“If that is so,” he said, “fortune could not have sent me a better coadjutor. You are dispassionate, disinterested, whole-hearted?”
“Entirely,” said Gilead.
The old man rubbed his palms gleefully together.
“It is a providence,” he said. “It is to demonstrate a truth, a momentous truth, that I advertised for an agent.”
“May I ask,” said Gilead, “what truth.”
“Hush-sh-sh!” said Mr Judex, putting a finger to his lips with exaggerated gravity. “It lies to prove in the wine-cellar of number forty-one, Belgrave Crescent—a very deep and dark cellar.”
Gilead’s eyes opened a little; but he sat calm and collected. He thought he perceived that he had to do here with an eccentric, not to say a daft old gentleman. But, if the quest was to bear fruit, he must betray nothing of his feelings. The other stretched out, and put a soft impressive hand upon his arm.
“Have you a clean conscience?” he said.
“I believe I may claim one,” answered the young man, smiling.
“No sense of guilt anywhere within?”