"And your profession as doctor must serve as a most excellent mask. Who would suspect you—a lonely bachelor in such quarters as these?" exclaimed his visitor.
"No one does suspect me," laughed the doctor with assurance. "Safety lies in pursuing my increasing practice, and devoting all my spare time to—well, to my real profession." He flicked the ash off his cigar as he spoke.
"Your friend, Elcombe, will have to be very careful. The peril is considerable in that quarter."
"I know that full well. But if he failed it would be he who would suffer—not I. As usual, I do not appear in the affair at all."
"That is just where you are so intensely clever and ingenious," declared Heureux. "In New York they speak of you as a perfect marvel of foresight and clever evasion."
"It is simply a matter of exercising one's wits," Weirmarsh laughed lightly. "I always complete my plans with great care before embarking upon them, and I make provision for every contretemps possible. It is the only way, if one desires success."
"And you have had success," remarked his companion. "Marked success in everything you have attempted. In New York we have not been nearly so fortunate. Those three articles in the New York Sun put the public on their guard, so that we dare not attempt any really bold move for fear of detection."
"You have worked a little too openly, I think," was Weirmarsh's reply. "But now that you have been sent to assist me, you will probably see that my methods differ somewhat from those of John Willoughby. Remember, he has just the same amount of money placed at his disposal as I have."
"And he is not nearly so successful," Heureux replied. "Perhaps it is because Americans are not so easily befooled as the English."
"And yet America is, par excellence, the country of bluff, of quackery in patent medicines, and of the booming of unworthy persons," the doctor laughed.