It was easier for Mr. Bede Greatorex to say to the police-agents "drop the investigation," than it was for them to do it. Had he been the sole person to whom they were responsible, the thing would have lain in a nutshell; but their employer was his father. And Mr. Greatorex was pushing discovery to an issue as he had never pushed anything yet. He looked up details himself; he went backwards and forwards to Scotland Yard; he was altogether troublesome.

As the days went on, and Mr. Butterby brought forth no result, only presented himself once in a way to say there was none to bring, Mr. Greatorex grew angry. Surely such a thing was never heard of!--as for a cheque to be stolen out of one of their desks at midday, carried to the bank and openly cashed, and for the police to say they could not trace the offender! Mr. Greatorex avowed that the police ought to be ashamed to confess it; that, in his opinion, they must be getting incapable of their duties.

One thing had struck Mr. Greatorex in the matter--that his son Bede seemed not to be eager for the investigation: if he did not retard it, he certainly did not push it. Perhaps the best word to express Bede\'s state of mind in regard to it, as it appeared to Mr. Greatorex, was indifference. Why was this? Bede ought to be as anxious as himself. Nay, more so: it was from his possession and his desk that the cheque was taken. Mr. Greatorex supposed that the laxity in regard to business affairs, which appeared latterly to have been creeping upon his son, must be extending itself even to the stealing of money. Was he more seriously ill than he allowed them to know? The fear, that it might be so, crossed the mind of Mr. Greatorex.

The solicitor sat one morning in his private room, Jonas Butterby opposite to him. The detective was there in answer to a peremptory mandate sent by Mr. Greatorex to Scotland Yard the previous day. Whether Mr. Butterby was responsible to himself alone for the progress or non-progress of the investigation; or, if not, whether he had imparted a hint at headquarters of Bede Greatorex\'s private communication to him, was locked up within his own breast. One thing appeared clear--that he was at liberty to do as he pleased.

"It is not the loss of the money; it is not that the sum of forty-four pounds is of so much moment to me that I must needs trace it out, and if possible regain it," Mr. Greatorex urged, his fine, fresh, honest face bent full on the detective, sternness in its every line. "It is the unpleasantness of knowing that we have a thief about us: it is the feeling of insecurity; the fear that the loss will not stop here. Every night of my life when the offices close, I seem to prepare myself for the discovery that some other one has taken place during the day."

"Not at all an unlikely thing to happen," acknowledged Mr. Butterby, who probably felt himself less free under existing circumstances than he usually was, and therefore spoke with deprecation.

"That the cheque must have been taken by one of the clerks attached to my son\'s room, I think there can be little doubt of. The difficulty is----"

"Mr. Bede thinks so himself," interrupted Butterby. "He charged me specially to look after them; after one of \'em in particular."

"Which was it?"

"Hurst."

"Hurst!" repeated Mr. Greatorex in surprise.

"But Mr. Bede is mistaken, sir. It was no more Hurst than it was me."

Instincts are subtle. And one came unbidden into the mind of the detective officer as he spoke--that he had made a mistake in repeating this to Mr. Greatorex. The truth was--carrying within him his private instructions, and the consciousness that they must be kept private--he found these interviews with the head of the firm slightly embarrassing.

"Why should he suspect Hurst if he----"

The door opened, and the person in question appeared at it--Bede Greatorex. Catching a glimpse of the detective\'s head, he was going out of it a vast deal quicker than he had entered; but his father stopped him.

"Bede! Bede! Come in. Come in and shut the door. Here\'s a fine thing I have just heard--that you are suspecting one person in particular of having taken the cheque. Over and over again, you have told me there was nobody in particular to be suspected."

A lightning glance from Bede Greatorex\'s fine dark Spanish eyes flashed out on the detective. It said as plainly as glance could speak, "How dare you presume to betray my confidence?"

That gentleman sat unmoved, and nodded a good morning with his customary equanimity.

"Mr. Greatorex--doing me the honour to call upon me to report progress--observed that he fully thought it was one of the clerks in your room we must look to, sir," spoke Butterby in a slow calm tone. "I told him your opinion was the same; and you had charged me to look well after them, especially Mr. Hurst. That was all."

Bede Greatorex bit his lip in anger. But the communication might have been worse.

