"That the cheque must have been taken by one of the clerks attached to my son's room, I think there can be little doubt of. The difficulty is----" "Mr. Bede thinks so himself," interrupted Butterby. "He charged me specially to look after them; after one of 'em in particular." "Which was it?" "Hurst." "Hurst!" repeated Mr. Greatorex in surprise. "But Mr. Bede is mistaken, sir. It was no more Hurst than it was me." Instincts are subtle. And one came unbidden into the mind of the detective officer as he spoke--that he had made a mistake in repeating this to Mr. Greatorex. The truth was--carrying within him his private instructions, and the consciousness that they must be kept private--he found these interviews with the head of the firm slightly embarrassing. "Why should he suspect Hurst if he----" The door opened, and the person in question appeared at it--Bede Greatorex. Catching a glimpse of the detective's head, he was going out of it a vast deal quicker than he had entered; but his father stopped him. "Bede! Bede! Come in. Come in and shut the door. Here's a fine thing I have just heard--that you are suspecting one person in particular of having taken the cheque. Over and over again, you have told me there was nobody in particular to be suspected." A lightning glance from Bede Greatorex's fine dark Spanish eyes flashed out on the detective. It said as plainly as glance could speak, "How dare you presume to betray my confidence?" That gentleman sat unmoved, and nodded a good morning with his customary equanimity. "Mr. Greatorex--doing me the honour to call upon me to report progress--observed that he fully thought it was one of the clerks in your room we must look to, sir," spoke Butterby in a slow calm tone. "I told him your opinion was the same; and you had charged me to look well after them, especially Mr. Hurst. That was all." Bede Greatorex bit his lip in anger. But the communication might have been worse. "What _is_ there against Hurst?" impatiently asked Mr. Greatorex. "Nothing at all," said Bede quietly. "If I said to Mr. Butterby that one of my clerks might have taken the cheque, it was only because access to my room was more obtainable by them than by anybody else I can think of. And of the four, Hurst spends the most money." "Hurst has the most money to spend," observed Mr. Greatorex. "Of course he has. I make no doubt Hurst is as innocent as I." This was very different from suspecting Hurst, from desiring that he should be specially looked after, and perhaps Mr. Greatorex felt the two accounts the least in the world contradictory. The keen-sighted observer sitting by, apparently sharpening the point of his broken lead-pencil, noticed that the eyes of Bede Greatorex never once went openly into the face of his father.