airs and wait for me, and I will arrange with you
when we go home together."

"Very well, sir," the man replied. He was perfectly respectful, though
there was an underlying threat in his manner. "I'll do as you wish. But
I hope you understand--"

"I understand everything!" cried Brunow, with an imperious wave of the
arm. "Do as you are told!"

"Hinge," I said, seeing a sudden light upon the complication of affairs
which lay before me, "Mr. Brunow and I have business with each other
which may detain us for some little time. This person can wait in your
room until Mr. Brunow is at liberty."

"I beg your pardon, sir," the man responded, "I've spent a good deal of
time about this business already, and it's getting late. I shall be glad
to know when I may expect to be able to talk to Mr. Brunow."

"You will wait outside," I answered; "and I think I may guarantee that
you will not be kept waiting long."

The man retired, and I turned on Brunow, as certain of the position of
affairs at that moment as I was half an hour later.

"This man," I said, "has a business claim upon you, and you have
promised to satisfy him to-night. Now, I know something of your affairs,
and I can guess pretty well that without to-night's action you might not
have been in a position to meet him. You had better make a clean breast
of it, and it will pay you to remember once for all that I hold your
life in my hands, and that I am not altogether indisposed to use my
power. What were you paid, or what are you to be paid?"

"I have told you everything I had to tell," said Brunow, falling back
into his former sullen attitude. "You can do just as you please, Fyffe,
but I shall say no more."

I took between my thumb and finger the sheet which lay upon the table,
inscribed, as he knew perfectly well, with the names and addresses of
the people mainly concerned in our enterprise, and held it up before
him.

"Very well," he said, after looking at it and me, and reading no sign of
wavering in my face, "I was to get five hundred pounds."

"Provided always," I suggested, "that your plot came to a successful
issue."

"Of course," he answered, biting his cigar and speaking in a tone of
furtive flippancy, which I suppose was the only thing left to the poor
wretch to hide the nakedness of his discomfiture.

"And you reckon," I asked him, "on being paid to-morrow?" Except for
a sullen motion of his chair he gave no sign of answer. "Now listen to
me," I s