"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 cortège 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."