not thought of this little dodge; it was you who suggested it. However, I jumped at it. Was it not well worth my while paying you that slight commission in return for a guarantee of your future silence? Your mouth is now closed. And cheap too at the price.—Yours, dear Comrade, in the great confraternity of rogues,
'Cuthbert Clay, Colonel.'
Charles laid his note down, and grizzled. 'What's yours, Sey?' he asked.
'From a lady,' I answered.
He gazed at me suspiciously. 'Oh, I thought it was the same hand,' he said. His eye looked through me.
'No,' I answered. 'Mrs. Mortimer's.' But I confess I trembled.
He paused a moment. 'You made all inquiries at this fellow's bank?' he went on, after a deep sigh.
'Oh, yes,' I put in quickly. (I had taken good care about that, you may be sure, lest he should spot the commission.) 'They say the self-styled Count von Lebenstein was introduced to them by the Southampton Row folks, and drew, as usual, on the Lebenstein account: so they were quite unsuspicious. A rascal who goes about the world on that scale, you know, and arrives with such credentials as theirs and yours, naturally imposes on anybody. The bank didn't even require to have him formally identified. The firm was enough. He
