“Yes, thank you,” he replied politely, as she opened the door and stepped aside to allow him to enter.
Arthur froze on the spot when he saw Mr. Stratton seated on the right of Mr. Buchan, with a large burly man he didn’t recognize seated on his left.
“Sit down, Dunbar,” said Stratton, as the door closed behind him.
Arthur obeyed the manager’s order as if they were back in Toronto, but said nothing.
“It wasn’t difficult for me to work out what you’ve been up to for the past year,” said Stratton, “and at least we caught up with you before you could do any real damage. We have Chief Inspector Mullins of the Edinburgh city police to thank for that,” he added, revealing who the third person was.
Arthur still didn’t speak, although he would have liked to ask the policeman how long his sentence was likely to be, but satisfied himself with, “How did you find out?”
“The watch,” said Chief Inspector Mullins matter-of-factly. “‘To Arthur, from all his colleagues at NBT.’ Once we’d cracked NBT, the rest was easy. And after she’d described you as a nice gentleman with a mid-Atlantic accent, one call to the bank and Mr. Stratton even told us he’d presented you with the Rolex Oyster.”
“And Marianne, how did you catch her?”
“She tried to buy a train ticket to Durham with your credit card, but fortunately Mr. Buchan had already canceled it.”
“And as far as I can tell,” said Stratton, taking over, “you’ve only spent two thousand seven hundred eighty-two dollars of Mr. Macpherson’s money. However, that doesn’t include the seventy three thousand one hundred forty-one dollars the bank will have to return to Mr. Macpherson’s private account, following the abortive exchange rate deal.”
“And a further forty nine thousand one hundred twenty-four pounds,” said Buchan, “that will have to be charged to NBT after converting the four million pounds back into dollars.”
“Mr. Buchan has already supplied me with all the share certificates, bonds, and other financial instruments that I will be taking back to Toronto later today, and once I return, Mr. Macpherson’s account will be repaid in full. So with a bit of luck, he will never find out what happened. However,” Stratton continued, “you have cost the National Bank of Toronto one hundred twenty three thousand four hundred sixty-eight dollars, not to mention the irreparable damage you might have caused to the bank’s reputation had this story ever got out. But, thanks to the cooperation of the Edinburgh police, to whom we will be eternally grateful,” continued Stratton, nodding in the chief inspector’s direction, “if you will agree to cover any costs, they will not press charges.”
“And if I don’t?” said Arthur.
“As a senior banking officer, in a position of trust,” said Chief Inspector Mullins, “you could be looking at six to eight years in a Scottish prison. I would’nae recommend it, laddie,” he paused, “given the choice.”
Mr. Stratton stood up and walked down from the other end of the table and handed over a check made out to the bank for $123,468. All it needed was a signature.
“But that would almost clean me out.”
“Perhaps you should have thought about that in the first place,” said Stratton, handing him a pen.
Arthur reluctantly signed the check, accepting that the alternative, as Mullins had so subtly pointed out, wasn’t that attractive.
Stratton retrieved the check and placed it in his wallet. He then turned to the chief inspector and said, “Like you, we will not be pressing charges.”
Mullins looked disappointed.
Typical Stratton, thought Arthur. Make sure you cover your own backside, and to hell with everyone else. Arthur even wondered if the board would ever be told what had really happened. But Stratton hadn’t finished. He picked up a carrier bag from under his chair, and emptied a pile of Canadian dollars onto the table in front of Arthur.
“Your account has been closed,” he said, “and the bank is no longer willing to do business with you in the future.”
Arthur slowly gathered up the neat cellophane packages, aware that he would even be paying for Stratton’s first-class flight back to Toronto. He dropped the money into the carrier bag.
“And what about my watch, Chief Inspector?” said Arthur, turning to face Mullins.
“Mrs. Dawson comes up in front of the magistrate at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, so you can collect it any time after that, but not until she’s been sentenced.” He smiled at Arthur for the first time.
“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to appear as a witness for the Crown?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
Arthur smiled back. “You suppose correctly, Chief Inspector. I wouldn’t, even if you’d made it a condition.”
Mullins frowned as Arthur rose from his place, and quietly left the room; no smiles, no handshakes, and certainly no one accompanied him to the front door. He left the bank in a daze and began to make his way slowly back to the hotel, not certain what to do next.
He’d only gone about a hundred yards along Princes Street, when he spotted a sign on a window in neat black letters, Henderson & Henderson, Attorneys at Law.
6