“Every penny,” said Clive looking up quickly. “How could you manage that?”
“I’m sure I hardly know,” he said with a half laugh. Then he added, with more confidence than he had yet shown—“You wouldn’t understand my shifts. I sold some things, and the rest I got out of myself somehow. I wonder now I didn’t break down.”
“I expect you did,” muttered Ibbetson, glancing at the hollow cheeks, and reflecting that this foolish attempt at escape was probably the outcome of broken-down nerves resulting from a life of semi-starvation. And Trent had looked on pitilessly! Clive went on with his story in a dull voice, making no attempt to appeal to his hearer’s sympathies:
“I was sent down to Birmingham a day or two before it became due, and I left the money with a man I knew—Smith. I didn’t hear anything, but I never doubted its being all right till I got back and found that he had bolted and that the money had never been paid. From that day to this I haven’t heard a word of him. I dare say you don’t believe me.”
“But I do,” said Ibbetson impatiently. “My dear fellow, for pity’s sake, pluck up a little spirit! Why shouldn’t I believe you?”
“Nobody does, that’s all.”
“Well, we’ll make them. Now, why don’t you trace this man?”
“I can’t.”
“How have you tried?”
“I went to his lodgings of course, and made no end of a row. There they said that he went out one day—the day after I left, it must have been—with a bag, and has never come back. I’ve been there again and again and never got anything new. Then, you see, I can’t afford detectives and all that sort of thing—”