“What?” asked Mr. Hurde, for Isaac had stopped.
“That perhaps money has been made of them.”
Mr. Hurde groaned. “They have not been taken for nothing, you may be sure.”
“If they have been taken,” persisted Isaac.
“If they have been taken,” assented Mr. Hurde. “I don’t believe they have. From the sheer impossibility of anybody’s getting to them, I don’t believe it. And I shan’t believe it, until every nook and corner between the four walls have been hunted over.”
“How do you account for their disappearance, then?”
“I think they must have been moved inadvertently.”
“No one could so move them except Mr. Godolphin or Mr. George,” rejoined Isaac.
“Mr. Godolphin has not moved them,” returned the clerk in a testy tone of reproof. “Mr. Godolphin is too accurate a man of business to move deeds inadvertently, or to move them and forget it the next moment. Mr. George may have done it. In searching for anything in the strong-room, if he has had more than one case open at once, he may have put these deeds back in their wrong place, or even brought them upstairs.”
Isaac considered for a minute, and then shook his head. “I should not think it,” he answered.