I hesitated. His question was curious. I could not see his object in such observations.
“I ask you a plain question,” he repeated. “Are you so rich as to be beyond the necessity of money?”
“No,” I answered frankly. “I’m not rich.”
“Then you admit that, for a certain price, you would be willing to perform a service?” he said bluntly.
“I don’t admit anything of the kind,” I laughed, not, however, without a feeling of indignation.
“Well,” he said after a few moments hesitation, during which time his pair of small black eyes were, I knew, fixed upon me, “I’ll speak more plainly. Would you object, for instance, to taking a fee of five figures to-day?”
“A fee of five figures?” I repeated, puzzled. “I don’t quite follow you.”
“Five figures equal to ten thousand pounds,” he said slowly, in a strange voice.
“A fee of five figures,” I repeated, puzzled. “For what?”
In an instant it flashed across my mind that the thin, grey-faced man before me was trying to suborn me to commit murder—that crime so easily committed by a doctor. The thought staggered me.