“Oh!” I exclaimed in pretended surprise as though it were news to me. “And who has said this?”
“I have received information privately,” was his evasive answer. “But before proceeding further, I thought it best to call upon you, in order that we might from the outset thoroughly understand each other. I know that both of you have been Blair’s most intimate and kindest friends, while owing to certain somewhat curious circumstances I have been compelled, until to-day, to remain entirely in the background, his friend in secret as it were. I am also well aware of the circumstances in which you met, of your charity to my dead friend and to his daughter—in fact, he told me everything, for he had no secrets from me. Yet you on your part,” he continued, glancing at us from one to the other with that single blue eye, “you must have regarded his sudden wealth as a complete mystery.”
“We certainly have done,” I remarked.
“Ah!” he exclaimed quickly in a tone of ill-concealed satisfaction. “Then he has revealed to you nothing!”
And in an instant I saw that I had inadvertently told the fellow exactly what he most desired to know.
Chapter Thirteen.
Burton Blair’s Secret is Revealed.
“Whatever Burton Blair told me was in strictest confidence,” I exclaimed, resenting the fellow’s intrusion, yet secretly glad to have that opportunity of meeting him and of endeavouring to ascertain his intentions.