"There is no one to hear," said Sir Charles, who was getting more and more uncomfortable at all this mystery.
"All right, then. Sorry to rake up disagreeables; but I must. You recollect making a slight mistake about your Christian name once, fancying it was Percy instead of Charles; writing it as Percy across a stamped bit of paper good for two hundred quid, and putting Redmoor as your address after it?"
"Well, what if I do?" His lips were so parched he could hardly frame the words.
"It would be awkward to have anything of that sort brought up just now, wouldn't it?"
Sir Charles hesitated for an instant, then gave a great sigh of relief as he said: "You infernal scoundrel! you think to frighten me with that, do you? To make that the ground for your extortion? Why, you miserable wretch, I myself burnt that--that--document in Moss's office!"
"How you do run on, Sir Charles! I just mentioned something about a little bill, and you're down upon me in a moment. I guessed that was destroyed; at all events I knew it was all safe; and Sir Percy's dead, so it don't much matter. But, Lord! with your memory you must surely recollect another little dockyment,--quite a little one, only five-and-twenty pound,-where you mistook both your names that time, and accepted it as Walter Burgess:--recollect?"
The pallor had spread over Mitford's face again, and his lips quivered as he said: "That was destroyed--destroyed by Tony Butler long since--before the other one was done."
"Yes, yes, I know this was the first,--a little one just to get your hand in. But it ain't destroyed. It's all right, bless you! I can see it now with a big black 'FORGED' stamped across it by the bank-people."
"Where is it?"
"Oh, it's in very safe keeping with a friend of mine who scarcely knows its value. Because, though he knows its a forgery, he don't know who done it; now, you see, through my brother Tony, I do know who done it; and I do know that Walter Burgess is alive, and is a large hop-factor down Maidstone way, and owing you a grudge for that thrashing you gave him in the billiard-rooms at Canterbury, which he's never forgotten, would come forward and prosecute at once."