Page:The Talleyrand maxim, by J.S. Fletcher (IA talleyrandmaximb00flet).pdf/58

 But across the street, all unknown to Collingwood, Linford Pratt was thinking a good deal. Collingwood had taken his car from a rank immediately opposite Eldrick & Pascoe's windows; Pratt, whose desk looked on to the street, had seen him drive away soon after ten o'clock and return about half-past twelve. Pratt, who knew everybody in the business centre of the town, knew the man who had driven Collingwood, and when he went out to his lunch he asked him where he had been that morning. The man, who knew no reason for secrecy, told him—and Pratt went off to eat his bread and cheese and drink his one glass of ale and to wonder why young Collingwood had been to Normandale Grange. He became slightly anxious and uneasy. He knew that Collingwood must have made some slight examination of old Bartle's papers. Was it—could it be possible that the old man, before going to Eldrick's, had left some memorandum of his discovery in his desk—or in a diary? He had said that he had not shown the will, nor mentioned the will, to a soul—but he might;—old men were so fussy about things—he might have set down in his diary that he had found it on such a day, and under such-and-such circumstances.

However, there was one person who could definitely inform him of the reason of Collingwood's visit to Normandale Grange—Mrs. Mallathorpe. He would see her at once, and learn if he had any grounds for fear. And so it came about that at nine o'clock that evening, Mrs. Mallathorpe, for the second time that day, found herself asked to see a limb of the law.