‘Your very good health, Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet,’ said Hold unconcernedly, as he tossed off his liquor. ‘We wear well, both of us; though many a year has gone over our heads since that ninth of April that you know of.’
‘Were you at Sandston, then, on that day?’ asked the baronet, thrown off his guard, and a slight quivering of Hold’s eyelid told that a point had been scored against his incautious opponent.
‘Not so. At Tunbridge Wells rather,’ returned Hold slowly. ‘I remember seeing the funeral—that of the poor little girl of yours who died, Sir Sykes.’
Sir Sykes grew almost as white as he had done when first he began the reading of the letter which had drawn him to such a rendezvous.
‘You will oblige me, sir,’ he said in a voice that he vainly tried to render firm and calm, ‘by being silent in future as to—as to’——
‘So that we understand one another, I agree to anything,’ was Hold’s half-sullen rejoinder.
‘And now to come to terms. You want money, no doubt?’ said Sir Sykes more composedly.
‘All people, to the best of my belief, want money,’ replied Hold with a grin. ‘I am no cormorant, no shearer and skinner of such as come under my handling. Just now, Sir Sykes, I will only ask you for five hundred—a fleabite!’
The demand, considering the baronet’s rank and means, was unexpectedly moderate. Sir Sykes in turn produced his pocket-book. ‘Few men,’ he said, ‘keep such a sum in ready cash. But it so happens’—laying down a roll of bank-notes upon the squalid table—‘that I have money, two hundred and thirty pounds, with me; and here’—pencilling a few words on a leaf which he tore out of the book—‘is my written promise for two seventy. I will send you a cheque to-morrow.’
‘Nothing,’ observed Hold, ‘could be more satisfactory. Don’t send a groom; grooms chatter; the post is safer. You won’t drink the rum, Sir Sykes? I will.’ And he swallowed the alcohol at a gulp, and then swept notes and paper into his pocket. ‘One thing more, Sir Sykes. I did not come here for hush-money and nothing else. I want you to take into your house and as a member of your family a person—of my recommending, Sir Sykes.’