Read Online Beggar’s Choice by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online

lawyer.
    â€œYou’d get off with three years if you’d any luck.”
    That got my goat. Three years! I could have driven my fist into his fat face.
    â€œI’ve not had much luck so far,” I said, “so I don’t think I’ll count on it now.”
    Then it came over me that they were offering me under two hundred a year to go to prison, and it made me mad to be reckoned so cheap. I suppose he saw something in my face, for he pushed back the bench and stood up. I think his feet were cold, and seeing him afraid like that made me think that the driver was out of earshot. And then next minute I thought I was mistaken, for I heard the door behind me open softly. I looked over my shoulder and saw about an inch of black night showing between the door and the jamb. I couldn’t see anything else. The door didn’t move; but I thought that some one was standing there listening.
    I turned back again. It didn’t matter to me who listened.
    â€œWell?” I said. “What’s my crime? You haven’t told me yet.”
    â€œYou agree?” said he with a show of eagerness.
    â€œI don’t agree or disagree till I know where I am.”
    He sat down again.
    â€œWell, just suppose a case. Let us suppose that a person—who we needn’t name—has anticipated a sum of money which would in all probability have passed to him legally within a year or two.”
    â€œAll right,” I said, “he anticipated some money. In other words he pinched it.”
    He waved again. I thought the door moved behind me.
    â€œDo you mind telling me how?” I proceeded.
    â€œThere was a matter of a check,” said he.
    â€œForgery runs to more than three years,” said I—and I thought the door moved again.
    I looked back, but it was still just ajar. The smell of violets came in out of the dark outside. There are no violets in a Surrey wood in September; but there had been a scent of violets in the car. I did not think that it was the driver who had opened the door. I thought that there was a woman standing there listening, and I wondered who she was.
    The fat man spread out his hands.
    â€œA first offense—it would be that, I suppose.”
    â€œI really don’t know. You haven’t told me who your forger is.”
    â€œThat,” he said, “is not necessary.”
    â€œOr how you propose to persuade a jury to accept your—substitute.”
    He had an answer ready for that. I suppose he had prepared it.
    â€œLet us put it this way. Money has been withdrawn from a certain account—let us call it Mr. A’s account, and Mr. A’s suspicions have become aroused. He knows that a check has been forged. He is determined to find out who forged it and to prosecute. His suspicions will inevitably lead him to the right person unless they are diverted to a substitute——” He talked like a man who has learnt a thing by heart. Every now and then he slid a paper into the light and looked at it.
    â€œAnd how do you propose they should be diverted?”
    â€œIf a second check were presented—a second forgery—in circumstances which plainly indicated the—substitute, Mr. A would naturally conclude that his suspicions had been groundless, and that the two checks were the work of the same hand.”
    I put my fist on the table and looked at it.
    â€œMy hand?”
    He nodded and sat back with the air of having got the thing off his chest.
    â€œThanks,” I said. “I think not.” And I got up to go.
    â€œFive hundred pounds,” he said, and rapped the table.
    Like an echo I heard Fay say, “Five hundred pounds—I must have five hundred pounds.”
    It was a relief to get the light out of my eyes. Standing, it didn’t worry me. I looked over the top of the lantern, but I couldn’t see his face. He had both hands on the table and was leaning over them. I saw his hat, his bulky