Chapter 1

The room was a small one, and had been chosen for its remoteness from
the dwelling rooms. It had formed the billiard room, which the former
owner of Weald Lodge had added to his premises, and John Minute, who had
neither the time nor the patience for billiards, had readily handed over
this damp annex to his scientific secretary.

Along one side ran a plain deal bench which was crowded with glass
stills and test tubes. In the middle was as plain a table, with half a
dozen books, a microscope under a glass shade, a little wooden case
which was opened to display an array of delicate scientific instruments,
a Bunsen burner, which was burning bluely under a small glass bowl half
filled with a dark and turgid concoction of some kind.

The face of the man sitting at the table watching this unsavory stew was
hidden behind a mica and rubber mask, for the fumes which were being
given off by the fluid were neither pleasant nor healthy. Save for a
shaded light upon the table and the blue glow of the Bunsen lamp, the
room was in darkness. Now and again the student would take a glass rod,
dip it for an instant into the boiling liquid, and, lifting it, would
allow the liquid drop by drop to fall from the rod on to a strip of
litmus paper. What he saw was evidently satisfactory, and presently he
turned out the Bunsen lamp, walked to the window and opened it, and
switched on an electric fan to aid the process of ventilation.

He removed his mask, revealing the face of a good-looking young man,
rather pale, with a slight dark mustache and heavy, black, wavy hair. He
closed the window, filled his pipe from the well-worn pouch which he
took from his pocket, and began to write in a notebook, stopping now and
again to consult some authority from the books before him.

In half an hour he had finished this work, had blotted and closed his
book, and, pushing back his chair, gave himself up to reverie. They were
not pleasant thoughts to judge by his face. He pulled from his inside
pocket a leather case and opened it. From this he took a photograph. It
was the picture of a girl of sixteen. It was a pretty face, a little
sad, but attractive in its very weakness. He looked at it for a long
time, shaking his head as at an unpleasant thought.

There came a gentle tap at the door, and quickly he replaced the
photograph in his case, folded it, and returned it to his pocket as he
rose to unlock the door.

John Minute, who entered, sniffed suspiciously.

"What beastly smells you have in here, Jasper!" he growled. "Why on
earth don't they invent chemicals that are more agreeable to the nose?"

Jasper Cole laughed quietly.

"I'm afraid, sir, that nature has ordered it otherwise," he said.

"Have you finished?" asked his employer.

He looked at the still warm bowl of fluid suspiciously.

"It is all right, sir," said Jasper. "It is only noxious when it is
boiling. That is why I keep the door locked."

"What is it?" asked John Minute, scowling down at the unoffending
liquor.

"It is many things," said the other ruefully. "In point of fact, it is
an experiment. The bowl contains one or two elements which will only mix
with the others at a certain temperature, and as an experiment it is
successful because I have kept the unmixable elements in suspension,
though the liquid has gone cold."

"I hope you will enjoy your dinner, even though it has gone cold,"
grumbled John Minute.

"I didn't hear the bell, sir," said Jasper Cole. "I'm awfully sorry if
I've kept you waiting."

They were the only two present in the big, black-looking dining room,
and dinner was as usual a fairly silent meal. John Minute read the
newspapers, particularly that portion of them which dealt with the
latest fluctuations in the stock market.

"Somebody has been buying Gwelo Deeps," he complained loudly.

Jasper looked up.

"Gwelo Deeps?" he said. "But they are the shares--"

"Yes, yes," said the other testily; "I know. They were quoted at a
shilling last week; they are up to two shillings and threepence. I've
got five hundred thousand of them; to be exact," he corrected himself,
"I've got a million of them, though half of them are not my property. I
am almost tempted to sell."

"Perhaps they have found gold," suggested Jasper.

John Minute snorted.

"If there is gold in the Gwelo Deeps there are diamonds on the downs,"
he said scornfully. "By the way, the other five hundred thousand shares
belong to May."

Jasper Cole raised his eyebrows as much in interrogation as in surprise.

John Minute leaned back in his chair and manipulated his gold toothpick.

"May Nuttall's father was the best friend I ever had," he said gruffly.
"He lured me into the Gwelo Deeps against my better judgment We sank a
bore three thousand feet and found everything except gold."

He gave one of his brief, rumbling chuckles.

"I wish that mine had been a success. Poor old Bill Nuttall! He helped
me in some tight places."

"And I think you have done your best for his daughter, sir."

