“There will be more to be done, then, before we can part,” I answered.
“I give you the whole night,” said he. “So long as you are off ere daybreak, I am content.”
“In short, Mr. Romaine,” said I, “I have had so much benefit of your advice and services that I am loth to sever the connection, and would even ask a substitute. I would be obliged for a letter of introduction to one of your own cloth in Edinburgh—an old man for choice, very experienced, very respectable, and very secret. Could you favour me with such a letter?”
“Why, no,” said he. “Certainly not. I will do no such thing, indeed.”
“It would be a great favour, sir,” I pleaded.
“It would be an unpardonable blunder,” he replied. “What? Give you a letter of introduction? and when the police come, I suppose, I must forget the circumstance? No, indeed. Talk of it no more.”
“You seem to be always in the right,” said I. “The letter would be out of the question, I quite see that. But the lawyer’s name might very well have dropped from you in the way of conversation; having heard him mentioned, I might profit by the circumstance to introduce myself; and in this way my business would be the better done, and you not in the least compromised.”
“What is this business?” said Romaine.
“I have not said that I had any,” I replied. “It might arise. This is only a possibility that I must keep in view.”