the clock of helstonleigh cathedral was striking eight, and the postman was going his rounds through the boundaries. formerly, nothing so common as a regular postman, when on duty, was admitted within the pale of that exclusive place. the boundaries, chiefly occupied by the higher order of the clergy, did not condescend to have its letters delivered in the ordinary way, and by the ordinary hands. it was the custom for the postman to take them to the boundary-gate, and there put them into the porter’s great box, just as if he had been posting letters at the town post-office; and the porter forthwith delivered them at their several destinations. the late porter, however, had grown, with years, half blind and wholly stupid. some letters he dropped; some he lost; some he delivered at wrong houses; some, he persisted in declaring, when questioned, had never been delivered to him at all. in short, mistakes and confusion were incessant; so, the porter was exonerated from that portion of his duty, and the postman entered upon it. there was a fresh porter now, but the old custom had not been resumed.

ring—ring—ring—ring—for one peculiarity of the boundaries was, that most of its doors possessed no knockers, only bells—on he went, the man, on this morning, leaving letters almost everywhere. at length he came to mr. galloway’s, and rang there a peal that it is the delight of a postman to ring; but when the door was opened, he delivered in only one letter and a newspaper. the business letters were generally directed to the office.

mr. galloway was half-way through his breakfast. he was no sluggard; and he liked to devote the whole hour, from eight to nine, to his breakfast and his times. occasionally, as on this morning, he would sit down before eight, in order that he might have nearly finished breakfast before the letters arrived. his servants knew by experience that, when this happened, he was expecting something unusual by the post.

his man came in. he laid the letter and the newspaper by his master’s side. mr. galloway tore open the times, gave one glance at the price of the funds and the money article, then put aside the paper, and took up the letter.

the latter was from his cousin, mr. robert galloway. it contained also the envelope in which mr. galloway had enclosed the twenty-pound note. “you perceive,” wrote mr. robert, “that the seal has not been tampered with. it is perfectly intact. hence i infer that you must be in error in supposing that you enclosed the note.”

mr. galloway examined the envelope closely. his cousin had not broken the seal in opening the letter, but had cut the paper above it. he was a methodical man in trifles, this mr. robert galloway, and generally did cut open his envelopes. it had been all the better for him had he learnt to be methodical with his money.

“yes; it is as robert says,” soliloquized mr. galloway. “the seal has not been touched since it went out of my hands; therefore the note must previously have been extracted from the letter. now, who did it?”

he sat—his elbow on the table, his chin in his hand, and the envelope before him. apparently, he was studying it minutely; in reality he was lost in thought. “it’s just like the work of a conjuror!” he presently exclaimed. “not a caller near the place, that i can find out, and yet the bank-note vanishes out of the letter! notes don’t vanish without hands, and i’ll do as i said yesterday—consult the police. if any one can come to the bottom of it, it’s butterby. had the seal been broken, i should have given it to the post-office to ferret out; the crime would have lain with them, and so would the discovery. as it is, the business is mine.”

he wrote a line rapidly in pencil, folded, called in his man-servant, and despatched him with it to the police-station. the station was very near mr. galloway’s; on the other side of the cathedral, halfway between that edifice and the town-hall. in ten minutes after the servant had left the house, mr. butterby was on his road to it.

mr. butterby puzzled helstonleigh. he was not an inspector, he was not a sergeant, he was not a common officer, and he was never seen in official dress. who was mr. butterby? helstonleigh wondered. that he had a great deal to do with the police, was one of their staff, and received his pay, was certain; but, what his standing might be, and what his peculiar line of duty, they could not tell. sometimes he was absent from helstonleigh for months at a time, probably puzzling other towns. mr. galloway would have told you he was a detective; but perhaps mr. galloway’s grounds for the assertion existed only in his own opinion. for convenience-sake we will call him a detective; remembering, however, that we have no authority for the term.

mr. butterby came forward, a spare, pale man, of middle height, his eyes deeply set, and his nose turned up to the skies. he was of silent habit; probably, of a silent nature.

mr. galloway recited the circumstances of his loss. the detective sat near him, his hands on his knees, his head bent, his eyes cast upon the floor. he did not interrupt the story by a single word. when it was ended, he took up the envelope, and examined it in equal silence; examined it with ridiculous minuteness, mr. galloway thought, for he poked, and peered, and touched it everywhere. he held it up to the light, he studied the postmarks, he gazed at the seal through an odd-looking little glass that he took from his waistcoat pocket, he particularly criticised the folds, he drew his fingers along its edges, he actually sniffed it—all in silence, and with an impassive countenance.

“have you the number of the note?” was his first question.