"She's a nice girl," said John Minute, "a dear girl. I'm not taken with
girls." He made a wry face. "But May is as honest and as sweet as they
make them. She's the sort of girl who looks you in the eye when she
talks to you; there's no damned nonsense about May."

Jasper Cole concealed a smile.

"What the devil are you grinning at?" demanded John Minute.

"I also was thinking that there was no nonsense about her," he said.

John Minute swung round.

"Jasper," he said, "May is the kind of girl I would like you to marry;
in fact, she _is_ the girl I would like you to marry."

"I think Frank would have something to say about that," said the other,
stirring his coffee.

"Frank!" snorted John Minute. "What the devil do I care about Frank?
Frank has to do as he's told. He's a lucky young man and a bit of a
rascal, too, I'm thinking. Frank would marry anybody with a pretty face.
Why, if I hadn't interfered--"

Jasper looked up.

"Yes?"

"Never mind," growled John Minute.

As was his practice, he sat a long time over dinner, half awake and half
asleep. Jasper had annexed one of the newspapers, and was reading it.
This was the routine which marked every evening of his life save on
those occasions when he made a visit to London. He was in the midst of
an article by a famous scientist on radium emanation, when John Minute
continued a conversation which he had broken off an hour ago.

"I'm worried about May sometimes."

Jasper put down his paper.

"Worried! Why?"

"I am worried. Isn't that enough?" growled the other. "I wish you
wouldn't ask me a lot of questions, Jasper. You irritate me beyond
endurance."

"Well, I'll take it that you're worried," said his confidential
secretary patiently, "and that you've good reason."

"I feel responsible for her, and I hate responsibilities of all kinds.
The responsibilities of children--"

He winced and changed the subject, nor did he return to it for several
days.

Instead he opened up a new line.

"Sergeant Smith was here when I was out, I understand," he said.

"He came this afternoon--yes."

"Did you see him?"

Jasper nodded.

"What did he want?"

"He wanted to see you, as far as I could make out. You were saying the
other day that he drinks."

"Drinks!" said the other scornfully. "He doesn't drink; he eats it. What
do you think about Sergeant Smith?" he demanded.

"I think he is a very curious person," said the other frankly, "and I
can't understand why you go to such trouble to shield him or why you
send him money every week."

"One of these days you'll understand," said the other, and his prophecy
was to be fulfilled. "For the present, it is enough to say that if
there are two ways out of a difficulty, one of which is unpleasant and
one of which is less unpleasant, I take the less unpleasant of the two.
It is less unpleasant to pay Sergeant Smith a weekly stipend than it is
to be annoyed, and I should most certainly be annoyed if I did not pay
him."

He rose up slowly from the chair and stretched himself.

"Sergeant Smith," he said again, "is a pretty tough proposition. I know,
and I have known him for years. In my business, Jasper, I have had to
know some queer people, and I've had to do some queer things. I am not
so sure that they would look well in print, though I am not sensitive as
to what newspapers say about me or I should have been in my grave years
ago; but Sergeant Smith and his knowledge touches me at a raw place. You
are always messing about with narcotics and muck of all kinds, and you
will understand when I tell you that the money I give Sergeant Smith
every week serves a double purpose. It is an opiate and a prophy--"

"Prophylactic," suggested the other.

"That's the word," said John Minute. "I was never a whale at the long
uns; when I was twelve I couldn't write my own name, and when I was
nineteen I used to spell it with two n's."

He chuckled again.

"Opiate and prophylactic," he repeated, nodding his head. "That's
Sergeant Smith. He is a dangerous devil because he is a rascal."

"Constable Wiseman--" began Jasper.

"Constable Wiseman," snapped John Minute, rubbing his hand through his
rumpled gray hair, "is a dangerous devil because he's a fool. What has
Constable Wiseman been here about?"

"He didn't come here," smiled Jasper. "I met him on the road and had a
little talk with him."

"You might have been better employed," said John Minute gruffly. "That
silly ass has summoned me three times. One of these days I'll get him
thrown out of the force."

"He's not a bad sort of fellow," soothed Jasper Cole. "He's rather
stupid, but otherwise he is a decent, well-conducted man with a sense of
the law."

"Did he say anything worth repeating?" asked John Minute.

"He was saying that Sergeant Smith is a disciplinarian."

"I know of nobody more of a disciplinarian than Sergeant Smith," said
the other sarcastically, "particularly when he is getting over a jag.
The keenest sense of duty is that possessed by a man who has broken the
law and has not been found out. I think I will go to bed," he added,
looking at the clock on the mantelpiece. "I am going up to town
to-morrow. I want to see May."

