“He’s paid in six thousand pounds?” Guy gasped out interrogatively.
The clerk gazed at him hard with a suspicious glance. “Are you a shareholder?” he asked, with one eye on the policeman. “What do you want to know for?”
“Yes, I’m a shareholder, unfortunately,” Guy answered, still in a maze. “I hold three hundred original shares. My name’s Guy Waring. You’ve got me on your books. Mr. Nevitt has paid three thousand in Mr. Whitley’s name, and three thousand for me. That was our arrangement.”
The clerk glanced hard at him again. “Waring!” he repeated, turning over the leaves of his big book for further verification. “Waring! Waring! Waring! Ah, here it is; Waring, Guy; journalist; 22, Staple Inn; 300 shares. Three hundred pounds paid. Then we call up to three thousand. No, Mr. Nevitt didn’t settle for you, sir. He paid Mr. Whitley’s call in full. That was all. Nothing else. You’re still our debtor.”
“He didn’t pay up!” Guy exclaimed, clapping his hands to his head, all the black guile and treachery of the man coining home to him at once, at one fell blow. “He didn’t pay up for me! Oh, this is too, too terrible!”
He paused for a moment. Floods of feeling rushed over him. He knew now that he had committed that forgery for nothing. Cyril’s money was gone. And Montague Nevitt had stolen the three thousand Guy intrusted to him at the bank for the second payment. Yet Guy knew he had no legal remedy save by acknowledging the forgery! This was almost more than human nature could stand. If Montague Nevitt had been by his side that moment Guy would have leapt at his throat, and it would have gone hard with him if he had left the villain living.
He clapped his hands to his ears in the horror and agony of that hideous disclosure.
“The thief!” he cried aloud, in a choking voice. “Did he pay what he paid from a big roll of notes, and did he take the rest of the notes in the roll away with him?”
“Yes, just so,” the clerk answered calmly. “He didn’t mention your name. But perhaps he’s coming back by-and-by to settle for you.”
Guy knew better. He saw through the man’s whole black nature at once.