The Man of Gold by Evelyn Hervey Read Free Book Online

with as much force as she could that her business was pressing she would not be allowed to hinder the pin-works owner’s steady acquisition of yet more and more gold sovereigns to add to his hoard.
    ‘I will see if he is disengaged,’ the clerk said.
    Miss Unwin inclined her head in acknowledgement.
    The man went over to a partitioned-off part of the high, busy platform. Presumably behind it sat old Mr Partington.
    Miss Unwin noticed then, with a certain relief, that Richard Partington’s somewhat larger high desk just outside the door of his father’s room was unoccupied. No doubt it was Richard’s duty sometimes to go about here and there seeing to business for the firm. She had not liked the idea of having to visit his father without telling him why she was entering the sanctum. But, had he questioned her or even raised an interrogative eyebrow, she would have been duty-bound to keep from him this secret of his father’s.
    Just as she was duty-bound now, in one moment, more, to tell the aged miser that she knew it.
    The Master will see you,’ the clerk said, returning.
    Miss Unwin realised from the very way the clerk declined to look her full in the face that the old man inside had expressed, doubtless in highly vigorous terms, anger at anyone daring to break in on his business day. But he had said that he would see her. Curiosity, she knew, was a powerful force and she had counted on it.
    She walked through the ranks of clerks’ desks. Not a head was lifted from the work in front of them. But one by one the scratching pens slowed in their tasks.
    She knocked at the closed door of Mr Partington’s room.
    ‘Come in,’ she heard the old man bark drily.
    She turned the wooden doorknob, pushed open the door and entered.
    Her employer was sitting behind a dusty leather-topped desk, evidently on a chair specially raised higher than usual from the ground since his smallness of stature was no longer apparent. But the size of his large head was even more evident than usual. And the two extra large ears projecting from its fleshlessness seemed prepared more than ever to sift out the last shade of meaning, the least hesitation, in what she might have to say.
    ‘Well?’
    There was no help for it now. No beating about the bushwould be possible. Not the quickest exchange of preliminary civilities.
    She took a breath.
    ‘Mr Partington,’ she said, ‘I have to tell you that your granddaughters have discovered –’
    She faltered then. But faltered only for an instant.
    ‘Have discovered what it is that lies beneath the flagstone near the basement door in the house.’
    It was said. It was done. The words had been spoken. The knowledge that the old miser’s secret was a secret no more had been revealed.
    Miss Unwin waited for the thunderbolt to descend.
    Her words were received in silence.
    She brought herself at last to lift up her gaze, which as she had spoken the unsayable thing she had not been able to raise higher than the paper-strewn surface of the desk in front of the old man. She looked now full and fair at the large white-domed head.
    It seemed as if it had been in an instant turned to true stone. The eyelids above the cold eyes did not so much as blink. The lips, pale almost as the skin surrounding them, did not quiver. It was hard to detect any breath issuing from the tense nostrils.
    Then, at last, there was a movement, a little forward jerk of that over-large head.
    Miss Unwin was positively relieved to find that she had not in truth struck her employer dead.
    ‘Gold.’
    The word now came out from between the hardly parted lips. It was only the one short syllable. But in it there was a world of desolation.
    Miss Unwin began a rapid jabber of explanation, telling once again how she had heard mysterious noises in the house as she had lain in bed the night before, how she had tracked them down, what she had seen, what the twins had said by way of explanation.
    And all the while, as she poured out the history