“Here is Mr. Falck!” he said; “who no doubt will be able to explain everything satisfactorily. A five-pound note has somehow disappeared from your till this afternoon, Frithiof; do you know anything about it?”
“It was certainly in the till when I last opened it,” said Frithiof; “and that was only a few minutes before I went out.”
“Very possibly,” said Mr. Horner. “The question is whether it was there when you shut it again.”
The tone even more than the words made Frithiof’s blood boil.
“Sir,” he said furiously, “do you dare to insinuate that I—”
But Mr. Boniface laid a hand on his arm and interrupted him.
“Frithiof,” he said, “you know quite well that I should as soon suspect my own son as you. But this note has disappeared in a very extraordinary way, while only you and Darnell were in the shop, and we must do our best to trace it out. I am sure you will help me in this disagreeable business by going through the ordinary form quietly.”
Then, turning to the private detective who had been hastily called in by Mr. Horner, he suggested that they should come to his own room. Mr. Horner shut the door with an air of satisfaction. From the first he had detested the Norwegian, and now was delighted to feel that his dislike was justified. Mr. Boniface, looking utterly miserable, sat down in his arm-chair to await the result of the inquiry, and the two men who lay under suspicion stood before the detective, who with his practiced eye glanced now at one, now at the other, willing if possible to spare the innocent man the indignity of being searched.
Darnell was a rather handsome fellow, with a short dark beard and heavy moustache: he looked a trifle paler than usual, but was quite quiet and collected, perhaps a little upset at the unusual disturbance in the shop where for so long he had worked, yet without the faintest sign of personal uneasiness about him. Beside him stood the tall Norwegian, his fair skin showing all too plainly the burning color that had rushed to his face the instant he knew that he lay actually under suspicion of thieving. Mr. Horner’s words still made him tingle from head to foot, and he could gladly have taken the man by the throat and shaken the breath out of him. For the suspicion, hard enough for any man to bear, was doubly hard to him on account of his nationality. That a Norwegian should be otherwise than strictly honorable was to Frithiof a monstrous idea. He knew well that he and his countrymen in general had plenty of faults, but scrupulous honesty was so ingrained in his Norse nature, that to have the slightest doubt cast upon his honor was to him an intolerable insult. The detective could not, of course, understand this. He was a clever and a conscientious man, but his experience was, after all, limited. He had not traveled in Norway, or studied the character of its people; he did not know that you may leave all your luggage outside an inn in the public highway without the least fear that in the night any one will meddle with it: he did not know that if you give a Norse child a coin equal to sixpence in return for a great bowl of milk, it will refuse with real distress to keep it, because the milk was worth a little less; he had not heard the story of the lost chest of plate, which by good chance was washed up on the Norwegian coast, how the experts examined the crest on the spoons, and after infinite labor and pains succeeded in restoring it to its rightful owner in a far-away southern island. It was, after all, quite natural that he should suspect the man who had colored so deeply, who protested so indignantly against the mere suspicion of guilt, who clearly shrank from the idea of being searched.
“I will examine you first,” said the detective; and Frithiof, seeing that there was no help for it, submitted with haughty composure to the indignity. For an instant even Mr. Horner was shaken in his opinion, there was such an evident consciousness of innocence in the Norwegian’s whole manner and bearing now that the ordeal had actually come.