"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 of them had the slightest idea how
things were. Not a soul knew that the firm of Laverick & Morrison
was already practically derelict, that they had on the morrow
twenty-five thousand pounds to find, neither credit nor balance at
their bankers, and eight hundred and fifty pounds in the safe.

Laverick, haggard from his long vigil, locked up his books at last,
turned out the lights, and locking the doors behind him walked into
the silent street. Instinctively he turned his steps westwards.
This might well be the last night on which he would care to show
himself in his accustomed haunts, the last night on which he could
mix with his fellows freely, and without that terrible sense of
consciousness which follows upon disaster. Already there was little
enough left of it. It was too late to change and go to his club.
The places of amusement were already closed. To-morrow nigh