Jacques Futrelle

“ Always the change is wrought by some trivial thing, like the lingering touch of a slender hand, or the haunting curl of scarlet lips, or the shy upward glance of timid eyes. Mr. Smith didn’t know precisely when or where the great change came. He only knew that on the second day after his release from arrest he had talked an hour or more with Edna Clarke, and since then his vision had cleared. When he bade her goodby he was preparing to catch the steamer at Cherbourg for home. At his hotel he found a note that stayed him. It said:
The Lord loveth a cheerful liar. ”

“ Now where are the bonds?”
Mr. Smith paced the length of the room a couple of times, then turned and faced the banker with a gleam of danger in the straight staring eyes.
“Now, look here, Mr. Clarke,” he said deliberately at last, “we might just as well understand each other now as at any other time. The bonds are beyond your reach, and will remain beyond your reach until they are back in that package in the vault at home, where they belong. Once they are there, my resignation is in. I’ve worked for you for twenty years, Mr. Clarke, and in that time I’ve saved a few thousand dollars. ”

“ It was within my power to increase that fortune enormously. In order to do it, it was necessary for me to put up for only a few weeks a million and a half dollars. If I took in some one else on the proposition, my share would have been trivial, and here in my bank was a million and a half dollars that I could use. I took it, to put the deal through. There’s no doubt in the world that I should have been able to return it, and no man would have been the wiser except for the accident, whatever it was, by which you learned the bonds were missing. ”