The manager started slightly, but the spasm pa.s.sed in a moment, and he said calmly, with a smile:

"My position? How I stand? I do not comprehend you! My dear Bayle, what do you mean?" The curate gazed in his eyes, a calm, firm, judicial look in his countenance; but Hallam did not flinch. And again the idea flashed across the visitor's mind, "Suppose Thickens should be wrong!"

Again, though, he cast off his hesitation, and spoke out firmly.

"Let me be plain with you, Robert Hallam, and show you the precipice upon whose edge you stand."

"Good heavens, Mr Bayle, are you ill?" said Hallam in the coolest manner.

"Yes; sick at heart, to find of what treachery to employers, to wife and child, a man like you can be guilty. Hallam, your great sin is discovered! What have you to say?"

"Say!" cried Hallam, laughing scornfully, "say, in words that you use so often, `Who made you a ruler and a judge?' What do you mean?"

"I came neither as ruler nor judge, but as the friend of your wife and child. There--as your friend. Man, it is of no use to dissimulate!"

"Dissimulate, sir!"

"Am I to be plainer?" cried Bayle angrily, "and tell you that but for my interposition James Thickens would at this moment be with Sir Gordon and Mr Dixon, exposing your rascality."

"My rascality! How dare--"

"Dare!" cried Bayle sternly. "Cast off this contemptible mask, and be frank. Do I not tell you I come as a friend?"

"Then explain yourself."

"I will," said Bayle; and for a few minutes there was a silence almost appalling. The clock upon the mantelpiece ticked loudly; the stool upon which James Thickens sat in the outer office gave a loud scroop; and a large bluebottle fly shut in the room beat itself heavily against the panes in its efforts to escape.

Bayle was alternately flushed and pale. Hallam, perfectly calm, paler than usual, but beyond seeming hurt and annoyed, there was nothing to indicate the truth of the terrible charge being brought against him.

"Well, sir," he said at last, "why do you not speak?"

Bayle gazed at him wonderingly, for all thought of his innocence had pa.s.sed away.

"I will speak, Hallam," he said. "Tell me the amount for which the deeds you have abstracted from that safe are pledged."

"The deeds I have abstracted from that safe?" said Hallam, rising slowly, and standing at his full height, with his head thrown back.

"Yes; and in whose place you have installed forgeries, dummies-- imitations, if you will."

That blow was too straight--too heavy to be resisted. Hallam dropped back in his chair; while James Thickens, at his desk behind the bank counter, heard the shock, and then fidgeted in his seat, and rubbed his right ear, as he heard Hallam speak of him in a low voice, and say hoa.r.s.ely:

"Thickens, then, has told you this?"

"Yes," said Bayle in a lower tone. "He came to me for advice, and I bade him do his duty."

"Hah!" said Hallam, and his eyes wandered about the room.

"This morning I begged him to wait."

"Hah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Hallam again, and now there was a sharp twitching about his closely-shaven lips. "And you said that you came as our friend?"

"I did."

"What do you mean?"

Bayle waited for a few moments, and then said slowly: "If you will redeem those deeds with which you have been entrusted, and go from here, and commence a new career of honesty, I will, for your wife and child's sake, find the necessary money."

"You will? You will do this, Bayle?" cried Hallam, extending his hands, which were not taken.

"I have told you I will," said Bayle coldly. "But--the amount?"

"How many thousands are they pledged for?--to some bank, of course?"

"It was to cover an unfortunate speculation. I--"

"I do not ask you for explanations," said Bayle coldly. "What amount will clear your defalcations?"

"Twenty to twenty-one thousand," said Hallam, watching the effect of his words.

"I will find the money within a week," said Bayle.

"Then all will be kept quiet?"

"Sir Gordon must be told."

"No, no; there is no need of that. The affairs will be put straight, and matters can go on as before. It was an accident; I could not help it. Stop, man, what are you going to do?"

"Call in Mr Thickens," said Bayle.

"To expose and degrade me in his eyes!"

Bayle turned upon him a withering contemptuous look.

"I expose you? Why, man, but for me you would have been in the hands of the officers by now. Mr Thickens!"

Thickens got slowly down from his stool and entered the manager's room, where Hallam met his eye with a look that made the clerk think of what would have been his chances of life had opportunity served for him to be silenced for ever.

"I have promised Mr Hallam to find twenty-one thousand pounds within a week--to enable him to redeem the securities he has pledged."

"And under these circ.u.mstances, Mr Thickens, there is no need for this trouble to be exposed."

"Not to the public perhaps," said Thickens slowly, "but Sir Gordon and Mr Dixon ought to know."

"No, no," cried Hallam, "there is no need. Don't you see, man, that the money will be made right?"

"No, sir, I only see one thing," said Thickens st.u.r.dily, "and that is that I have my duty to do."

"But you will ruin me, Thickens."