“Not the slightest!” affirmed Barthorpe. “I never have known who he is. I never liked him—I didn’t like his sneaky way of going about the house—I didn’t like anything of him—and he never liked me. I always had a feeling—a sort of intuition—that he resented my presence—in fact, my existence.”
“Very likely,” said Burchill, with a dry laugh. “Well—has it ever struck you that there was a secret between Tertius and Jacob Herapath?”
Barthorpe started. At last they were coming to something definite.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “So—that’s the secret you mentioned in that letter?”
“Never mind,” replied Burchill. “Answer my question.”
“No, then—it never did strike me.”
“Very well,” said Burchill. “There is a secret.”
“There is?”
“There is! And,” whispered Burchill, rising and coming nearer to his visitor, “it’s a secret that will put you in possession of the whole of the Herapath property! And—I know it.”
Barthorpe had by this time realized the situation. And he was thinking things over at a rapid rate. Burchill had asked Jacob Herapath for ten thousand pounds as the price of his silence; therefore——