In the Hands of the Malays, and Other Stories

  CHAPTER IV

  A CLUE

  A week later Roland received a letter from his father in answer to thathe had written him. Its contents were as follows:

  "My dear Roland,--I know that with your young heart and strong courageand a complete and happy absence of nerves, you cannot but think itweak and cowardly of me to run away instead of waiting and fighting hardagainst circumstances. I know as well as anyone can tell me that this isthe course I should have adopted, and a score of times since I came awayI have been on the point of returning and giving myself up, but eachtime when it has come to the point I have drawn back, and despisedmyself for my cowardice. But I cannot overcome it. I had an unhappychildhood under a stern father and a very unkind stepmother, and I thinkthat any spirit I ever had was frightened out of me by the time Ientered life--a shrinking, sensitive young fellow, conscious that Ipossessed fair abilities, but altogether unfit to fight my own way.

  "For some years life was very hard to me, and my failing increasedrather than diminished; and then by some good chance, certainly from nosolicitation on my part, a course opened before me. I married. Yourmother's firmness gave me support, and her love and goodness brought mehappiness. Then when I obtained the post of cashier at the bank ofBrownsville, it seemed that my trials were over. Although I could neverbring myself to mix much with other men, I gained confidence in myself,and believed that I had grown out of that extreme sensibility which hadrendered my early years so unhappy. When the trial came upon me suddenlyI found that I was mistaken. The thought of standing before the worldaccused of theft filled me with an overpowering fear, and rather thanstay and face it I should have put an end to my existence. I know thatyou will scarcely understand this feeling. I know that you will think itweak and cowardly. I simply say, my boy, that I cannot help it, and thatI can no more withstand it than a madman can check his impulses.

  "And now I have told you so much, my son, I will tell you of the eventsof that evening. For some days I had been low and out of sorts; ahaunting sense that something was wrong had been upon me. The lastclerk, before leaving, had, as usual, laid the keys on the desk besideme. I told him he could go, as I had some hours' work before me. For anhour I went through the books, and then a sudden impulse seized me. Iwould examine some of the securities and see that none were missing. Itook the keys and went down to the strong room, a thing which I neverthat I can recall had done after the bank was shut; took out some largeparcels of shares and bonds, and locked the doors again. I took them upwith me to count in my room, and compare them with the books. I had justset to work when I heard the latch-key of the front door turn, and aminute later Mr. Johnstone came in. 'You are at work late, Partridge,'he said. 'I saw your light burning as I was passing. Why, hallo!' hesaid with a change of voice, 'what have you got all the securities upfor? that is rather unusual, isn't it? Wasn't the strong room locked upbefore the clerks went away?' It had not struck me that there wasanything strange about it, but the tone of the president's voice showedme that there was, and my old nervousness seized me as if with a suddengrip; and I have no doubt that the tone in which I explained my reasonfor going down into the strong room and bringing up the securities addedto his suspicion. However, he said coldly: 'I am not aware of anythingthat should have excited your suspicions that all was not right, andinduced you to unlock the strong room after the bank was closed.However, as you have brought up some of the securities, and I havenothing to do for the next half-hour, I will go through them with you.'

  "He sat down by my side, and took the book containing the lists of thesecurities held by the bank and I read out the number of the bonds.'New York Centrals of five hundred dollars each.' Presently he saidsharply: 'That does not tally with the book.' He ran his eye down andremarked: 'There are fifty missing here, running in successive numbers,between the last two you read out.' 'Perhaps they are out of place,' Isaid, and looked through the rest of the bonds, but they were not there.'How do you account for this?' the president asked sharply. 'I cannotaccount for it,' I said, bewildered. 'Oh!' he said in an awkward tone,that particularly struck me. 'Here are your initials to all thesefigures, showing that they have been paid out. When were they redeemed?'I looked at the book; there were my initials sure enough. The bonds hadnot been redeemed at all, I was certain, but there were my initials. Ilooked at them thunderstruck.

  "'I have the highest opinion of you, Mr. Partridge,' the president said,'but this, you must admit, has a very curious appearance. Here I findyou have, after the bank has closed, opened the strong room, and havegot some of the securities up here, and I find that some of them aremissing, but that the book is initialled by you, so that anyone elsegoing through it with the securities would suppose that they had beenparted with in due course. Your own manner, if you will excuse my sayingso, strikes me as altogether suspicious. However, let us go through somemore.'

  "Each bundle that we examined showed deficiencies, and although I hadnot brought up one-tenth of the bonds and securities, we found adeficiency of over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. When we haddone, Mr. Johnstone did not make a single observation beyond brieflypointing out the numbers of the missing securities, and added: 'You see,Mr. Partridge, I have but one course to follow. The bank has been robbedof an immense amount. How much as yet I have no means of knowing. I findyou here with the securities brought out of the strong room at thisunusual hour. These securities were entirely in your hands, and no onetouches them but yourself. You can give me no explanation of thedeficiency, and in every case your initials are appended, as a proofthat they have been paid out in due course. Under such circumstances itis my duty to at once give you into custody.'

