"Perhaps."
"For heaven's sake what is it?"
"If I have one, it's my own," I drily replied. "I don't see why I should give it away. This is your business—yours and Haslemere's. Why should I be interested? Neither of you are interested in mine."
"You mean, your ideas are for sale?" Haslemere exclaimed, in virtuous disgust, seizing my point.
"My help is for sale—at a price."
"The price of our receiving your wife, I suppose!" he accused me bitterly.
"Oh, it's higher than that! I may have guessed something. I may be able to do something with that guess; but I'm hanged if I'll dedicate a thought or act to your service unless you, Haslemere, personally ask Maida's forgiveness for the cruel injustice you once did without stopping to make sure whether you were right or wrong: unless you, Violet, ask my wife—ask her, mind you!—to let you present her to the King and Queen at the first Court after the war."
"We'll do anything—anything!" wailed Violet. "I'll crawl on my knees for a mile to your Maida, if only you can really get the jewels back before people find out how we've been fooled."
"I don't want you to crawl," said I. "You can walk, or even motor to Maida—or come out in a boat to the yacht where she's waiting for me and my news. But if I can do any useful work, it will be to-night."
"Do you think you can—oh, do you think you can?" Violet implored.