"I know no more than you do. I've been expecting him to come in by that 8.30 train, but he can't have done that, or he'd have been up here by now."
"Perhaps it's late," suggested Neale.
"No – it's in," she said. "I saw it come in from my window, at the back. It was on time. So – I don't know what's become of him."
"But – what about Saturday?" asked Neale. "Shirley says you said Mr. Horbury went off on Saturday. Didn't he leave any word – didn't he say where he was going?"
"Mr. Horbury went out on Saturday evening," answered Mrs. Carswell. "He didn't say a word about where he was going. He went out just before dusk, as if for a walk. I'd no idea that he wasn't at home until Sunday morning. You see, the servants and I went to bed at our usual time on Saturday night, and though he wasn't in then, I thought nothing of it, because, of course, he'd his latch-key. He was often out late at night, as you know, Mr. Neale. And when I found that he hadn't come back, as I did find out before breakfast yesterday, I thought nothing of that either – I thought he'd gone to see some friend or other, and had been persuaded to stop the night. Then, when he didn't come home yesterday at all, I thought he was staying the week-end somewhere. So I wasn't anxious, nor surprised. But I am surprised he's not back here first thing this morning."
"So am I," agreed Neale. "And more than surprised." He stood for a moment, running over the list of the manager's friends and acquaintances in the neighbourhood, and he shook his head as he came to the end of his mental reckoning of it. "It's very odd," he remarked. "Very surprising, Mrs. Carswell."
"It's all the more surprising," remarked the housekeeper, "because of his going off for his holiday tomorrow. And Miss Fosdyke's coming down from London today to go with him."
Neale pricked his ears. Miss Fosdyke was the manager's niece – a young lady whom Neale remembered as a mere slip of a girl that he had met years before and never seen since.
"I didn't know that," he remarked.
"Neither did Mr. Horbury until Saturday afternoon – that is, for certain," said Mrs. Carswell. "He'd asked her to go with him to Scotland on this holiday, but it wasn't settled. However, he got a wire from her, about tea-time on Saturday, to say she'd go, and would be down here today. They're to start tomorrow morning."
Neale turned to the door. He was distinctly puzzled and uneasy. He had known John Horbury since his own childhood, and had always regarded him as the personification of everything that was precise, systematic, and regular. All things considered, it was most remarkable that he should not be at the bank at opening hours. And already a vague suspicion that something had happened began to steal into his mind.
"Did you happen to notice which way he went, Mrs. Carswell?" he asked. "Was it towards the station?"
"He went out down the garden and through the orchard," replied the housekeeper. "He could have got to the station that way, of course. But I do know that he never said a word about going anywhere by train, and he'd no bag or anything with him – he'd nothing but that old oak stick he generally carried when he went out for his walks."
Neale pushed open the house door and went into the outer hall to the junior clerks. Little as he cared about banking as a calling, he was punctilious about rules and observances, and it seemed to him somewhat indecorous that the staff of a bank should hang about its front door, as if they were workshop assistants awaiting the arrival of a belated foreman.
"Better come inside the house, Shirley," he said. "Patten, you go to the post-office and get the letters."
"No good without the bag," answered Patten, a calm youth of seventeen. "Tried that once before. Don't you know! – they've one key – we've another."
"Well, come inside, then," commanded Neale. "It doesn't look well to hang about those steps."
"Might just as well go away," muttered Shirley, stepping into the hall. "If Horbury's got to come back by train from wherever he's gone to, he can't get here till the 10.45, and then he's got to walk up. Might as well go home for an hour."
"The partners'll be here before an hour's over," said Neale. "One of them's always here by ten."
Shirley, a somewhat grumpy-countenanced young man, made no answer. He began to pace the hall with looks of eminent dissatisfaction. But he had only taken a turn or two when a quietly appointed one-horse coupé brougham came up to the open door, and a well-known face was seen at its window. Mr. Gabriel Chestermarke, senior proprietor, had come an hour before his time.
CHAPTER II
THE ELLERSDEANE DEPOSIT
Had the three young men waiting in that hall not been so familiar with him by reason of daily and hourly acquaintance, the least observant amongst them would surely have paused in whatever task he was busied with, if Mr. Gabriel Chestermarke had crossed his path for the first time. The senior partner of Chestermarke's Bank was a noticeable person. Wallington Neale, who possessed some small gift of imagination, always felt that his principal suggested something more than was accounted for by his mere presence. He was a little, broadly built man, somewhat inclined to stoutness, who carried himself in very upright fashion, and habitually wore the look of a man engaged in operations of serious and far-reaching importance, further heightened by an air of reserve and a trick of sparingness in speech. But more noticeable than anything else in Mr. Gabriel Chestermarke was his head, a member of his body which was much out of proportion to the rest of it. It was a very big, well-shaped head, on which, out of doors, invariably rested the latest-styled and glossiest of silk hats – no man had ever seen Gabriel Chestermarke in any other form of head-gear, unless it was in a railway carriage, there he condescended to assume a checked cap. Underneath the brim of the silk hat looked out a countenance as remarkable as the head of which it was a part. A broad, smooth forehead, a pair of large, deep-set eyes, the pupils of which were black as sloes, a prominent, slightly hooked nose, a firm, thin-lipped mouth, a square, resolute jaw – these features were thrown into prominence by the extraordinary pallor of Mr. Chestermarke's face, and the dark shade of the hair which framed it. That black hair, those black eyes, burning always with a strange, slumbering fire, the colourless cheeks, the vigorous set of the lips, these made an effect on all who came in contact with the banker which was of a not wholly comfortable nature. It was as if you were talking to a statue rather than to a fellow-creature.
Mr. Chestermarke stepped quietly from his brougham and walked up the steps. He was one of those men who are never taken aback and never show surprise, and as his eyes ran over the three young men, there was no sign from him that he saw anything out of the common. But he turned to Neale, as senior clerk, with one word.
"Well?"
Neale glanced uncomfortably at the house door. "Mr. Horbury is not at home," he answered. "He has the keys."
Mr. Chestermarke made no reply. His hand went to his waistcoat pocket, his feet moved lower down the hall to a side-door sacred to the partners. He produced a key, opened the door, and motioned the clerks to enter. Once within, he turned into the partners' room. Five minutes passed before his voice was heard.
"Neale!"
Neale hurried in and found the banker standing on the hearth-rug, beneath the portrait of a former Chestermarke, founder of the bank in a bygone age. He was suddenly struck by the curious resemblance between that dead Chestermarke and the living one, and he wondered that he had never seen it before. But Mr. Chestermarke gave him no time for speculation.
"Where is Mr. Horbury?" he asked.
Neale told all he knew: the banker listened in his usual fashion, keeping his eyes steadily fixed on his informant. When Neale had finished, Mr. Chestermarke shook his head.
"If Horbury had meant to come into town by the 8.30 train and had missed it," he remarked, "he would have wired or telephoned by this. Telephoned, of course: there are telephones at every station on that branch line. Very well, let things go on."
Neale went out and set his fellow-clerks to the usual routine. Patten went for the letters. Neale carried them into the partners' room. At ten o'clock the street door was opened. A customer or two began to drop in. The business of the day had begun. It went on just as it would have gone on if Mr. Horbury had been away on holiday.