"I don't know what we should have done if it hadn't been for you!" said Avice. "But--we shan't forget. My father is a strange man, Mr. Brereton, but he's not the sort of man he's believed to be by these Highmarket people--and he's grateful to you--as you'll see." "But I must do something to merit his gratitude first, you know," replied Brereton. "Come!--I've done next to nothing as yet. But we'll make a fresh start with this reward--if your father's solicitor approves." The solicitor did approve--strongly. And he opened his eyes to their widest extent when he read the anonymous letter and saw the bank-notes. "Your father," he observed to Avice, "is the most mysterious man I ever heard of! The Kitely mystery, in my opinion, is nothing to the Harborough mystery. Do you really mean to tell me that you haven't an idea of what all this means?" "Not an idea!" replied Avice. "Not the ghost of one." "Well--we'll get these posters and handbills out, anyway, Mr. Brereton," said the solicitor. "Five hundred pounds is a good figure. Lord bless you!--some of these Highmarket folk would sell their mothers for half that! The whole population will be turned into amateur detectives. Now let's draft the exact wording, and then we'll see the printer." Next day the bill-poster placarded Highmarket with the reward bills, and distributed them broadcast in shops and offices, and one of the first persons to lay hands on one was Mallalieu & Cotherstone's clerk, Herbert Stoner. CHAPTER XIV THE SHEET OF FIGURES At that time Stoner had been in the employment of Mallalieu and Cotherstone for some five or six years. He was then twenty-seven years of age. He was a young man of some ability--sharp, alert, quick at figures, good at correspondence, punctual, willing: he could run the business in the absence of its owners. The two partners appreciated Stoner, and they had gradually increased his salary until it reached the sum of two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence per week. In their opinion a young single man ought to have done very well on that: Mallalieu and Cotherstone had both done very well on less when they were clerks in that long vanished past of which they did not care to think. But Stoner was a young man of tastes. He liked to dress well. He liked to play cards and billiards. He liked to take a drink or two at the Highmarket taverns of an evening, and to be able to give his favourite barmaids boxes of chocolate or pairs of gloves now and then--judiciously. And he found his salary not at all too great, and he was always on the look-out for a chance of increasing it.