“So you do recognize him, Mr. Cade,” he said, in a voice that he strove to render devoid of triumph.
“I’ve seen him before, yes,” said Anthony, recovering himself. “But not as Prince Michael Obolovitch. He purported to come from Messrs. Balderson and Hodgkins, and he called himself Mr. Holmes.”
13
The American Visitor
Superintendent Battle replaced the sheet with the slightly crest-fallen air of a man whose best point has fallen flat. Anthony stood with his hands in his pockets lost in thought.
“So that’s what old Lollipop meant when he talked about ‘other means,’” he murmured at last.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Cade?”
“Nothing, superintendent. Forgive my abstraction. You see, I—or rather my friend, Jimmy McGrath, has been very neatly done out of a thousand pounds.”
“A thousand pounds is a nice sum of money,” said Battle.
“It isn’t the thousand pounds so much,” said Anthony, “though I agree with you that it’s a nice sum of money. It’s being done that maddens me. I handed over that manuscript like a little woolly lamb. It hurts, superintendent, indeed it hurts.”