“I never got to the bottom of it because Rob was too cut up to talk of it. Perhaps it was only that old man Heilbronner didn't think the mills were turning out enough money for his daughter. He tried his best to get the place away from Rob, but Rob wouldn't let it go. There was some sort of a clause by which he could purchase it, so much down at once and the rest yearly. He had paid the sum down out of the ranch sale, and I guess the old man was always hoping he'd trip up on his payments, but Rob held on for seven years in spite of all, and then they—he—failed on the last instalment. Oh, Mr. Pointer, it was cruel! He first, and then Jack with him, had worked so hard. They had done without everything, pleasures, or enough sleep, or even”—she choked—“enough food those last months, and they just slipped up on it. He needed five thousand pounds, and so, though it cut him to do it, he wrote to his mother for the loan of the money. She sent one thousand pounds and he couldn't scrape the rest of the money together, try as he could. No one in Toronto would give him any help. That was the doing of the Silk Amalgamated. So he lost the mills and they even tried to turn him and Jack out of their positions, but Rob and he refused to leave. And that”—she sprang to her feet again. “I'm sure that is the _real_ reason for the charge of embezzlement—just to break Rob and Jack because they dared to stand out against the Amalgamated. Mr. Heilbronner swore that they had been cheating the company out of its percentages for three years. Said that the Amalgamated had proofs of big orders carried out at the Toronto Mills which weren't entered on the books and on which nothing had been paid.” Pointer tried here and there to come upon something approaching a clue, but finally he saw Miss West into a taxi, and promised to call upon her next morning. Then he sat up till far into the night trying to clear up the new tangles which she had introduced. Why—among many other ways—had Erskine given no idea of the nature of his work to his mother? He had only written infrequently, but even so he never referred to it. He only asked for funds and wrote as an idle young man about town. Why had he told Miss West that he had asked for five thousand pounds, when Pointer had read his own letter asking for one thousand pounds exactly. Where had the rest of the money gone which the young man had asked for and received, at the rate of about two thousand a year? As yet Pointer had been able to find no proof that Erskine speculated, though had he done so under another name it would be difficult to trace it. However, the Chief Inspector went to bed with a clear plan as to how Miss West would work into his schemes.