The Attic Murder, S. Fowler Wright [children's books read aloud .TXT] 📗

loan. You shall have it back during the next few days.”

“Call it what you will. You must be gone from here when I get back. That’s at six tonight.”

He rose, and went up to his room. Ten minutes later Francis heard him leave, and almost immediately after Miss Jones came down.

She had her bag in her hand, from which she drew the cheque-book that he required.

“Was it all right?” he asked. “I was afraid when you didn’t get back — - “

“I think so, but I’m not sure. I went to a cashier who was not occupied when I got to the counter, and gave him the note. He was reading it when another customer came up. The cashier looked at him, and then said to me: “Just a moment, please,” and went to the back.

“I thought I should have some trouble to face, but when he returned he just gave me the book in the usual way. The man who came after me had pushed a cheque over to him for payment, and I looked back as I went out of the door, and the cashier wasn’t paying it, but talking to him, with it in his hand.

“That looked as though he had gone behind to enquire something about him rather than me, when he first saw him come up, without wishing to do it so that he would be understood — perhaps to see what his balance was — and I felt easy; but after that I got an idea that I was being followed. It may have been only nervousness, but I went a good way round, to make sure.”

“You are sure?”

“Yes. I mean I’m sure no one followed me here.”

Francis noticed the quiet confidence in her voice, and that she had been sufficiently conversant with banking methods to judge what had occurred in a cool and probable way. He asked: “You won’t mind going again? There’ll be just about time before they close.”

She did not refuse, but neither did she agree. She said:

“It seems rather a needless risk, if we could do it a better way… I wonder whether you’d care to trust me with a cheque that I could get a firm I know to put through their account? We could get the money in a couple of days.”

But it could be traced through another bank?

“I don’t know that that would matter. You’ve got a right to draw cheques on your own account. They wouldn’t give you away.”

He was slow to answer, and there was reserve in her voice when she spoke again: “But I expect you can think of a better plan. Anyway, you’ve got the cheque-book now.”

He saw that he must have appeared distrustful of the offer, and even ungrateful for what she had already done. He was in danger of losing the one friend he had, at a time when friends were his greatest need. He said: “It isn’t that. The fact is I’ve just been told to clear out before six o’clock. Mr. Rabone knows who I am.”

“What dit he say?”

He narrated the incident as exactly as possible.

She frowned in thought over this, and then said: “It’s bad luck that he’s guessed, but I don’t think he’ll be in any hurry to let the police know. You needn’t worry much about that.”

He asked with surprise: “You’d advise me to risk it, and stay on””

“I didn’t say that. It’s not easy to see what’s the safest way. But you might leave here and go somewhere that I could reach, if we thought out a plan.”

“But you don’t think he’ll inform the police? You feel sure that he’s not that sort?

She answered dryly: “No. He’s not that sort.”

He attacked the position irritably from another angle: “I suppose he wanted to have you alone here this evening. That’s really why he wants me to clear.”

She listened to this, and amusement came to her eyes. “I should call that a good guess… But it isn’t that, all the same. Or not that alone. He thinks you’ve come to the wrong place.”

“If you’d only say what you mean!”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

He checked an impatient reply, and made the effort necessary to control a nervous impatience born of the precarious position in which he stood, and remained silent, waiting for her to say more. He was rewarded with: “You told me a good deal. I wonder whether it wouldn’t save trouble if I were to pay you back in the same coin.”

He became conscious of the boorishness of his previous mood. What obligation had she to him? He said: “Don’t tell me anything you’re not sure I should know. There’s no reason you should. I’d rather trust you than that.”

Indeed, if she were not worthy of trust, what hope could he have? He was in her hands, in more ways than one. If she sought to rob or betray him, it would be easy for her to tell a tale that he could not test. In his position, he must trust entirely, or not at all, and his choice was already made.

But she had formed her own resolution, and his words did not change it, but rather confirmed her judgement that she could give a confidence which he would not betray.

“Trust’s all right,” she said, “but it’s simpler to understand. I don’t think you’ll give me away to Mr. Rabone, and still less that you’ll set the police on him, though I shouldn’t care if you did, so long as my name wasn’t anywhere in the bill…

“Mr. Rabone is a bank inspector. He’s on the staff of the London & Northern. Bank inspectors have to be men of good character. If they haven’t got private means, the bank expects them to live within their salaries, which are substantial, but nothing more.

