"Of course not. But, you see, I don't ask for your gratitude—I want a good round sum down on the nail—hard cash. Your uncle's fortune, if you get two-thirds of it, will be worth thirty thousand a year; and for such a fortune you can very well afford to pay me twenty thousand in ready money within two years of your accession to the inheritance."
"Twenty thousand!"
"Yes; if you think the sum too much, we will say no more about it. The business is a very difficult one, and I scarcely care to engage in it."
"My dear Victor, you bewilder me. I cannot bring myself to believe that you can bring about my restoration to my old place in my uncle's will; but if you do, the twenty thousand shall be yours."
"Good!" answered the surgeon, in his coolest and most business-like manner; "I must have it in black and white. You will give me two promissory notes; one for ten thousand, to fall due a year hence—the other for the same sum, to fall due in two years."
"But if I do not get the fortune—and I am not likely to get it within that time; my uncle's life is a good one, and—"
"Never mind your uncle's life. I will give you an undertaking to cancel those notes of hand if you have not succeeded to the Raynham estates. And now here are stamps. You may as well fill in the body of the notes, and sign them at once, and so close the transaction."
"You are prepared with the stamps?"
"Yes; I am a man of business, although a man of science."
"Victor," said Reginald Eversleigh; "you sometimes make me shudder,
There is something almost diabolical about you."