"A bit different, this, to the Newey Valley," he remarked, as he sat down without waiting for an invitation. "Things have gone pretty well with you, eh, Deane? Slap-up offices you've got, and the chink of money everywhere. It reminds me of what I've come about."

"You have come for money, have you?" Deane asked.

"Well, I don't know about that. I don't know how you look at it, but it seems to me that there's a bit owing, a bit which might come my way. I should tell you, perhaps, that I am representing Miss Sinclair as well as myself."

"Richard Sinclair's niece?" Deane asked.

"Exactly. She is heiress to anything the old man had, and I was partner with him in the Little Anna Gold-Mine."

"In what?" asked Deane.

"In the Little Anna Gold-Mine," Hefferom repeated distinctly.

Deane leaned back in his chair. "I must ask you to explain yourself," he said. "The Little Anna Gold-Mine belongs to the syndicate of which I am a director."

"That's all very well for a bluff," answered Hefferom, "but you got rid of Sinclair a little too easily."

"Got rid of him?"