"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.
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