‘I----,’ began Bommaney, stammering and speaking a little thickly, ‘I didn’t come to ask about your father.’ Young Barter’s heart at this, though he was perfectly prepared for it, began to beat like a sledgehammer. ‘I’ve had a dreadful loss. I have called nowhere but at your office since I left my own, and I have lost eight thousand pounds. I am convinced that I must have left it there.’
‘I can’t think so, Mr. Bommaney,’ said Barter, with a face of innocence.’ We can go back together, if you like, and look for it.’ Bommaney’s driver lingered for him; the other cabman was already jingling leisurely down the street.
‘Johnson,’ said young Barter, addressing the domestic, ‘you hear what Mr. Bommaney says. This is a matter of the most urgent importance, and must be looked into at once. Tell my mother that I have been home, and that I have been called suddenly back on urgent business.’ Bommaney stood in a kind of stupid trance, and the young man, taking him by the arm, had some ado to secure his attention. ‘Come! Come, sir,’ he said; ‘we will look into this at once. You must not remain in suspense about such a matter.’
They rustled together through the straw which had been laid down upon the roadway, and had been scattered by the feet of passers-by upon the pavement, and, mounting the cab, drove in a ghastly silence for a score of yards, and then, with a clatter which made conversation difficult, Bommaney, rousing himself at intervals, shouted his certainty that the notes would prove to have been left at Barter’s chambers. Barter, growing curiously inured to the circumstances of the case, shouted back that he dared to say they would be; that it was very likely; that he really did not see where else Mr. Bommaney could possibly have left them, furtively pressing the notes against his breast meanwhile, and once, at a quiet interval, when Bommaney had sunk into his former stupor, venturing to steal a hand to the pocket in which the stolen money lay, caressing the edges of the notes with the tips of his fingers.
‘I’m sure,’ said Bommaney, as the cab pulled up at the gate of the quadrangle, ‘that we shall find them here.’ He spoke with a tremulous uncertainty, and so obviously appealed for a confirmation of his hope, that Barter felt constrained to answer,