Mr. Holland sat reading, his feet resting on a chair.
He only interrupted his study long enough to draw off the coffee into a little white cup and to switch off the current.
He sat until the little silver clock on the mantelshelf struck twelve, and then he placed a card in the book to mark the place, closed it, and rose leisurely.
He slid back a panel in the wall, disclosing the steel door of a safe. This he opened with a key which he selected from a bunch. From the interior of the safe he removed a cedarwood box, also locked. He threw back the lid and removed one by one three check books and a pair of gloves of some thin, transparent fabric. These were obviously to guard against telltale finger prints.
He carefully pulled them on and buttoned them. Next he detached three checks, one from each book, and, taking a fountain pen from his pocket, he began filling in the blank spaces. He wrote slowly, almost laboriously, and he wrote without a copy. There are very few forgers in the criminal records who have ever accomplished the feat of imitating a man’s signature from memory. Mr. Rex Holland was singularly exceptional to all precedent, for from the date to the flourishing signature these checks might have been written and signed by John Minute.
There were the same fantastic E’s, the same stiff-tailed Y’s. Even John Minute might have been in doubt whether he wrote the “Eight hundred and fifty” which appeared on one slip.
Mr. Holland surveyed his handiwork without emotion.
He waited for the ink to dry before he folded the checks and put them in his pocket. This was John Minute’s way, for the millionaire never used blotting paper for some reason, probably not unconnected with an event in his earlier career. When the checks were in his pocket, Mr. Holland removed his gloves, replaced them with the check books in the box and in the safe, locked the steel door, drew the sliding panel, and went to bed.
Early the next morning he summoned his servant.
“Take the car back to town,” he said. “I am going back by train. Meet me at the Holland Park tube at two o’clock; I have a little job for you which will earn you five hundred.”
“That’s my job, sir,” said the dazed man when he recovered from the shock.
Frank sometimes accompanied May to the East End, and on the day Mr. Rex Holland returned to London he called for the girl at her flat to drive her to Canning Town.
“You can come in and have some tea,” she invited.
“You’re a luxurious beggar, May,” he said, glancing round approvingly at the prettily furnished sitting room. “Contrast this with my humble abode in Bayswater.”
“I don’t know your humble abode in Bayswater,” she laughed. “But why on earth you should elect to live at Bayswater I can’t imagine.”
He sipped his tea with a twinkle in his eye.
“Guess what income the heir of the Minute millions enjoys?” he asked ironically. “No, I’ll save you the agony of guessing. I earn seven pounds a week at the bank, and that is the whole of my income.”
“But doesn’t uncle—” she began in surprise.
“Not a bob,” replied Frank vulgarly; “not half a bob.”
“But—”
“I know what you’re going to say; he treats you generously, I know. He treats me justly. Between generosity and justice, give me generosity all the time. I will tell you something else. He pays Jasper Cole a thousand a year! It’s very curious, isn’t it?”
She leaned over and patted his arm.
“Poor boy,” she said sympathetically, “that doesn’t make it any easier—Jasper, I mean.”
Frank indulged in a little grimace, and said:
“By the way, I saw the mysterious Jasper this morning—coming out of the Waterloo Station looking more mysterious than ever. What particular business has he in the country?”
She shook her head and rose.
“I know as little about Jasper as you,” she answered.
She turned and looked at him thoughtfully.
“Frank,” she said, “I am rather worried about you and Jasper. I am worried because your uncle does not seem to take the same view of Jasper as you take. It is not a very heroic position for either of you, and it is rather hateful for me.”
Frank looked at her with a quizzical smile.
“Why hateful for you?”
She shook her head.
“I would like to tell you everything, but that would not be fair.”
“To whom?” Frank asked quickly.
“To you, your uncle, or to Jasper.”
He came nearer to her.
“Have you so warm a feeling for Jasper?” he asked.
“I have no warm feeling for anybody,” she said candidly. “Oh, don’t look so glum, Frank! I suppose I am slow to develop, but you cannot expect me to have any very decided views yet a while.”
Frank smiled ruefully.
“That is my one big trouble, dear,” he said quietly; “bigger than anything else in the world.”
She stood with her hand on the door, hesitating, a look of perplexity upon her beautiful face. She was of the tall, slender type, a girl slowly ripening into womanhood. She might have been described as cold and a little repressive, but the truth was that she was as yet untouched by the fires of passion, and for all her twenty-one years she was still something of the healthy schoolgirl, with a schoolgirl’s impatience of sentiment.
“I am the last to spin a hard-luck yarn,” Frank went on, “but I have not had the best of everything, dear. I started wrong with uncle. He never liked my father nor any of my father’s family. His treatment of his wife was infamous. My poor governor was one of those easygoing fellows who was always in trouble, and it was always John Minute’s job to get him out. I don’t like talking about him—” He hesitated.
She nodded.
“I know,” she said sympathetically.
“Father was not the rotter that Uncle John thinks he