“Mr. Rabone is a man against whose financial record nothing is known. He is separated from his wife, but that’s understood not to be his fault. She’s said to drink like a fish. He has to contribute to her support.

“He lives simply, in such lodgings as these. He takes expensive holidays, but not more so than his salary may possibly cover, particularly if he was careful in earlier years which report says that he was.

“But he gives the impression of having money under control. There was an occasion when he avoided scandal by paying what must have been a large sum, though we haven’t been able to find out yet what the figure was.

“No one would have worried themselves to enquire into these matters but for the fact that the London & Northern Bank has been the victim of a succession of forgeries of such a character that there has been a growing suspicion that they could not have been carried out successfully without the assistance, if not the actual direction, of someone with inside knowledge, particularly of the balances lying in the accounts on which the forged cheques were drawn.

“The Texall Enquiry Agency, of which I am one of the humbler members, was instructed, about a year ago, to make the most searching investigation into the records and occupations of about twenty of the bank staff, each of which could have assisted one or other of the robberies at different branches.

“The trouble was that no one man could have been in touch with them all, and when we’d failed to discover anything to connect any of them with the incidents in question, though we’d stirred up some unexpected mud in one or two cases, we received instructions to investigate the private life and connections of some of the higher officials, who had been regarded as above such suspicion before.”

“With Mr. Rabone top of the list? Well, I hope you’ll prove he’s in it up to the neck, as no doubt he is.”

Miss Jones smiled. “You don’t love him. It’s easy to see that. Neither do I… But we haven’t found anything yet, beyond that, if he’s really in with a criminal gang, as I think he is, he’s an exceptionally circumspect man.

“The only really unpleasant thing that we should be able to prove as yet is that he has a habit of making friends with lonely girls in his lodgings, or when he goes on holidays, and in some other ways, and seducing them without telling them that he has a wife very much alive.

“It was in connection with one of these incidents some years ago that he found it prudent to pay a sufficient sum to a girl, who had a baby coming, to go out to New Zealand with her mother without making a fuss… And when I tell you that you’ll understand why I’m here.”

“I should have thought it would have been a better reason for keeping a good distance away.”

“Then you didn’t listen when I told you what my profession is… I’m a poor girl who’s out of a job, and her money down to about ten shillings. I’m rather timid, and more frightened than attracted as yet, but he’s very patient and kind, and, in the end, when my money’s gone, and — well, what can a poor girl be expected to do?… He’s trying hard now to get me a job at the bank, but it’s a sure bet that he’ll fail in that.”

She smiled slightly, and did not change her expression when she saw the lack of response on her hearer’s face.

“I wonder,” he said, “that you can talk to the filthy beast.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said lightly. “Being seduced isn’t so bad, when it’s being done in a cautious way, and you’re playing the timid part.”

“And so you’ve found out nothing yet?”

“Not quite nothing. There have been two dark nights when he’s been visited by callers who come over the roof. The second time, I followed them back. Not closely enough to see who they were, but to find where they went. It was the fourth house from here toward Windsor Terrace. It’s quite easy to get along from roof to roof. There’s a parapet a foot high, and the dormer windows are close to its inner side.”

“It must have been a very dangerous thing to do.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. It’s all in the day’s work, or perhaps night’s might be a better word… But if you should see anyone knocking at the front door that you’re not anxious to meet, it might be worth while trying. I don’t know what sort of reception you’d have in the other house, but you might get down before anyone’d try to stop you, and they’re not likely to be the sort to call in the police.”

“Haven’t you found out who they are?”

“Not much yet, but of course we shall. There’ll be someone else digging that up now. I have to concentrate here.”

“It doesn’t sound very circumspect to have criminals crawling over the roofs.”

“No? It would be easy to think of other ways more likely to be observed, and not so difficult for us to prove. But I wasn’t thinking of that… The fact is that most people who make money in criminal ways give themselves away by how they let it slip through their hands. There’s not much fun in risking your liberty or your neck for money you never spend, and it’s astonishing how little use it is, even if you risk throwing it round. There isn’t much that people of bad character can buy, especially in a quiet way, that’s much satisfaction to them, and they daren’t get drunk for fear of what they might let out…

“But Mr. Rabone lives a quiet frugal life, except for his one annual spree, and this habit I’ve told you