"Don't talk riddles, man; speak out."

"Parables, Mr Bayle, sir, parables. Give me time, sir, give me time.

You don't know what it is to a man who has trained himself from a boy to be close and keep secrets, to have to bring them out of himself and lay them all bare."

"I'll be patient; but you are torturing me. Go on."

"I felt it would, and that's one of the things that's kept me back, sir; but I'm going to speak now."

"Go on."

"Well, sir, a bank clerk is trained to be suspicious. Every new customer who comes to the place is an object of suspicion to a man like me. He may want to cheat us. Every cheque that's drawn is an object of suspicion because it may be a forgery, or the drawer may not have a balance to meet it. Then money--the number of bad coins I've detected, sir, would fill a big chest full of sham gold and silver, so that one grows to doubt and suspect every sovereign one handles. Then, sir, there's men in general, and even your own people. It's a bad life, sir, a bad life, a bank clerk's, for you grow at last so that you even begin to doubt yourself."

"Ah! but that is a morbid feeling, Thickens."

"No, sir, it's a true one. I've had such a fight as you couldn't believe, doubting myself and whether I was right: but I think I am."

"Well," said the curate, smiling a faint, dejected smile; "but you are still keeping me in the dark."

"It will be light directly," said Thickens fiercely, "light that is blinding. I dread almost to speak and let you hear."

"Go on, man; go on."

"I will, sir. Well, for years past I've been in doubt about our bank."

"Dixons', that every one trusts?"

"Yes, sir, that's it. Dixons' has been trusted by everybody. Dixons', after a hundred years' trial, has grown to be looked upon as the truth in commerce. It has been like a sort of money mill set going a hundred years ago, and once set going it has gone on of itself, always grinding coin."

"But you don't mean to tell me that the bank is unsafe? Man, man, it means ruin to hundreds of our friends!"

He spoke in an impa.s.sioned way, but at the same time he felt more himself; the vague horror had grown less.

"Hear me out, sir; hear me out," said Thickens slowly. "Years ago, sir, I began to doubt, and then I doubted myself, and then I doubted again, but even then I couldn't believe. Doubts are no use to a man like me, sir; he must have figures, and figures I couldn't get to prove it, sir.

I must be able to balance a couple of pages, and then if the balance is on the wrong side there's something to go upon. It has taken years to get these figures, but I've got them now."

"Thickens, you are torturing me with this slow preamble."

"For a few minutes, sir," said the clerk pathetically, "for an hour. It has tortured me for years. Listen, sir. I began to doubt--not Dixons'

stability, but something else."

The vague horror began to increase again, and Christie Bayle's hands grew more damp.

"I have saved a little money, and that and my writings were in the bank.

I withdrew everything. Cowardly? Dishonest? Perhaps it was; but I doubted, sir, and it was my little all. Then you'll say, if I had these doubts I ought to have spoken. If I had been sure perhaps I might; but I tell you, sir, they were doubts. I couldn't be false to my friends though, and where here and there they've consulted me about their little bits of money I've found out investments for them, or advised them to buy house property. A clergyman for whom I changed a cheque one day, said it would be convenient for him to have a little banking account with Dixons', and I said if I had an account with a good bank in London I wouldn't change it. Never change your banker, I said."

"Yes, Thickens, you did," said the curate eagerly, "and I have followed your advice. But you are keeping me in suspense. Tell me, is there risk of Dixons' having to close their doors?"

"No, no, sir; it's not so bad as that. Old Mr Dixon is very rich, and he'd give his last penny to put things straight. Sir Gordon Bourne is an honourable gentleman--one who would sacrifice his fortune so that he might hold up his head. But things are bad, sir, bad; how bad I don't know."

"But, good heavens, man! your half-yearly balance-sheets--your books?"

"All kept right, sir, and wonderfully correct. Everything looks well in the books."

"Then how is it?"

"The securities, sir," said Thickens, with his lip quivering. "I've done a scoundrelly thing."

"You, Thickens? You? I thought you were as honest a man as ever trod this earth!"

"Me, sir?" said the clerk grimly. "Oh, no! oh, no! _I'm_ a gambler, I am."

The vague horror was dissolving fast into thin mist. "You astound me!"

cried Bayle, as he thought of Sir Gordon's doubts of Hallam. "You, in your position of trust! What are you going to do?"

The grim smile on James Thickens's lips grew more saturnine as he said:

"Make a clean breast of it, sir. That's why I sent for you."

"But, my good man!--oh, for heaven's sake! go with me at once to Sir Gordon and Mr Hallam. I ought not to listen to this alone."

"You're going to hear it all alone," said James Thickens, growing still more grim of aspect; "and when I've done you're going to give me your advice."

Bayle gazed at him sternly, but with the strange oppression gone, and the shadow of the vague horror fading into nothingness.

"I'm confessing to you, sir, just as if I were a Roman Catholic, and you were a priest."

"But I decline to receive your confession on such terms, James Thickens," cried Bayle sternly. "I warn you that, if you make me the recipient of your confidence, I must be free to lay the case before your employers."

"Yes, of course," said Thickens with the same grim smile. "Hear me out, Mr Bayle, sir. You'd never think it of me, who came regularly to church, and never missed--you'd never think I had false keys made to our safe; but I did. Two months ago, in London."

Bayle involuntarily drew back his chair, and Thickens laughed--a little hard, dry laugh.

"Don't be hard on the man, Mr Bayle, who advised you not to put your money and securities in at Dixons'."

"Go on, sir," said the curate sternly.

"Yes: I will go on!" cried Thickens, speaking now excitedly, in a low, harsh voice. "I can't carry on that nonsense. Look here, sir," he continued, shuffling his chair closer to his visitor, and getting hold of his sleeve, "you don't know our habits at the bank. Everything is locked up in our strong-room, and Hallam keeps the key of that, and carefully too! I go in and out there often, but it's always when he's in the room, and when he is not there he always locks it, so that, though I tried for years to get in there, I never had a chance."

"Wretched man!" cried Bayle, trying to shake off his grip, but Thickens's fingers closed upon his arm like a claw.

"Yes, I was wretched, and that's why I had the keys made, and altered again and again till I could get them to fit. Then one day I had my chance. Hallam went over to Lincoln, and I had a good examination of the different securities, shares, deeds--scrip of all kinds--that I had down on a paper, an abstract from my books."

"Well, sir?"

"Well, sir? Half of them are not there. They're dummies tied up and docketed."

"But the real deeds?"

"Pledged for advances in all sorts of quarters. Money raised upon them at a dozen banks, perhaps, in town."