“Show him here,” said Learmont, quickly, and the man was out of the room as expeditiously as if he had been pulled from behind with a sudden jerk.
“They will meet here,” muttered Learmont. “Well, be it so. Three persons so strangely knit together, as these two men and myself, were surely never heard of. Hating them with that hatred which requires to be glutted with blood to calm its fury; yet I am obliged to supply their wildest extravagancies and most insolent demands. Oh, if I, dared, if—oh, you are here, Jacob Gray?”
“As you perceive, most worshipful sir,” said Gray, as he closed the door behind him, and fixed his keen, ferret-looking eyes upon the Squire.
For a few minutes they regarded each other in silence. Learmont at length, uttered the word,—
“Well?”
“I am rejoiced to hear you are well,” sneered Gray. “The fog last night was very damp.”
“Jacob Gray,” said Learmont, “I sought your life.”
“Your worship was so kind,” said Gray, “and since my connexion with your worship has grown so dangerous, it shall bear a higher price.”
“What mean you?”
“I mean,” said Gray, striking the palm of his hand with his fist—“I mean that where I have had one guinea, Squire Learmont, I will have ten; where ten, a hundred. Thank yourself for raising my price. My nerves are weak, and yet I prize them. I like my blood to keep its even pace. If I am to be tortured—if I am to be threatened—broken in upon at midnight, and cold steel held to my throat, I will be well paid—extremely well paid. You understand me, Squire Learmont, I have raised my price.”