“no,” said mr. galloway.

he looked up at this. the thought may have struck him, that, not to take the number of a bank-note, sent by post, betrayed some carelessness for a man of business. mr. galloway, at least, inferred this, and answered the look.

“of course i am in the habit of taking their numbers; i don’t know that i ever did such a thing before, as send a bank-note away without it. i had an appointment, as i tell you, at the other end of the town for a quarter to three; it was of importance; and, when i heard the college strike out the three-quarters—the very hour i ought to have been there—i hurriedly put the note into the folds of the letter, without waiting to take its number. it was not that i forgot to do so, but that i could not spare the time.”

“have you any means of ascertaining the number, by tracing the note back to whence it may have come into your possession?” was the next question.

mr. galloway was obliged to confess that he had none. “bank-notes are so frequently paid me from different quarters,” he remarked. “yesterday, for instance, a farmer, renting under the dean and chapter, came in, and paid me his half-year’s rent. another, holding the lease of a public-house in the town, renewed two lives which had dropped in. it was beard, of the barley mow. now, both these men paid in notes, tens and fives, and they now lie together in my cash drawer; but i could not tell you which particular notes came from each man—no, not if you paid me the worth of the whole to do it. neither could i tell whence i had the note which i put into the letter.”

“in this way, if a note should turn out to be bad, you could not return it to its owner.”

“i never took a bad note in my life,” said mr. galloway, speaking impulsively. “there’s not a better judge of notes than myself in the kingdom; and jenkins is as good as i am.”

another silence. mr. butterby remained in the same attitude, his head and eyes bent. “have you given me all the particulars?” he presently asked.

“i think so. all i remember.”

“then allow me to go over them aloud,” returned the detective; “and, if i make any mistake or omission, have the goodness to correct me:—on friday last, you took a twenty-pound note out of your cash drawer, not taking or knowing its number. this note you put within the folds of a letter, and placed both in an envelope, and fastened the envelope down, your two clerks, channing and yorke, being present. you then went out, leaving the letter upon one of the desks. as you left, hamish channing came in. immediately following upon that, yorke went out, leaving the brothers alone. arthur departed to attend college, hamish remaining in the office. arthur channing soon returned, finding there was no necessity for him to stay in the cathedral; upon which hamish left. arthur channing remained alone for more than an hour, no one calling or entering the office during that period. you then returned yourself; found the letter in the same state, apparently, in which you had left it, and you sealed it, and sent arthur channing with it to the post-office. these are the brief facts, so far as you are cognizant of them, and as they have been related to you?”

“they are,” replied mr. galloway. “i should have mentioned that arthur channing carried the letter into my private room before he left the office for college.”

“locking the door?”

“oh dear, no! closing the door, no doubt, but not locking it. it would have been unusual to do so.”

“jenkins was away,” observed the detective in a tone of abstraction, which told he was soliloquizing, rather than addressing his companion. mr. galloway rather fired up at the remark, taking it in a different light from that in which it was spoken.

“jenkins was at home at the time, confined to his bed; and, had he not been, i would answer for jenkins’s honesty as i would for my own. can you see any possible solution to the mystery?”

“a very possible one,” was the dry answer. “there is no doubt whatever upon my mind, that the theft was committed by arthur channing.”

mr. galloway started up with an exclamation of surprise, mingled with anger. standing within the room was his nephew mark. the time had gone on to nine, the hour of release from school; and, on running past mr. galloway’s with the rest of the boys, mark had dutifully called in. mark and his brothers were particularly fond of calling in, for their uncle was not stingy with his sixpences, and they were always on the look-out. mr. mark did not get a sixpence this time.

“how dare you intrude upon me in this sly way, sir? don’t you see i am engaged? i will have you knock at my room door before you enter. take yourself off again, if you please!”

mark, with a word of deprecation, went off, his ears pricking with the sentence he had heard from the detective—arthur channing the thief!

mr. galloway turned again to the officer. he resented the imputation. “the channings are altogether above suspicion, from the father downwards,” he remonstrated. “were arthur channing dishonestly inclined, he has had the opportunity to rob me long before this.”

“persons of hitherto honourable conduct, honest by nature and by habit, have succumbed under sudden temptation or pressing need,” was the answer.

“arthur channing is in no pressing need. he is not hard up for money.”

a smile actually curled the detective’s lip. “a great many more young men are harder up for money than they allow to appear. the channings are in what may be called difficulties, through the failure of their chancery suit, and the lad must have yielded to temptation.”

mr. galloway could not be brought to see it. “you may as well set on and suspect hamish,” he resentfully said. “he was equally alone with the letter.”