  "I had been getting more nervous and confused as each fresh discoverywas made, and the horrible consciousness of my position becamestronger.

  "'I am innocent, sir!' I exclaimed; 'before God I am innocent!'

  "'In that case, Mr. Partridge, you will no doubt be able to prove it tothe satisfaction of the jury. In my mind I confess the matter is clear.This book in which your entries are made is your own private property,and you keep it, I presume, in your own safe here, of which no one butyourself has a key, and it is not the sort of book that you are in thehabit of leaving about. What you have done with the proceeds of thebonds I know not, but that you have taken them seems to me as clear asday. Of course the matter may be explained in some way. I hope that itwill be. You have worked here with me for the last fifteen years, and Ihave hitherto not only had implicit confidence in you, but respect andliking. I would give anything to escape the situation in which I amplaced, but my duty is clear. I must hand you over to the police.'

  "'It will kill me!' I said. 'I am innocent, Mr. Johnstone, innocent as achild, but the disgrace of this will kill me!'

  "He was silent for some time, and then he said: 'I am sorry for you, Mr.Partridge, with all my heart, and still more sorry for your wife. Thismoney, I suppose, is hopelessly gone in some wild speculation,'--Iagain protested, but he waved to me to be silent--'and irretrievablylost. For the sake of our long friendship and of the good lady yourwife, I will suffer you to leave this office a free man. I will take nosteps till morning. More than that, I will, if possible, keep the affairout of the hands of the police for the next twelve hours, by which timeyou ought to be across the frontier into Canada. I am risking a greatdeal in doing this, but I will do it, and I will satisfy my colleaguesas well as I can. There, let no more be said. Go! and strive in future,by a life of strict honesty, to justify the course which I am taking.'

  "I murmured something, whether of thanks or protest I know not, and,seizing my hat, went out into the air. Anyone who had noticed me on myway home must have thought me drunk, for I know that I staggered blindlyalong. Your mother will have told you what happened when I got home.That is the tale, Roland, and it makes things look very black againstme. I was at the bank late, having opened the strong room and taken outthe securities. The president, coming in and finding me so employed,went through the books with me, and discovered large d
eficiencies in thesecurities, which were never handled by anyone but myself. Worst ofall, in my private book, kept always under lock and key, are myinitials, showing that I am cognizant of the securities having beenparted with. Lastly, there is my flight and my manner against me. Inanswer I give my bare protest that I knew nothing about the securitiesbeing missing, and that though the initials appear indeed to be my own,that I certainly never signed them, though I own that the book was neverto my knowledge out of my custody at any time, and that the safe inwhich it was kept was always locked up by me of an evening. Thatsomebody has taken the securities is clear; also that somebody has gotat my book and forged my initials.

  "But it is only this bare assertion that I have against all the factsthat seem to prove me guilty. I am going west. I have made theacquaintance of a gentleman, who has given me letters to two or threelarge store-keepers in Winnipeg, where, under another name, I hope toobtain employment. There, I trust, your mother will follow me. As foryourself, you have told me you have been taken by Mr. Fernlea into hisoffice, and I trust, in spite of the terrible blot I have brought uponour name, that you will succeed. I have, however, no hope that you willbe able to clear up the mystery of which I am the victim. Still, I willnot dissuade you from trying, and although I cannot hope, I shall pray,day and night, that success may attend your efforts."

  Roland read the letter through and through until he had almost learnt itby heart. The next morning he took it in to Mr. Fernlea. "You know whatmy object is in remaining at Brownsville, Mr. Fernlea. I should like youto read this letter which I have received from my father. I need not saythat I shall show it to no one else. I received it yesterday evening,and have been thinking it over all night, but I cannot see that itfurnishes me with any clue such as I had hoped. But you may thinkdifferently."

  Mr. Fernlea read the letter through to the end; then, without a word, heturned it over and re-read it. "Frankly, Roland," he said, when he laidit down, "is there no impression left in your mind after reading thatletter?"

  "Well, sir," Roland said hesitatingly, "it seems too absurd, but Icannot but think it a little strange that Mr. Johnstone should let myfather go off like that."

  "That is it," Mr. Fernlea said. "Johnstone has the reputation of being apleasant gentleman adverse to trouble and contention, and desirous ofkeeping on good terms with everyone, but he has nevertheless been alwayssharp enough on creditors to the bank, and has several times prosecutedwhen it appeared that the bank was the victim of sharp practices. I havealways wondered that no attempt to discover and arrest your father wasmade when the loss was first discovered, which was, I understood, whenJohnstone examined the bonds on the morning when your father was foundmissing; but now that I find he knew it before your father left, it isstill more surprising to me that he should have let him go. He assumed,as it seems by this letter, that your father had spent all the proceedsof the robbery; but why should he assume that?

