"THE receipt? Oh, is that all? _You_ have got that," said Skinner very coolly.
"What makes you think so?" inquired the other keenly. He instantly suspected Skinner of having it.
"Why, sir, I saw it in his hand."
"Then it has got to Albion Villa, and we are ruined.""No, no, sir; you won't hear me: I am sure I saw it fall out of his hand when he was taken ill; and I think, but I won't be sure, he fell on it.
Anyway, there was nothing in his hands when I delivered him at Albion Villa; so it must be here. I daresay you have thrown it into a drawer or somewhere, promiscuously.""No, no, Skinner," said Mr. Hardie, with increasing alarm: "it is useless for us to deceive ourselves. I was not three minutes in the room, and thought of nothing but getting to town and cashing the bills."He rang the bell sharply, and on Betty coming in, asked her what she had done with that paper that was on the floor.
"Took it up and put it on the table, sir. This was it, I think." And she had her finger upon a paper.
"No! no!" said Mr. Hardie. "The one I mean was much smaller than that.""What" said she, with that astonishing memory for trifles people have who never read, "was it a little crumpled up paper lying by the basket?""Yes! yes! that sounds like it.""Oh, I put that _into_ the basket."
Mr. Hardie's eye fell directly on the basket, but it was empty. She caught his glance, and told him she had emptied it in the dust-hole as usual. Mr. Hardie uttered an angry exclamation. Betty, an old servant of his wife's, resented it with due dignity by tossing her head as she retired.
"There is no help for it," said Mr. Hardie bitterly; "we must go and grub in the dust-hole now.""Why, sir, your name is not on it, after all.""What does that matter? A man is bound by the act of his agent; besides, it is my form, and my initials on the back. Come, let us put a good face on the thing." And he led the way to the kitchen, and got up a little laugh, and asked the scullery-maid if she could show Mr. Skinner and him the dust-hole. She stared, but obeyed, and the pair followed her, making merry.
The dust-hole was empty.
The girl explained: "It is the dustman's day: he came at eleven o'clock in the morning and carried all the dust away: and grumbled at the paper and the bones, he did. So I told him beggars musn't be choosers: just like his impudence! when he gets it for nothing, and sells it for a mint outside the town." The unwonted visitors left her in dead silence almost before she had finished her sentence.
Mr. Hardie sat down in his parlour thoroughly discomposed; Skinner watched him furtively.
At last the former broke out: "This is the devil's doing: the devil in person. No intelligence nor ability can resist such luck. I almost wish we had never meddled with it: we shall never feel safe, never be safe."Skinner made light of the matter, treated the receipt as thrown into the sea. "Why, sir," said he, "by this time it will have found its way to that monstrous heap of ashes on the London Road; and who will ever look for it there, or notice it if they find it?" Hardie shook his head: "That monstrous heap is all sold every year to the farmers. That receipt, worth L. 14,000 to me, will be strewed on the soil for manure; then some farmer's man, or some farmer's boy that goes to the Sunday-school, will read it, see Captain Dodd's name, and bring it to Albion Villa, in hopes of a sixpence: a sixpence! Heaven help the man who does a doubtful act and leaves damnatory evidence on paper kicking about the world."From that hour the cash Hardie carried in his bosom, without a right to it, began to blister.
He thought of telling the dustman he had lost a paper, and setting him to examine the mountain of ashes on the London Road; but here caution stepped in: how could he describe the paper without awakening curiosity and defeating his own end? He gave that up. It was better to let the sleeping dog lie.
Finally, he resolved to buy security in a world where after all one has to buy everything: so he employed an adroit agent, and quietly purchased that mountain, the refuse of all Barkington. But he felt so ill-used, he paid for it in his own notes: by this means the treaty reverted to the primitive form of barter*--ashes for rags.
* Or exchange of commodities without the aid of money: see Homer, and Welsh Villages, _passim._This transaction he concealed from his confederate.
