n which there was more of
triumph than pity.

"You false coward!" I exclaimed, suddenly seeing who it was, "you did
this. You put the key in my desk while I was locked up stairs."

"Really, Batchelor," replied he, in his sweetest tones, "I'm afraid you
hardly know what you're saying. I don't understand you."

"You do," said I, "and you understand how helpless I am to defend
myself. You and Masham did your work well this morning."

"At any rate," retorted he, firing up, "we gave you a lesson for your
impudence."

Mr Merrett had been speaking with the detective, and did not hear this
dialogue; but Mr Barnacle did, happily for me.

"Then," he said, turning short round to Hawkesbury, "Masham _was_ here
this morning?"

Hawkesbury, thus suddenly cornered, turned first red, then white, and
tried to mumble out some evasion. But Mr Barnacle was not the man to
be put off in that way.

"Then he _was_ here this morning?" he demanded again.

Hawkesbury had no retreat, and he saw it.

"He just called in for a moment," he said, sullenly; "that's all."

"Oh," said Mr Barnacle, "you can go to your desk, Hawkesbury, for the
present."

Hawkesbury, looking anything but triumphant, obeyed, and Mr Barnacle,
who evidently suspected the real truth more than his partner did, turned
to me.

"Batchelor, do you still decline to offer any explanation of the
discovery of this key in your desk?"

"I can only say," I replied, "that it must have been put there, for I
never touched it."

"Who would put it there?"

"Hawkesbury, I suppose. When he and his friend dragged me up stairs my
desk was left open."

"Can you describe this Masham?"

I could, and did.

"The description," said the detective, "tallies exactly with that given
at the bank of the person who presented the cheque."

"Do you know his writing?"

"I know what I believe to be his writing," said I.

"Is that it?" inquired Mr Barnacle, showing me an envelope addressed to
Hawkesbury.

"No, that is not the handwriting I believe to be his."

"Is that?" showing another.

"No."

"Is that?" This time it was the envelope I had already recognised.

"Yes, that is it."

"How are you able to recognise it?"

"By this," said I, producing the letter to Mary Smith from my pocket.
The handwriting on the two envelopes was compared and found to be alike,
and further to correspond with a signature at the back of the cheque.
The clerk, it seemed, being a little doubtf