'What robbery? Man alive!'—Athelstan sprang to his feet—'there is only one robbery to me in the whole history of the world since men and robberies began. What robbery? Look here, Master George Austin, when a man is murdered, there is for that man only one murder in the whole history of the world. All the other murders, even that of Abel himself, are of no concern at all—not one bit. He isn't interested in them. They don't matter to him a red cent. That's my case. The robbery of eight years ago, which took a few hundred pounds from a rich man, changed my whole life; it drove me out into the world; it forced me for a time to live among the prodigals and the swine and the husks. It handed me over to a thousand devils; and you ask me what robbery?'
'I am very sorry. It is now a forgotten thing. Nobody remembers it any more. I doubt whether Mr. Dering himself ever thinks of it.'
'Well, what was discovered after all? Who did it?'
'Nothing at all has been discovered. No one knows to this day who did it.'
'Nothing at all?—I am disappointed. Hasn't old Checkley done time for it? Nothing found out?'
'Nothing. The notes were stopped in time, and were never presented. After five or six years the Bank of England gave Mr. Dering notes in the place of those stolen. And that is all there is to tell.'
'Nothing discovered! And the notes never presented? What good did the fellow get by it, then?'
'I don't know. But nothing was discovered.'
'Nothing discovered!' Athelstan repeated. 'Why, I took it for granted that the truth had come out long since. I was making up my mind to call upon old Dering. I don't think I shall go now.—And my sister Hilda will not be coming here to express her contrition. I am disappointed.'
'You can see Elsie if you like.'