It seemed an age before he spoke again.
“Three years ago,” he said then, very quietly, “—just two weeks before you went abroad, Dan—fifty thousand dollars’ worth of bonds were stolen from the Merchant’s Bank in Port Tobacco. Alan Keane was sent to prison. He was let out after thirteen months of his sentence because some of us didn’t think he stole those bonds. For three years the bonds have been missing. Several people have thought Alan Keane has known a lot he’s never said, because he didn’t dare say it, without proof he didn’t have. And for the simple reason that no one in the world would have believed him.”
As he paused I could feel him looking steadily from one to the other of us.
“But he wrote a letter to Purcell, just before he put a g*n to his head, knowing, I suppose, that a dyi
