“I don’t expect you do,” was “Red Mullet’s” reply, as he laughed lightly. “Just be open with me, Doc, and I’ll tell you something—something that’ll interest you, no doubt. What is the purport of this precious document about which there’s all this fuss?”
“It’s a secret—a great and remarkable problem which, up to the present, I’m unable to solve.”
“My dear old chap, there are a good many problems in this world which want solving. The first of them is Woman,” laughed the other.
“Admitted. But woman doesn’t concern this particular matter.”
“That’s just where you are mistaken, Doc,” Mullet interrupted. “You live down in this rural solitude, and you don’t know what goes on up in London. There is a woman in the case—a woman who is very deeply involved in it.”
“Who?”
“We can leave her out of it for the present,” replied Mullet. “I want to know something about the document.”
Doctor Diamond hesitated. Had this man, whose reputation was so bad, and against whom he had so often been warned, come there for the purpose of levying blackmail? It seemed as though he had! “Well,” he answered, “I really see no reason why we should discuss what is, after all, my own private business, Mr Mullet.”
“I should not ask you if I had not a distinct object,” said the other. “I may as well tell you that I’ve already acted in your interests, and at considerable risk to myself, too,” he added.
“For which I thank you most sincerely,” responded the ugly little man, now very much on the alert.