‘Well, I do calculate my countrymen don’t give much away for nothing. They like a quid pro quo; and if they can get the quid without the quo, so much the better are they pleased. But I didn’t come here to discuss the idiosyncrasies of my countrymen.’
Mr Slimm seemed to possess the happy knack of making his conversation suit his company. Edgar could not help contrasting him now with the typical Yankee of the gambling-house; they hardly seemed like the same men.
‘Have you got your uncle’s letter?’ Edgar asked his wife.
‘Why?’ she asked, without the slightest curiosity.
‘Why? I have almost come to your way of thinking,’ replied Edgar. ‘Do you know, a wonderful thing has happened this morning. To make a long story short, my good friend here was an old friend of your uncle’s. The story is a very sad one; but the gist of it is that the paper your uncle left so nearly resembles a tragic document which he and Mr Slimm once perused together—what is termed a cipher—that he is almost sure it is taken from the same. The coincidence is so strange, the two letters are so remarkably alike’——
‘Is this really so, Mr Slimm?’ Eleanor asked eagerly.
‘Yes, madam,’ he said quietly. ‘Some day I will tell you the tale, but not now, of how I came to be in receipt of that terrible document. Your uncle was with me; and from what I know of the circumstances, they must be the same. If you don’t mind me seeing it’——
Before he could finish his sentence, Eleanor was out of the room, and a silence, an uneasy silence of expectancy, fell on the group. No one spoke, and the few minutes she was away seemed like hours. Then she reappeared, and put the paper in his hands.
He merely glanced at it for a moment; indeed, he had not time to read it through before a smile began to ripple over his quaint-looking, weather-beaten face. The smile gradually grew into a laugh, and then he turned to view the anxious group with a face full of congratulation and triumph.
‘Have you found it? Is it so?’ burst from three people simultaneously.