not hide the fact that he was serious enough inside:
"You see it begins. There is a gentleman whom it appears you have met before who is, I fancy, interested in these we will call them pills. He would cut my throat for one of them if he had what he would judge to be a reasonable expectation of getting safely away with it."
"Who is the man? I don't like the look of him at all."
"Who does? My good Mr. Beckwith, ask no questions; notice nothing, if you can help it especially do not notice people like the one across the road. Will you finally yes or no for five hundred pounds take the pills to New York? starting to-night?"
"Where am I to carry them? I mean, am I to have them on my person, or where are they to be hidden if they are to be hidden."
"Oh, yes, you may take it they are to be hidden, but where is for you to say. You have a certain amount of intelligence, I presume. If you had something of your own which you wished to take to New York without letting people guess that you had it, what would be the best hiding-place you could find?" As he saw that I was about to speak he held up his hand. "I'm not asking for an answer. I don't want one. I don't wish to know where you propose to hide the pills. There are twenty-two of them. I ask you to take them with you to New York. I trust you completely. Again will you or won't you act as my messenger?"
Something in my very bones seemed to warn me to be careful before I committed myself to a definite statement. I was full of all sorts of fears and fancies lest the man might be using me as a cat's-paw in an affair from which I should derive neither advantage nor credit.
"I don't understand," I told him, "why you won't send what you call your pills by post. There is such a thing as a registered post which is used by hundreds of thousands of people every day. Surely they would be much safer with it than me."
"Sometimes, Mr. Beckwith, trifles sent by your registered post are apt to go astray; several registered packets in which I have had an interest have lately reached their destinations in America safely enough in one sense, but with the packets empty. What is the use of receiving a boxful of pills when the box is found to be empty?"
"Could not the police recover the pills?"
"They are not asked. There are pills with which one would rather the police had nothing to do even if they are lost. Better to 'bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.' That is a quotation, Mr. Beckwith, of which you may have heard. But we'll leave all that alone. Now play the man speak out! Will you earn that five hundred pounds yes or no?"
I was still reluctant; I felt that I was committing myself to a business altogether out of my line and of which I knew nothing. The mention of the five hundred pounds tipped the beam. It was a sum of which I had dreamt for years. Only a few hours before I had been driven to the conclusion that it was further from me than it ever had been. Now the idea that I could win it in a month or three weeks was a temptation I could not resist. It was a chance which might never recur again; I could not afford to let it slip I would not.
"I will take your pills to New York if you will satisfy me that the five hundred pounds are sure to be mine when I get there."
"That is a point on which it will afford me the greatest possible pleasure to give you entire satisfaction, Mr. Beckwith. You see these look at them; they are genuine English bank-notes."
He produced from an inner pocket in his coat a roll of what looked like bank-notes and which were bank-notes; he placed them in my hands for examination and I proved it. They were of various denominations fives, tens, fifties, and hundreds. There must have been three or four thousand pounds worth. I won't say that I looked at each separate one, but I took careful stock of several. On their genuineness there could not be the faintest possible shadow of a shade of doubt.
The idea that he carried about with him, in such a careless fashion, such a huge sum of money impressed me almost more than anything which had gone before. The individual who would carry about a small fortune in his jacket pocket, and treat it as if it were nothing at all, must either be a very rich or a very remarkable person. I had been taught, in a hard school, to treat money with respect. How anyone could walk about the streets with thousands of pounds lying loose in his jacket pocket was beyond my comprehension. I should have rushed to the nearest bank to ensure its safety. As with his face still lighted by a smile he stood and watched I fancy he understood something of what I felt as I assured myself that those notes of his were genuine.
"If you like," he said, "I will deposit your five hundred pounds in any bank you choose to name, as the property of Hugh Beckwith, to be handed over to you on your return from New York, if you will give me a written agreement to fulfil your share of the bargain I am proposing. More, I will add this; if you fail you shall still have your five hundred pounds if you satisfy me that you have done your best to achieve success."
"I think that is only fair," said the girl, "because Mr. Beckwith may fail through what is really no fault of his."
"Exactly," returned Mr. Stewart, "that is what I had in my mind. So you perceive, Mr. Beckwith, on the lines of this lady's suggestion you stand to win five hundred pounds and to lose nothing."
"Except his life," struck in the girl. "I think it only right that he should be informed that he runs a certain risk of losing that." As she spoke she glanced through the window. "He has gone," she said to the man.
Mr. Stewart laughed, as if she had perpetrated some joke,
"Precisely just as shadows go. You talk of risk? What's risk? You risk your life when you cross the street, because you may be knocked down and killed by a runaway or a skidding motor car."
The girl, who was still looking through the window, observed, "There's a policeman come instead."
CHAPTER VIII
GROVE GARDENS
Since I had left the service of Messrs. Hunter and Barnett I seemed to have tumbled into a sort of topsy-turvydom, where things happened as they had never happened before. For instance, there was the way in which I left that house. Ordinarily, as a matter of course, I should have gone through the front door, out into the street, and so home. But no, Mr. Stewart would not have it. He took me down some stairs to the basement as I descended I thought of the cellar in which I had spent the night; then through a back door which opened into a little yard.
"There are times," he explained the mode of egress needed a little explaining "when I find it advisable to have two ways in and out of a house, one behind and one in front; so I thought it well to rent the house at the back to use as a means of going' to and fro when the door in front is attracting more attention than I care for."
He led me across the yard to where a pair of steps stood against a wall, up the steps, over the wall, on to a second pair of steps which was on the other side, down them, by the side of the house to which I presume he referred, and so into the street beyond.
"I do not think," he observed, "that any of my friends have so far tumbled to this way out. Here you will not find yourself an object of attention. You see the street is empty. You had better stroll to the end; you will find a taxi-cab stand just round the corner; get into one, drive from your house, I should suggest to the City. In the City dismiss your cab and get into another; then discharge that and get into a third; then, by the time you get to your own quarters, if anyone started on your track I should fancy you will have put them off it."
I
