“Exactly. Where any one could easily have secured them in the event of Mr. Brewster’s back being turned for a moment,” retorted the expert laconically. “Now, with reference to these falsified accounts,” said Hubbard, touching the books before him, his white teeth gleaming viciously for a moment beneath his mustache, “you claim, I believe, that they are none of your work—that some one else has changed your figures. We would like to have your statements proven, young man.”
“I never knowingly made a false entry in my life,” Gerald proudly returned, but flushing hotly beneath the man’s insolent manner; “my own figures were all correct when entered, but my ‘ones’ have been made over into fours, nines, sevens, zeros, and so forth——”
“But the proof, young man—the proof!” interposed his tormentor.
“If any one will add the columns, calling such figures as I should point out, ‘ones,’ the balance would be found correct in every instance,” Gerald replied.
“Possibly, but we want evidence to prove that those ‘ones’ have been changed.”
“You can have it, sir,” said Mr. Arnold, in a brisk, businesslike tone, that made John Hubbard prick up his ears, and, at a signal, another witness now came forward.
He was a small, olive-complexioned man, with straight black hair, small, sharp features, with a pair of keen, black eyes, which were shaded by steel-bowed spectacles.
His manner was abrupt, and there was a decisive air about him which indicated strong personality, while he rejoiced in the sobriquet of Plum—Mr. Thomas Plum.
“Mr. Plum,” courteously observed Mr. Arnold, “will you tell the court what you have discovered with reference to those ‘doctored accounts’?”
“Yes, sir, yes, sir,” responded the brisk little man, taking out some tablets, “I find no less than eighty instances where the figure ‘one’ has been skilfully changed to some other figure, in those accounts, and covering a period of from sixteen, to eighteen months. If the figures were added as ones, which they were originally, the balance would, in every instance, be correct; but, according to the changes made, there seems to be a deficit of several hundreds of dollars.”