She said nothing, for she had arrived at no conclusion; the case puzzled everyone, and had amazed the public in its various stages, from the moment when opinion began to cast doubt on Mr. Ireland’s honesty to that when his integrity was proved beyond a doubt. One or two people had suspected Mrs. Ireland to have been the actual thief, but that idea had soon to be abandoned.
Mrs. Ireland had all the money she wanted; the theft occurred six months ago, and not a single banknote was ever traced to her pocket; moreover, she must have had an accomplice, since someone else was in the manager’s room that night; and if that someone else was her accomplice, why did she risk betraying him by speaking loudly in the presence of James Fairbairn, when it would have been so much simpler to turn out the light and plunge the hall into darkness?
“You are altogether on the wrong track,” sounded a sharp voice in direct answer to Polly’s thoughts—“altogether wrong. If you want to acquire my method of induction, and improve your reasoning power, you must follow my system. First think of the one absolutely undisputed, positive fact. You must have a starting-point, and not go wandering about in the realms of suppositions.”
“But there are no positive facts,” she said irritably.
“You don’t say so?” he said quietly. “Do you not call it a positive fact that the bank safe was robbed of £5,000 on the evening of March 25th before 11:30 p.m.”
“Yes, that is all which is positive and—”
“Do you not call it a positive fact,” he interrupted quietly, “that the lock of the safe not being picked, it must have been opened by its own key?”
“I know that,” she rejoined crossly, “and that is why everyone agreed that James Fairbairn could not possibly—”
“And do you not call it a positive fact, then, that James Fairbairn could not possibly, etc., etc., seeing that the glass partition door was locked from the inside; Mrs. Ireland herself let James Fairbairn into her husband’s office when she saw him lying fainting before the open safe. Of course that was a positive fact, and so was the one that proved to any thinking mind that if that safe was opened with a key, it could only have been done by a person having access to that key.”
“But the man in the private office—”
“Exactly! the man in the private office. Enumerate his points, if you please,” said the funny creature, marking each point with one of his favourite knots. “He was a man who might that night have had access to the key of the safe, unsuspected by the manager or even his wife, and a man for whom Mrs. Ireland was willing to tell a downright lie. Are there many men for whom a woman of the better middle class, and an Englishwoman, would be ready to perjure herself? Surely not! She might do it for her husband. The public thought she had. It never struck them that she might have done it for her son!”
“Her son!” exclaimed Polly.
“Ah! she was a clever woman,” he ejaculated enthusiastically, “one with courage and presence of mind, which I don’t think I have ever seen equalled. She runs downstairs before going to bed in order to see whether the last post has brought any letters. She sees the door of her husband’s office ajar, she pushes it open, and there, by the sudden flash of a hastily struck match she realizes in a moment that a thief stands before the open safe, and in that thief she has already recognized her son. At that very moment she hears the watchman’s step approaching the partition. There is no time to warn her son; she does not know the glass door is locked; James Fairbairn may switch on the electric light and see the young man in the very act of robbing his employers’ safe.
“One thing alone can reassure the watchman. One person alone had the right to be there at that hour of the night, and without hesitation she pronounces her husband’s name.
“Mind you, I firmly believe that at the time the poor woman only wished to gain time, that she had every hope that her son had not yet had the opportunity to lay so heavy a guilt upon his conscience.
“What passed between mother and son we shall never know, but this much we do know, that the young villain made off with his booty, and trusted that his mother would never betray him. Poor woman! what a night of it she must have spent; but she was clever and farseeing. She knew that her husband’s character could not suffer through her action. Accordingly, she took the only course open to her to save her son even from his father’s wrath, and boldly denied James Fairbairn’s statement.
“Of course, she was fully aware that her husband could easily clear himself, and the worst that could be said of her was that she had thought him guilty and had tried to save him. She trusted to the future to clear her of any charge of complicity in the theft.
“By now everyone has forgotten most of the circumstances; the police are still watching the career of James Fairbairn and Mrs. Ireland’s expenditure. As you know, not a single note, so far, has been traced to her. Against that, one or two of the notes have found their way back to England. No one realizes how easy it is to cash English banknotes at the smaller agents de change abroad. The changeurs are only too glad to get them; what do they care where they come from as long as they are genuine? And a week or two later M. le Changeur
