“LORD ARLINGFORD wishes to see his box,” whispered the cashier. And Mr. Upton Greig, manager of the Barnmouth branch of the Southern Counties Bank, hurried out to greet his most important client.
“Come this way, my lord,” he said, lifting the flap in the counter.
Lord Arlingford, a stout and rather pompous-looking person of sixty, followed the manager into the large private room behind the office.
“We are home again sooner than I expected, Mr. Greig,” said his lordship affably. “Lady Arlingford is going to Dunglas tomorrow, and, as she desires to take her rubies with her, I came myself to fetch them.”
Mr. Greig unlocked a door in the right-hand wall and ushered his client down a wide flight of stone steps.
At the bottom was a great black door of solid metal, unrelieved except by a lar
