'I feel as if I am going mad,' he murmured. 'Seven hundred and twenty pounds paid by myself in a single lump, only three weeks ago, and I remember nothing about it! I have no client named Edmund Gray. The money must therefore have been paid by me for some client to this unknown person. Yet it was paid by my cheque, and I don't remember it. Strange! I never forgot such a thing before.'
There was an office bell on the table. He touched it. A clerk—an elderly clerk—an ancient clerk—obeyed the call. He was the clerk who sat in the room outside Mr. Dering's office: the clerk who wrote the cheques for the chief to sign, brought back the letters when they had been copied, directed the letters for the post, received visitors, and passed in cards: in fact, the private secretary, stage-manager—we all want a stage-manager in every profession—or confidential clerk. As befits a man of responsibility, he was dressed all in black, his office coat being as shiny as a mirror on the arms and on the shoulders: by long habit it hung in certain folds or curves which never unbent: his face was quite shaven and shorn: all that was left of his white hair was cut short: his eyes were keen and even foxy: his lips were thin: his general expression was one of watchfulness: when he watched his master it was with the attention of a servant: when he watched anybody else it was as one who watches a rogue, and would outwit him, if he could, at his own roguery. In certain commercial walks of the lower kind, where honour and morality consist in the success of attempts to cheat each other, this kind of expression is not uncommon. Whether his expression was good or bad, he was an excellent clerk: he was always at his post at nine in the morning: he never left the office before seven, and, because Mr. Dering was a whale for work, he sometimes stayed without a grumble until eight or even nine. Man and boy, Checkley had been in the office of Dering & Son for fifty-five years, entering as an errand-boy at twelve.
'Checkley,' said his master, 'look at this bank book. Credit side. Fourth entry. Have you got it?'
'Edmund Gray, 720l.,' the clerk read.
'Yes. What is that cheque for? Who is Edmund Gray?'
The clerk looked surprised. 'I don't know,' he said.
'Why did I pay that money?'
The clerk shook his head.
'Did you look at the book when you laid it on the table?'
The clerk nodded.