“She may or may not have been down in the hall at that particular hour, for she usually ran down herself to see if the last post had brought any letters, but most certainly she had neither seen nor spoken to Mr. Ireland at that hour, for Mr. Ireland had gone out an hour before, she herself having seen him to the front door.  Never for a moment did she swerve from this extraordinary statement.  She spoke to James Fairbairn in the presence of the detective, and told him he must absolutely have been mistaken, that she had not seen Mr. Ireland, and that she had not spoken to him.

“One other person was questioned by the police, and that was Mr. Robert Ireland, the manager’s eldest son.  It was presumed that he would know something of his father’s affairs; the idea having now taken firm hold of the detective’s mind that perhaps grave financial difficulties had tempted the unfortunate manager to appropriate some of the firm’s money.

“Mr. Robert Ireland, however, could not say very much.  His father did not confide in him to the extent of telling him all his private affairs, but money never seemed scarce at home certainly, and Mr. Ireland had, to his son’s knowledge, not a single extravagant habit.  He himself had been dining out with a friend on that memorable evening, and had gone on with him to the Oxford Music Hall.  He met his father on the doorstep of the bank at about 11.30 p.m. and they went in together.  There certainly was nothing remarkable about Mr. Ireland then, his son averred; he appeared in no way excited, and bade his son good night quite cheerfully.

“There was the extraordinary, the remarkable hitch,” continued the man in the corner, waxing more and more excited every moment.  “The public—­who is at times very dense—­saw it clearly nevertheless:  of course, every one at once jumped to the natural conclusion that Mrs. Ireland was telling a lie—­a noble lie, a self-sacrificing lie, a lie endowed with all the virtues if you like, but still a lie.

“She was trying to save her husband, and was going the wrong way to work.  James Fairbairn, after all, could not have dreamt quite all that he declared he had seen and heard.  No one suspected James Fairbairn; there was no occasion to do that; to begin with he was a great heavy Scotchman with obviously no powers of invention, such as Mrs. Ireland’s strange assertion credited him with; moreover, the theft of the bank-notes could not have been of the slightest use to him.

“But, remember, there was the hitch; without it the public mind would already have condemned the sick man upstairs, without hope of rehabilitation.  This fact struck every one.