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Updated: June 15, 2025
As soon as they had left the courtyard, Laverick and his solicitor, with his own guard, re-entered the motor-car in which they had arrived, and drove back to Bow Street. Very few words were exchanged during the short journey. His solicitor, however, bade him good-night cheerfully, and Laverick's bearing was by no means the bearing of a man in despair.
The long-predicted boom had arrived at last. Without lunch, he and all his clerks worked until after six o'clock. Even then Laverick found it hard to leave. During the day, a dozen people or so had been in to ask for Morrison. To all of them he had given the same reply, Morrison had gone abroad on private business for the firm. Very few were deceived by Laverick's dry statement.
Directly, however, another man had been accused, the matter appeared to him to be altogether different. He had come forward the moment he had heard of Laverick's ARREST, to offer his evidence. While the opinion of the court was still undecided, Laverick's solicitor called Miss Zoe Leneveu. A little murmur of interest ran though the court. Laverick himself started.
"He is my solicitor," Laverick answered, "and is entirely in my confidence. If you have anything to tell me, I should like Mr. Bellamy also to hear." Bellamy, who was standing a little in the background, took his place by Laverick's side. The cashier, who knew him by sight, bowed.
He made himself comfortable in Laverick's easy-chair, and accepted the paper which Halsey offered him. "I shall be quite glad of a rest," he remarked genially. "I have been running about all the morning." "Mr. Laverick is never very long out for lunch, sir," Halsey said. "I daresay he will not keep you more than a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes." The clerk withdrew and closed the door.
Morrison was an ordinary young man of his type, something of a swaggerer, probably at heart a coward. But this was no ordinary fear not even the ordinary fear of a coward. Laverick's face became graver. There was something else, then! "I will get you out of the country if I can," said he. "There is no difficulty about it at all unless you are concealing something from me.
You can take two hundred and fifty, and you can take them with you to any place you like." The young man was already at the safe. The notes were between them, on the table. He counted quickly with the fingers of a born manipulator of money. When he had gathered up two hundred and fifty pounds, Laverick's hand fell upon his. "No more," he ordered sternly.
Laverick's cigarette burned away between his fingers. It seemed to him that he was no longer in the room. He was listening to Big Ben striking the hour, he was back again in that tiny little bedroom with its spotless sheets and lace curtains. The man on the bed was looking at him. Laverick remembered the look and shivered. "What has this to do with Morrison?" he demanded.
"My moral judgment is warped," she asserted, "from the fact that Laverick's decision brought us the document." He nodded. "Perhaps so," he agreed, "and yet, there was the man face to face with ruin. The use of that money for a few hours did no one any harm, and saved him. I say that such a deed is always a matter of calculation, and in this case that he was justified."
The man with the gold-rimmed glasses replaced the paper where he had found it. Evidently he had done with the writing-table. He moved swiftly over to the safe and stood there listening for a few seconds. Then from his pocket he drew a bunch of keys. To Laverick's surprise, at the stranger's first effort the great door of the safe swung open.
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