The clerk was scarcely gone a moment. Holding open the door of the inner office, he said:
"Mr. Barker will see you, sir."
Mr. James went in, and the door was shut behind him.
At a square table, with his back to the fire, sat Mr. Barker, a stout, bald-headed, foxy-looking man, dressed in a blue frock coat and white waistcoat, with a flower in his buttonhole, and a rather conspicuous display of jewelry. He nodded familiarly to "Mr. James" as to an old acquaintance.
"I rather thought you might call in the course of the day," he said. "Come to settle up, eh?"
"Yes, come to settle up," was the answer, with a faint sigh. "Perhaps you won't mind taking the greater part in gold; your doing so will oblige me."
"I shall have no objection at all, Mr. James. It don't matter to me--ha! ha!--in what form it comes, so long as I get hold of it. What nice weather we have been having of late."
Mr. James opened his bag and drew therefrom twelve small canvas bags containing one hundred sovereigns each. "Be good enough to count these," he said.
Mr. Barker emptied one bag on the table and counted its contents into little piles of twenty sovereigns each.
"I won't detain you, Mr. James, while I count the rest," he said. "I have no doubt I shall find them quite correct."