He shifted slightly in his chair as though the recollection made him uncomfortable.
“I had to do something for a living; and somehow I dropped into secretarial work—the kind where it’s more important that a man should have a decent appearance than that he should know his work. But by that time I realised that I’d have to work for a living, and I sobered up. I took things seriously and picked up all I could. I turned into quite a decently-efficient secretary.”
Sir Clinton nodded. It was no more than Stenness’s due.
“I drifted about from post to post, until a couple of years ago I dropped into Roger Shandon’s place. I learned a lot with him. It was a perfect education—on certain lines.”
“I can quite imagine that,” Sir Clinton interjected.
“He was a damned scoundrel,” Stenness pronounced, without heat. “But I picked up a lot about the seamy side of affairs from things that passed through my hands. It was interesting, even at first. And then, it got more interesting.”
He shifted again in his chair so as to look Sir Clinton in the face.
“I came across a name in his correspondence, the name of one of the fellows who had helped to rook me of that last five thousand. That put me on the alert. I began to hunt things up. It took me a good while; and none of it was in any way explicit, you understand; but I had sense enough to put two and two together and fill up the blanks. My late employer was the man who had been behind the ramp that cleared me of the last of my cash.”
“You couldn’t have expected me to guess that,” Sir Clinton said, as though defending himself. “I knew there was more behind this business than appeared on the surface, but naturally I’d no inkling of anything of that sort.”
Stenness paid no attention to the interruption.
“I suppose my training under Roger Shandon had taken the refined edge off any honesty I had. Or else it had left the honesty but blunted my respect for the conventions, if you like it better that way. It seemed to me, anyhow, a simple enough state of affairs. This fellow Shandon had picked my pocket—at least that was what it amounted to in practice, though I doubt if I could have charged him with fraud and brought it home to him. Well, I saw no particular reason why he should get away with my money. He’d taken advantage of my stupidity or trustfulness, or whatever you like to call it. I decided to pay him back in his own coin. I might have milked him of a fair extra sum as a fine; but that didn’t suit my book. I’ve got a peculiar brand of conscience; and I made up my mind that I’d take precisely the cash that he cheated me out of. No doubt the odd figures on the cheque surprised you.”
“No,” Sir Clinton objected. “I simply took it that Shandon wasn’t in the habit of drawing cheques for round thousands and that you filled in an odd figure so as not to make the cheque look uncommon.”
“I’d have done that in any case, of course,” Stenness explained, “but as it happened, the exact sum he took from me originally made a likely enough figure; and I stuck to it. I didn’t even fine him a sovereign for his swindling. I contented myself with taking back exactly what I’d lost. I saw nothing wrong in it; and I see nothing wrong in it now. My conscience doesn’t trouble me a rap in the matter. Legally, of course, it’s quite a different question.”
“Quite,” said Sir Clinton, but his tone gave no clue to his views on the matter.
“As to the actual business, I needn’t go over it; for you put your finger on it quite correctly up to a point, not ten minutes ago. I forged his signature, destroyed the cancelled cheque, cut the counterfoil out of the chequebook, and cashed the forged cheque. Nobody suspected anything.”
“There was no reason why they should—at the time.”
“No. But now I come to the point where you made a further suggestion. You brought out the idea that I’d murdered Shandon to cover the trail.”
“I suggested it as an hypothesis that some people might be inclined to put forward,” corrected Sir Clinton. “If you remember, I refrained from supporting it myself.”
Stenness reflected for a moment.
“That’s true. But murder never entered into my plans at all. Bear in mind that I don’t feel a criminal in this affair. All I’ve done is to take my own money out of the hand of a fellow who had picked my pocket. You’d recover your own purse if you caught a thief red-handed with it; and you wouldn’t call yourself a robber for doing so. Well, no more do I.”
“Go on,” said Sir Clinton, in unconscious plagiarism.
“That being so,” Stenness continued, “murder was the last thing that would have entered my mind. Why should I murder him? I’d squared the account; I’d got my money back again. What would be the point in putting my neck into a noose? None whatever! All I needed was a clean getaway. I planned that carefully enough.”
“That’s no particular business of mine at present,” Sir Clinton reminded him. “But one might ask what you’re doing here, since it’s evidently not according to plan.”
“It’s easy to account for that. I had planned to get away on the evening of the day when the Shandons were murdered. I was in the middle of clearing up preparations for a bolt … and suddenly came the affair in the Maze. Could I bolt
