When he was safe from their eyes, whirling along over the country, he took once more the telegram from his pocket: “Something requiring your immediate attention. Fear bad news. Sent for last night. Too late to communicate, please lose no time.” Well! after all, there was nothing in that to indicate Bob D’yell. It might be Mrs. Davidson’s business. It might be that scapegrace young Faulkner again. The devil fly away with all young spendthrifts! To give an honest man a fright like this for him! Mr. Wedderburn, with a momentary relief, noted, a gleam of fun coming into his eyes, two superfluous words in the telegram: “‘Please’--the blockhead! What man in his senses says ‘please’ when he has to pay a ha’penny for it?” he said with a little hoarse laugh to himself. For surely it must be young Faulkner--the born fool! There was absolutely nothing to connect it with Bob D’yell.
When he entered his office, however, he was met with a very grave face by his managing clerk. “It was a man from Musselburgh, sir, last night. He came to the office, and finding it shut, as it naturally would be at that hour, came on to me at my house. You know, sir, I live out at Morningside----”
“It would be strange if I did not know where you live--get on, man, get on!”
“I say that to account for it being so late. Well, sir, he told me--if it was Musselburgh or if it was Portobello, I can’t quite say, but it’s written down, and I sent off young Gibson by skreigh of day to make inquiries. He told me, sir, that a heap of clothes had been found on the sands belonging to somebody, it would seem, that was bathing in the sea. They lay there all the afternoon and no one took any notice, but at last one of the fisherwomen getting bait came in and said it was a gentleman’s clothes, and his watch and all lying. And the things were examined, and in the pockets were a number of letters----”
Mr. Wedderburn gave a gasp, inarticulate but impatient, with a vehement wave of his hand. The clerk handed him, with a look of deep commiseration and sympathy which filled the lawyer with sudden rage, a little packet on the table.
He sank into a chair, speechless for the moment, but half with rage at Martin standing there gently shaking his head, with the look that a sympathetic acquaintance wears at a funeral--as if it were anything to him! “Robert Dalyell, Esq., Yalton,” the familiar commonplace address, that meant nothing except the merest everyday necessity--that meant a whole tragedy now.