The man lounging in the chair suddenly sat up.
“You’ve been misinformed,” he said. “Denzil never had those letters at any time in his charge. Van Bleit doesn’t trust him... he’s wise not to. We’ve assumed too much because Hayhurst got hold of them once... That is the first and only time Van Bleit has risked having them in his possession. Those letters are safe—where you and I can’t get them. Van Bleit alone can touch them.” He laughed shortly. “The search has narrowed considerably since we met.”
“What the devil are you driving at? ... You talk as though you know where the letters are,” the Colonel said sharply.
“So I do, man... They’re in the Bank, of course.”
“In the Bank!” There was silence for a few seconds. Then in a voice that had lost its quick tone of authority Colonel Grey asked quietly: “How do you know?”
“Know! I don’t know... And yet I do know. Where would you keep important papers that you feared might be stolen? ... where would I? ... In the Bank, of course. I wonder we never thought of it before. It was Hayhurst misled us. Because he got hold of them, we took Van Bleit for a fool—which he isn’t... Scoundrel every inch of him, but no fool. I had it from himself that the letters were safe from us. He didn’t mean to give me a clue... I jumped to it. I’ve had him staying with me since his acquittal.”
He laughed mirthlessly at the expression of astonishment in his listener’s face, and, as though the recollection of his recent meeting with Van Bleit excited him, got up from his chair and took a turn the length of the room, and then came back.
“I thought I had a good game on... that I had only to get hold of Van Bleit and the letters were mine,” he said. “You nearly upset my plans by that unexpected move of yours which cost so dear in the end... As it chanced, it wouldn’t have mattered had you frustrated them altogether. What made you interfere, as you did, when you had entrusted me with the affair?”
He paused in front of the Colonel, and waited for his answer, regarding him fixedly with his keen, penetrating eyes. The Colonel appeared, not so much unequal, as disinclined to reply.
“I thought you had lost your head,” he said at last. “Your manner of leaving Cape Town was not calculated to inspire confidence.”