“The Recorder interrupted Mr. Doolittle at this point to ask if he was to understand that Mr. Doolittle was referring to the prisoner’s own money.

“Mr. Doolittle replied that he was afraid the large sums he referred to were the property of the bank.  But the prisoner had such belief in Chamberlayne that he firmly anticipated that all would be well, and that these sums would be repaid, and that a vast profit would result from their use.

“The Recorder remarked that he supposed the prisoner intended to put the profit into his own pockets.

“Mr. Doolittle said at any rate the prisoner assured him that of the two hundred and twenty thousand pounds which was in question, Chamberlayne had had the immediate handling of at least two hundred thousand, and he, the prisoner, had not the ghost of a notion as to what Chamberlayne had done with it.  Unfortunately for everybody, for the bank, for some other people, and especially for his unhappy client, Chamberlayne died, very suddenly, just as these proceedings were instituted, and so far it had been absolutely impossible to trace anything of the moneys concerned.  He had died under mysterious circumstances, and there was just as much mystery about his affairs.

“The Recorder observed that he was still waiting to hear what Mr. Doolittle had to urge in mitigation of any sentence he, the Recorder, might think fit to pass.

“Mr. Doolittle said that he would trouble the Court with as few remarks as possible.  All that he could urge on behalf of the unfortunate man in the dock was that until three years ago he had borne a most exemplary character, and had never committed a dishonest action.  It had been his misfortune, his folly, to allow a plausible man to persuade him to these acts of dishonesty.  That man had been called to another account, and the prisoner was left to bear the consequences of his association with him.  It seemed as if Chamberlayne had made away with the money for his own purposes, and it might be that it would yet be recovered.  He would only ask the Court to remember the prisoner’s antecedents and his previous good conduct, and to bear in mind that whatever his near future might be he was, in a commercial sense, ruined for life.

“The Recorder, in passing sentence, said that he had not heard a single word of valid excuse for Maitland’s conduct.  Such dishonesty must be punished in the most severe fashion, and the prisoner must go to penal servitude for ten years.

“Maitland, who heard the sentence unmoved, was removed from the town later in the day to the county jail at Saxchester.”

Spargo read all this swiftly; then went over it again, noting certain points in it.  At last he folded up the newspaper and turned to the house—­to see old Quarterpage beckoning to him from the library window.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE CHAMBERLAYNE STORY