'Look here!' I said, after a few minutes, 'this is all very well, but would you be kind enough to tell me what money was found in my pockets?'
'Two sovereigns, one half sovereign, seven shillings in silver, and tuppence in bronze,' said the sepulchral policeman, as though he thought 'tuppence' was usually 'in' marble, or lignum vitæ, or something of the sort. 'Also one silver watch with leather guard, one plated cigarette-case, and----'
'No pocket-book?' I interrupted despondently. The policeman brightened at that.
'So there was a pocket-book? I thought so,' the brilliant creature said. And after that I lost all interest in these bedside proceedings. I referred the man to the Chronicle office, the bank, and the shipping-office, and requested as a special favour that Mr. Smith should be sent for; also, on a journalistic afterthought, a reporter from the Chronicle. The numbers of the bank-notes had been written down. Oh yes, on the advice of the bank clerk, I had done this carefully at the bank counter, and preserved the record scrupulously--in the missing pocket-book.
The police--marvellous men--ascertained next morning that the notes had been cashed at the Bank of New South Wales, in George Street, within half an hour of the time at which I obtained them from the savings bank. And that was the last I ever heard of them.
Twenty-four hours later I was called upon to identify an arrested suspect who had been seen in the vestibule of the bank at the time of my call. I did identify the poor wretch. He was the American reporter who had been discharged from the Chronicle staff. But nobody at the Bank of New South Wales remembered ever having seen the man, and I said at once that I could not possibly identify my assailant, not even having known that any one had attacked me until I was told of it in hospital.
The police appeared to regard me as a most unsatisfactory kind of person, as I doubtless was from their point of view. But they had to release the American, although, when arrested, he had two shining new sovereigns in his ragged pockets, and was full of assorted alcoholic liquors. Their theory was that in some way or another the American had known of my movements and plans, and communicated these to a professional 'strong arm' thief; that I had been shadowed to and from the bank, and that I might possibly have escaped attack altogether but for my addiction to byways.
Their theory did not greatly interest me. For the time the central fact was all my mind seemed able to accommodate. My savings were gone, my passage to England forfeited, my bank account closed, and--so my hot eyes saw it--my career at an end.
XXII
From the medical standpoint there were no complications whatever in my case; it was just as simple as a cut finger. Regarded from this point of view, a broken head is a small matter indeed, in a youth of abstemious habits and healthy life. Well, he was a very thoroughly chastened youth who accepted the cheery physician's congratulations upon his early discharge from hospital.