"David, ever since that woman appeared on the scene we have been persecuted by a malignant fate." "Big words, Andrew, big words." "She moves me to them. On the day Grahame's letter came I happened to be going abroad. Brown sent a clerk here with his letter and the shares, so that I might check them and see that they were right. I packed the clerk back, and sent the shares myself; but in my haste--I was running the boat train pretty close!--I was idiot enough not to take a copy of my own letter, and what I did with Grahame's I have not the dimmest recollection." "Very unbusiness-like." "Don't I know it, man! Of course she declined to credit a word of the story; said that she believed it was a fabrication from beginning to end; and that she was more than ever convinced that she was dealing with a set of rogues. The climax is to come! The day after she had drugged me she came to my office, and produced a Hardwood Company's share, which she had the assurance to assert that she had taken out of my own safe when I was in a state of unconsciousness!--think of it! She had taken it round to the Company's offices, and it had there been identified as one of the shares which were standing in Cuthbert Grahame's name." "Was it one of his shares?" "It was, beyond a doubt." "And had she taken it out of your safe?" "David, I can only tell you that she swore she had; and I'm bound to admit that if she hadn't, I don't know where she got it from. On the other hand, if she did I have not the vaguest notion how it got there. Plague take the thing!" Mr. McTavish, emptying his liqueur glass, immediately refilled it. "Don't you know what's in your own safe?" "Do you take me for a feather-brain? I knew every trifle it contained, or thought I did. She says that she took up a bundle of papers, and that the share dropped out of one of them. If it did, no one knows less than I do who put it there. The only conclusion at which I can arrive is that, in returning the shares to Grahame, I overlooked one of them, and that, in my hurry, it got mixed up with some of the papers which I keep in my safe, and which were lying on my table at the time. Of all the evil chances that ever befel a man!" "And what was the inference she drew?"