le
interest he could have had in ruining your father by putting his name
on to the register of shareholders. Even if he had an interest in so
doing the risk of detection would be frightful, for not only would the
matter be known to the directors, but, as you are aware, any shareholder
has a right on the payment of a nominal fee to inspect the list of
shareholders."

"Precautions were taken against this," Cuthbert said. "Just glance
through this paper, which has been signed and sworn to by Cumming in
proper form at Brussels."

Mr. Harford ran his eye over the document and then read it through
carefully word by word.

"This is an extraordinary statement," he said, gravely, "do you believe
it, Mr. Hartington?"

"I believe it implicitly. I had the man practically at my mercy. As you
know, there is a warrant out for his arrest and a word from me would
have set the police on his track and led to an application for his
extradition. Therefore he had every motive for telling me the truth, and
I am as certain as I can be, that he did so."

"If so there can be no question that Mr. Brander had some very strong
reason indeed for preventing the knowledge of this transfer having ever
been made from being known; but in any case it must have come out when
the bank failed and of course he must have had a pretty accurate
knowledge of the state of its affairs."

"Yes, but it man be that he had an equally accurate knowledge of the
state of my father's health. That would account for what Cumming says as
to his offer to bolster up the bank for a time, and for a retraction of
that offer within a few days after my father's death."

"But why on earth should he have run all this risk merely to ruin you?
He had no cause of enmity against you, had he, sir?"

"None, so far as I knew but now we come to the other document where you
witnessed the signature without having seen it signed. If the signature
on the transfer was a forgery, why not that on the mortgage, if it was
the mortgage. If so you see the motive of the transfer. The smash of the
bank brought a good many estates into the market and they would
consequently go cheap. Not only would he get it far below its value, but
by reason of this pretended mortgage he would get a further drawback of
L15,000 from the price he would pay as its purchase."

"Good heavens, Mr. Hartington! You take my breath away! Have you any
reason whatever for believing that the mortgage was a bogus one?"

"N