  "Your father might still have had a great number of bonds in hand, andby arresting him at once a considerable number of the stolen securitiesmight have been recovered. But this is not all. There is one verysingular fact in the story. Your father was reading over the numbers ofthe bonds, when Mr. Johnstone suddenly exclaimed, 'That is wrong; thereare fifty bonds missing between the last two numbers you read out. Whereare they?' Why should he have said that? As I take it, the number of thebonds which had hitherto been read corresponded with the number ofthose marked still in hand, that is to say, of those against which noinitial had been placed. But it seems that these fifty were initialled.What was there, then, to call Johnstone's attention to the fact thatthey should have been there? That is very remarkable, to say the leastof it."

  Roland clasped his hands before him. "Oh, Mr. Fernlea, do you reallythink--"

  "I don't think anything, Roland," Mr. Fernlea said sharply. "Mr.Johnstone is president of the bank, a prominent citizen, a man ofunblemished reputation. I simply say that these facts, stated together,are singular, and I think they give you a clue. How that clue is to befollowed up, I cannot at present suggest, I simply affirm that it is aclue. Now I want you to take the next train to Chicago. A client of minewants some enquiries made about a house which he is thinking ofpurchasing. Here are the papers connected with it; you can study them asyou go along. Of course you will go to the land office and see if thereare any mortgages on it, and you will look up the titles."

  Roland reached Chicago in the afternoon, where he at once set aboutmaking the necessary enquiries. The lawyers upon whom he first called atonce showed him the titles, which appeared to him to be correct, but ofwhich he made an abstract for Mr. Fernlea's inspection. He then went tothe land office and found that mortgages were registered on the house.From there he walked to the address of the owner, which he found to bein a small street. The house was shut up. He made some enquiriescarefully among the neighbours, and found the reputation of the man wasthe reverse of favourable. It was now getting late in the afternoon, andhe rode to the Central Telegraph office to send off a short message toMr. Fernlea with the result of his enquiries. Two or three persons werewriting their messages, and to his surprise he at once recognized in oneof them Mr. Johnstone of Brownsville.

  There was nothing in the least strange that the banker should be atChicago, a hundred and fifty miles from Brownsville; and had it not beenthat Roland had been thinking of him all day, the meeting would not havegiven him a second thought. As it was, he drew back instantly and tookhis place at a distant desk to write his own message. "House mortgagedfor 2500 dollars, title apparently good; vendor's house shut up,neighbours give bad account of him; I wait instructions." Just as he hadfinished, Mr. Johnstone turned from the desk and went up to thepigeon-hole and handed in his message. A question or two was asked, andhaving paid his money he left.

  Roland at once went to the same pigeon-hole. The girl was in the act ofhanding the message she had just received to an operator. "It is acipher. What tiresome things those are! one has to be so careful withthem, and there is no sense to help one."

  "Mine is not a cipher," Roland said as he handed his in; "but myhandwriting is not a very clear one. Your last message ought not to bedifficult to make out, for I know Mr. Johnstone's writing is as clear asprint."

  "Johnstone!" the girl said, glancing back over the other's shoulder; "itisn't Johnstone, it is Westerton."

  Roland felt a thrill shoot through him, but he answered carelessly: "Oh,is it? I was mistaken in my man then, I thought I knew him."

  An hour later he received a telegram from Mr. Fernlea in answer to thathe had sent. It simply said "Come back". He accordingly took the nighttrain to Brownsville, and appeared at the office as usual in themorning.

  "You have found out just what we wanted to know, Partridge. The man is asort of acquaintance of my client, and wanted him to let him have athousand dollars to-day, pending the examination of the titles. Ofcourse he said nothing about the mortgage already on the house. Myclient believed it was all right, and would have advanced the money hadI not begged him to wait twenty-four hours; so your trip has preventedhim from throwing away a thousand dollars."

  "I am very glad I went, sir, on my own account," Roland said, "for Ihave made a discovery which may be of importance. I have found out thatMr. Johnstone is in the habit of going over to Chicago and despatchingtelegrams there in the name of Westerton."

  And he then related the incident of the telegraph office.

  "That may be of importance," Mr. Fernlea said, "but we must not placetoo much importance upon it. He may possibly have sent off a message forsome friend; still, it is a clue."

  So Tom Fernlea thought when Roland told him the circumstances. "I mustget you to write off again, Tom, to your cousin. You told me two daysago that, so far, he had not found out among his acquaintances thatanyone here connected with the bank was speculating. The thing now is toask among them if anyone knows of a Mr. Westerton of Chicago, dealing inventures of that sort."