“no,” was the answer of the keen officer. “hamish channing is in a responsible position; he would not be likely to emperil it for a twenty-pound note; and he could not know that the letter contained money.” mr. butterby was not cognizant of quite the facts of the case, you see.

“it is absurd to suspect arthur channing.”

“which is the more absurd—to suspect him, or to assume that the bank-note vanished without hands? forced its own way through the envelope, and disappeared up the chimney in a whirlwind?” asked the officer, bringing sarcasm to his aid. “if the facts are as you have stated, that only the two channings had access to the letter, the guilt must lie with one of them. facts are facts, mr. galloway.”

mr. galloway admitted that facts were facts, but he could not be brought to allow the guilt of arthur channing. the detective rose.

“you have confided the management of this affair to me,” he observed, “and i have no doubt i shall be able to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. one more question i must ask you. is it known to your clerks that you have not the number of the note?”

“yes, it is.”

“then i fear you stand little chance of ever seeing it again. that fact known, no time would be lost in parting with it; they’d make haste to get it safe off.”

not an instant did mr. butterby take for consideration upon quitting mr. galloway. with a sharp, unhesitating step, as though his mind had been made up for a month past as to what his course must be, he took his way to the house of mr. joe jenkins. that gentleman, his head still tied up, was just leaving for the office, and mr. butterby encountered him coming through the shop.

“good morning, jenkins. i want a word with you alone.”

jenkins bowed, in his civil, humble fashion; but “a word alone” was more easily asked than had, mrs. jenkins being all-powerful, and burning with curiosity. the officer had to exert some authority before he could get rid of her, and be left at peace with jenkins.

“what sources of expense has arthur channing?” demanded he, so abruptly as to startle and confuse jenkins.

“sources of expense, sir?” he repeated.

“what are his habits? does he squander money? does he go out in an evening into expensive company?”

“i’m sure, sir, i cannot tell you anything about it,” jenkins was mildly beginning. he was imperatively interrupted by the detective.

“i ask to know. you are aware that i possess authority to compel you to speak; therefore, answer me without excuse or circumlocution; it will save trouble.”

“but indeed, sir, i really do not know,” persisted jenkins. “i should judge mr. arthur channing to be a steady, well-conducted young gentleman, who has no extravagant habits at all. as to his evenings, i think he spends them mostly at home.”

“do you know whether he has any pressing debts?”

“i heard him say to mr. yorke one day, that a twenty-pound note would pay all he owed, and leave him something out of it,” spoke jenkins in his unconscious simplicity.

“ah!” said mr. butterby, drawing in his lips, though his face remained impassive as before. “when was this?”

“not long ago, sir. about a week, it may have been, before i met with that accident—which accident, i begin to see now, sir, happened providentially, for it caused me to be away from the office when that money was lost.”

“an unpleasant loss,” remarked the officer, with apparent carelessness; “and the young gentlemen must feel it so—arthur channing especially. yorke, i believe, was out?”

“he does feel it very much, sir. he was as agitated about it yesterday as could be, when mr. galloway talked of putting it into the hands of the police. it is a disagreeable thing to happen in an office, you know, sir.”

a slight pause of silence was made by the detective ere he rejoined. “agitated, was he? and mr. roland yorke the same, no doubt?”

“no, sir; mr. roland does not seem to care much about it. he thinks it must have been taken in its transit through the post-office, and i cannot help being of the same opinion, sir.”

another question or two, and jenkins attended mr. butterby to the door. he was preparing to follow him from it, but a peremptory female voice arrested his departure.

“jenkins, i want you.”

“it is hard upon half-past nine, my dear. i shall be late.”

“if it’s hard upon half-past ten, you’ll just walk here. i want you, i say.”

meek as any lamb, mr. jenkins returned to the back parlour, and was marshalled into a chair. mrs. jenkins closed the door and stood before him. “now, then, what did butterby want?”

“i don’t know what he wanted,” replied jenkins.

“you will sit there till you tell me,” resolutely replied the lady. “i am not going to have police inquisitors making mysterious visits inside my doors, and not know what they do it for. you’ll tell me every word that passed, and the sooner you begin, the better.”

“but i am ignorant myself of what he did want,” mildly deprecated jenkins. “he asked me a question or two about mr. arthur channing, but why i don’t know.”

leaving mrs. jenkins to ferret out the questions one by one—which, you may depend upon it, she would not fail to do, and to keep jenkins a prisoner until it was over—and leaving mr. butterby to proceed to the house of the cathedral organist, whither he was now bent, to ascertain whether mr. williams did take the organ voluntarily, and (to arthur) unexpectedly, the past friday afternoon, we will go on to other matters. mr. butterby best knew what bearing this could have upon the case. police officers sometimes give to their inquiries a strangely wide range.