The Heart of a Mystery

by T. W. Speight

"She is lying down in her own room," answered Fanny. "When I went to her, a few minutes ago, she was asleep."

"Sleep is the best thing for her just now. I must leave it to you, Clem, to induce her to keep up her strength as much as possible."

"You may rely upon it that I will look after her."

Presently Edward took his leave. He was restless and anxious to get home. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts. The company of anyone would have been distasteful to him just then. He shut himself up in his study as soon as he reached home.

Next day Mr. Avison, who had been telegraphed for, arrived from Paris, and he and John Brancker at once set to work to ascertain to what extent the Bank was a sufferer by the recent robbery. The result was that gold and notes to the amount of about three thousand one hundred pounds proved to be missing, together with the twelve hundred pounds which the dead man had brought with him from London.

The investigation served to bring to light one singular fact which puzzled Mr. Avison and John Brancker not a little. Mr. Hazeldine's private ledger was missing, as were also a number of check slips on which the undercashiers entered the numbers of the notes which they paid over at the close of each day's business.

"It certainly looks," said Mr. Avison, "as if the thief or thieves were intimately acquainted with the ins and outs of our business, or else why should they have taken away with them the only evidence by means of which we should have been able to trace the missing notes?"

But John Brancker could only profess himself to be as utterly puzzled over the affair as Mr. Avison was.

Although Mr. Avison had read the evidence taken at the inquest, he had hitherto attached no importance to the fact that certain portions of it seemed to point the finger of suspicion at John Brancker. John was such an old and tried servant, and he had such implicit confidence in his integrity, that he had only smiled to himself, as he thought how wide of the truth people are often led by circumstantial evidence.

But now the case began to put on a very different complexion. A grave suspicion was taking root in his mind, that no one but a man thoroughly acquainted with the inner working of the Bank could be at the bottom of the mystery. It troubled him more even than the loss of the money troubled him, to think that his faith in human nature should be so rudely shaken. But Mr. Avison was by nature a very reticent man, a man who thought much but said little, and John had not the faintest notion of the feelings at work in his employer's mind. The Banker said to himself that some further evidence would probably be forthcoming at the adjourned inquest, and that he could afford to wait till then.