"Bosh my dear chap. There is no question of thanks between you and myself. I promised your mother to see you through, and I intend to keep my word."
"And you won't let me make things right for you," grumbled Stephen.
"Wait till everything is squared up, then we will see. I may ask you to be my banker after all. Well Steve, Santiago has gone away, so you are relieved of at least one of your enemies. Joyce can do nothing without his father, and that gentleman is in gaol."
"Will you want me to go with you to-morrow?"
"No, prefer to see him alone. I'll get more out of him in that way. I wonder what I'll hear this time. However let us think no more of the matter just now. We might take a turn down to see the Earl's Court Exhibition. There's always something going on there. It's not exactly like a theatre Steve or I should not ask you to go. But you must be cheered up somehow. We can't stay in this dismal hotel all the evening talking about a criminal."
Stephen assented, as he always did to whatever Herrick proposed. They went to the exhibition and spent a pleasant evening. When they returned Dr. Jim retired straightway to bed, "I shall have a lot of talking to do to-morrow so I must get as much rest as I possibly can," said he.
In some mysterious way, Frith obtained the required permission, and Herrick found himself introduced into a small cell, where Frisco sat on his bed in a gloomy frame of mind. After exchanging a few words with the warder, Frith got the man to go away leaving Herrick and Frisco alone.
"So you are Dr. Herrick," remarked Frisco calmly, "I am glad to meet you."
He spoke in a rather refined voice, and did not at all look like the truculent ruffian Herrick had expected to meet. He was no longer fat, but had quite a shapely figure. Also his face had lost the redness of incessant drinking. Misfortune had sobered and improved the man. He was plainly dressed in a suit of black serge, which as he afterwards informed Herrick had been supplied by his son. But even if he had been still more changed Dr. Jim would have recognised him from the cries-cross scar on his forehead. Frisco saw him looking at it, and smiled.
"The Colonel's handiwork," said he quietly. "He marked me with a bowie in Los Angelos one drunken evening. But I gave him as good as he gave me Dr. Herrick. He lost a finger." And Frisco fell to whistling at the pleasing recollection. There was no doubt about the man being a scoundrel. Herrick felt his way carefully.