"What is there against Hurst?" impatiently asked Mr. Greatorex.

"Nothing at all," said Bede quietly. "If I said to Mr. Butterby that one of my clerks might have taken the cheque, it was only because access to my room was more obtainable by them than by anybody else I can think of. And of the four, Hurst spends the most money."

"Hurst has the most money to spend," observed Mr. Greatorex.

"Of course he has. I make no doubt Hurst is as innocent as I."

This was very different from suspecting Hurst, from desiring that he should be specially looked after, and perhaps Mr. Greatorex felt the two accounts the least in the world contradictory. The keen-sighted observer sitting by, apparently sharpening the point of his broken lead-pencil, noticed that the eyes of Bede Greatorex never once went openly into the face of his father.

"If it was my case," thought the officer, "I should tell him the truth out and out. No good going about the bush this way, saying he suspects one and suspects another, when he does not suspect \'em: far better that old Greatorex should hear the whole and see for himself that it can\'t be gone into. He don\'t care to worrit the old gentleman: that\'s what it is."

That is just what it was. But Mr. Butterby was not right in all his premises.

"I am fully persuaded that every clerk on my side the house is as innocent as are those on yours, sir," spoke Bede Greatorex, a kind of tremor in his tone; which tremor did not escape the officer\'s notice, or that it was caused by anxious, painful eagerness: and that astute man knew in a moment that old Greatorex must not have his suspicions turned actively on Bede\'s employés. "I believe it was Butterby who first mentioned them. Upon that, I ran them over in my mind, and remembered that Hurst was the only one spending much money--he lives in fashionable lodgings as a gentleman. Was it not so, Mr. Butterby?"

The detective was professionally prepared for most accidents. Therefore when Bede Greatorex turned upon him with startling rapidity, a second flash darting forth from his dark eyes, he never moved a muscle.

"You are right, sir."

"Bede," said Mr. Greatorex, in a still tone of meaning, "if the same facility for getting access to your room attached to the clerks on my side the house, I should not say to you so positively that they were not guilty. You seem to resent the very thought that suspicion can attach to them."

"Not at all, father. Perhaps I felt vexed that Hurst\'s name should have been mentioned to you without grounds."

"Understand me, Mr. Butterby," spoke the elderly gentleman sharply. "I expect to have this matter better attended to than it has been. And I repeat to you that I think the clerks in my son\'s room should be--I do not say suspected, but sufficiently thought of. It is monstrous to know that a theft like this can have been openly committed in a professional man\'s house, and you officers should avow yourselves at fault. We may be losing some of our clients\' deeds next."

The detective glanced at Mr. Bede Greatorex, and was answered, as he thought, by the faintest signs in return. It was not the first time he had been concerned in cases where sons wished things kept from knowledge of fathers.

"We don\'t give it up, sir. Allow us more time, and perhaps we may satisfy you better."

"I shall expect you to do so," returned Mr. Greatorex with sufficient emphasis. And the officer rose to quit his presence. "Go round by the other door to my room and wait."

Surely these words were breathed into Mr. Butterby\'s ear! Faint though the whisper was he could not have fancied it. Bede Greatorex was crossing his path at the moment, as if he wished to look from the window.

Fancy or not, the officer acted upon it. Going round by the street to the professional entrance, and so on up the passage to the private room. When Bede Greatorex returned to it, he saw him seated against the wall, underneath the map of London.

"You did wrong to mention Mr. Hurst to my father," Bede began with imperative quickness, as he slipped the bolt of the middle door.

"That\'s as it may be," was the rejoinder, cool as usual. "If there\'s not some outlet of suspicion given to your father, it will be just this, Mr. Bede Greatorex--that he\'ll make one for himself. Leastways, that\'s my opinion."

"Be it so. I do not want it to take the direction of my clerks."

"He lays the blame on us: says we are lax, or else incapable; and it is only natural he should think so. Anyway there\'s no harm done about Mr. Hurst: you made it right with him there. Do you suspect Hurst still, sir?"

"Yes. At least more than I do any one of the others."

Mr. Butterby put his hands on his knees and bent a little forward. "If you wish me to do you any service in this, sir, you must not keep me quite so much in the dark. What I want to get at, Mr. Bede Greatorex, is the true reason of your pitching upon Hurst yourself."

