Читать книгу The Invisible Foe - Louise Jordan Miln - Страница 13

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Bransby watched Grant under beetling brows, his thin lips set, stiff and angry. He valued his money. He had earned it hard, and to be robbed of a farthing had always enraged him. But more than any money—much more, he valued the prestige of his business and the triumphant working of his own business methods. Its success was the justification of his arbitrariness and his egoism.

He was angry now, in hot earnest—very angry. “Robbed?” he said at last quietly. It was an ominous quietude. When he was angriest, invariably he was quietest.

“Ten thousand pounds, sir,” Grant said wearily.

“Ten thousand pounds. Have you reported it to the police?”

“No, sir.”

“Why do you come to me instead of them?”

“Well, sir, you see it only came to light this afternoon. You know the war has disturbed all our arrangements—made us very backward.”

Richard Bransby knew nothing of the sort. His business prevision and his business arrangements were far too masterly to be greatly disarranged by a mere war, had Heaven granted him subordinates with half his own grit and devise. But he let that pass.

And Grant continued. “The accountants have been unable to make their yearly audit of our books until this week. It was during their work to-day that they discovered the theft. So I thought before taking any action I had best come straight to you.”

“Who stole it?”

Morton Grant’s terrible moment had come—his ordeal excruciating and testing. He looked piteously toward his hat. He felt that it might help him to hold on to it. But the hat was too far to reach, and alone, without prop, he braced himself for his supreme moment of loyalty.

“Who stole it?” Bransby’s patience was wearing thin. The fumbling man prayed for grit to take the plunge clean and straight. But the deep was too cold for his nerve. He shivered and slacked.

“Why—er—the fact of the matter is—we are not quite sure.”

“Yes, you are—who stole it?”

“Mr. Bransby, I—” the dry old lips refused their office.

Even in his own impatience, tinged with anxiety now (it disturbed him to have trusted and employed untrustworthy servants), Bransby was sorry for the other’s painful embarrassment. And for that he said all the more roughly, “Come, come, man. Out with it.”

“Well, sir,” Grant’s voice was nervously timid, almost craven—and not once had he looked at Richard Bransby—“all the evidence goes to prove that only one man could have done it.”

“And who is that man?” demanded the quick, hard voice.

With a supreme effort of courage, which a brave man never knows—it is reserved for the cowards—Grant lifted his eyes square to the other, and answered in a voice so low that Bransby scarcely could have heard the words had they not rung clear with desperation and resolve, “Your—your nephew, Mr. Hugh Pryde.”

For a moment Richard Bransby yielded himself up to amazement, over-sweeping and numb. Then his face flushed and he half rose. For that one instant Morton Grant was in danger of his employer’s fingers fiercely strangling at his throat—and he knew it. His eyes filled with tears—not for himself, pity for Bransby.

Then Bransby laughed. It was a natural laugh—he was genuinely amused—but full of contempt. “My nephew Hugh?” he said good-humoredly.

“Yes, sir.” The low words were emphatic. Grant was past flinching now.

“Grant, you must be out of your senses——”

“It’s the truth, sir; I am sorry, but it’s the truth.”

Bransby disputed him roughly. “It can’t be. He is my own flesh and blood. I love the boy. Why, he’s just received his commission, Grant. And you come sneaking to me accusing him like this—” He threw his head up angrily and his eyes encountered Helen’s eyes in the portrait of her that hung over the fireplace: a breathing, beautiful thing, well worth the great price he had paid for it. As he looked at it his words died on his lips, and then rushed on anew in fresh and uncontrolled fury—“How dare you say he’s a thief—how dare you?”

Grant rose too. He was standing his ground resolutely now. The worst was over for him: the worst for Richard Bransby was just to come. Pity made the clerk brave and direct. “I’ve only told you the truth, sir,” he said very quietly.

Grant’s calmness checked Bransby’s rage. For a moment or two he wavered and then, reseating himself quietly, he said in a voice quiet and restrained, “What evidence do you base this extraordinary charge on?” As he spoke he picked up from the table a little jade paper-weight and fingered it idly. He had had it for years and often handled it so. No one else ever touched it—not even Helen. He dusted it himself, with a silk handkerchief kept for that purpose in a drawer to his hand. It was worth its weight in pure gold, a moon-faced, green Chinese god squatted on a pink lotus flower.

Grant answered him immediately. “The shortage occurred in the African trading account.”

“Well?”

“That was entirely in charge of Mr. Hugh; except for him,” Grant continued, with the kind relentlessness of a surgeon, “no one has access to those accounts but his brother, Mr. Stephen, and myself. I do not think that you will believe that either Mr. Stephen Pryde or myself tampered——”

Bransby brushed that aside with a light sharpness that was something of an apology, and completely a vote of credit. “Of course not. Go on.”

“Those accounts have been tampered with.”

“But Hugh has not been at the office for months,” Bransby said eagerly, the hopefulness of his voice betraying how sharp his fear had been in spite of himself. Acute masters do not easily doubt the conviction of the word of this world’s rare Morton Grants—“not for months. He’s been training.”

“The theft occurred before he left us.”

“Oh!” trying to conceal his disappointment, but succeeding not too well.

“Drafts made payable to us are not entered in the books. The accounts were juggled with so that the shortage would escape our notice.”

Bransby’s teeth closed on his lip. “Is that the entire case against Hugh?” he demanded sharply, clutching at any hope.

