“I must have been a very green hand in those days. I had a sort of trustfulness which I’ve lost since then. To make a long story short I was swindled out of that five thousand. I was so green that at the time I didn’t realise who was at the back of the swindle. All I met were agents of the big fish in the background. They cleaned me out, almost completely.”
He shifted slightly in his chair as though the recollection made him uncomfortable.
“I had to do something for a living; and somehow I dropped into secretarial work—the kind where it’s more important that a man should have a decent appearance than that he should know his work. But by that time I realised that I’d have to work for a living, and I sobered up. I took things seriously and picked up all I could. I turned into quite a decently-efficient secretary.”
Sir Clinton nodded. It was no more than Stenness’s due.
“I drifted about from post to post, until a couple of years ago I dropped into Roger Shandon’s place. I learned a lot with him. It was a perfect education—on certain lines.”
“I can quite imagine that,” Sir Clinton interjected.
“He was a damned scoundrel,” Stenness pronounced, without heat. “But I picked up a lot about the seamy side of affairs from things that passed through my hands. It was interesting, even at first. And then, it got more interesting.”
He shifted again in his chair so as to look Sir Clinton in the face.
“I came across a name in his correspondence, the name of one of the fellows who had helped to rook me of that last five thousand. That put me on the alert. I began to hunt things up. It took me a good while; and none of it was in any way explicit, you understand; but I had sense enough to put two and two together and fill up the blanks. My late employer was the man who had been behind the ramp that cleared me of the last of my cash.”
“You couldn’t have expected me to guess that,” Sir Clinton said, as though defending himself. “I knew there was more behind this business than appeared on the surface, but naturally I’d no inkling of anything of that sort.”