"I cannot give it to you," said Bede promptly. "What I told you at our first interview, I repeat now--that the suspicion against him is but a faint one. Still it is sufficient to raise a doubt; and I have no reason to doubt the other three. Jenner is open and honest as the day; Brown valuable and trustworthy; and Mr. Yorke must of course be exempt."

"Oh, of course he must," dryly acquiesced the detective with a cough. He knew he was sure of Roland in this case, but he thought Bede Greatorex might not have spoken so confidently had he been cognizant of a certain matter connected with the past.

"I would not much mind answering for Jenner myself," remarked Mr. Butterby. "Brown seems all right, too.

"Brown\'s honesty has been sufficiently proved. Very large sums have passed through his hands habitually, and he has never wronged us by a shilling. Had he wished to help himself, he would have done it before now: he has had the opportunity."

"Then that leaves us back at Hurst again. Where is your objection, sir, to the doubt of him being mentioned to your father?"

A kind of startled look crossed Bede\'s face: a look of fear: and he spoke hastily.

"Have you forgotten what I said? That the fact of Mr. Hurst\'s knowing he was suspected (assuming he is guilty) would be attended with danger. Awful danger, too. If it were possible to disclose all to my father, he would forfeit a great deal that he holds dear in life, rather than incur it."

"Well it seems to me that I can be of little use in this matter," said Butterby, turning somewhat crusty. "I have had dangerous secrets confided to me in my lifetime, sir; and the parties they were told of are none the wiser or the worse for it yet."

"And I wish I could confide this to you," said Bede, steadily and candidly. "I\'d be glad enough to get it out of my keeping, for I don\'t know what to do with it. If no one but myself were concerned; if I could disclose it to you without the risk of injuring others you should hear it this next minute. For their sakes, Mr. Butterby, my lips are tied. I dare not speak."

"Does he mean his wife, or doesn\'t he?" thought Butterby. And the question was not solvable. "I\'ll look after Hurst a bit," he said aloud. "Truth to tell, I considered him the safest of them all, in spite of your opinion, Mr. Bede Greatorex, and have let him be. He shall get a little of my private attention now. And so shall one of the others," the detective mentally added.

"Unsuspected by Hurst himself," enjoined Bede, a shade of anxiety in his voice.

Could Mr. Butterby have been suspected of so far forgetting professional dignity as to indulge in winks, it might have seemed that he answered by one, as he rose from his chair.

"I\'ll just take a look in upon them now," he remarked. "And let me advise you, sir, to get your father in a more reasonable frame of mind, if possible. If he calls in fresh aid, as he threatens, there might be the dickens to pay."

Bede Greatorex crossed the room hastily, as though he meant to guard the middle door, and spoke in a low tone.

"I do not care that they should know you have been with me. Not for the world would I let it come to their knowledge that I doubt either of them."

"Now do you suppose that I am a young gosling?" demanded Butterby. "You have done me the honour to confide this private business to my hands, Mr. Bede Greatorex, and you may safely leave it in \'em. After being at the work so many years, there\'s not much left for me to be taught."

He departed by the passage, treading lightly, and halted when he came to the clerks\' door. He was in deep thought. This matter which, as he phrased it, Mr. Bede Greatorex had done him the honour to put in his hands, was no such great matter after all; a mere trifle in professional quarters: but few things had so much puzzled the detective. Not in his way to discovery: that, as it seemed to him, would be very easy, could he pursue it openly. Bede Greatorex puzzled him; his ambiguous words puzzled him; the thing itself puzzled him. In most cases Mr. Butterby could at least see where he was; in this he stood in a sea-encompassed fog, not understanding where he was going, or what he was in search of.

Giving the swing-door a dash backwards, as though he had just entered, he went into the room. Mr. Brown was at his desk, Roland Yorke at his; but the other two were absent. So if the visit had been intended as a special one to Josiah Hurst, it was a decided failure.

When was the great Butterby at fault? He had just looked in upon them "in passing," he said, to give the good-morrow, and enquire how they relished the present state of the thermometer, which he should pronounce melting. How did Mr. Yorke like it?

Mr. Yorke, under the circumstances of not knowing whether he stood on his head or his heels, had not thought about the thermometer. Since the receipt of a letter that morning, containing............