“Thank you—much obliged to you,” said Jettison. “No objection to my pipe, I suppose? Just so. Ah!—well, between you and me, Mr. Stebbing, I'm down here in connection with that Collishaw case—you know.”
“I know, sir—poor fellow!” said the secretary. “Cruel thing, sir, if the man was put an end to. One of our members, was Collishaw, sir.”
“So I understand,” remarked Jettison. “That's what I've come about. Bit of information, on the quiet, eh? Strictly between our two selves—for the present.”
Stebbing nodded and winked, as if he had been doing business with detectives all his life. “To be sure, sir, to be sure!” he responded with alacrity. “Just between you and me and the door post!—all right. Anything I can do, Mr. Jettison, shall be done. But it's more in the way of what I can tell, I suppose?”
“Something of that sort,” replied Jettison in his slow, easy-going fashion. “I want to know a thing or two. Yours is a working-man's society, I think? Aye—and I understand you've a system whereby such a man can put his bits of savings by in your hands?”
“A capital system, too!” answered the secretary, seizing on a pamphlet and pushing it into his visitor's hand. “I don't believe there's better in England! If you read that—”
“I'll take a look at it some time,” said Jettison, putting the pamphlet in his pocket. “Well, now, I also understand that Collishaw was in the habit of bringing you a bit of saved money now and then a sort of saving fellow, wasn't he?” Stebbing nodded assent and reached for a ledger which lay on the farther side of his desk.
“Collishaw,” he answered, “had been a member of our society ever since it started—fourteen years ago. And he'd been putting in savings for some eight or nine years. Not much, you'll understand. Say, as an average, two to three pounds every half-year—never more. But, just before his death, or murder, or whatever you like to call it, he came in here one day with fifty pounds! Fairly astounded me, sir! Fifty pounds—all in a lump!”
“It's about that fifty pounds I want to know something,” said Jettison. “He didn't tell you how he'd come by it? Wasn't a legacy, for instance?”
“He didn't say anything but that he'd had a bit of luck,” answered Stebbing. “I asked no questions. Legacy, now?—no, he didn't mention that. Here it is,” he continued, turning over the pages of the ledger. “There! 50 pounds. You see the date—that 'ud be two days before his death.”