Grant stood up beside the ledger, and opened it remorselessly. What the remorse at his old heart was only the spirit of a dead woman knew—if the dead know. “The alterations in the books are in his handwriting,” he said.

“I don’t believe it.”

“I brought the ledger down so that you might see for yourself, sir.” He placed the volume on the table before Bransby, took a memorandum from his waistcoat pocket, and consulted it. “The irregularities occur on pages forty-three——”

Bransby put on his glasses and opened the book scornfully. He believed in Hugh, and now his belief would be vindicated. Grant was faithful, no question of that, but a doddering old blunderer. Well, he must not be too hard on Grant, and he would not, for really he had been half afraid—from the so-far evidence—himself for a breath or two.

“Page forty-three—yes.” He looked at it. “Yes.” His face was puzzled—his voice lacked triumph.

“Fifty-nine,” Grant prompted.

Bransby turned to it. “Fifty-nine—yes.”

“Eighty-eight.”

“Eighty-eight.” He looked at it steadily. Slowly belief in Hugh was sickened into suspicion. Bransby put down the jade toy held till now idly, and took up a magnifying glass. Suspicion was changing to conviction. “Yes,” he said grimly. Just the one word—but the one word was defeat. He was convinced, convinced with the terrible conviction of love betrayed and outraged—loyalty befouled by disloyalty. Violet seemed to stand before him—Violet as a child. A lump sobbed in his throat.

“One hundred and two.”

Staring straight before him, “What number?” he said.

“One hundred and two,” Grant repeated.

“One hundred and two—yes.” But he did not look at the page, he was still staring straight before him, looking through the long years at the sister he had loved—Violet in her wedding dress. “Yes.” Still it was Violet he saw—he had no sight for the page of damnation and treachery. Violet as he had seen her last, cold in her shroud. Slowly he closed the book—slowly and gently. He needed it no more. He had nothing more to fear from it, nothing more to hope. He was convinced of his nephew’s guilt. “My God.” It was a cry to his Maker for sympathy—and rebuke rather than prayer.

“The alterations are unmistakably in Mr. Hugh’s handwriting, sir,” Grant said sorrowfully.

“But why,” Richard Bransby cried with sudden passion, “why should he steal from me, Grant? Answer me that. Why should he steal from me?”

“Some time ago, sir—after Mr. Hugh had joined the army—it came to my ears—quite by accident, as a matter of fact—through an anonymous letter——”

Bransby uttered a syllable of contempt.

Grant acquiesced, “Yes, sir, of course—but—I—er—verified its statements that while Mr. Hugh was still with us—he had been gambling rather heavily and for a time was in the hands of the money-lenders.”

“Certain of this?”

“Quite.”

“And I trusted that boy, Grant. I would have trusted him with anything”—his eyes turned to the pictured face over the fireplace—“anything”—and his hand playing with the jade paper-weight trembled.

“I know.” And Grant did know. Had not he trusted him too—and loved him—and for the same woman’s sake?

The hand on the little jade god grew steady and still. The man gripped it calmly; he had regained his grip of self. “Except yourself, who has any knowledge of this affair?”

“Only the accountants, sir. Mr. Stephen Pryde has not been at the office for the past few days.”

“I know. He is staying here with me.” Then the mention of Stephen’s name suggested to him a pretext and a vent to give relief to his choking feelings, and he added in querulous irritation, “He’s down here to worry me again about that cracked-brain scheme of his for controlling the world’s output of aeroplane engines. He’s as mad as the Kaiser, and about as ambitious and pig-headed. I’ve told him that Bransby and Co. built ships and sailed ’em, and that was enough. But not for him. He’s the first man I’ve ever met who thinks he knows how to conduct my business better than I do—the business I built up myself. Of course I know he has brains—but he should have ’em—he’s my nephew—that’s why I left him the management of my business at my death—fortunate, fortunate——”

“Yes, sir. But about Mr. Hugh?”

“Ah!” In his irritation over Stephen—an old irritation—the thought of Hugh had for a moment escaped their uncle. It returned to him now, and his face fell from anger to brooding sorrow, “Yes, yes, about Hugh.” He stared in front of him in deep thought, his face working a little.

“I think that, perhaps——” the clerk began timidly.

But Bransby silenced him with an impatient gesture. “The accountants? Can you trust them?”

“Absolutely.”

“They won’t talk?”

“Not one word.”

“I know there is no need to caution you.”

“Thank you.”

“I must think this over for a day or two—I must think what is best to be done. Go back to town and have everything go on as if nothing had happened. Go back on the next train. And, Grant, you’d best leave the house at once. Hugh is staying here with me, too. I don’t want him to know you’ve been here.”

“Very good, Mr. Bransby,” Grant said, picking up his hat, and turning to the ledger.

But Bransby stayed him. “I’ll keep the ledger here with me. I shall want to look over it again.”

Grant took the memorandum slip from the pocket to which he had restored it when Bransby shut the book, and held it towards his employer in silence. In silence Bransby took it.

“I am—er—I am very sorry, sir,” Grant faltered, half afraid to voice the sympathy that would not be stifled.

“Yes, yes, Grant, I know,” Richard Bransby returned gently. They looked in each other’s eyes, two old men stricken by a common trouble, a common disappointment, and for the moment, as they had not been before, in a mutual sympathy. “You shall hear from me in a day or two.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And, Grant——”

Grant turned back, nearly at the door, “Yes, sir?”

With a glint of humor, a touch of affection, and a touch of pathos, Bransby said, “You were quite justified in setting aside my orders.”