Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/83

 time thinking, trying, indeed, to recall something.

Charles Bruno Levigne—where had he heard that name before, and in connection with what? Some case in which he had been engaged, years before, he felt sure, but what particular case he could not recall. He had a vague notion that it was a case of fraud, in the City, and that Levigne was a witness, or an interested party. His memory failed to respond, and presently he wrote a letter to the colleague asking him to enquire quietly into the status, financial and otherwise, of the man of whom he was thinking. For there was a strong impression, however chaotic, in Wedgwood's mind that this Charles Bruno Levigne's record, as outlined in the bygone case he was thinking of, was somewhat shady.

Wedgwood set out next morning after a leisurely breakfast, to make his way to Mortover Grange. He had no difficulty in finding it—the Mortover property, he was told, on which the new colliery was being made, lay at the end of the valley, some three miles away. About eleven o'clock of a raw, misty, October morning he came to it, a dreary, featureless expanse of flat, dank land amongst the hills, in the centre of which crowds of men were at work on the surface equipment of the pit. Wedgwood visu-