“Who else knows where they are?”
I started and looked at him. I began to see his drift, and led him on.
“No one,” I answered, and I saw by the way his eyes fell that my new suspicions were correct.
“Will you give me a pledge on your honour that if I do what you ask you will hand them to me?”
Again he would not trust me to see his eyes.
“Yes. Any pledge you like, written or verbal,” I answered, helping him out. “But write me first that you grant my conditions.”
“Yes. I agree to that. It is fair.” And he began to use for the first time the paper with which at the start he had made so much show. “Will that suffice?” he asked, handing me the writing.
I appeared to read it carefully, but I was watching, and noticed that iron-nerved as he was, his hands were trembling.
“Yes, that will do,” I said, and put it away in my pocket.
“Now write, then,” and we exchanged places, he standing up by me, I sitting at his desk.