"But, Ken-oh, love-a-duck, if you'd only made that telephone-call ten minutes later-!"
"Why ten minutes later?" asked Evelyn. "What difference would that have made?"
"Because I'd have been sure," said H.M. sourly. "Follow the course of your adventures, Ken, as I got 'em in your next report from Bristol. You saw the whole story played out in front of you, if you'd known it. After speakin' to me from Moreton Abbott, you walked out of the telephone-box and opened your newspaper bundle to put on your policeman's outfit again — and out. fell a £100 note. I ask you….
"That tore it. A big slice of money like that was tossed away casually in a four-days' old newspaper chucked into the scullery. That meant it was a part of the real slush; that meant somebody had been conferrin' with Hogenauer about the Willoughby stuff; and, above all, it meant something none of you seem to have realized. It meant that this conference must have taken place some days before. It meant that the only other party to the conference must have been Charters himself, because Charters was the only one who had the money in his possession. It was in his safe."
Stone held up his hand.
"Hold on there," he protested. "Why couldn't it have been Serpos? Why couldn't Serpos have swiped a couple of samples out of the safe-there was a lot of dough, you know, so Charters wouldn't have noticed a few missing — and why couldn't Serpos have taken that to Hogenauer for the verdict?"
H.M. blinked at him.
"Well, now, I ask you," he said, with moderation. "If it'd been only the question of a few samples, why should the guilty person (whoever he was) need to blow the gaff to Hogenauer at all, and tell him what money it was? If you only have a few samples, why give away the fact that you're actin' crookedly with Willoughby's money? The point of this business is that the guilty person had to get a verdict on the whole lot, the whole sackful — otherwise it was no good. There was real money and bogus money. If you take a few, samples, where are you? Is this real? No. Is that real? Yes. And you don't know where you stand.
"Am I makin' myself clear?" inquired H.M. laboriously. "Serpos couldn't have pinched the money, because he couldn't have got it out of the safe without Charters's knowledge. Nobody, nobody in the whole case, could have done it except Charters himself. Nobody else could have taken it to Hogenauer. If money was taken to Hogenauer, it's the one thing that established Charters's guilt. Why burn me — '
"No," said Stone, with grave thoughtfulness. "Burn me.