“It isn’t far,” urged the Doctor.
But “Red Mullet” hesitated. He had a cause to hesitate. There was a hidden reason why for the past three years he had not put foot on English soil.
He shook his head sadly as he recognised that discretion was the better part of valour. He was too wary a man to run his neck into a noose.
“No,” he said, “I think that in a few weeks I’ll ask you to bring little Aggie over here to see me. You won’t mind the trip—eh?”
“Not at all,” was the reply. “Aggie will hardly know her father, I expect. She looks upon me as her parent.”
“That was what we arranged, Doctor. She was to take your name, and you were to bring her up as your own daughter. I have a reason for that.”
“So you told me six years ago.”
“Red Mullet” nodded, and stretched out his long legs lazily as he contemplated the smoke of his cigar ascending to the ceiling. Recollections of his child had struck a sympathetic chord in his memory. There were incidents in his life that he would fain have forgotten. One of them was now recalled.
Quickly, however, the shadow passed, and his brow cleared. He became the same easy-going, humorous man he always had been, possessing a merry bonhomie and a fund of stories regarding his own amusing experiences in various out-of-the-way corners of the world.
At last the Doctor, with eighty pounds in his pocket, rose and wished his friend adieu.