"After my father had gone away, I found a
telegram in a drawer in one of the rooms. There was no envelope, there
was just the telegram. So I opened it. It was addressed to my father. I
remember the words, for I did not know whether there was not something
which needed attention. It ran like this: 'What are you waiting for?
Hurry up.'"
"Was it signed?" asked Chayne.
"Yes. 'Jarvice,'" replied Sylvia.
"Jarvice," Chayne repeated; and he spoke it yet again, as though in some
vague way it was familiar to him. "What was the date of the telegram?"
"It had been sent a month before I found it. So I put it back into
the drawer."
"'What are you waiting for? Hurry up. Jarvice,'" said Chayne, slowly, and
then he remembered how and when he had come across the name of Jarvice
before. His face grew very grave.
"We are in deep waters, my dear," he said.
There had been trouble in his regiment, some years before, in which the
chief figures had been a subaltern and a money-lender. Jarvice was the
name of the money-lender--an unusual name. Just such a man would be
likely to be Garratt Skinner's confederate and backer. Chayne ran over
the story in his mind again, by this new light. It certainly strengthened
the argument that the Mr. Jarvice who sent the telegram was Mr. Jarvice,
the money-lender. Thus did Chayne work it out in his thoughts:
"Jarvice, for some reason unknown, pays Walter Hine an allowance.
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