Having made out the necessary receipts, Poole declined Mr. Hessel’s chaffing offer of transport, but borrowed an attaché case from Mangane, and made his way home. Late as it was, he still did not give up the day’s work, but sat down to examine his booty.
Turning at once to the subject that interested him most, he took up the jacket of the Victory Finance Company; he found that it contained a copy of the company’s last Annual Report, to which was attached a type-written schedule of investments and advances, and three sheets of notes in the dead man’s handwriting.
The Annual Report was in places underscored in pencil; Poole could not see any particular significance in these markings. The list of investments and advances was not marked at all, but corresponding headings appeared on Sir Garth’s sheets of notes, with the banker’s comments upon each.
Apparently, so far as Poole’s limited knowledge of the subject took him, the Victory Finance Company was in the habit of investing a certain proportion of its money and lending the remainder. The list of investments appeared to have passed Sir Garth’s scrutiny with little criticism, most items having a simple tick against them, and a few the words “discard,” “enlarge,” “concentrate,” “doubtful” and so on. The list of advances was more fully annotated; evidently the banker had been at pains to scrutinize the antecedents and activities of each of the concerns to which the Victory Finance Company had lent money. In all but three cases—the South Wales Pulverization Company, the Nem Nem Sohar Trust, and the Ethiopian and General Development Company—there was a tick against the name, as if Sir Garth had been satisfied of its soundness; in the case of the S. W. Pulverization Company and the Nem Nem Sohar Trust there was a separate sheet of notes for each, ending with the underscored words “overcapitalized” in the first case, and “too political” in the second. In the case of the Ethiopian and General Development Company there were no such notes.
Poole sighed as he finished his scrutiny.
“This is going to be deep water for me,” he muttered.
A quick scrutiny of the other “Company Boards” jackets showed the detective that Sir Garth had either resigned his seat or was contemplating doing so, or else that the work was of so simple or nominal a character as to be of no importance. The jacket dealing with Fratten’s Bank was clearly too big a subject to be tackled that night—and Poole was extremely doubtful of finding the clue that he was looking for in that well-established concern.
There remained the personal letters—the bundle of faded letters in a woman’s hand. Poole felt a guilty sense of intrusion as he opened the first. For nearly an hour he sat, not noticing how the time went on, reading the beautiful and tragic story of a woman’s life—her humiliation, her courage, her love, her deep gratitude to the big-hearted man who had given her a new life. There was nothing in the letters that Poole did not already know, no scrap of help to him in his difficult task, but rare tears of sympathy stood in the detective’s eyes as he reverently returned the last letter to its carefully-treasured envelope.
CHAPTER XV.
“Eau D’Enfer”
Inez Fratten, on hearing from the sedate Miss Gilling that the scent she had been trying to trace to Ryland’s mysterious charmer had been actually bought by Ryland himself, felt a chill of apprehension creep over her—a chill so vivid as to be almost physical. What could it mean? It was possible, of course, that Ryland had given it to the girl himself, but from the way he had spoken of it—as a possible clue to her identity—that seemed quite out of the question. A reference to Miss Gilling confirmed this view; the last purchase had been made several weeks—possibly two months—ago, and Ryland had said that he had only met the girl about a fortnight previously.