THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM
question. "The package is to be delivered to him. Now you must excuse me. An important matter calls me out for a short time. But I will be back soon—oh, yes, very soon. And you will wait for me. You will wait for me here, and then I will take you to St. James."
He was gone in a quick hopping way, like a cricket, and the last that Captain Plum saw of him was his ghostly face turned back for an instant in the darkness of the next room, and after that the soft patter of his feet and the strange chuckle in his throat traveled to the outer door and died away as he passed out into the night. Nathaniel Plum was not a man to be easily startled, but there was something so unusual about the proceedings in which he was as yet playing a blind part that he forgot to smoke, which was saying much. Who was the old man? Was he mad? His eyes scanned the little room and an exclamation of astonishment fell from his lips when he saw the leather bag, partly filled with gold, lying where his mysterious acquain-
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