ad been in need of an immediate
L5000--which was all the amount extracted from the bank safe that
night--he had plenty of securities on which he could, at an hour's
notice, have raised twice that sum. His life insurances had been fully
paid up; he had not a debt which a L5 note could not easily have
covered.

"On the fatal night he certainly did remember asking the watchman not to
bolt the door to his office, as he thought he might have one or two
letters to write when he came home, but later on he had forgotten all
about this. After the concert he met his son in Oxford Street, just
outside the house, and thought no more about the office, the door of
which was shut, and presented no unusual appearance.

"Mr. Ireland absolutely denied having been in his office at the hour
when James Fairbairn positively asserted he heard Mrs. Ireland say in an
astonished tone of voice: 'Why, Lewis, what in the world are you doing
here?' It became pretty clear therefore that James Fairbairn's view of
the manager's wife had been a mere vision.

"Mr. Ireland gave up his position as manager of the English Provident:
both he and his wife felt no doubt that on the whole, perhaps, there had
been too much talk, too much scandal connected with their name, to be
altogether advantageous to the bank. Moreover, Mr. Ireland's health was
not so good as it had been. He has a pretty house now at Sittingbourne,
and amuses himself during his leisure hours with amateur horticulture,
and I, who alone in London besides the persons directly connected with
this mysterious affair, know the true solution of the enigma, often
wonder how much of it is known to the ex-manager of the English
Provident Bank."

The man in the corner had been silent for some time. Miss Polly Burton,
in her presumption, had made up her mind, at the commencement of his
tale, to listen attentively to every point of the evidence in connection
with the case which he recapitulated before her, and to follow the
point, in order to try and arrive at a conclusion of her own, and
overwhelm the antediluvian scarecrow with her sagacity.

She said nothing, for she had arrived at no conclusion; the case puzzled
every one, and had amazed the public in its various stages, from the
moment when opinion began to cast doubt on Mr. Ireland's honesty to that
when his integrity was proved beyond a doubt. One or two people had
suspected Mrs. Ireland to have been the actual thief, but that idea had
soon to