"Oh, I don't say it isn't," laughed Gaspard incredulously.
"But you don't believe it is?"
"We can't help our thoughts, but——" and another laugh ended his sentence.
Benham looked round. They were alone. Cautiously he drew a bag of money and a roll of notes from his pocket. For a moment he opened the bag and showed the gleam inside; wetting his forefinger, he parted the notes for a second.
"Some one believes it," he said, "up to five hundred pound."
"That's the sort of belief I'd like to inspire," laughed Gaspard, watching the money back into its pocket with a curious eye.
"Come, you're not drinking," urged the hospitable Benham.
"You don't show me the way," untruthfully answered the guest, as Benham complacently buttoned up his coat, little imagining that his neighbour was weighing a question, very momentous to him, in the light of fresh information.
Five hundred pounds! The duty of removing Benham began to look rather imperative again, but from a different point of view. François had of late worked for his living, a mode of existence which seemed to him anomalous, and ill suited to his genius. Five hundred pounds meant, to a man of his frugal habits and tact in eliciting hospitality
three years' comfortable idleness. It was no doubt apparent now that Benham had already parted with his secret, and that, if anything happened to him, the secret would still remain to vex the good Medland. Gaspard regretted this; he would have liked to combine public and private advantage in the job. But a man must not ask everything, or he may end by having to take nothing. Here sat a drunken fool with five hundred pounds; opposite to him sat a sober sharp-wit with only five. The situation was full of suggestion. If the five hundred could be got from the fool without violence, well and good; but really, thought Mr. Gaspard, their transference to the sharp-wit must be effected somehow, or that sharp-wit had no title to the name.