"I see
it all now. That designing woman sent round before dinner to say I
wanted to meet him; and by the time you got there he was ready
for bamboozling me."
"That's so," the Commissary answered. "He had your name ready
painted on both his arms; and he had made other preparations of
still greater importance."
"You mean the cheque. Well, how did he get it?"
The Commissary opened the door. "Come in," he said. And a young man
entered whom we recognised at once as the chief clerk in the Foreign
Department of the Credit Marseillais, the principal bank all along
the Riviera.
"State what you know of this cheque," the Commissary said, showing
it to him, for we had handed it over to the police as a piece of
evidence.
"About four weeks since--" the clerk began.
"Say ten days before your seance," the Commissary interposed.
"A gentleman with very long hair and an aquiline nose, dark,
strange, and handsome, called in at my department and asked if I
could tell him the name of Sir Charles Vandrift's London banker.
He said he had a sum to pay in to your credit, and asked if we
would forward it for him. I told him it was irregular for us to
receive the money, as you had no account with us, but that your
London bankers were Darby, Drummond, and Rothenberg, Limited.
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