Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1679 page)

“In plain English,” said Obenreizer, “you doubt my word?”

“Do you purpose to take
my
word for it when I inform you that I have doubled my income?” asked Vendale.  “If my memory does not deceive me, you stipulated, a minute since, for plain proofs?”

“Well played, Mr. Vendale!  You combine the foreign quickness with the English solidity.  Accept my best congratulations.  Accept, also, my written guarantee.”

He rose; seated himself at a writing-desk at a side-table, wrote a few lines, and presented them to Vendale with a low bow.  The engagement was perfectly explicit, and was signed and dated with scrupulous care.

“Are you satisfied with your guarantee?”

“I am satisfied.”

“Charmed to hear it, I am sure.  We have had our little skirmish — we have really been wonderfully clever on both sides.  For the present our affairs are settled.  I bear no malice.  You bear no malice.  Come, Mr. Vendale, a good English shake hands.”

Vendale gave his hand, a little bewildered by Obenreizer’s sudden transitions from one humour to another.

“When may I expect to see Miss Obenreizer again?” he asked, as he rose to go.

“Honour me with a visit to-morrow,” said Obenreizer, “and we will settle it then.  Do have a grog before you go!  No?  Well! well! we will reserve the grog till you have your three thousand a year, and are ready to be married.  Aha!  When will that be?”

“I made an estimate, some months since, of the capacities of my business,” said Vendale.  “If that estimate is correct, I shall double my present income — ”

“And be married!” added Obenreizer.

“And be married,” repeated Vendale, “within a year from this time.  Good-night.”

VENDALE MAKES MISCHIEF

When Vendale entered his office the next morning, the dull commercial routine at Cripple Corner met him with a new face.  Marguerite had an interest in it now!  The whole machinery which Wilding’s death had set in motion, to realise the value of the business — the balancing of ledgers, the estimating of debts, the taking of stock, and the rest of it — was now transformed into machinery which indicated the chances for and against a speedy marriage.  After looking over results, as presented by his accountant, and checking additions and subtractions, as rendered by the clerks, Vendale turned his attention to the stock-taking department next, and sent a message to the cellars, desiring to see the report.

The Cellarman’s appearance, the moment he put his head in at the door of his master’s private room, suggested that something very extraordinary must have happened that morning.  There was an approach to alacrity in Joey Ladle’s movements!  There was something which actually simulated cheerfulness in Joey Ladle’s face

“What’s the matter?” asked Vendale.  “Anything wrong?”

“I should wish to mention one thing,” answered Joey.  “Young Mr. Vendale, I have never set myself up for a prophet.”

“Who ever said you did?”

“No prophet, as far as I’ve heard I tell of that profession,” proceeded Joey, “ever lived principally underground.  No prophet, whatever else he might take in at the pores, ever took in wine from morning to night, for a number of years together.  When I said to young Master Wilding, respecting his changing the name of the firm, that one of these days he might find he’d changed the luck of the firm — did I put myself forward as a prophet?  No, I didn’t.  Has what I said to him come true?  Yes, it has.  In the time of Pebbleson Nephew, Young Mr. Vendale, no such thing was ever known as a mistake made in a consignment delivered at these doors.  There’s a mistake been made now.  Please to remark that it happened before Miss Margaret came here.  For which reason it don’t go against what I’ve said respecting Miss Margaret singing round the luck.  Read that, sir,” concluded Joey, pointing attention to a special passage in the report, with a forefinger which appeared to be in process of taking in through the pores nothing more remarkable than dirt.  “It’s foreign to my nature to crow over the house I serve, but I feel it a kind of solemn duty to ask you to read that.”

Vendale read as follows: — ”Note, respecting the Swiss champagne.  An irregularity has been discovered in the last consignment received from the firm of Defresnier and Co.”  Vendale stopped, and referred to a memorandum-book by his side.  “That was in Mr. Wilding’s time,” he said.  “The vintage was a particularly good one, and he took the whole of it.  The Swiss champagne has done very well, hasn’t it?”

“I don’t say it’s done badly,” answered the Cellarman.  “It may have got sick in our customers’ bins, or it may have bust in our customers’ hands.  But I don’t say it’s done badly with us.”

Vendale resumed the reading of the note: “We find the number of the cases to be quite correct by the books.  But six of them, which present a slight difference from the rest in the brand, have been opened, and have been found to contain a red wine instead of champagne.  The similarity in the brands, we suppose, caused a mistake to be made in sending the consignment from Neuchâtel.  The error has not been found to extend beyond six cases.”

“Is that all!” exclaimed Vendale, tossing the note away from him.

Joey Ladle’s eye followed the flying morsel of paper drearily.

“I’m glad to see you take it easy, sir,” he said.  “Whatever happens, it will be always a comfort to you to remember that you took it easy at first.  Sometimes one mistake leads to another.  A man drops a bit of orange-peel on the pavement by mistake, and another man treads on it by mistake, and there’s a job at the hospital, and a party crippled for life.  I’m glad you take it easy, sir.  In Pebbleson Nephew’s time we shouldn’t have taken it easy till we had seen the end of it.  Without desiring to crow over the house, young Mr. Vendale, I wish you well through it.  No offence, sir,” said the Cellarman, opening the door to go out, and looking in again ominously before he shut it.  “I’m muddled and molloncolly, I grant you.  But I’m an old servant of Pebbleson Nephew, and I wish you well through them six cases of red wine.”

