Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/182

Rh "Not got any!" he almost shrieked. "I've wasted three days and I've got all the damned things. Would to the prophets that each one was a millstone round the perjured neck of that accursed young man!"

"You mean?" demanded Scott, with increasing deliberation.

"They're forgeries. All except the Beornwulf and the half-dozen I examined there in the daylight. Look for yourself."

Mr. Scott opened the case, then the biscuit tin, and took out a handful of coins.

"Forgeries!" he repeated with cold contempt. "Why, these would scarcely deceive even me. And you have paid for them the nine hundred pounds that you wired to be sent down to you in gold!"

"He insisted on gold," babbled Mr. Lester, reverting to an almost maudlin retrospective monotone. "When I offered him bills at three months he said in his bucolic way that bills were what he had to pay and he didn't want any of them. He said he had never seen a cheque or possessed a bank-note in his life, and he didn't understand them. All he understood was gold."

"You are neither a child nor a dotard in the ordinary way, Lester," said his partner. "What is at the bottom of this; were you drunk or was there a woman?"

"Two cups of tea for fourpence, and a simple village maiden," replied Lester hysterically. "Scott," he exclaimed, rousing himself, "the solid, blasting incomprehensible truth is that I was dazzled. I never examined the bulk; I never had the opportunity. I had seen the others and they were unimpeachable. I couldn't in any case examine two thousand five hundred coins in detail. I saw them for a moment by candle-light the first time. I saw them again under the same conditions when the bargain was struck, and I sealed them up. When I went