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out, and when he does–’
    He left the sentence unfinished, and Peter tried hard to understand, but found it difficult.
    â€˜Do you mean,’ he said in a whisper, in a low, awestricken whisper. ‘Embezzlement?’ he asked.
    â€˜That’s what the courts would call it, I suppose,’ Marsden answered, laughing harshly. ‘I could have put the money back in time, I always have till now. It’s that Belfort Trust upset me – once I could get that back I should be all right. I could use it and carry on till I had got things square again, but now, you fool, you utter fool, you’ve ruined everything. If you stay with the firm Sir Christopher will smash it; and you can’t sell out and clear out – you’ve nothing to sell except your share in a bankrupt swindle.’

CHAPTER 3
MURDER
    Early that same evening, about the time when the great, daily tide of humanity ebbs from work to home, Police-Constable Robert Owen, B.A. (Oxon) – a pass degree only – took shelter from a light passing shower under one of the tall cedars that grew on either side of the gate admitting to the imposing Hampstead residence of Sir Christopher Clarke. The wide stretching arms of the trees, reaching out over the roadway, protected him well enough from the rain as he waited for his sergeant, who, in the ordinary routine, was due soon to meet him thereabouts.
    As yet there was no sign of him, and, stifling a yawn, Bobby Owen reflected that a policeman’s lot, whether happy or not, was at any rate sufficiently dull. During the three years he had spent in the force his most exciting experiences had been escorting old ladies across the road and satisfying the insatiable thirst of children for the right time. Of course his luck had been atrociously bad. Any little turn up with Communists blazing to overthrow civilization, or with Irish more modestly content with the destruction of the British Empire, always took place when he was off duty. Smash and grab raids never happened on his beat, no burglar ever troubled his tranquillity, even motorists themselves seemed to suffer from an epidemic of good behaviour when he was near. Indeed Bobby was almost reduced to wishing that when, on coming down from Oxford, he had found a world with but scanty openings to offer to young University graduates with only pass degrees, he had decided to join the army instead of choosing the police – even though an army in peace time had always seemed to him the last word in futility.
    Of course, his athletic record was good enough to have secured him a post on the staff of almost any school in the land, except the few where the standard is so high that besides the necessary athletics, some scholarship also is demanded. But towards the teaching profession he felt no attraction whatever – quite the reverse, indeed – and an offer of a post in the haberdashery department, known as ‘habys’, in one of the great London stores he had also declined in spite of the alluring prospect it held out of becoming in due course a super-Selfridge, of out-harroding Harrods, of aiding the flag of Kensington High Street to blaze yet more terrific through the advertisement columns of all the papers in the country.
    So here he was in the police, very bored, and uncomfortably aware that he was not in too good odour with his superiors. For as soon as they realized that he was an old St George’s College man, he had been selected for night club work, and to that job he had shown his dislike so plainly that he had been at once shot out to Hampstead, there to be engaged on ordinary patrol duty. Not that his superiors really minded much, for there is no lack of good-looking young constables who can wear evening dress as though midnight had never seen them in any other attire, and who are perfectly prepared to spend a fiver of their country’s money on bad champagne and worse whisky. But all the same neither in ‘The