“You say ‘if,’ but perhaps you mean ‘when’?”
“I’m picking my words with some care,” Sir Clinton assured him. “I mean ‘if.’ The point’s still in doubt; but I want to play the game with you and take no improper advantage.”
The imperturbable face of the secretary showed neither relief nor depression.
“It’s very good of you,” he said in a colourless voice. Sir Clinton considered for a moment. Stenness moved over to a chair and sat down.
“I think I can put my cards on the table in your case, Stenness,” the Chief Constable said at length. “Nothing I’m going to tell you will be news to you; and there seems no reason why I shouldn’t say it.”
Stenness looked up indifferently. His mind seemed to be occupied with something quite apart from the affair in hand.
“Go on,” he said, apathetically.
“Here are the facts, then,” Sir Clinton began. “You were employed here as Roger Shandon’s secretary. In that capacity, you seem to have had access to his chequebooks. It’s not a usual thing; but I have sound reasons for supposing that it was so in your case.”
Stenness nodded his assent.
“I don’t deny that,” he admitted.
“You have the key of the safe, haven’t you? Would you mind seeing if you can find the chequebook that Roger Shandon used last?”
Stenness walked over to the safe, opened it, and after a few moments’ search he unearthed the chequebook.
“Now,” Sir Clinton went on, “would you mind turning up the counterfoil numbered 60073?”
Stenness looked up without showing any emotion on his features.
“There’s no such counterfoil in the book,” he admitted.
“But you find 60072 and 60074 there?”
“Yes.”
“Rather a peculiar state of affairs, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
Sir Clinton turned to another subject.
“There’s a bundle of returned cheques in that drawer of the writing-desk, isn’t there?”
“There is. Do you want it?”
Sir Clinton seemed to disregard the question.
“Would it surprise you, Stenness, if you learned that one of these cheques has been abstracted and that it can’t be found? The bank returned it in due course for all that.”
Stenness gazed stonily at his interlocutor.
“It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.”
Sir Clinton paused for a moment before continuing. When he spoke again it was in a different vein.
“These are all plain facts. Now we come to hypothesis; and of course the ground’s not quite so firm. I think, if you don’t mind, we might put it in the form of one of these John Doe and Richard Roe cases, lest you should think …”
He left the sentence incomplete.
“Now,” he began briskly, “let’s suppose that John Doe is a rich man who has made his money in rather peculiar ways—like the late Roger Shandon, for example. He employs a secretary. I think one may reasonably suppose that a secretary in that case would need to be somebody who could shut his eyes when necessary, and who wouldn’t be apt to judge things too rigidly. In fact, Stenness, he would need to be a fairly unscrupulous fellow himself.”
Stenness nodded indifferently.
“Go on.”
“I’m putting a hypothetical case, remember,” Sir Clinton cautioned him. “This is what might be said—I don’t necessarily accept it myself. I’m only trying to show you how it could be made to look, you understand? Well, then, this secretary, Richard Roe, sooner or later sees the chance which Providence has thrown in his way. His employer is in the habit of drawing bearer cheques for large amounts—some thousands—from time to time. And, rather carelessly, he has dropped into the way of getting his secretary to cash them for him and bring him the money. So the bank is accustomed to paying over these things to the secretary, and no questions asked.”
Stenness gave no sign of special interest. His normal reserve was sufficient to veil his thoughts.
“The secretary, we may assume, is an acute fellow. I think we may take it that he may see a chance when it comes his way. But forgery requires a certain amount of manual skill if it is carried out in some ways; and possibly the secretary is sufficiently acute to distrust his powers as a forger. But it’s always possible to trace a signature.”
Sir Clinton pulled out his cigarette case and lit a cigarette before going on. He seemed determined to infuse informality into the proceedings.
“It’s always possible to trace a signature,” he continued. “But one needs a model signature for that—a signature from a cheque, of course, because sensible people don’t use their letter signature on their cheques. They have a special one with some specific trick in it—the position of a dot, or something of the sort. I hope I’m not boring you with these elementary things.”
“Not at all,” said Stenness, with a certain show of polite interest.
“The model, in the case of the secretary Richard Roe,” went on Sir Clinton, “could easily be chosen from one of the old cheques returned by the bank. He had access to these, we may suppose. But then comes in a point which is sure to strike his acute mind. A man never writes his signature twice in precisely the same way; there’s always a faint difference between any two signatures. Hence, if two cheques turn up with identical signatures, a sharp detective might suspect something wrong. You follow me?”
Stenness nodded in silence.
“The acute secretary, Richard Roe, therefore traces his employer’s signature from one of these old cheques. And to cover his trail, to make certain that the thing cannot be shown to be a traced signature, he then destroys the old cheque. Thus there are not two identical signatures in existence; and the only thing missing is a cancelled cheque—not a thing anyone is likely to make a fuss about at the worst, even if its disappearance is noted. I make myself clear?”
“Quite,” said Stenness, still with his air of formal interest.
“So far, then,” Sir Clinton went on, “all is plain sailing. But now comes a sticky bit. In fact, the sticky bit of the whole affair. Every cheque has its counterfoil; and Mr. John
