A Girl of the Commune

by G. A. Henty

"None, so far as I knew but now we come to the other document where you witnessed the signature without having seen it signed. If the signature on the transfer was a forgery, why not that on the mortgage, if it was the mortgage. If so you see the motive of the transfer. The smash of the bank brought a good many estates into the market and they would consequently go cheap. Not only would he get it far below its value, but by reason of this pretended mortgage he would get a further drawback of £15,000 from the price he would pay as its purchase."

"Good heavens, Mr. Hartington! You take my breath away! Have you any reason whatever for believing that the mortgage was a bogus one?"

"None, beyond the fact that I was ignorant of its existence. I was so surprised that I not only wrote to Brander himself but to the official liquidator. The former said he had advanced the money at the urgent request of my father, who told him he wished to settle a very long standing claim upon him, and that he desired that the transaction should be kept an absolute secret. The official liquidator said he had gone carefully into the question of the mortgage, that it was of three years, standing, that the receipts Mr. Brander had given my father for the half-yearly interest on the money had been found among my father's papers, and that Brander had moreover produced a document, showing that he had sold securities to that amount, and had drawn the money from his bankers in town by a singled check for £15,000. Do you remember whether such a deed was ever drawn up in the office?"

"Certainly it was not, but you see that proves nothing, for it was to be kept a secret. Brander might have had it drawn up by some solicitor in London."

"I see that. Well, then, this deed, whatever it was that you witnessed, was that drawn up in the office?"

"No. I remember Levison and I talked it over and said it was curious that a deed between Brander and Mr. Hartington should not have been given to us as usual to be drawn up."

"You witnessed his signature then as well as that of my father?"

"Yes, I have a particular reason for remembering that, for I had sat down hurriedly after he had signed it, and dipping my pen too deeply in the ink, made a blot. It was no doubt a stupid thing to do, but Brander was so unreasonably angry about it, and blew me up so roughly that I made up my mind there and then to stand it no longer, and wrote that very evening to my friend in my present office the letter which led to my getting the situation there two or three months later."

"That blot may be a most important one," Cuthbert said, "if it occurs on the mortgage deed on Fairclose, it is clear that document was not, as it professes on its face, executed three years earlier."

"That would be so indeed," Mr. Harford exclaimed, excitedly; "it would be a piece of evidence there would be no getting over, and that fact would account for Brander's anger, which seemed to me was out of all proportion to the accident. If you could show that the mortgage deed on which Brander claimed is really that document we witnessed, it would be all up with him. As to the receipts for the payments of interest they proved nothing as they were, of course, in Brander's own handwriting and were found where he put them. If you could find out that Brander had knowledge of Mr. Hartington's state of health about the time that transfer was produced you would strengthen your case. It seems to me that he must have got an inkling of it just before he filled up the transfer, and that he ante-dated it a week so that it would appear to have been signed before he learnt about his illness. I can see no other reason for the ante-dating it."