Emile Gaboriau 
Other People’s Money 

A bank manager is running down quiet street in Paris. He bursts into his head cashier’s home, interrupting a dinner party, and tells his cashier, that all is discovered, that the police are close behind him, and that he must flee.

The police are close behind, seeking to arrest the cashier for the theft of twelve million francs, but he has eluded them. He has slipped out the back window, climbing down a rope made of bed-sheets that his quick thinking-son tied together for him.

The man’s family – his wife, that son and his daughter – didn’t know what to think. They had been ruled over by an autocratic man, they lived quite parsimoniously, and they definitely hadn’t seen any sign of the missing money.

And so the author threw questions into the air:

Was the man a criminal mastermind?

Was he a player in another man’s conspiracy?

Or was he a pawn – an innocent man who had been framed?

Before he addresses these questions, he looks into the past; exploring the lives of his wife, their son, his mistress, their daughter, and her secret admirer.