d stopped at
home, and minded their business, year in and year out. Naturally, they
had prospered. They had speedily become known as hard-working young men;
then as good employers of labour; finally as men of considerable
standing in a town of which there were only some five thousand
inhabitants. They had been invited to join in public matters--Mallalieu
had gone into the Town Council first; Cotherstone had followed him
later. They had been as successful in administering the affairs of the
little town as in conducting their own, and in time both had attained
high honours: Mallalieu was now wearing the mayoral chain for the second
time; Cotherstone, as Borough Treasurer, had governed the financial
matters of Highmarket for several years. And as he sat there, staring at
the red embers of the office fire, he remembered that there were no two
men in the whole town who were more trusted and respected than he and
his partner--his partner in success ... and in crime.

But that was not all. Both men had married within a few years of their
coming to Highmarket. They had married young women of good standing in
the neighbourhood; it was perhaps well, reflected Cotherstone, that
their wives were dead, and that Mallalieu had never been blessed with
children. But Cotherstone had a daughter, of whom he was as fond as he
was proud; for her he had toiled and contrived, always intending her to
be a rich woman. He had seen to it that she was well educated; he had
even allowed himself to be deprived of her company for two years while
she went to an expensive school, far away; since she had grown up, he
had surrounded her with every comfort. And now, as Kitely had reminded
him, she was engaged to be married to the most promising young man in
Highmarket, Windle Bent, a rich manufacturer, who had succeeded to and
greatly developed a fine business, who had already made his mark on the
Town Council, and was known to cherish Parliamentary ambitions.
Everybody knew that Bent had a big career before him; he had all the
necessary gifts; all the proper stuff in him for such a career. He would
succeed; he would probably win a title for himself--a baronetcy, perhaps
a peerage. This was just the marriage which Cotherstone desired for
Lettie; he would die more than happy if he could once hear her called
Your Ladyship. And now here was--this!

Cotherstone sat there a long time, thinking, reflecting, reckoning up
things. The dusk had come; the darkness f