“It’s Carr of the Inner Temple,” whispered Mr. Kedge in his clerk’s ear.

“Oh, I know him, sir.”

“All right.  If you can help him, do so.”

“I first knew Gorton about fifteen months ago,” observed the clerk, when they were shut in together.  “A friend of mine, now dead, spoke of him to me as a respectable young fellow who had fallen in the world, and asked if I could help him to some employment.  I think he told me somewhat of his history; but I quite forget it.  I know he was very low down then, with scarcely bread to eat.”

“Did this friend of yours call him Gorton or Gordon?” interrupted Mr. Carr.

“Gorton.  I never heard him called Gordon at all.  I remember seeing a book of his that he seemed to set some store by.  It was printed in old English, and had his name on the title-page:  ’George Gorton.  From his affectionate father, W. Gorton.’  I employed him in some outdoor work.  He knew London perfectly well, and seemed to know people too.”

“And he had been to Australia?”

“He had been to Australia, I feel sure.  One day he accidentally let slip some words about Melbourne, which he could not well have done unless he had seen the place.  I taxed him with it, and he shuffled out of it with some excuse; but in such a manner as to convince me he had been there.”

“And now, Mr. Kimberly, I am going to ask you another question.  You spoke of his having been at Calne; I infer that you sent him to the place on the errand to Mr. Elster.  Try to recollect whether his going there was your own spontaneous act, or whether he was the original mover in the journey?”

The grey-haired clerk looked up as though not understanding.

“You don’t quite take me, I see.”

“Yes I do, sir; but I was thinking.  So far as I can recollect, it was our own spontaneous act.  I am sure I had no reason to think otherwise at the time.  We had had a deal of trouble with the Honourable Mr. Elster; and when it was found that he had left town for the family seat, we came to the resolution to arrest him.”

Thomas Carr paused.  “Do you know anything of Gordon’s—­or Gorton’s doings in Calne?  Did you ever hear him speak of them afterwards?”

“I don’t know that I did particularly.  The excuse he made to us for arresting Lord Hartledon was, that the brothers were so much alike he mistook the one for the other.”

“Which would infer that he knew Mr. Elster by sight.”

“It might; yes.  It was not for the mistake that we discharged him; indeed, not for anything at all connected with Calne.  He did seem to have gone about his business there in a very loose way, and to have paid less attention to our interests than to the gossip of the place; of which there was a tolerable amount just then, on account of Lord Hartledon’s unfortunate death.  Gorton was set upon another job or two when he returned; and one of those he contrived to mismanage so woefully, that I would give him no more to do.  It struck me that he must drink, or else was accessible to a bribe.”