“Have you got the— Hullo, what’s up?”
“Why,” said Fisher major, “there’s a discrepancy. We ought to have £27 14 shillings 6 pence, and there’s about £4 10 shillings short.”
“Do you mean that’s missing in the Club accounts?”
“Well, either in that or the House clubs, or in both lumped together. I say, I wish you’d add that up, there’s a good fellow. The addition may be wrong.”
But no; the captain made it the same as Dalton.
Ranger and Ridgway dropped in while the audit was in progress, and were promptly pounced upon to add the columns too. Evidently the mistake was not there. They made the total precisely the same.
“It must be in the payments, then,” said Fisher. So the whole party sat down, and scrutinised the hapless treasurer’s bills and vouchers, and, after allowing him the benefit of every imaginable doubt, still brought the deficit out at the same uncompromising figure.
“Let’s have another look round,” suggested Fisher. So once more the study was turned topsy-turvy, and every nook and cranny searched. But no money was there, nor any sign of it.
The captain looked grave.
“It’s precious awkward,” said he.