Morrice seemed greatly perturbed, as was quite natural under the circumstances; but Lane noticed that there was a considerable difference in his demeanour on this occasion from the last, when he had insisted, with some display of temper, upon the certainty of Croxton’s guilt.
Lane had been a little nettled at the time—at the cocksure attitude of this hard-headed man of business who, however great his success in his own particular line, did not seem to possess a very great logical faculty, and could not forbear putting a rather pertinent question.
“Are you quite as sure as you were, Mr. Morrice, that your late secretary is the thief?”
Morrice shrugged his shoulders. It was easy to see that he was in a subdued mood; there was no fear of further explosions to-day. “I admit there are complications in this infernal business that perplex one extremely. But I don’t think that, so far, I can see any particular reasons for altering my previous opinion. You can’t get over the insurmountable fact that Croxton and myself were the only two persons who knew the secret of the mechanism. He may not be the actual purloiner, I admit; he may have passed on his knowledge to a confederate with whom he shares the spoil.”
Lane let fall only a few words in answer to these observations, but they were very significant ones.
“Don’t forget, Mr. Morrice, that you lost the original key or memorandum, as you call it, of the workings.”
But the financier was an obstinate person, as many strong-minded men are. When he had once formed a theory, he did not give it up in a hurry.
“Only mislaid, I expect,” he answered, but it was easy to see his tone was not quite so confident as usual. “I shouldn’t be surprised if it turned up at any moment.”
But Lane hastened to put on a damper at once. “And if it did, I don’t see that it would help you so very much. You couldn’t possibly know in what other hands it might have been during the interval.”
The financier had no wish to engage in further argument with this calm, self-possessed man, whose merciless logic made such short work of anything in the nature of a positive opinion.