As Cyril drove home from Waterloo next day to his lonely rooms in Staple Inn, Holborn, he turned aside with his cab for a few minutes to make a passing call at the bank in Lombard Street. He was short of ready money, and wanted to cash a cheque for fifty pounds for expenses incurred in his defence at Tavistock.
The cashier stared at him hard; then, without consulting anybody, he said, in a somewhat embarrassed tone, “I don’t know whether you’re aware of it, Mr. Waring, but this overdraws your current account. We haven’t fifty pounds on our books to your credit.”
He was well posted on the subject, in fact, for only that morning he had hunted up Cyril’s balance in the ledger at his side for the gratification of his own pure personal curiosity.
Cyril stared at him in astonishment. In this age of surprises, one more surprise was thus suddenly sprung upon him. His first impulse was to exclaim in a very amazed voice, “Why, I’ve six thousand odd pounds to my credit, surely;” but he checked himself in time with a violent effort. How could he tell what strange things might have happened in his absence? If the money was gone, and Nevitt was murdered, and Guy in hiding, who could say what fresh complications might not still be in store for him? So he merely answered, with a strenuous endeavour to suppress his agitation, “Will you kindly let me have my balance-sheet, if you please? I—ur—I thought I’d more money than that still left with you.”
The cashier brought out a big book and a bundle of cheques, which he handed to Cyril with a face of profound interest. To him, too, this little drama was pregnant with mystery and personal implications. Cyril turned the vouchers over one by one, with close attention, recognising the signature and occasion of each, till he arrived at last at a big cheque which staggered him sadly for a moment. He took it up in his hands and examined it in the light. “Pay Self or Bearer, Six Thousand Pounds (L6,000), Cyril Waring.”
Oh, horrible, horrible! This, then, was the secret of Guy’s sudden disappearance.
He didn’t cry aloud. He didn’t say a word. He looked at the thing hard, and knew in a moment exactly what had happened. Guy had forged that cheque; it was Guy’s natural hand, written forward like Cyril’s own, instead of backward, as usual. And no one but himself could possibly have told it from his own true signature. But Cyril knew it at once for Guy’s by one infallible sign—a tiny sign that might escape the veriest expert—some faint hesitation about the tail of the capital C, which was shorter in Guy’s hand than Cyril ever made it, and which Guy had therefore deliberately lengthened, by an effort or an afterthought, to complete the imitation.
“You cashed that cheque yourself, sir, over the counter, you remember,” the cashier said quietly, “on the date it was drawn on.”
Cyril never altered a muscle of his rigid face.
“Ah, quite so,” he answered, in a very dry voice, not daring to contradict the man. He knew just what had happened. Guy must have come to get the money himself, and the cashier must have mistaken him for the proper owner of the purloined six thousand. They were so very much alike. Nobody ever distinguished them.
“And that was one of the days, I think, when you proved the alibi in Belgium before the Devonshire magistrates at Tavistock yesterday,” the clerk went on, with a searching glance. Cyril started this time. He saw in a second the new danger thus sprung upon him. If the cashier chose to press the matter home to the hilt, he must necessarily arrive at one or other of two results. Either the alibi would break down altogether, or it would be perfectly clear that Guy had committed a forgery.
“So it seems,” he answered, looking his keen interlocutor straight in the eyes. “So it seems, I should say, by the date on the face of it.”
But the cashier did NOT care to press the matter home any further; and for a very good reason. It was none of his business to suggest the idea of a forgery, after a cheque had been presented and duly cashed, if the customer to whose account it was debited in course chose voluntarily to accept the responsibility of honouring it. The objection should come first from the customer’s side. If HE didn’t care to press it, then neither did the cashier. Why should he, indeed? Why saddle his firm with six thousand pounds loss? He would only get himself into trouble for having failed to observe the discrepancy in the signatures, and the difference between the brothers. That, after all, is what a cashier is for. If he doesn’t fulfil those first duties of his post, why what on earth can be the good of him to anybody in any way?
The two men looked at one another across the counter with a strong inscrutable stare of mutual suspicion. Then Cyril slowly tore up the cheque he had tendered for fifty pounds, filled in another for his real balance of twenty-two, handed it across to the clerk without another word, received the cash in white trembling hands, and went out to his cab again in a turmoil of excitement.
All the way back to his rooms in Staple Inn one seething idea alone possessed his soul. His faith in Guy was beginning to break down. And with it, his faith in himself almost went. The man was his own brother—his very counterpart, he knew; could he really believe him capable of committing a murder? Cyril looked within, and said a thousand times NO; he looked at that forged cheque, and his heart misgave him.
At Staple Inn, the housekeeper who took care of their joint rooms came out to greet him with no small store of tears an............