Sellars could not help laughing. It was a bit comical to find that the magnificent Sir George was not good enough for five hundred pounds. Sellars’ bankers would have given him a reference for that amount, and he lived by his wits too. But then it was in a respectable way, and he did not invent spurious relations. “I think we had better set about old Morrice himself next,” he said. “What’s the odds on finding something fishy about him, in spite of his high reputation?” Lane smiled. “By gad, when you’ve been in this line as long as I have, I’m hanged if you’ve got much belief left in anybody. It is marvellous the queer things we do unearth, many of them of little actual importance to the case, when we once start a long investigation.” “Well, what’s the next move on the board?” queried his colleague. He began to feel great interest in the Morrice mystery; if it went on as it had begun, there promised to be some surprising developments. He was not so astonished about Sir George. He was not popular, partly, perhaps, on account of the wildness of his youth, and Sellars himself had been repelled by the man; he had always thought there was something a little sinister about him. But the discovery that Mrs. Morrice, that pleasant, gracious woman who made such an admirable hostess in the big house in Deanery Street, was a party to such an extraordinary fraud, had fairly taken his breath away. He recalled the old waiter’s admiration for her as a girl, of his pity for her lonely life, his disgust with her soddened father. She must have changed very much from the girl who lived in the little village of Brinkstone and ate her heart out in these sordid surroundings. “I hardly quite know,” was Lane’s answer to the question put by his young lieutenant. “I want thoroughly to digest all that very important information you got for me, and make up my mind as to how we are going to utilize it. But certainly one of the first steps is to discover who this so-called Archie Brookes really is. It only wants two days to Christmas; I’m not going to work on it any more till after the holidays. Then you’ll try to get into touch, if possible, with this woman Alma Buckley, who is a very strong link with Mrs. Morrice’s past.” Lane was spending his Christmas in the bosom of his family. Sellars, as became a young man of his position, was due at a smart country house. They would meet in the New Year. Richard Croxton passed the festive season with his kind old nurse. Rosabelle kept up a smiling face that hid a very aching heart in Switzerland. It was not a cheerful Christmas for any member of the Morrice family; they missed greatly the familiar figure that had been with them for years. CHAPTER X THE SAFE IS ROBBED AGAIN