"Not I. I come up to it only yesterday, expecting to stop a week or so. Now I find I may have to go back tomorrow: the chances is about equal one way and t'other. But if I do, I should not have got to see you this time, sir, and must have come up again for it." "I felt very much inclined to say I'd not see you," answered Bede, candidly. "We are busy just now, and I would a great deal rather let the whole affair relating to the cheque drop entirely, than be at the trouble of raking it up again. The loss of the money has been ours, and, of course, we must put up with it. I began a note to you to this effect; but it struck me while I was writing that you might possibly be carrying your news to my father." "No, I shouldn't have done that. It concerns you, so to say, more than him. Been well lately, Mr. Bede Greatorex?" "As well as I usually am. Why?" "Well, sir, you are looking, if I might make bold to say it, something like a shadder. Might a'most see through you." "I have been doing too much lately. Mrs. Bede Greatorex and myself were on the Continent for two months, rushing about from kingdom to kingdom, and from place to place, seeing the wonders, and taking what the world calls a holiday--which is more wearing than any hard work," Bede condescended to explain, but in rather a haughty tone, for he thought it did not lie in the detective's legitimate province to offer remarks upon him. "In regard to business, Mr. Butterby: unless you have anything very particular to communicate, I would rather not hear it. Let the affair drop." "But I should not be doing my duty either way, to you or to me, in letting it drop," returned Butterby. "If anything worse turned up later, I might get called over the coals for it at headquarters." "Be so good as to hasten over what you have to say, then," said Bede, taking out his watch and looking at it with anything but marked courtesy. It produced no effect on Mr. Butterby. If his clients chose to be in a hurry, he rarely was. But in his wide experience, bringing, as he generally did, all keen observation to bear, he felt convinced of one thing--that the gentleman before him _dreaded_ the communication he had to make, and, for that reason and no other, wished to shun it. "When that cheque was lost in the summer, Mr. Bede Greatorex, you did me the honour to put a little matter into my hands, confiding to me your confident opinion that one of your clerks must have been the purloiner of it, if not on his own score, on somebody else's that he was acting for. You asked me to give an eye privately to the four. Not having got any satisfactory news from me up to the present time, you have perhaps thought that I have been neglecting the charge, and let it fall through." "Oh, if it concerns _them_, I'll be glad to hear you!" briskly spoke Bede Greatorex; and to the acute ear listening, the tone seemed to express relief as well as satisfaction. "Have you found out that one of them did take it?"