"You allude to the anonymous letter."
"Yes. And I have come to ask you to give me all the information you can about it."
"But, my good sir, I have no information to give. I don't possess any."
"I ought to have said details of the attendant circumstances. Let me hear your history of the transaction from beginning to end: and if you can give me any hint as to the writer--that is, if you have formed any private opinion about him--I trust you will do so."
Mr. Dale could be a little tricky on occasion; he was sometimes engaged in transactions that would not have borne the light of day, and that most certainly he would never have talked about. On the other hand, he could be honest and truthful where there existed no reason for being the contrary: and this anonymous letter business came under the latter category.
"The transaction was as open and straightforward as possible," spoke the lawyer--and Richard, a judge of character and countenances, saw he was speaking the truth. "Mr. Edmund North came to me one day some short time ago, wanting me to let him have a hundred pounds on his own security. I didn't care to do that--I knew about his bill transactions, you see--and I proposed that some one should join him. Eventually he came with Alexander the surgeon, and the matter was arranged."
"Do you know for what purpose he wanted the money?"
"For his young brother, Sidney North. A fast young man, that, Mr. Richard," added the lawyer in significant tones.
"Yes. Unfortunately."
"Well, he had got into some secret trouble, and came praying to Mr. Edmund to get him out of it. Whatever foolish ways Edmund North had wasted money in, there's this consolation remaining to his friends--that the transaction which eventually sent him to his grave was one of pure kindness," added the lawyer warmly. "'My father has enough trouble,' he remarked to me; 'with one thing and another, his life's almost worried out of him; and I don't care that he should hear what Master Sidney's been up to, if it can be kept from him.' Yes; the motive was a good one."