakfast, I was here, writing a letter," he went on. "While sealing it, Thomas called me away in a hurry, and I was absent the best part of an hour. When I got back, my ring had disappeared."

"Your ring, sir!" cried Tod.

"Yes, my ring, sir," mocked the pater; for he thought we were taking up the matter lightly, and it nettled him. "I left it on the seal, expecting to find it there when I returned. Not so. The ring had gone, and the letter lay on the ground. We have got a thief about the house, boys--a thief--within or without. Just the same sort of thief, as it seems to me, that you had at school."

Tod suddenly leaned forward, his elbow on his knee, his whole interest aroused. Some unpleasant doubt had struck him, as was evident by the flush upon his face.

"Of course, anybody that might be about, back or front, could find their way down here if they pleased," he slowly said. "Tramps get in sometimes."