“Yes.”

There came an indefinable change in Garratt Skinner’s face.  He leaned forward with his mouth sternly set and his eyes very still.  One might almost have believed that for the first time during that luncheon he was really anxious, really troubled.

“Well, this morning the carpet had been swept.  The litter had gone.  But just underneath the hearth-rug one of those crumpled slips of paper lay not quite hidden.  I picked it up.  It was a check.”

“Have you got it?  Sylvia, have you got it?” and Garratt Skinner’s voice in steady quietude matched his face.

“Yes.”

Sylvia opened the little bag which she carried at her wrist and took out the slip of paper.  She unfolded it and spread it on the table before her.  The inside was pink.

“A check for L480 on the London and County Bank, Victoria Street,” she said.

Garrett Skinner looked over the table at the paper.  There was Wallie Hine’s wavering, unfinished signature at the bottom right-hand corner.  Parminter had guided his hand as far as the end of the Christian name, before he tore the check out and threw it away.  The amount of the body of the check had been filled in in Barstow’s hand.

“You had better give it to me, Sylvia,” he said, his fingers moving restlessly on the table-cloth.  “That check would be a very dangerous thing if Parminter ever came to hear of it.  Better give it to me.”

He leaned over and took it gently from before her, and put it carefully away in his pocket.

“Now, you see, there’s more reason ever why we should get Wallie Hine away from those two men.  He is living a bad life here.  Three weeks in the country may set his thoughts in a different grove.  Will you make this sacrifice, Sylvia?  Will you let me ask him?  It will be a good action.  You see he doesn’t know any geography.”

“Very well; ask him, father.”

Garrett Skinner reached over the table and patted her hand.

“Thank you, my dear!  Then that’s settled.  I propose that you and I go down this afternoon.  Can you manage it?  We might catch the four o’clock train from Waterloo if you go home now, pack up your traps and tell the housemaid to pack mine.  I will just wind up my business and come home in time to pick you and the luggage up.”

He rose from the table, and calling a hansom, put Sylvia into it.  He watched the cab drive out into the Strand and turn the corner.  Then he went back to the table and asked for his bill.  While he waited for it, he lit a match and drawing from his pocket the crumpled check, he set fire to it.  He held it by the corner until the flame burnt his fingers.  Then he dropped it in his plate and pounded it into ashes with a fork.

“That was a bad break,” he said to himself.  “Left carelessly under the edge of the hearth-rug.  A very bad break.”