A woman's debt

by William Le Queux

Including that item the total payings-in for the two months were a little over four hundred pounds. Assuming that this was a fair average, the baronet’s income would be only slightly more than two thousand a year. It was a small amount for a man who went about in good society, and according to Simmons, spent about five hundred a year at least on his clothes, and entertained his friends lavishly to lunches and dinners at the most expensive restaurants.

“That’s what riles me about him,” observed the valet when he had answered Lane’s direct questions on these points. “A month ago he bought a new car that must have cost him every penny of a thousand pounds. He thinks nothing of paying fifty pounds for a dinner to his pals, I know that from one or two waiters who are friends of mine. And yet he’s so devilish mean in some things, he sells his old clothes, he begrudges me a cigar or a glass of wine, and while he’s blueing all this money, his bank won’t let him overdraw five pounds, according to his own statement which I overheard him make to his nephew.”

“On the evidence of this book, one would say he was, comparatively speaking, a poor man, that is to say a poor man for his position,” said the detective in a musing tone, as he restored the little pale-coloured book to its original position, and shut the drawer. “And yet he spends any amount of money on clothes and entertaining, and can plank down a thousand pounds for a new car. You said yourself he was a poor man, pretending to be rich.”

“He seems to be wealthy one day and hard-up the next, now one comes to go into it a bit closer,” remarked Mr. Simmons. “I expect I was guided a bit too much to my opinion by the fact of his being in such a blue funk about that cheque he had changed at the club.”

“That little book is a blind, Simmons; no wonder he is careless about that drawer; he knows that whatever you can see there will not disclose the true state of his affairs. And you say he bought that car about a month ago.”

“Of course, he may owe for it, for anything we know to the contrary,” was the valet’s comment, “only just paid a bit down and is trying to raise the wind somewhere now. Perhaps that’s the object of his present journey.”

The detective was thinking deeply, it was a puzzling situation. He had been in hopes that he might have got some absolute results from his visit to Sir George’s flat and the inspection of his paying-in book. The outcome was quite negative. The one suspicious thing was the purchase of that car, and as Simmons had truly remarked, it might have been bought on credit. Still, supposing it had been, Sir George must have expected to lay his hands upon a thousand pounds pretty soon.

The drawer contained nothing to help him. He cast his eyes longingly at the safe which stood in the corner of the room, a big one, made by one of the best-known makers in London. He would very much have liked to have a peep into that safe, it might have yielded up some secrets. But he was not an expert safe-breaker like Mr. “Tubby” Thomas now languishing in Dartmoor, or the hitherto undiscovered thief who had practised his art in the big, old-fashioned house in Deanery Street.

He lost himself in speculation for some little time, almost oblivious of the valet’s presence. That gentleman thought it time that attention should be paid to his own immediate affairs, and coughed gently to raise Lane from his reverie.

“Haven’t you found what you wanted?” he asked, with an anxious look in his cunning little eyes.