North laughed.
"It had."
"You were familiar with certain little peculiarities of his, were you not, his mistrust of banks for instance?"
"Yes, he had very little confidence in banks, judging from what he said of them."
"Did he ever tell you that he had large sums of money hidden away about the store?"
"Never."
"But always when you had business dealings with him he gave you the ready money, very rarely a check?"
"Never in all my experience a check, always the cash."
"Yet the sums involved were usually considerable?"
"In one or two instances they reached a thousand dollars, if you call that considerable."