“The service I require of you is not a very difficult one,” he answered, bending across the table in his earnestness. “You are young—a bachelor, I presume—and enthusiastic in your honourable calling. Would not ten thousand pounds be of great use to you at this moment?”
I admitted that it would. What could I not do with such a sum?
Again I asked him the nature of the service he demanded, but he cleverly evaded my inquiries.
“My suggestion will, I fear, strike you as curious,” he added. “But in this matter there must be no hesitation on our part; it must be accomplished to-day.”
“Then it is, I take it, a matter of life or death?”
There was a brief silence, broken only by the low ticking of the marble clock upon the mantelshelf.
“Of death,” he answered in a low, strained tone. “Of death, rather than of life.”
I held my breath. My countenance must have undergone a change, and this did not escape his observant eyes, for he added—
“Before we go further, I would ask you, doctor, to regard this interview as strictly confidential.”
“It shall be entirely as you wish,” I stammered.