CHAPTER XXVII
the last cheque
The three elderly gentlemen, seated in Mr. Halfpenny’s private room, listened with intense, if silent, interest to Selwood’s account of the interview with Barthorpe. It was a small bundle of news that he had brought back and two of his hearers showed by their faces that they attached little importance to it. But Professor Cox-Raythwaite caught eagerly at the mere scrap of suggestion.
“Tertius!—Halfpenny!” he exclaimed. “That must be followed up—we must follow it up at once. That bank-note may be a most valuable and effective clue.”
Mr. Halfpenny showed a decided incredulity and dissent.
“I don’t see it,” he answered. “Don’t see it at all, Cox-Raythwaite. What is there in it? What clue can there be in the fact that Barthorpe picked up a hundred pound bank-note from his uncle’s writing-desk? Lord bless me!—why, every one of us four men knows very well that hundred pound notes were as common to Jacob Herapath as half-crowns are to any of us! He was a man who carried money in large amounts on him always—I’ve expostulated with him about it. Don’t you know—no, I dare say you don’t though, because you never had business dealings with him, and perhaps Tertius doesn’t, either, because he, like you, only knew him as a friend—you don’t know that Jacob had a peculiarity. Perhaps Mr. Selwood knows of it, though, as he was his secretary.”
“What peculiarity?” asked the Professor. “I know he had several fads, which one might call peculiarities.”
“He had a business peculiarity,” replied Mr. Halfpenny, “and it was well known to people in his line of business. You know that Jacob Herapath had extensive, unusually extensive, dealings in real property—land and houses. Quite apart from the Herapath Flats, he dealt on wide lines with real estate; he was always buying and selling. And his peculiarity was that all his transactions in this way were done by cash—bank-notes or gold—instead of by cheque. It didn’t matter if he was buying a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of property, or selling two hundred thousand pounds’ worth—the affairs had to be completed by payment in that fashion. I’ve scolded him about it scores of times; he only laughed at me; he said that had been the custom when he went into the business, and he’d stuck to it, and wasn’t going to give it up. God bless me!” concluded Mr. Halfpenny, with emphasis. “I ought to know, for Jacob Herapath has concluded many an operation in this very room, and at this very table—I’ve seen him handle many a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of notes in my time, paying or receiving! And, as I said, the mere picking up of a hundred pound note from his desk is—why, it’s no more than if I picked up a few of those coppers that are lying there on my chimney-piece!”
“Just so, just so!” observed Mr. Tertius mildly. “Jacob was a very wealthy man—the money evidence was everywhere.”
But Professor Cox-Raythwaite only laughed and smote the table with his big fist.