8
Frobisher arrived next morning. Ross had departed the previous day without voicing any suspicions, but everyone realised that he was waiting for the result of the finger-print experiment. Not, said Richard impatiently, that it proved much, those marks on the safe; they might have been there for days. He had asked the sergeant whether anything had been removed from it. Ross had replied blandly, “I don’t know what was originally in it, Sir Richard. I was hoping you might be able to help me.”
“I didn’t know, either. Perhaps Mr. Moore…”
Eustace, recalled, said, “I always understood he had documents of some value in it. I’ve often seen papers in the safe when it was opened, though I’ve never actually handled any of them, any more than I have ever been allowed to open the safe.”
Then he asked what had actually been found there, but Ross did not satisfy his curiosity. Eustace came upstairs and sought out Miles, in a fine rage and anxiety.
“It’s infamous,” he exclaimed. “How do we know how far these men are to be trusted? Oh, yes, our splendid police force, the high morale of the service and all that—I daresay in ninety per cent of their activities they’re reliable enough, but they are subject to temptations like other men, and the fact remains that you do every now and again hear of policemen who have taken advantage of their circumstances, and themselves figure in the dock. We know nothing about this fellow, and we—at least, I—do know that my father-in-law had a number of valuable certificates and so forth in the safe.”
His connection by marriage remarked mildly that if they were in Gray’s name they wouldn’t be much use to the sergeant, and anyway he didn’t suppose the fellow wanted to encompass his own ruin. “Moreover,” he added, “we’re all in his hands now. Oh, I grant you it’s illogical enough, but it’s the law of life, so far as we can tell. The innocent suffering for the guilty.”
Eustace cried fiercely, “We know well enough who’s guilty.”
Miles stopped him with a sharp, “Take care! There are such things as slander actions, and we don’t want to increase the scandal. It’ll be bad enough in any case.”
Richard saw Frobisher alone. He was by this time trembling with anticipation, and did not make a good impression upon his man of affairs. Frobisher said, “Well, this is a mess. I suppose it’ll be all over the town to-morrow.”
Richard agreed bitterly that no doubt it would, and that they’d be inundated with reporters.
“Well, there’s no need to see them. Give instructions that you’ve nothing to say and no interviews are being given. As a matter of fact, in a case of this kind it’s very important that there should be no leakage. Can you trust your servants?”
Richard said weakly that he wasn’t sure. He mentioned Amy.
“Is she on good terms with them? Do they like her?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Then presumably they don’t. Well, if you take my advice, you’ll forbid them to speak to anyone. Things are going to be quite unpleasant enough without that. How do they stand at present?”
Richard began to explain, but his habit of public speaking, that was apt to be oratorical and ponderous, irritated the lawyer, who interrupted him with a testy, “Yes, yes. But have you any idea whom they suspect? Whom, for instance, do you suspect?”
“My brother seems the most likely person to have done it—temperamentally, I mean. He holds to his story of seeing Eustace Moore on the stairs as he himself left the room, but I don’t know that that’s been substantiated. I suppose, in the circumstances, it isn’t likely that it can be.”
“He admits to seeing your father, then?”
“Yes.” Richard continued his explanations more briefly. “I suppose,” he concluded, “there’s bound to be a good deal of publicity about the case.”
“I don’t see how you can avoid it. Not so much on your father’s account, or your own, as on Moore’s. His name’s going to be very much on everyone’s lips in the next few days.”
Richard turned white. “It’s true, then? He’s in for a smash?”
“A criminal smash, or I’m mightily mistaken,” returned Frobisher grimly.
“Would my father have been involved?”
“I should imagine that all Moore’s dupes would be. The long and the short of the matter is that he’s been running a ramp and the facts have come out. If you ask me, I should say he was safe for a good five years.”
“Everyone knows, then?”
“Anyone who doesn’t will know very soon. And it won’t be possible to keep your father’s name out of that. There’ll be a lot of ugly suspicions voiced. Brand won’t be the only man to stand the racket, particularly in view of his story.”
“I daresay his wife can vouch for Moore.”
“And I daresay there’ll be a good many people to whisper collusion, if she does. I don’t think a wife’s unsupported word will help our financier this time, particularly when it comes out that he’s had every penny of your father’s capital.”
Richard started. “Every penny? But, Frobisher, it’s only a few months since my father was discussing his position with me. He distinctly mentioned a sum of fifteen thousand pounds that he didn’t propose to let Eustace get into his hands.”
“Man proposes and financiers dispose,” Frobisher assured him gloomily. “Moore got hold of a lot of that. In fact, the position got so bad that your father was raising mortgages, and not always paying the interest involved. I had to speak to him very gravely on the subject this summer. To my certain knowledge he’s mortgaged every security he possesses. We shall be lucky if we can pull anything out
