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"I sat in the dark laboratory slowly recovering and thinking of the long years that had slipped away since the hand of this miscreant had robbed me of my darling. Gradually I grew more calm. But fully an hour passed before I could summon resolution to go back into the museum and satisfy myself that the long-outstanding debt had indeed been paid at last to the uttermost farthing.
In spite of an enormous and long-outstanding bill for office stationery, insistently clamorous for payment one of those bills looked upon as trifles until they suddenly become staggering there was, after the mail, a general feeling of wielding the destiny of a large part of the world, where the typometer was a power.
These certificates of loan were then ostensibly to be sold in the open market, a sinking-fund set aside for their redemption, and the money so obtained used to take up the long-outstanding warrants which were now such a subject of public comment. It is obvious that this was merely a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. There was no real clearing up of the outstanding debt.
"So there have been financial difficulties during the past few months?" "Yes." "And the murder was committed when?" "Last March, on a Sunday." "Who was the victim?" "A distant cousin, M. Guillaume, who lived at Suresnes." "What was the sum stolen?" "Sixty thousand-franc notes, which this cousin had received the day before, in payment of a long-outstanding debt." "Did your husband know that?"
Such a favorable balance of economic factors did not exist in the 1760's. The European market could not absorb continued annual increases in the good, cheap tobacco Virginia produced. Prices fell. With an oversupply of tobacco in the warehouses, English and Scots merchants limited further credit extensions and called for repayment of long-outstanding loans.