"Yes, yes; but tell me the news!" faltered Von Barwig, without looking at the bill. "Have you found her? Tell me!" The pleading look in Von Barwig's face would have melted the heart of any ordinary scoundrel; but Mr. Hatch was no ordinary scoundrel.
"It's customary, Mr. Barwig," he said drily, "to settle one account before opening another."
Von Barwig looked at the bill that had been handed to him, saw the amount, shook his head pathetically, and smiled. "There must be some mistake," he said.
"My partner went to California on this clue and followed it clean to British Columbia; railroad fares alone amount to two fifty; there's hotel bills, carfare; there's salaries, office expenses, stamps; and then—there's me." If Mr. Hatch had put himself first there would have been little need to refer to the other items.
"There's the vouchers," he went on, pushing a lot of papers toward Von Barwig. "Everything O.K.'d; everything on the level, open and above board." He leaned back in his chair as if determined not to say another word until the matter was settled.
"Then you refuse to tell me any more until this is paid?"
"Not at all, not at all! I'd just as leave tell you right now; but it wouldn't be business, it wouldn't be business." He repeated this as if to impress his listener with the importance of the business aspect of the situation being well preserved.
"You are right; it is not business! It is life and death; it's my heart, my soul, my very existence! My little girl, my little Hélène is not business."
"I suppose not," assented the fat man, "not to you; but our end of it rests on a commercial basis. We've laid out the money and we're entitled to be paid for it."
"But I have paid you already so much! I cannot afford more. For years I have hunted high and low for my wife and child through city after city for thousands upon thousands of miles. At last I came to you, and there have been months and months of weary waiting, hunting false clues; disappointments upon disappointments."