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 the Hostables.  Owing to the death of his father, a young Hostable, fresh from college, came into the business.  He was a shrewd, keen young fellow; he got some suspicion, somehow, about Maitland, and he insisted on the other partners consenting to a special investigation, and on their making it suddenly.  And Maitland was caught before he had a chance.  But we’re talking about Chamberlayne.”

“Yes, about Chamberlayne,” agreed Spargo.

“Well, now, Maitland was arrested one evening,” continued Mr. Quarterpage.  “Of course, the news of his arrest ran through the town like wild-fire.  Everybody was astonished; he was at that time—­aye, and had been for years—­a churchwarden at the Parish Church, and I don’t think there could have been more surprise if we’d heard that the Vicar had been arrested for bigamy.  In a little town like this, news is all over the place in a few minutes.  Of course, Chamberlayne would hear that news like everybody else.  But it was remembered, and often remarked upon afterwards, that from the moment of Maitland’s arrest nobody in Market Milcaster ever had speech with Chamberlayne again.  After his wife’s death he’d taken to spending an hour or so of an evening across there at the ‘Dragon,’ where you saw me and my friends last night, but on that night he didn’t go to the ‘Dragon.’  And next morning he caught the eight o’clock train to London.  He happened to remark to the stationmaster as he got into the train that he expected to be back late that night, and that he should have a tiring day of it.  But Chamberlayne didn’t come back that night, Mr. Spargo.  He didn’t come back to Market Milcaster for four days, and when he did come back it was in a coffin!”