Norman Sinclair Author:William Edmondstoune Aytoun Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. A DISCLOSURE. This was destined to be a busy day for me. Not encountering Davie Osett, I repaired to my own rooms, where I found him awaiting ... more »my return in a state of considerable excitement. " Lord save us a', Mr Norman !" he cried, " hae ye heard the wonderful news that has set London in a bleeze ?" " This story of the railway forgeries, I suppose you mean, Davie ?" " Ay, just that! I didna gie the folk here the credit of thinking they should be so easily steered; but if a new gunpowder plot had been faud out, they couldna mak' mair o't. I have been down to the City; and I never saw onything to compare til't but a half- harried wasp's byke: sic fleeing, and buzzing, and storming, and stinging as is ganging on yonder ! They are a' crying out that they are robbed, and every man suspects his neighbour." " Then the real criminal has not yet been discovered ?" " I'm thinking no. But a committee of investigation, as they ca't, is sitting, and some of the City magistrates have taken the job in hand. But yell no hinder people from saying that your friend Mr Beaton kens mair than he should do about the transaction, and I heard them say that he was one of the first folk to be examined." " I should be astonished," I replied, " that any man in his senses could entertain so preposterous an idea for a single moment, were I not aware of the fact, that in times of panic people will credit almost anything ! Setting aside his undoubted high character, is it possible to conceive that a man in Mr Beaton's high position would lend himself to a fraud which was certain to be immediately detected ?" " That's just what I said mysel'; but the chield I spoke wi'—he was a dour auld deevil o' a broker—gied a kind o' grunt, and speered if I had never heard tell of one A...« less