'How should I know?' said Mr. Dering irritably. 'Give them to me.

Bank-notes? There are no bank-notes in my safe.'

'Forgotten!' the clerk murmured. 'Clients' money, perhaps. But the client would have asked for it. Five or six hundred pounds. How can five hundred pounds be forgotten? Even a Rothschild would remember five hundred pounds. Forgotten!' He glanced suspiciously at his master, and shook his head, fumbling among the papers.

Mr. Dering s.n.a.t.c.hed the bundle from his clerk. Truly, they were bank-notes--ten-pound bank-notes; and they had been forgotten. The clerk was right. There is no Firm in the world where a bundle worth five hundred pounds could be forgotten and no inquiry made after it. Mr.

Dering stared blankly at them. 'Notes!' he cried--'notes! Ten-pound notes. What notes?--Checkley, how did these notes come here?'

'If you don't know,' the clerk replied, 'n.o.body knows. You've got the key of the safe.'

'Good Heavens!' If Mr. Dering had been twenty years younger, he would have jumped. Men of seventy-five are not allowed to jump. The dignity of age does not allow of jumping. 'This is most wonderful! Checkley, this is most mysterious!'

'What is it?'

'These notes--the Devil is in the safe to-day, I do believe. First the certificates are lost; that is, they can't be found--and next these notes turn up.'

'What notes are they, then?'

'They are nothing else than the bank-notes paid across the counter for that forged cheque of eight years ago. Oh! there is no doubt of it--none whatever. I remember the numbers--the consecutive numbers--seventy-two of them--seven hundred and twenty pounds. How did they get here? Who put them in? Checkley, I say, how did these notes get here?'

He held the notes in his hand and asked these questions in pure bewilderment, and not in the expectation of receiving any reply.

'The notes paid to that young gentleman when he forged the cheque,' said Checkley, 'must have been put back in the safe by him. There's no other way to account for it. He was afraid to present them. He heard you say they were stopped, and he put them back. I think I see him doing it.

While he was flaring out, he done it--I'm sure I see him doing it.'

Mr. Dering received this suggestion without remark. He laid down the notes and stared at his clerk. The two old men stared blankly at each other. Perhaps Checkley's countenance, of the two, expressed the greater astonishment.

'How did those notes get into the safe?' the lawyer repeated. 'This is even a more wonderful thing than the mislaying of the certificates. You took them out. Show me exactly where they were lying.'

'They were behind these books. See! the outside note is covered with dust.'

'They must have been lying there all these years. In my safe! The very notes paid across the counter to the forger's messenger! In my safe!

What does this mean? I feel as if I was going mad. I say-- What does all this mean, Checkley?'

The clerk made answer slowly, repeating his former suggestion.

'Since young Arundel forged the cheque, young Arundel got the notes.

Since young Arundel got the notes, young Arundel must have put them back. No one else could. When young Arundel put them back, he done it because he was afraid of your finding out. He put them back unseen by you that day when you charged him with the crime.'

'I did not charge him. I have charged no one.'

'I charged him, then, and you did not contradict. I'd charge him again if he was here.'

'Any man may charge anything upon any other man. There was no proof whatever, and none has ever come to light.'

'You're always for proofs that will convict a man. I only said that n.o.body else could do the thing. As for putting the notes back again in the safe, now I come to think of it'--his face became cunning and malignant--'I do remember--yes--oh! yes--I clearly remember--I quite clearly remember--I see it as plain as if it was before me. He got sidling nearer and nearer the safe while we were talking: he got quite close--so--he chucked a bundle in when he thought I wasn't looking. I think--I almost think--I could swear to it.'

'Nonsense,' said the lawyer. 'Your memory is too clear. Tie up the notes, Checkley, and put them back. They may help, perhaps, some time, to find out the man. Meantime, let us go back to our search. Let us find these certificates.'

They had now examined every packet in the safe: they had looked at every paper: they had opened every book and searched through all the leaves.

There was no doubt left: the certificates were not there.

Checkley began to tie up the bundles again. His master sat down trying to remember something--everything--that could account for their disappearance.

