We’re in exactly the same position as the shop-boy who sneaks five bob from his master’s till to put it on a horse. If the horse comes in he puts it back, and if it doesn’t, he gets a month’s hard labour.... We shall get seven years. ETCHINGHAM. What are you talking about, George? GEORGE WINTER. Has it escaped your memory that you and I are Directors of the Middlepool Investment Trust? ETCHINGHAM. Well? GEORGE WINTER. We had to plank down eighty thousand pounds within twenty-four hours or lose the mine. BENNETT. It looked like a certainty. GEORGE WINTER. At that moment it was impossible for us to raise anything like that sum. The bank held a hundred thousand pounds of bearer bonds for the Middlepool Investment Trust. They delivered them on an order signed by you, me, and Bennett. We borrowed on them and completed the purchase of a worthless mine. ETCHINGHAM. But I’ve never signed anything. BENNETT. Yes, you did, my lord. They wouldn’t have delivered the bonds without. ETCHINGHAM. Then my signature’s been forged. GEORGE WINTER. Don’t you remember one day, after an excellent luncheon at Pym’s, you were just off to a wedding, and I asked you to come up into the office and sign some papers? ETCHINGHAM. But I never looked at them. I didn’t know.... GEORGE WINTER. [_Interrupting blandly._] Ah, that’s your affair. ETCHINGHAM. [_Indignantly._] I shall go to the police. GEORGE WINTER. D’you think you’ve got a plausible story to tell them? It sounds devilish improbable that a business man, a chairman of half a dozen companies, should sign documents without looking at them. Bennett and I will swear that you carefully read everything that was put before you--as, indeed, was your duty, my dear friend--and fully understood the nature of your act. ETCHINGHAM. Mr. Bennett, you’ll testify that I never realized for a moment what I was doing. You told me they were purely formal documents. I saw George sign them. I added my signature without hesitation. GEORGE WINTER. I think Mr. Bennett would be more than human if he cleared you at his own expense. BENNETT. If there were any trouble, my lord, I should have to tell the truth. ETCHINGHAM. That’s just what I want you to do. BENNETT. I should have to say that you agreed with us in the necessity of borrowing the bonds with the idea of putting them back as soon as we’d floated the company, and that you signed the order to the bank with full knowledge of the seriousness of your act. GEORGE WINTER. What is truth, said jesting Pilate. BENNETT. You’re just as deep in it as we are, my lord. ETCHINGHAM. Oh, my God! GEORGE WINTER. It’s no use losing one’s head because one’s in a tight place. ETCHINGHAM. You’ve tricked me. You’re a common swindler. In a month we may all be in prison. GEORGE WINTER. I hear they make you very comfortable there nowadays. ETCHINGHAM.