“I suppose you could give a pretty good guess,” said Skeggs at length, “at my reasons for asking you which way you were going to walk this afternoon?”
“Indeed, no,” said Kester with a shrug. “I have not the remotest idea, nor do I care to know. It was you who chose to accompany me. I did not thrust my company upon you.”
Skeggs laughed a little maliciously. “I don’t think there’s much good, Mr. Kester St. George, in you and I beating about the bush. I’m a plain man of business, and that reminds me,”—interrupting himself with a chuckle—“that when I once used those very words to a client of mine, he retorted by saying, ‘You are more than a plain man of business, Mr. Skeggs, you are an ugly one.’ I did my very utmost for that man, but he was hanged. Mais revenons. I am a plain man of business, and I intend to deal with this question in a business-like way. The simple point is: What is it worth your while to give me for the document I have buttoned up here?” tapping his chest with his left hand as he spoke.
“I am at a loss to know to what document you refer,” said Mr. St. George, coldly.
“A very few words will tell you the contents of it, though, if I am rightly informed, you can give a pretty good guess already as to what they are likely to be. In this document it is asserted that you, sir, have no right to the name by which the world has known you for so long a time—that you have no right to the position you occupy, to the property you claim as yours. That you are, in fact, none other than the son of Mother Mim herself—of the woman who lies dead in yonder hut.”
Kester drew in his breath with something like a sigh. It was as he had feared. Mother Mim had told everything, and, of all people in the world, to the wretch now walking by his side. He braced his nerves for the coming encounter. “I have heard something before to-day of the rigmarole of which you speak,” he said, haughtily; “but I need hardly tell you that the affair is nothing but a tissue of vilest lies from beginning to end.”
“I dare say it is,” said Skeggs, good humouredly. “But it may be rather difficult for you to prove that it is so.”
“It will be still more difficult for you to prove that it is not so.”
“Oh! I am quite aware of all the difficulties both for and against—no man more so. You have got possession, and a hundred other points in your favour. Still, with what evidence I have already, and with what evidence I can get elsewhere, I shall be able to make out a strong case—a very strong case against you in a court of justice.”
“Evidence elsewhere!” said Kester, disdainfully. “There is no such thing, unless you are clever enough to make the dead speak.”