and Tredgold in the
High Street only made matters more complicated.

"Chalk always was fond of making mysteries of things," complained Mr.
Tredgold.

Mr. Stobell, whose habit was taciturn and ruminative, fixed his dull
brown eyes on the ground and thought it over. "I believe it's all my eye
and Betty Martin," he said, at length, quoting a saying which had been
used in his family as an expression of disbelief since the time of his
great-grandmother.

"He comes in to see me when I'm hard at work and drops hints," pursued
his friend. "When I stop to pick'em up, out he goes. Yesterday he came
in and asked me what I thought of a man who wouldn't break his word for
half a million. Half a million, mind you! I just asked him who it was,
and out he went again. He pops in and out of my office like a figure on
a cuckoo-clock."

[Illustration: "He pops in and out of my office like a figure on a
cuckoo-clock."]

Mr. Stobell relapsed into thought again, but no gleam of expression
disturbed the lines of his heavy face; Mr. Tredgold, whose sharp, alert
features bred more confidence in his own clients than those of other
people, waited impatiently.

"He knows something that we don't," said Mr. Stobell, at last; "that's
what it is."

Mr. Tredgold, who was too used to his friend's mental processes to
quarrel with them, assented.

"He's coming round to smoke a pipe with me to-morrow night," he said,
briskly, as he turned to cross the road to his office. "You come too,
and we'll get it out of him. If Chalk can keep a secret he has altered,
that's all I can say."

His estimate of Mr. Chalk proved correct. With Mr. Tredgold acting as
cross-examining counsel and Mr. Stobell enacting the part of a partial
and overbearing judge, Mr. Chalk, after a display of fortitude which
surprised himself almost as much as it irritated his friends, parted with
his news and sat smiling with gratification at their growing excitement.

"Half a million, and he won't go for it?" ejaculated Mr. Tredgold. "The
man must be mad."

"No; he passed his word and he won't break it," said Mr. Chalk. "The
captain's word is his bond, and I honour him for it. I can quite
understand it."

Mr. Tredgold shrugged his shoulders and glanced at Mr. Stobell; that
gentleman, after due deliberation, gave an assenting nod.

"He can't get at it, that's the long and short of it," said Mr. Tredgold,
after a pause. "He had to leave it behind when he was rescued