"But never mind
that; I'm going to make a guess--a desperate guess, mind. Should
I be altogether in error if I thought that this letter had been
stolen; and that the fingers of Mr. Davager, of suspicious
commercial celebrity, might possibly be the fingers which took
it?"
"That is exactly what I wanted to make you understand," cried Mr.
Frank.
"How did he communicate the interesting fact of the theft to
you?"
"He has not ventured into my presence. The scoundrel actually had
the audacity--"
"Aha!" says I. "The young lady herself! Sharp practitioner, Mr.
Davager."
"Early this morning, when she was walking alone in the
shrubbery," Mr. Frank goes on, "he had the assurance to approach
her, and to say that he had been watching his opportunity of
getting a private interview for days past. He then showed
her--actually showed her--her unfortunate father's letter; put
into her hands another letter directed to me; bowed, and walked
off; leaving her half dead with astonishment and terror. If I had
only happened to be there at the time!" says Mr. Frank, shaking
his fist murderously in the air, by way of a finish.
"It's the greatest luck in the world that you were not," says I.
"Have you got that other letter?"
He handed it to me. It was so remarkably humorous and short, that
I remember every word of it at this distance of time. It began in
this way:
_"To Francis Gatliffe, Esq.
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