Left by himself, Vendale laughed, and took up his pen.  “I may as well send a line to Defresnier and Company,” he thought, “before I forget it.”  He wrote at once in these terms:

“Dear Sirs.  We are taking stock, and a trifling mistake has been discovered in the last consignment of champagne sent by your house to ours.  Six of the cases contain red wine — which we hereby return to you.  The matter can easily be set right, either by your sending us six cases of the champagne, if they can be produced, or, if not, by your crediting us with the value of six cases on the amount last paid (five hundred pounds) by our firm to yours.  Your faithful servants,

“WILDING AND CO.”

This letter despatched to the post, the subject dropped at once out of Vendale’s mind.  He had other and far more interesting matters to think of.  Later in the day he paid the visit to Obenreizer which had been agreed on between them.  Certain evenings in the week were set apart which he was privileged to spend with Marguerite — always, however, in the presence of a third person.  On this stipulation Obenreizer politely but positively insisted.  The one concession he made was to give Vendale his choice of who the third person should be.  Confiding in past experience, his choice fell unhesitatingly upon the excellent woman who mended Obenreizer’s stockings.  On hearing of the responsibility entrusted to her, Madame Dor’s intellectual nature burst suddenly into a new stage of development.  She waited till Obenreizer’s eye was off her — and then she looked at Vendale, and dimly winked.

The time passed — the happy evenings with Marguerite came and went.  It was the tenth morning since Vendale had written to the Swiss firm, when the answer appeared, on his desk, with the other letters of the day:

“Dear Sirs.  We beg to offer our excuses for the little mistake which has happened.  At the same time, we regret to add that the statement of our error, with which you have favoured us, has led to a very unexpected discovery.  The affair is a most serious one for you and for us.  The particulars are as follows:

“Having no more champagne of the vintage last sent to you, we made arrangements to credit your firm to the value of six cases, as suggested by yourself.  On taking this step, certain forms observed in our mode of doing business necessitated a reference to our bankers’ book, as well as to our ledger.  The result is a moral certainty that no such remittance as you mention can have reached our house, and a literal certainty that no such remittance has been paid to our account at the bank.

“It is needless, at this stage of the proceedings, to trouble you with details.  The money has unquestionably been stolen in the course of its transit from you to us.  Certain peculiarities which we observe, relating to the manner in which the fraud has been perpetrated, lead us to conclude that the thief may have calculated on being able to pay the missing sum to our bankers, before an inevitable discovery followed the annual striking of our balance.  This would not have happened, in the usual course, for another three months.  During that period, but for your letter, we might have remained perfectly unconscious of the robbery that has been committed.

“We mention this last circumstance, as it may help to show you that we have to do, in this case, with no ordinary thief.  Thus far we have not even a suspicion of who that thief is.  But we believe you will assist us in making some advance towards discovery, by examining the receipt (forged, of course) which has no doubt purported to come to you from our house.  Be pleased to look and see whether it is a receipt entirely in manuscript, or whether it is a numbered and printed form which merely requires the filling in of the amount.  The settlement of this apparently trivial question is, we assure you, a matter of vital importance.  Anxiously awaiting your reply, we remain, with high esteem and consideration,

“DEFRESNIER & CIE.”

Vendale had the letter on his desk, and waited a moment to steady his mind under the shock that had fallen on it.  At the time of all others when it was most important to him to increase the value of his business, that business was threatened with a loss of five hundred pounds.  He thought of Marguerite, as he took the key from his pocket and opened the iron chamber in the wall in which the books and papers of the firm were kept.

He was still in the chamber, searching for the forged receipt, when he was startled by a voice speaking close behind him.

“A thousand pardons,” said the voice; “I am afraid I disturb you.”

He turned, and found himself face to face with Marguerite’s guardian.

“I have called,” pursued Obenreizer, “to know if I can be of any use.  Business of my own takes me away for some days to Manchester and Liverpool.  Can I combine any business of yours with it?  I am entirely at your disposal, in the character of commercial traveller for the firm of Wilding and Co.”

“Excuse me for one moment,” said Vendale; “I will speak to you directly.”  He turned round again, and continued his search among the papers.  “You come at a time when friendly offers are more than usually precious to me,” he resumed.  “I have had very bad news this morning from Neuchâtel.”

“Bad news,” exclaimed Obenreizer.  “From Defresnier and Company?”

“Yes.  A remittance we sent to them has been stolen.  I am threatened with a loss of five hundred pounds.  What’s that?”

Turning sharply, and looking into the room for the second time, Vendale discovered his envelope case overthrown on the floor, and Obenreizer on his knees picking up the contents.

“All my awkwardness,” said Obenreizer.  “This dreadful news of yours startled me; I stepped back — ”  He became too deeply interested in collecting the scattered envelopes to finish the sentence.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” said Vendale.  “The clerk will pick the things up.”

“This dreadful news!” repeated Obenreizer, persisting in collecting the envelopes.  “This dreadful news!”

“If you will read the letter,” said Vendale, “you will find I have exaggerated nothing.  There it is, open on my desk.”

He resumed his search, and in a moment more discovered the forged receipt.  It was on the numbered and printed form, described by the Swiss firm.  Vendale made a memorandum of the number and the date.  Having replaced the receipt and locked up the iron chamber, he had leisure to notice Obenreizer, reading the letter in the recess of a window at the far end of the room.