"Well, what's the news?" he asked.
"I had better run down and inquire how the young lady is progressing," said the doctor, who was really a first-rate surgeon and who had performed a number of skilled operations upon various members of the Black Hundred anent their encounters with the police. "I've got Miss Florence where you want her. It's up to you now."
"She ought to be separated from her companion. We have left them alone for a whole week, so Jones will not worry particularly. A mighty curious thing has turned up. Before Hargreave's disappearance not a dozen persons could recollect what Jones looked like. He was rarely ever in sight. What do you suppose that signifies?"
"Don't ask me," shrugged the man of medicine. "I shouldn't worry over Jones."
"But we can't stir the old fool. We can't get him out of that house. I've tried to get that maid to put a little something in his coffee, but she stands off at that. She says that she did as she agreed in regard to Florence, but her agreement ended there. We have given the jade five thousand already and she is clamoring for the balance."
"Have you threatened her?" asked Olga.
Braine smiled a little. "My dear woman, it is fifty-fifty. While I have a hold on her, it is not quite so good as she has on me. We are not dealing with an ordinary servant we could threaten and scare. No, indeed; a shrewd little woman who desperately wanted money. And she will be paid; no getting out of it. She will not move another step, one way or the other, after she receives the balance. Hargreave will have a pretty steep bill to pay when the time comes."
"She has no idea where the million is?"
"If she had, she's quite capable of lugging it off all by herself," said Braine.
The doctor laughed.