'Consider. Is there any Edmund Gray in connection with any of my clients?'
'Not to my knowledge.'
'Not to your knowledge. Has any Edmund Gray ever been employed about the office?'
'No—certainly not.'
'We have recently been painted and papered and whitewashed and new carpeted at great expense and inconvenience. Did Edmund Gray conduct any of those operations?'
'No.'
'Has the name of Edmund Gray ever been mentioned in any letters that have come here?'
It was notorious in the office that Checkley read all the letters that came, and that he never forgot the contents of any. If you named any letter he would at once tell you what was written in it, even if it were twenty years old.
'I have never even heard the name of Edmund Gray in any letter or in any connection whatever,' the clerk replied firmly.
'I put all these questions, Checkley, because I was pretty certain myself from the beginning; but I wanted to make myself quite certain. I thought it might be a trick of failing memory. Now, look at the name carefully'—the clerk screwed up his eyes tightly in order to get a good grip of the name. 'You see I have given him a cheque for 720l., only three weeks ago. I am not the kind of man to give away 720l. for nothing. Yet I have actually forgotten the whole business.'