onded
with alacrity. "Just between you and me and the door post!-all right.
Anything I can do, Mr. Jettison, shall be done. But it's more in the way
of what I can tell, I suppose?"

"Something of that sort," replied Jettison in his slow, easy-going
fashion. "I want to know a thing or two. Yours is a working-man's
society, I think? Aye--and I understand you've a system whereby such a
man can put his bits of savings by in your hands?"

"A capital system, too!" answered the secretary, seizing on a pamphlet
and pushing it into his visitor's hand. "I don't believe there's better
in England! If you read that--"

"I'll take a look at it some time," said Jettison, putting the pamphlet
in his pocket. "Well, now, I also understand that Collishaw was in the
habit of bringing you a bit of saved money now and then a sort of saving
fellow, wasn't he?" Stebbing nodded assent and reached for a ledger
which lay on the farther side of his desk.

"Collishaw," he answered, "had been a member of our society
ever since it started--fourteen years ago. And he'd been putting in
savings for some eight or nine years. Not much, you'll understand. Say,
as an average, two to three pounds every half-year--never more. But,
just before his death, or murder, or whatever you like to call it, he
came in here one day with fifty pounds! Fairly astounded me, sir! Fifty
pounds--all in a lump!"

"It's about that fifty pounds I want to know something," said Jettison.
"He didn't tell you how he'd come by it? Wasn't a legacy, for instance?"

"He didn't say anything but that he'd had a bit of luck," answered
Stebbing. "I asked no questions. Legacy, now?--no, he didn't mention
that. Here it is," he continued, turning over the pages of the ledger.
"There! 50 pounds. You see the date--that 'ud be two days before his
death."

Jettison glanced at the ledger and resumed his seat.

"Now, then, Mr. Stebbing, I want you to tell me something very
definite," he said. "It's not so long since this happened, so you'll not
have to tag your memory to any great extent. In what form did Collishaw
pay that fifty pounds to you?"

"That's easy answered, sir," said the secretary. "It was in gold. Fifty
sovereigns--he had 'em in a bit of a bag." Jettison reflected on this
information for a moment or two. Then he rose.

"Much obliged to you, Mr. Stebbing," he said. "That's something worth
knowing. Now there's something else you can tell me as long as I'm
here--though, to b