"Is anything worrying you?" asked Jasper.

"The bank is worrying me," said the old man.

Jasper Cole looked at him steadily.

"What's wrong with the bank?"

"There is nothing wrong with the bank, and the knowledge that my dear
nephew, Frank Merrill, esquire, is accountant at one of its branches
removes any lingering doubt in my mind as to its stability. And I wish
to Heaven you'd get out of the habit of asking me 'why' this happens or
'why' I do that."

Jasper lit a cigar before replying:

"The only way you can find things out in this world is by asking
questions."

"Well, ask somebody else," boomed John Minute at the door.

Jasper took up his paper, but was not to be left to the enjoyment its
columns offered, for five minutes later John Minute appeared in the
doorway, minus his tie and coat, having been surprised in the act of
undressing with an idea which called for development.

"Send a cable in the morning to the manager of the Gwelo Deeps and ask
him if there is any report. By the way, you are the secretary of the
company. I suppose you know that?"

"Am I?" asked the startled Jasper.

"Frank was, and I don't suppose he has been doing the work now. You had
better find out or you will be getting me into a lot of trouble with the
registrar. We ought to have a board meeting."

"Am I the directors, too?" asked Jasper innocently.

"It is very likely," said John Minute. "I know I am chairman, but there
has never been any need to hold a meeting. You had better find out from
Frank when the last was held."

He went away, to reappear a quarter of an hour later, this time in his
pajamas.

"That mission May is running," he began, "they are probably short of
money. You might inquire of their secretary. _They_ will have a
secretary, I'll be bound! If they want anything send it on to them."

He walked to the sideboard and mixed himself a whisky and soda.

"I've been out the last three or four times Smith has called. If he
comes to-morrow tell him I will see him when I return. Bolt the doors
and don't leave it to that jackass, Wilkins."

Jasper nodded.

"You think I am a little mad, don't you, Jasper?" asked the older man,
standing by the sideboard with the glass in his hand.

"That thought has never occurred to me," said Jasper. "I think you are
eccentric sometimes and inclined to exaggerate the dangers which
surround you."

The other shook his head.

"I shall die a violent death; I know it. When I was in Zululand an old
witch doctor 'tossed the bones.' You have never had that experience?"

"I can't say that I have," said Jasper, with a little smile.

"You can laugh at that sort of thing, but I tell you I've got a great
faith in it. Once in the king's kraal and once in Echowe it happened,
and both witch doctors told me the same thing--that I'd die by violence.
I didn't use to worry about it very much, but I suppose I'm growing old
now, and living surrounded by the law, as it were, I am too law-abiding.
A law-abiding man is one who is afraid of people who are not
law-abiding, and I am getting to that stage. You laugh at me because I'm
jumpy whenever I see a stranger hanging around the house, but I have got
more enemies to the square yard than most people have to the county. I
suppose you think I am subject to delusions and ought to be put under
restraint. A rich man hasn't a very happy time," he went on, speaking
half to himself and half to the young man. "I've met all sorts of people
in this country and been introduced as John Minute, the millionaire, and
do you know what they say as soon as my back is turned?"

Jasper offered no suggestion.

"They say this," John Minute went on, "whether they're young or old,
good, bad, or indifferent: 'I wish he'd die and leave me some of his
money.'"

Jasper laughed softly.

"You haven't a very good opinion of humanity."

"I have no opinion of humanity," corrected his chief, "and I am going to
bed."

Jasper heard his heavy feet upon the stairs and the thud of them
overhead. He waited for some time; then he heard the bed creak. He
closed the windows, personally inspected the fastenings of the doors,
and went to his little office study on the first floor.

He shut the door, took out the pocket case, and gave one glance at the
portrait, and then took an unopened letter which had come that evening
and which, by his deft handling of the mail, he had been able to smuggle
into his pocket without John Minute's observance.

He slit open the envelope, extracted the letter, and read:

DEAR SIR: Your esteemed favor is to hand. We have to thank you for
the check, and we are very pleased that we have given you
satisfactory service. The search has been a very long and, I am
afraid, a very expensive one to yourself, but now that discovery
has been made I trust you will feel rewarded for your energies.

The note bore no heading, and was signed "J. B. Fleming."

Jasper read it carefully, and then, striking a match, lit the paper and
watched it burn in the grate.