But at the half-mocking speech, the almost insolent challenge of the tone, the doubt in the Colonel’s mind suddenly vanished. What if the man were an adventurer? Were not his services required for an adventurous undertaking? The balance sheet of his past life was no concern of his. He wanted courage, daring, and intelligence; he was prepared to pay for them; and he believed that the man before him possessed these qualifications.
“You are not the first man who has gone under who in happier circumstances would have been a credit to the Service,” he said gravely, and having said it dismissed the subject almost it seemed with relief. It did not do to be over particular in regard to a man’s past with great odds at stake.
“I have mentioned what the business I wished to see you about demands of the man who undertakes it,” he added, without pausing, “but I have said nothing about the business itself as yet. Briefly, it is the recovery of certain letters and incriminating papers—some of them, I believe, forgeries—that are being now used for the purposes of blackmail.”
“Half a moment, please. Is this a personal matter, or are you merely negotiating for someone else?”
“It is not a personal matter. It affects someone of greater importance. I have been sent out here to get hold of those papers at any cost. We have offered a big sum down for them, but the rogues who hold them won’t part. Their game is to keep on squeezing. They believe they have an inexhaustible mine.”
“From what you tell me I should say their belief was justified. Since they won’t sell, how do you purpose getting hold of the papers?”
“We must take a leaf from their book and steal them back.”
There was a momentary silence during which the grey eyes looked straight into the brown eyes with a hard, unflinching gaze.
“And that’s where I come in,” he said, completing the Colonel’s sentence.
The Colonel nodded.