"It is as I thought. In England I myself can do nothing personally that others cannot do as well. In America I have every sort of influence...."
I looked him in the face. "I am not going to trouble about America in the very least."
"Quite! I see what you mean. And I am absolutely of your opinion. Now I'll come to what I can do for you."
He rose slowly from his chair and came up to me. When he spoke he had dropped his voice a full tone.
"I must let you into one or two little secrets about myself," he said. "In the first place, a man so rich as I am does not become so without making powerful and unscrupulous enemies. Also, American methods are direct. It will probably surprise you to hear that my life has been attempted twelve or fifteen times, but that is the case. Some of the methods were diabolically ingenious, too! However, I stand here to-day, quite unharmed and quite safe. Why? I'll tell you.
"Quite early in my successful career I saw what would happen. I watched other men assassinated, and was determined that it shouldn't happen to me. How was it to be avoided? I thought that point out very carefully, and came to a conclusion. I must find, and then attach to my person, someone of extraordinary intelligence, cunning, skill and personal prowess. My ambitions ran high. I wanted someone who would devote his whole life to my service, a familiar spirit, no less! It took me three years of steady work to find that familiar spirit—to discover the exact combination of qualities I required. But a multi-millionaire is the Magician of to-day, and I have a Genie as clever and infallible as any out of the old 'Arabian Nights.' I pay him the salary of a cinema star, and I say, meaning every word of it, that there isn't another like him in the world. Do you think this tall talk, Sir John?"
It was certainly amazing, but I could not but believe him.
"You startle and you interest me deeply," I replied. "You are to be congratulated."
"I am—on a unique human possession. Well, you can't have failed to see what I'm driving at. I will lend you this man, place his services entirely at your disposal, for a month!"
For a moment or two I was silent. I believed every word that Van Adams said, and I was not hesitating—only just letting the offer, and what it meant, sink into my mind. It became plain. It was like the offer of a rope-ladder to a man in prison, a light and a pickaxe to an entombed miner.