"Is it true?"
"It is absolutely false. There is not one word of truth in it. It comes to me as a complete surprise. Never by so much as a word did your father lead me to suppose that he had such thoughts of me. I cannot conceive what can have been the condition of his mind when he wrote in such a strain. But that letter enables me to begin to understand that something must have happened to him mentally, and that when he committed suicide he actually was insane."
Miss Patterson tore the letter in half from top to bottom. The lawyer broke into exclamation.
"Miss Patterson! What are you doing? You must not do that! Not only is it not your letter, but it is a document of the gravest legal importance."
Paying him no heed whatever, the girl continued in silence the destruction of the letter, going about the business in the most thorough-going manner, reducing it to the tiniest atoms. When she had finished with the letter itself, she proceeded to dispose of the envelope, Mr. Wilkes expostulating hotly all the time, but kept from active interference by the insistent fashion with which Mr. Elmore prevented him from getting near the lady. Compelled at last to own that it was useless to attempt to stay her, he called upon his colleague to take notice of the outrage to which the letter was subjected, to say nothing of himself.
"Mr. Parmiter, you are witness of what is being done. This young lady, with the connivance and, indeed, assistance of this young man, is destroying a document of the first importance, which is not only in no sense her own property, but which was obtained from me by what is tantamount to an act of robbery, accompanied, in a legal sense, by violence. Of these facts you will be called upon, in due course, to give evidence."
Mr. Parmiter was still, but the lady spoke.
"Are you not forgetting that Mr. Parmiter is my solicitor, and that a solicitor cannot give evidence against his own client? I am sorry to have to seem to teach you law, Mr. Wilkes. Rodney, have you a match?
If so, will you please burn these?"
She held out the fragments of the letter. Mr. Wilkes made a final attempt at salvage.
"Miss Patterson, I implore you to give me those scraps of paper. It may still not be too late to piece them together, and so save you from consequences of whose gravity you have no notion."
Once more the young gentleman interposed.
"Steady, Mr. Wilkes, steady!"
"Remove your hand from my shoulder, sir! You are only making your position every moment more and more serious!"
Again the lady spoke.
"To use a phrase of which you seem to be rather fond, Mr. Wilkes, in a legal sense, I believe this is my room. I must ask you to leave it at once."
"Not before you have given me those scraps of paper, Miss Patterson!"
"If you won't go, I shall reluctantly have to ask Mr. Elmore to put you out, and, in doing so, to use no more violence than is necessary."
"I entreat you, Miss Patterson, to accept sound advice, and to do something which may permit of my repairing the mischief you have caused. Give me those scraps of paper."
"Rodney, will you please put Mr. Wilkes out? But please don't hurt him!"
The young man put the lawyer out, doing him no actual bodily hurt. He conducted him through the outer office to the landing, then addressed the astonished Andrews.
"Andrews, this is Mr. Stephen Wilkes; I believe you know him. Give instructions that, under no pretext, is he to be admitted to these offices again. I shall look to you to see that those instructions are carried out. Good-day, sir."
Shutting the door in the lawyer's face, he audibly turned the key on the inner side.
"Now, Andrews, would you mind coming into the other room?"
Miss Patterson greeted her cousin with the request she had already made. She still had the fragments of the letter between her fingers.
"How about that match, Rodney? Please burn these."
He made a little bonfire of them on the hearth, while she went on:
"I don't suppose you will be very eager now to attend my father's funeral in the capacity of mourner."
"I am not. I would much rather not go at all, if you will pardon the abstention."
"I would much rather you did not go either--so, Andrews, that is settled. Also, be so good as to understand that I should prefer that the funeral should not start from Russell Square."
Mr. Patterson's body had been removed from the station to the undertaker's, where it at present reposed in a handsome example of the undertaker's art. The idea had been to bring it in a hearse to Russell Square, whence the funeral cortege was to start. It was this arrangement which Miss Patterson wished to have altered. The managing man silently acquiesced; there was still time to give instructions that all that was left of his late employer was to be taken straight from the undertaker's to the cemetery.
CHAPTER XXII
PHILIP WALTER AUGUSTUS PARKER
The four of them went together to the bank, which was within a minute's walk. There, the necessary forms being quickly gone through, a sum of two thousand pounds was credited to Miss Patterson, power being given to Rodney Elmore to draw on her account for such sums as were needed for the proper conduct of the business, it being tacitly understood that he would draw only such sums as were needed for the business. That matter being settled, they separated; Mr. Andrews and Mr. Parmiter going their own ways, Miss Patterson and Mr. Elmore departing together in a cab to lunch. The cab had not gone very far before the young gentleman made a discovery.
"I've left my letter-case on the table in the bank?"
"Your letter-case? Did you? What a nuisance; I never noticed it. Are you sure it was on the table?"
"Quite; I remember distinctly; it was under a blotting-pad. What an idiot I am! I'm frightfully sorry, but I'm afraid I shall have to go back and get it."
"Of course, we will go back."
The cab returned to the bank. The lady remained inside; the gentleman passed through the great swing doors--through first one pair, then a second--it was impossible to see from the street what was taking place beyond. Once in the bank, the young gentleman said nothing about his letter-case--it had apparently passed from his memory altogether; but he presented at the counter a cheque for a thousand pounds, with his own signature attached. He took it in tens and fives, and a hundred pounds in gold. If the paying clerk thought it was rather an odd way of taking so large a sum, he made no comment. He came back through the swing doors with a letter-case held in his hand.
"I've got it," he explained.
He emphatically had, though she understood one thing and he meant another. When they had gone some little distance in the direction of lunch she observed:
"I wish I were not in mourning. I've half a mind to go back and change."
He observed her critically--he was holding one of her hands under cover of the apron.
"My dear Gladys, I can't admit that you do look your best in mourning."
"Do you think that I don't know that?"
"But you look charming, all the same."
"No, I don't; I look a perfect fright."
"I doubt if you could look a fright even if you tried; I'm certain you don't look one now. In fact, the more I look at you the harder I find it to keep from kissing you."