“Then I regret that I am unable to satisfy your curiosity,” was her firm response. “I now realise your motive in inviting me here at this hour to see you in secret. You meant me to compromise myself—to remain away from Cunnington’s and be punished for my absence—the punishment of dismissal,” she went on, her fine eyes flashing in anger at his dastardly tactics. “You know quite well, Mr Statham, that the world is only too ready to think ill of a woman! You anticipate that I will betray my friend, in order to save myself from calumny and dismissal from the service of the firm. But in that you are mistaken. No word shall pass my lips, and I wish you good-night,” she added with serve hauteur, moving towards the door.
“No, Miss Rolfe!” he cried, quickly intercepting her. “Surely it is unnecessary to create this scene. I hate scenes. Life is really not worth them. You have denounced what you are pleased to call my ungentlemanly tactics. Well, I can only say in my defence that Samuel Statham, although he is not all that he might be, has never acted the blackguard towards a woman, and more especially, towards the daughter of his dear friend.”
“You have told me that you will refuse to assist me further!” she said. “In other words, you decline to preserve the secret of my visit here, although you made a promise that my absence to-night from Cunnington’s should not be noted!”
“I have given you a promise, Miss Rolfe, and I shall keep it,” was his quiet and serious response.
She looked at him with distrust.
“You have asked me a question, Mr Statham—one to which I am not permitted to reply,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because—well, because I have made a vow to regard what was told me as strictly in confidence.”
Sam Statham pursed his lips. Few were the secrets he could not learn when he set his mind upon learning them. In every capital in Europe he had his agents, who, at orders from him, set about to discover what he wished to know, whether it be a carefully-guarded diplomatic secret, or whether it concerned the love affair of some royal prince to whom he was making a loan. He knew as much of the internal affairs of various countries as their finance ministers did themselves, and with the private affairs of some of his clients he was as well acquainted as were their own valets.
To the possession of sound but secret information much of the old man’s success was due. The mysterious men and women who so often came and went to that house all poured into his ear facts they had gathered—facts which he afterwards duly noted in the locked green-covered book which he kept in the security of his safe.