He sat late that night in his study. He heard the parlor-maid lock the front door; then his wife went upstairs and the lights were put out. His brain was like some great empty hall with an echo in it; one thought reverberated endlessly. . . . At length he drew his chair to the table and began to write. He addressed an envelope and then slowly re-read what he had written.
“my dear flamel”
“Many apologies for not sending you sooner the enclosed check, which represents the customary percentage on the sale of the Letters.”
“Trusting you will excuse the oversight,
“Yours truly,
“Stephen Glennard.”
He let himself out of the darkened house and dropped the letter in the post-box at the corner.
The next afternoon he was detained late at his office, and as he was preparing to leave he heard someone asking for him in the outer room. He seated himself again and Flamel was shown in.
The two men, as Glennard pushed aside an obstructive chair, had a moment to measure each other; then Flamel advanced, and drawing out his note-case, laid a slip of paper on the desk.
“My dear fellow, what on earth does this mean?” Glennard recognized his check.
“That I was remiss, simply. It ought to have gone to you before.”
Flamel’s tone had been that of unaffected surprise, but at this his accent changed and he asked, quickly: “On what ground?”
Glennard had moved away from the desk and stood leaning against the calf-backed volumes of the bookcase. “On the ground that you sold Mrs. Aubyn’s letters for me, and that I find the intermediary in such cases is entitled to a percentage on the sale.”
Flamel paused before answering. “You find, you say. It’s a recent discovery?”
“Obviously, from my not sending the check sooner. You see I’m new to the business.”
“And since when have you discovered that there was any question of business, as far as I was concerned?”
Glennard flushed and his voice rose slightly. “Are you reproaching me for not having remembered it sooner?”
Flamel, who had spoken in the rapid repressed tone of a man on the verge of anger, stared a moment at this and then, in his natural voice, rejoined, good-humoredly, “Upon my soul, I don’t understand you!”
The change of key seemed to disconcert Glennard. “It’s simple enough–” he muttered.
“Simple enough–your offering me money in return for a friendly service? I don’t know what your other friends expect!”
“Some of my friends wouldn’t have undertaken the job. Those who would have done so would probably have expected to be paid.”
He lifted his eyes to Flamel and the two men looked at each other. Flamel had turned white and his lips stirred, but he held his temperate note. “If you mean to imply that the job was not a nice one, you lay yourself open to the retort that you proposed it. But for my part I’ve never seen, I never shall see, any reason for not publishing the letters.”
“That’s just it!”
“What–?”
“The certainty of your not seeing was what made me go to you. When a man’s got stolen goods to pawn he doesn’t take them to the police-station.”
“Stolen?” Flamel echoed. “The letters were stolen?”
Glennard burst into a coarse laugh. “How much longer to you expect me to keep up that pretence about the letters? You knew well enough they were written to me.”
Flamel looked at him in silence. “Were they?” he said at length. “I didn’t know it.”
“And didn’t suspect it, I suppose,” Glennard sneered.
The other was again silent; then he said, “I may remind you that, supposing I had felt any curiosity about the matter, I had no way of finding out that the letters were written to you. You never showed me the originals.”
“What does that prove? There were fifty ways of finding out. It’s the kind of thing one can easily do.”
Flamel glanced at him with contempt. “Our ideas probably differ as to what a man can easily do. It would not have been easy for me.”
Glennard’s anger vented itself in the words uppermost in his thought. “It may, then, interest you to hear that my wife does know about the letters–has known for some months. . . .”