"God bless me, sir," he exclaimed, "such an idea never entered my mind."
"That I can quite understand," Cuthbert said, quietly, "but you must admit it is possible."
"But in that case," the clerk said, after a pause, "Brander himself must have been the forger, and surely that is not possible. I fancy I know Mr. Brander pretty well, but I should never have dreamt him capable of forgery. Not because I have a high opinion of his honesty, but because I believe him to be a cautious man, and besides I do not see what possible interest he could have had in ruining your father by putting his name on to the register of shareholders. Even if he had an interest in so doing the risk of detection would be frightful, for not only would the matter be known to the directors, but, as you are aware, any shareholder has a right on the payment of a nominal fee to inspect the list of shareholders."
"Precautions were taken against this," Cuthbert said. "Just glance through this paper, which has been signed and sworn to by Cumming in proper form at Brussels."
Mr. Harford ran his eye over the document and then read it through carefully word by word.
"This is an extraordinary statement," he said, gravely, "do you believe it, Mr. Hartington?"
"I believe it implicitly. I had the man practically at my mercy. As you know, there is a warrant out for his arrest and a word from me would have set the police on his track and led to an application for his extradition. Therefore he had every motive for telling me the truth, and I am as certain as I can be, that he did so."
"If so there can be no question that Mr. Brander had some very strong reason indeed for preventing the knowledge of this transfer having ever been made from being known; but in any case it must have come out when the bank failed and of course he must have had a pretty accurate knowledge of the state of its affairs."
"Yes, but it man be that he had an equally accurate knowledge of the state of my father's health. That would account for what Cumming says as to his offer to bolster up the bank for a time, and for a retraction of that offer within a few days after my father's death."
"But why on earth should he have run all this risk merely to ruin you? He had no cause of enmity against you, had he, sir?"