Four o'clock had struck, and the doors of the bank were closed when Miss Wickham and Viner hurried up to it, but there was a private entrance at the side, and the man who answered their summons made no difficulty about admitting them when Miss Wickham said who she was. And within a few minutes they were closeted with a manager, who, surprised when they entered, was astonished before many words had been exchanged. For during their dash from the Whitechapel streets Viner had coached his companion as to the questions he wished her to put on arrival at the bank, and she went straight to the point.
"I wanted to know if my companion, Mrs. Killenhall, had called here this afternoon?" begun Miss Wickham.
"She has," answered the manager. "I happened to see her, and I attended to her myself."
"Did she present a check from me?" inquired Miss Wickham.
"Certainly—and I cashed it," said the manager. He gave his customer and her companion a look of interrogation which had a good deal of surprise in it. "Why?" he continued, glancing at Miss Wickham, "wasn't it in order?"
"That," replied Miss Wickham, "depends upon the amount."
"The amount!" he exclaimed. "You know—if the drawer! It was for ten thousand pounds!"
"Then Mrs. Killenhall has done me, or you, out of that," said Miss Wickham. "The check I gave her was to have been filled up for the amount of the usual weekly bills—twenty pounds or so. Ten thousand? Ridiculous!"
"But—it all seemed in order!" exclaimed the concerned manager. "She was as plausible, and all that—and really, you know, Miss Wickham, we know her very well—and, in addition to that, you have a very large balance lying here. Mrs. Killenhall merely mentioned that you wanted this amount, in notes, and that she had called for it—and of course, I cashed the check—your check, remember!—at once."
"I hadn't filled in the amount," remarked Miss Wickham.
"Mrs. Killenhall had often presented checks bearing your signature in which you hadn't filled in the amount," said the manager. "There was nothing unusual, I assure you, in any detail of the affair."
"The most important detail, now," observed Viner dryly, "is to find Mrs. Killenhall."
The manager, who was obviously filled with amazement at Mrs. Killenhall's audacity, looked from one to the other of his visitors, as if he could scarcely credit their suggestion.
"You really mean me to believe that Mrs. Killenhall has got ten thousand pounds out of Miss Wickham by a trick?" he asked, fixing his gaze at last on Viner.
"What I really mean you to believe," said Viner, rising, "is that a rapid series of events this afternoon has proved to me that Mrs. Killenhall is one of a gang who are responsible for the murder of John Ashton, who stole his diamond and certain papers, and who have endeavoured, very cleverly, to foist one of their number, a scoundrelly clever actor, on the public, as a peer of the realm who had been missing. Mrs. Killenhall—who has another name—probably got wind of possible detection about noon today, and took advantage of Miss Wickham's habit of giving her a weekly check, to provide herself with ample funds. That's really about the truth—and I think Miss Wickham and I had better be seeing the police."
"The very best thing you can do!" responded the manager with alacrity. "And take my advice and go straight to headquarters—go to New Scotland Yard. Just think what this woman—and her accomplices—could do! If she or they had one hour's start of you, they can have already put a good distance between themselves and London; they can be halfway to Dover, or Harwich, or Southampton. And therefore—"
"And therefore all the more reason why we should set somebody on their trail," interrupted Viner, and hurried Miss Wickham out of the manager's room and away to the taxicab which he had purposely kept in waiting. "I don't think Mrs. Killenhall, or Killerby, or whatever her name is, will have hurried away as quickly as all that," he remarked as they sped along toward Whitehall. "My own idea is that, having got hold of your money, she'll probably have made for the headquarters of this precious gang, she and they are sure to have one, for I should say the place in Whitechapel was only an outpost,—and they'll be better able to arrange an escape from there than she would to make an immediate flight. She—but what are you thinking?"
"That I seem to be involved, somehow, in a very strange and curious combination of things," answered Miss Wickham.