"Perhaps you can help me, Silk. You're a member of the North-West Mounted Police and accustomed to dealing with crimes. Perhaps you can try to get at the root of this one?"
Sergeant Silk struck a match and held the flame to the bowl of his pipe.
"Why, cert'nly," he said. "It is in my line. I shall be glad if I can clear you of suspicion. What are the circumstances? You may say whatever you like before my chum here—the Honourable Percy Rapson, late of Eton College, now of Rattlesnake Ranch."
He dismounted, and Percy followed his example. The three of them stood close together.
"You were right about my wishing to marry Dora Crisp," Fortescue resumed. "We've been engaged for a long time. We were to have been married next month. I had been saving up, on the quiet. But I never told Sam or Dora anything about it. I was keeping it for a surprise, see? I didn't want to say anything until I had saved off my own bat a sum equal to the pile that Sam had put aside to give her as her dowry.
"One day last week the old man sent me to Banff to look at a new reaping machine attachment he thought of buying, and he asked me also to call at the bank and cash a cheque for him. I drew the money—it was two hundred pounds in gold—and delivered it to him safely.
"'It's for Dora,' he told me, when, having carefully counted it, he swept it into a chamois leather bag and tied the bag round with a wisp of red tape. Then, signing to me to go with him, he went into the harness-room, and I watched him as he cunningly hid the bag of gold in a ventilation hole in the wall; high up, where it couldn't be seen or easily reached. 'It'll be safe there, Charlie,' he said with satisfaction. 'We'll let it stop there until the wedding morning. There's only you and me who know where it is. It's sure safe up there.'"
Sergeant Silk shook his head.
"I shouldn't have thought so," he said. "When was it missed?"