“In these circumstances, is there one of us who hasn’t got something he’d like to hide? You, Amy, if you were asked what were your relations with our father, were you always on the best of terms, wouldn’t you like to refuse to answer that, knowing that he is at liberty to examine the whole household staff, who may or may not corroborate your story? And Richard, do you really want to tell an outsider what happened between you and our father when you came down yesterday? I should imagine Eustace is in the same boat.”
“What did he ask you?” his sister demanded.
“He might have been understudying yourself. And I gave him precisely the same replies. Oh, and I did tell him I hadn’t been tampering with the safe. Unfortunately, I didn’t know where it was.”
Richard said apprehensively, “Who is talking about the safe?”
“Authority on the floor below. There are finger-prints on it. Very damaging, perhaps. I don’t know. I’ve suggested they belong to the safe’s owner.
“I think that sounded normal enough,” he reflected, concealing an inward anxiety, that was rapidly increasing, under an aspect of derisive calm. “The type of thing they expect from me, anyway.”
The door opened, but it was not Eustace but a servant who appeared. Would Mrs. Moore go down to the little room behind the library? Olivia asked quickly for her husband. The servant murmured, in discreet and formal tones, “I couldn’t say, madam,” and stood holding the door.
Eustace came in a moment later, pale and guarded. He answered one or two questions with brevity, and looked with malevolence at Brand, who had resumed his stance by the window. Richard said something in a low voice, and he replied, “God only knows where this will end. Gaol for half of us, probably. The fellow’s a scorpion. Our distress is simply his chance of promotion.”
Richard stood back, and began to talk in low tones to Amery. Eustace strategically worked his way round the room until he could speak to Brand without attracting attention. Brand, who had watched him secretly, was thinking, as he was bound to think with the return of each member of the clan from that cool but deadly examination downstairs, “What did he get out of him? How much does Eustace know? What passed between him and my father yesterday?”
He had turned his back on the rest of the room, with these thoughts in mind, and it came as a small shock when he felt a hand close on his wrist. Eustace’s voice said, “What did you tell the police, Brand?”
“Just what I’ve told all of you. I’ve answered that question once at least.”
“I’ve only this to ask you. Where’s that cheque?”
“In my pocket.”
“My cheque?”
“Your cheque?”
“Yes. They’ve examined his cheque-book, and they find that he drew a cheque for me immediately after drawing yours—a cheque for ten thousand pounds.”
“And to hear him talk, you wouldn’t have believed he even had so much money.”
“That’s not the point. I’ve got to have that cheque, Brand.”
“Why come to me? I haven’t got it. I wasn’t even in the room when it was drawn. I didn’t stay long after getting the money. After all, that was what I came down for.”
“That cock won’t fight. No one saw Gray after you did…”
“That’s rather a bold accusation, isn’t it? Tantamount to saying I killed him. But I suppose you think I did.”
Eustace sketched an impatient gesture. “That’s beside the point. The matter’s out of our hands now. But I want to know about that cheque…”
“My dear fellow, be reasonable. I know less about it than you do. I know precisely what you’ve told me, which is merely that it exists. I haven’t even any proof of that. By the way, if you haven’t seen it, what proof have you?”
“The police have seen the entry on the counterfoil.”
“Ah! True. I’d forgotten that piece of evidence. Well, it doesn’t seem likely that my father would have made such an entry without drawing the cheque.”
“The cheque itself is missing.”
“What about the safe?”
“Oh, they’ve examined that.” Eustace’s voice was very bitter. “It’s a combination lock, and I’ve never been allowed to know what the combination was. But they got it open all right. I’d not realised before what opportunities the police have.”
“Did you tell them that?” Brand looked interested.
“I congratulated them. That fellow—confound his impertinence!—said coolly that if all safes were impregnable the police wouldn’t have nearly so much to do.”
“Well, if it wasn’t in the safe, where could it be? Are there any other hiding-holes in the room?”
“None I know of.”
“Then I suppose we may take it there are none. By the way, you knew about the safe?”
“Well?”
“What was my father’s idea in concealing it so elaborately?”
“Your father, Brand, was a very strange man. If you think it was advantageous to work for him, and in his interest, you’re greatly mistaken. If any of his shares dropped a couple of points there would be letters and telegrams and accusations, until the time came when I deliberately kept him in the dark, knowing that it was a matter of days before the shares rose again.”
“Did they often fall?”
“Of course, they weren’t stationary. In a situation like the present, with the whole world’s standards changing from day to day, with uncertainty on every hand and the most reliable companies passing their dividends, with unemployment and idle shipyards and trouble all over the East, with no money in people’s pockets, and strikes and disorders in industry, with falling Governments and all the rest of it, do you suppose his wretched little investments were going to be immune? No one but an egotist would have expected it.”
Brand, smiling drily, observed, “You haven’t a great admiration for my father, it seems.”
“I wasn’t sufficiently disaffected to murder him, all the same, though it might suit your book to say so. Just as you’ve made the position as awkward for me as possible with your lying story of seeing me on the stairs
