Lieberg paused for a moment, in meditation, drawing in his eyelids, as if to shut out even the daylight from his busy brain, and he replied, at length--
"Very well, I will, marking the condition, that you pledge yourself to assist me in one particular object, with your whole power and might."
"Very well," said the youth, and Lieberg wrote down the stipulations.
The boy signed, what might be called, his confession, and Lieberg put his hand to the promise. After he had done so, however, he shook his head, gazing on the boy with a smile full of pity and contempt.
"I will keep that promise, my good youth, firmly," he said, "but at the same time I will tell you, it is of no earthly value; for I have nothing to do but to let this bill slip into the hands of the Bow-street officers, and you are arrested, tried, and executed in the shortest possible time. No promise of mine could save you. It is the state that prosecutes, the law that condemns. I have nothing to do with it but to swear that this name, purporting to be mine, is not my handwriting," and he took out of his pocket-book the identical bill which William Barham had forged, and laid his finger upon the fatal words, "Frederick Lieberg," at the bottom.
The unhappy youth gazed at it, with eyes of eager fire--and oh, what would he have given to snatch it from the hand of him that held it, and tear it into a thousand pieces that moment! The bright eyes of Lieberg seemed to read his very thoughts, and again the dark and bitter smile curled his lip, as he said--
"You cannot get it, my good youth. It will remain with me till there is a stronger bond between you and me, and what I desire is accomplished.--Where is your sister?"
"I do not know," replied the youth, boldly. "Do you not know?--I thought you did."
"No, indeed," replied Lieberg, "I am utterly ignorant. But we must both know ere long. This is the first business we have before us.--You tell me true, I see it--but how happens it that she was removed without your knowledge?"
"I was away for two days," replied the youth, "and when I came back she was gone. But he knows--that Sir Morley Ernstein! Cannot you get him to tell you?"