The result was an instant smothering of the
flame, and the production of a stream of yellow
smoke, without a visible morsel of fire to
account for it.

"Imbecile!" whispered Obenreizer to himself,
with a look at the man which the man remembered
for many a long day afterwards.

"Will you come into the clerks' room?"
asked Vendale. "They have a stove there."

"No, no. No matter."

Vendale handed him the receipt.
Obenreizer's interest in examining it appeared to
have been quenched as suddenly and as effectually
as the fire itself. He just glanced over the
document, and said, "No; I don't understand
it! I am sorry to be of no use."

"I will write to Neuchâtel by to-night's post,"
said Vendale, putting away the receipt for the
second time. "We must wait, and see what
comes of it."

"By to-night's post," repeated Obenreizer.
"Let me see. You will get the answer in eight
or nine days' time. I shall be back before
that. If I can be of any service, as
commercial traveller, perhaps you will let me know
between this and then. You will send me
written instructions? My best thanks. I
shall be most anxious for your answer from
Neuchâtel. Who knows? It may be a
mistake, my dear friend, after all. Courage!
courage! courage!" He had entered the room
with no appearance of being pressed for time.
He now snatched up his hat, and took his leave
with the air of a man who had not another
moment to lose.

Left by himself, Vendale took a turn thoughtfully
in the room.

His previous impression of Obenreizer was
shaken by what he had heard and seen at the
interview which had just taken place. He was
disposed, for the first time, to doubt whether,
in this case, he had not been a little hasty and
hard in his judgment on another man.
Obenreizer's surprise and regret, on hearing the
news from Neuchâtel, bore the plainest marks
of being honestly felt—not politely assumed
for the occasion. With troubles of his own
to encounter, suffering, to all appearance,
from the first insidious attack of a serious
illness, he had looked and spoken like a man
who really deplored the disaster that had fallen
on his friend. Hitherto, Vendale had tried
vainly to alter his first opinion of Marguerite's
guardian, for Marguerite's sake. All the
generous instincts in his nature now combined
together and shook the evidence which had seemed
unanswerable up to this time. "Who knows?"
he thought, "I may have read that man's face
wrongly, after all."

The time passed—the happy evenings with
Marguerite came and went. It was again the
tenth morning since Vendale had written to the
Swiss firm; and again the answer appeared on
his desk with the other letters of the day:

"Dear Sir. My senior partner, M. Defresnier, has
been called away, by urgent business, to Milan. In
his absence (and with his full concurrence and authority),
I now write to you again on the subject of the
missing five hundred pounds.

"Your discovery that the forged receipt is executed
upon one of our numbered and printed forms has
caused inexpressible surprise and distress to my
partner and to myself. At the time when your
remittance was stolen, but three keys were in
existence opening the strong box in which our receipt-
forms are invariably kept. My partner had one
key; I had the other. The third was in the
possession of a gentleman who, at that period, occupied
a position of trust in our house. We should as soon
have thought of suspecting one of ourselves as of
suspecting this person. Suspicion now points at
him, nevertheless. I cannot prevail on myself to
inform you who the person is, so long as there is
the shadow of a chance that he may come innocently
out of the inquiry which must now be instituted.
Forgive my silence; the motive of it is good.

"The form our investigation must now take is
simple enough. The handwriting on your receipt
must be compared, by competent persons whom we
have at our disposal, with certain specimens of hand-
writing in our possession. I cannot send you the
specimens, for business reasons, which, when you
hear them, you are sure to approve. I must beg
you to send me the receipt to Neuchâtel—and, in
making this request, I must accompany it by a word
of necessary warning.

"If the person, at whom suspicion now points,
really proves to be the person who has committed
this forgery and theft, I have reason to fear that
circumstances may have already put him on his
guard. The only evidence against him is the
evidence in your hands, and he will move heaven and
earth to obtain and destroy it. I strongly urge you
not to trust the receipt to the post. Send it to me,
without loss of time, by a private hand, and choose
nobody for your messenger but a person long
established in your own employment, accustomed to
travelling, capable of speaking French; a man of
courage, a man of honesty, and, above all things, a
man who can be trusted to let no stranger scrape
acquaintance with him on the route. Tell no one—
absolutely no one—but your messenger of the turn
this matter has now taken. The safe transit of the
receipt may depend on your interpreting literally the
advice which I give you at the end of this letter.

"I have only to add that every possible saving
of time is now of the last importance. More than
one of our receipt-forms is missing—and it is
impossible to say what new frauds may not be
committed, if we fail to lay our hands on the thief.

"Your faithful servant.

"ROLLAND,
"(Signing for Defresnier and Cie)."

Who was the suspected man? In Vendale's
position, it seemed useless to inquire.

Who was to be sent to Neuchâtel with the
receipt? Men of courage and men of honesty
were to be had at Cripple Corner for the
asking. But where was the man who was
accustomed to foreign travelling, who could
speak the French language, and who could be
really relied on to let no stranger scrape
acquaintance with him on his route? There was
but one man at hand who combined all those
requisites in his own person, and that man was
Vendale himself.

It was a sacrifice to leave his business; it
was a greater sacrifice to leave Marguerite.
But a matter of five hundred pounds was