CHAPTER XI

A MYSTERIOUS DISCOVERY

The safe disposed of, there remained a cupboard, two tables full of drawers, twenty or thirty tin boxes. Checkley examined every one of these receptacles. In vain. There was not anywhere any trace of the certificates.

'Yet,' said Mr. Dering, 'they must be somewhere. We have been hunting all the morning, and we have not found them. They are not in this room.

Yet they must be somewhere. Certificates and such things don't fly away.

They are of no use to any one. People don't steal certificates. I must have done something with them.'

'Did you take them home with you?'

'Why should I do that? I have no safe or strong-room at home.'

'Did you send them to the Bank for greater safety? To be sure, they would be no more safe there than here.'

'Go and ask. See the manager. Ask him if he holds any certificates of mine.'

The clerk turned to obey.

'No.' Mr. Dering stopped him. 'What's the good? If he held the things, there would have been dividends. Yet what can I do?' For the first time in his life the lawyer felt the emotion that he had often observed in clients at times of real disaster. He felt as if there was nothing certain: not even Property: as if the law itself, actually the law--was of no use. His brain reeled: the ground was slipping under his feet, and he was falling forward through the table, and the floor and the foundation--forward and down--down--down. 'What can I do?' he repeated.

'Checkley, go. See the manager. There may be something to find out. I can't think properly. Go.'

When the clerk left him, he laid his head upon his hands and tried to put things quite clearly before himself. 'Where can the certificates be?' he asked himself, repeating this question twenty times. He was quite conscious that if he had been consulted on such a point by a client he would have replied with the greatest readiness, suggesting the one really practical thing to do. For himself he could advise nothing.

'Where can the certificates be? n.o.body steals Corporation stock and gas companies' shares. They are no good if you do steal them. They can't be sold without the authority of the owner: he has got to sign transfer papers: if they were stolen, the dividends would go on being paid to the owner just the same. Besides----' Somewhere about this point he bethought him of the Bank-book. If the stock had been sold the money would appear to his credit. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the book and looked at it. No; there was no entry which could possibly represent the sale of stock. He knew what every entry meant, and when the amount was paid in: his memory was perfectly clear upon this point.

Checkley's suggestion occurred to him. Had he taken the certificates home with him? He might have done for some reason which he had now forgotten. Yes; that was the one possible explanation. He must have done. For a moment he breathed again--only for a moment, because he immediately reflected that he could not possibly do such a thing as take those securities to a house where he never transacted any business at all. Then he returned to his former bewilderment and terror. What had become of them? Why had he taken them out of the safe? Where had he bestowed them?

And why were there no dividends paid to him on these stocks? Why? He turned white with terror when he realised that if he got no more dividends, he could have no more stocks.

During a long professional career of fifty years, Mr. Dering had never made a mistake--at least he thought so. If he had not always invested his money to the greatest profit, he had invested it safely. He did not get the interest that some City men expect, but he made no losses. He looked upon himself, therefore, as a man of great sagacity, whereas in such matters he was only a man of great prudence. Also, during this long period he was always in the enjoyment of a considerable income.

Therefore he had never known the least anxiety about money. Yet all his life he had been counselling other people in their anxieties. It was exactly as if a specialist in some mortal disease should be himself attacked by it. Or it was as if the bo'sun, whose duty it is to superintend the flogging, should be himself tied up.

Nothing came to him: no glimmer of light: not the least recollection of anything. Then he thought desperately, that perhaps if he were to imagine how it would be if somebody else, not himself at all, were to come to himself and lay the story before him as a solicitor, for advice.

Or how it would be if he himself were to go to himself as a solicitor and put the case.

When Checkley came back, he found his master leaning back in his chair, his eyes wide open and staring at him as he opened the door--yet they saw nothing. Checkley stood under the gaze of those eyes, which saw him not. 'Good Lord!' he murmured. 'Is the time come? Is he going to die?'

His face was white. He seemed to be listening anxiously: his lips were parted. 'He's in a fit of some kind,' thought the old clerk.