he
interview with Barthorpe. It was a small bundle of news that he had
brought back and two of his hearers showed by their faces that they
attached little importance to it. But Professor Cox-Raythwaite caught
eagerly at the mere scrap of suggestion.

"Tertius!--Halfpenny!" he exclaimed. "That must be followed up--we must
follow it up at once. That bank-note may be a most valuable and
effective clue."

Mr. Halfpenny showed a decided incredulity and dissent.

"I don't see it," he answered. "Don't see it at all, Cox-Raythwaite. What
is there in it? What clue can there be in the fact that Barthorpe picked
up a hundred pound bank-note from his uncle's writing-desk? Lord bless
me!--why, every one of us four men knows very well that hundred pound
notes were as common to Jacob Herapath as half-crowns are to any of
us! He was a man who carried money in large amounts on him always--I've
expostulated with him about it. Don't you know--no, I dare say you don't
though, because you never had business dealings with him, and perhaps
Tertius doesn't, either, because he, like you, only knew him as a
friend--you don't know that Jacob had a peculiarity. Perhaps Mr. Selwood
knows of it, though, as he was his secretary."

"What peculiarity?" asked the Professor. "I know he had several fads,
which one might call peculiarities."

"He had a business peculiarity," replied Mr. Halfpenny, "and it was well
known to people in his line of business. You know that Jacob Herapath
had extensive, unusually extensive, dealings in real property--land and
houses. Quite apart from the Herapath Flats, he dealt on wide lines with
real estate; he was always buying and selling. And his peculiarity was
that all his transactions in this way were done by cash--bank-notes or
gold--instead of by cheque. It didn't matter if he was buying a hundred
thousand pounds' worth of property, or selling two hundred thousand
pounds' worth--the affairs had to be completed by payment in that
fashion. I've scolded him about it scores of times; he only laughed at
me; he said that had been the custom when he went into the business, and
he'd stuck to it, and wasn't going to give it up. God bless me!"
concluded Mr. Halfpenny, with emphasis. "I ought to know, for Jacob
Herapath has concluded many an operation in this very room, and at this
very table--I've seen him handle many a hundred thousand pounds' worth
of notes in my time, paying or receiving! And, as I said, the mere
pickin