Page:Fletcher - The Middle Temple Murder (Knopf, 1919).djvu/179

 as a stock-and-share broker. He'd been a saving man; he'd got a nice bit of money with his wife; he always let it be known that he had money of his own, and he started in a good way. He was a man of the most plausible manners; he'd have coaxed butter out of a dog's throat if he'd wanted to. The moneyed men of the town believed in him—I believed in him myself, Mr. Spargo—I'd many a transaction with him, and I never lost aught by him—on the contrary, he did very well for me. He did well for most of his clients—there were, of course, ups and downs, but on the whole he satisfied his clients uncommonly well. But, naturally, nobody ever knew what was going on between him and Maitland."

"I gather from this report," said Spargo, "that everything came out suddenly—unexpectedly?"

"That was so, sir," replied Mr. Quarterpage. "Sudden? Unexpected? Aye, as a crack of thunder on a fine winter's day. Nobody had the ghost of a notion that anything was wrong. John Maitland was much respected in the town; much thought of by everybody; well known to everybody. I can assure you, Mr. Spargo, that it was no pleasant thing to have to sit on that grand jury as I did—I was its foreman, sir,—and hear a man sentenced that you'd regarded as a bosom friend. But there it was!"

"How was the thing discovered?" asked Spargo, anxious to get at facts.

"In this way," replied Mr. Quarterpage. "The Market Milcaster Bank is in reality almost entirely the property of two old families in the town, the Gutchbys and