“Blackmail?” I asked.
He nodded.
“And do they blackmail Thorold in the same way?”
Again he nodded in the affirmative.
At last I seemed to be really on the verge of unravelling the mystery which had puzzled me so long—also on the way to discovering the closely-guarded secret of the Thorolds.
After a brief pause, I put another question to him.
“Is all that French gold I have seen, genuine?” I asked. “I know some of it is, because I had some tested.”
“How many?” he inquired, in a tone of surprise.
“Three. They were all good.”
“Most of them are base coin,” he said. “A small proportion only are coin from the French mint.”