Cyrus
Vetch had vanished, together with the contents of his uncle's cash
box. When Mr. Vetch went home to his dinner, he found the cash box
broken open, and Cyrus gone. I could not doubt now that 'twas my
old enemy had wreaked on me the vengeance that had smouldered in
his breast ever since Joe Punchard sent him down Wyle Cop in the
barrel, and was fanned into a flame by my action on the night of
the adventure in Raven Street. Mistress Pennyquick was firm in her
belief that the Cluddes were party to the crime, but that I could
not credit then, and never will.
Mr. Vetch himself came to see me the next day. The poor old man was
quite broken down. He humbly begged my forgiveness for the trouble
he had brought upon me, for so he chose to regard it; and he
confessed to me, what I am sure he never revealed to a living soul
beside, that Cyrus had been for years a thorn in his flesh. He was
a spendthrift and a gambler, and had bled his uncle many a time to
discharge what he called his debts of honor. This drain upon the
lawyer, together with losses he had sustained in the failure of
Chamberlain's Land Bank scheme--that monstrous attempt of the
Tories to set up a rival to the Bank of England--had brought him to
the verge of ruin, and with tears in his eyes he expressed to me
his fear that the matter of my father's will would bring him into
such ill repute that the Shrewsbury folk would no longer trust him
and would give their business into other hands.
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