more.” 

 Laverick pushed him contemptuously away and locked up the remainder of the notes. 

 “I am letting you take two hundred and fifty pounds of this money,” he said, “for various reasons. For one, I can bear this thing better alone. As for the rest of the money, it remains there for the accountant who liquidates our affairs. I do not propose to touch a penny of it.” 

 The young man buttoned up his coat with an hysterical little laugh. Such ways were not his ways. They were not, indeed, within the limit of his understanding. But of his partner he had learned one thing, at least. The word of Stephen Laverick was the word of truth. He shambled toward the door. On the whole, he was lucky to have got the two hundred and fifty pounds. 

 “So long, Laverick,” he said from the door. “I’m—I’m sorry.” 

 It was characteristic of him that he did not venture to offer his hand. Laverick nodded, not unkindly. After all, this young man was as he had been made. 

 “I wish you good luck, Morrison,” he said. “Try South Africa.” 

 

CHAPTER IX ROBBING THE DEAD

 The roar of the day was long since over. The rattle of vehicles, the tinkling of hansom bells, the tooting of horns from motor-cars and cabs, the ceaseless tramp of footsteps, all had died away. Outside, the streets were almost deserted. An occasional wayfarer passed along the flagged pavement with speedy footsteps. Here and there a few lights glimmered at the windows of some of the larger blocks of offices. The bustle of the day was finished. There is no place in London so strangely quiet as the narrow thoroughfares of the city proper when the hour approaches midnight. 

 Laverick, who since his partner’s departure had been studying with infinite care his private ledger, closed it at last with a little snap and leaned back in his chair. After all, save that he had got rid of Morrison, it had been a wasted evening. Not even he, whose financial astuteness no man had ever questioned, could raise from those piles of figures any other answer save the one inevitable one, the knowledge of which had been like a black nightmare stalking by his side for the last thirty-six hours. One by one during the evening his clerks had left him, and it was a proof not only of his wonderful self-control but also of the confidence which he invariably inspired, that not a single one 

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