The Devil's Advocate by Fred M. White

As was quite natural in the circumstances, Hitherfield made the most of the Baines mystery. Nothing so startling had happened in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, the London papers had taken it up, and the whole county was talking of very little else. There were those who stoutly defended Macrae and declined to hear a word against him, but, on the other hand, there were folk who nodded their heads sagely and intimated that certain people could say a great deal if only they were disposed to do so. And this, precisely, was the sort of thing that got on David Macrae's nerves and almost maddened him. He had to go about his business in the ordinary course of things and face people in the street, much as if nothing had happened, and it seemed to him that, in most cases, he could detect a certain shrinking that filled him sometimes with despair, and at others with a desire to argue the matter out.

Still, he and his friends, who rallied round him, and it was a great deal of encouragement when he received a telegram from his employer, somewhere in the South of France, expressing every confidence in him, and, moreover, giving him instructions to offer two hundred pounds reward, in the 'Hitherfield Mercury, ' to anyone who would bring the culprit to justice. It was absurd, of course, that a man in Macrae's position should lay violent hands upon Baines, whom he had never spoken to in his life. He had criticised Baines' methods freely enough, but that was merely in the course of business.