When money is lost out of an office, suspicion very frequently falls
upon one or more of that office’s _employés_. Mr. Galloway’s doubts,
however, had not yet extended to those employed in his. The letter
containing the bank-note had been despatched to Mr. Robert Galloway, at
Ventnor, on the Friday. On the Sunday morning, while Mr. Galloway was at
breakfast, a short answer was delivered to him from his cousin:--“Your
letter has reached me, but not the note; you must have omitted to
enclose it,” was the news it contained relative to that particular
point. Mr. Galloway knew that he had enclosed the note; there was little
doubt that both his clerks could testify that he had done so, for it was
done in their presence. How could it have been taken out again? Had it
been abstracted while the letter was still in his office?--or on its
way to the post?--or in its transmission to Ventnor? “If in the office,”
argued Mr. Galloway, “it must have been done before I sealed it; if
afterwards, that seal must have been tampered with, probably broken.
I’ll drop a note to Robert, and ask the question.” He rose from his
breakfast and penned a line to Southampton, where, as he had reason
to believe, Mr. Robert Galloway would be on the Monday. It was not Mr.
Galloway’s habit to write letters on a Sunday, but he considered that
the present occasion justified the act. “I certainly enclosed the note
in my letter,” he wrote. “Send me word instantly whether the seal had
been tampered with. I stamped it with my private seal.” Mr. Robert
Galloway received this on the Monday morning. He did not wait for the
post, but forwarded the reply by telegraph--“The seal had not been
broken. Will send you back the envelope by first post.” This was the
despatch which you saw Mr. Galloway receive in his office.
He went back into his private room, carrying the despatch with him, and
there he sat down to think. From the very first, he had not believed the
fraud to lie with the post-office--for this reason: had the note been
taken out by one of its servants, the letter would almost certainly not
have reached its destination; it would have disappeared with the note.
He had cast a doubt upon whether Arthur Channing had posted the letters
himself. Arthur assured him that he had done so, and Mr. Galloway
believed him; the information that the seal of the letter was unbroken
was now a further confirmation, had he needed it. At least, it confirmed
that the letter had not been opened after it left the office. Mr.
Galloway perfectly remembered fastening down the letter. He probably
would have sealed it then, but for the commotion that arose at the same
moment in the street caused by Mad Nance. There could be no shadow of
doubt, so far as Mr. Galloway could see, and so far as he believed, that
the abstraction had taken place between the time of his fastening down
the envelope and of his sealing it. Who had done it?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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