“There they are, man, by your feet.”  Mordaunt stooped and recovered them himself.  “What’s the matter?  Aren’t you well?”

Bertrand lifted a ghastly face.  “I am quite well,” he said.  “But—­but surely the bank would not cash a cheque so large without reference to you!”

Mordaunt looked at him a moment.  “I have been in the habit of drawing large sums,” he said.  “But I usually write a note to the bank to accompany a cheque of this sort.”

He turned to the drawer and unlocked it.  His cheque-book lay in its accustomed place within.  He took it out and commenced a careful examination of the counterfoils of cheques already drawn.

Bertrand sat quite motionless, with bowed head.  He seemed to be numbly waiting for something.

Mordaunt was very deliberate in his search.  He came to the end of the counterfoils only, but went quietly on through the sheaf of blank cheques that remained, gravely scrutinizing each.

Minutes passed.  Bertrand was sunk in his chair as one bent beneath some overpowering weight, the pile of letters untouched before him.

Suddenly Mordaunt paused, became tense for an instant, then slowly relaxed.  His eyes travelled from the open cheque-book to the man in the chair.  He contemplated him silently.

After the lapse of several seconds, he laid the open book upon the table before him.  “A cheque has been abstracted here,” he said.

His voice was perfectly quiet.  He made the statement as if there were nothing extraordinary in it, as if he felt assured that there must be some perfectly simple explanation to account for it, as if, in fact, he scarcely recognized the existence of any mystery.

But Bertrand uttered not a word.  He was as one turned to stone.  His eyes became fixed upon the cheque in front of him, but his stare was wide and vacant.  He seemed to be thinking of something else.

There fell a dead silence in the room, a stillness in which the quiet ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece became maddeningly obtrusive.  For seconds that dragged out interminably neither of the two men stirred.  It was as if they were mutely listening to that eternal ticking, as one listens to the tramp of a watchman in the dead of night.

Then, at last, with a movement curiously impulsive, Trevor Mordaunt freed himself from the spell.  He laid his hand once more upon his secretary’s shoulder.

“Bertrand!” he said, and in his voice interrogation, incredulity, even entreaty, were oddly mingled.  “You!”

The Frenchman shivered, and came out of his lethargy.  He threw a single glance upwards, then suddenly bowed his head on his hands.  But still he spoke no word.

Mordaunt’s hand fell from him.  He stood a moment, then turned and walked away.  “So that was the reason!” he said.

He came to a stand a few feet away from the bent figure at the writing-table, took out his cigarette-case, and deliberately lighted a cigarette.  His face as he did it was grimly composed, but there were lines in it that very few had ever seen there.  His eyes were keen and cold as steel.  They held neither anger nor contempt, only a tinge of humour inexpressibly bitter.