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helped himself.
    “What’s up?” he asked as he struck a match.
    “It’s about that terrible Starvel affair, the fire, you know. I begin to doubt if the matter is really over, after all.”
    “Not over? What on earth do you mean?”
    “I’ll tell you, and it is really a most disturbing thought. But before you can appreciate my news I must explain to you how Averill carried on his bank business. The poor fellow was a miser, as you know, a miser of the most primitive kind. He loved money for itself—just to handle and to look at and to count. His safe was just packed full of money. But of course you know all this, and that it was through this dreadful weakness of his that that poor girl lost what should have come to her.”
    “I know,” Mr. Oxley admitted.
    “Averill’s income passed through the bank, and that’s how I come to be aware of the figures. He had between sixteen and seventeen hundred a year and it came from three sources. First he had a pension; he had held a good job with some company in London. That amounted to about three hundred pounds. Next he had an annuity which brought him in £150. But the major portion came from land—land on the outskirts of Leeds which had been built over and which had become a very valuable property. In this he had only a life interest—not that that affects my story, though it explains why that poor girl didn’t get it.”
    “I know about that property,” Mr. Oxley interjected. “I’ve had a deal to do with it one way and another. The old man got it through his wife and it went back to her family at his death.”
    “I imagined it must be something of the kind. Well, to continue. Averill’s income, as I said, was passed through the bank. He received it all in cheques or drafts, and these he would endorse and send to me for payment. He had a current account, and my instructions were that when any cheque came I was to pay in to this account until it stood at something between £40 and £60—whatever would leave an even £20 over— and I was to send the surplus cash in £20 notes out to Starvel. Averill evidently looked upon this as a sort of revenue account and paid all his current expenses out of it. It never, of course, rose above the £60 and seldom fell below £20. To carry on my simile, any monies that were over after raising the current account to £60 he considered capital, and they went out to swell the hoard in the safe at Starvel. In addition he kept a sum of £500 on deposit receipt. I don’t know exactly why he did so, but I presume it was as a sort of nest-egg in the event of his safe being burgled. You follow me?”
    “I follow you all right, but, by Jove! It was a queer arrangement.”
    “Everything the poor old man did was queer, but, as you know, he was—” Mr. Tarkington shook his head significantly. “However, to go on with my story. These monies that were to be sent out to Starvel I used to keep until they reached at least a hundred, and then I used to send a clerk out with the cash. The mission usually fell to Bloxham—you know Bloxham, of course? Averill liked him and asked me to send him when I could. Bloxham had seen into the safe on two or three occasions, and it is from him I know that it was packed with notes as well as the gold.”
    “I never can get over all that money being burnt,” Mr. Oxley interjected. “It makes me sick to think of it even now. Such stupid, needless, wicked waste!”
    Mr. Tarkington took no notice of this outburst.
    “It happened that about a week before the tragedy,” he went on in his precise manner, “a cheque for £346 came in from the Leeds property. The current account was then standing at £27, so I paid £26 into it, raising it to £53, and sent Bloxham with the balance, £320, out to Starvel. The money was in sixteen twenties, the numbers of which were kept. As I said, it was one of the old man’s peculiarities that he liked his money in £20 notes. I suppose it made it easier to hoard and