“I should like to go—­I will go,” said Breton.  “And if that grave proves to be—­empty—­I’ll—­I’ll tell you something.”

Spargo looked up with sharp instinct.

“You’ll tell me something?  Something?  What?”

“Never mind—­wait until we see if that coffin contains a dead body or lead and sawdust.  If there’s no body there——­”

At that moment one of the senior messenger boys came in and approached Spargo.  His countenance, usually subdued to an official stolidity, showed signs of something very like excitement.

“There’s a man downstairs asking for you, Mr. Spargo,” he said.  “He’s been hanging about a bit, sir,—­seems very shy about coming up.  He won’t say what he wants, and he won’t fill up a form, sir.  Says all he wants is a word or two with you.”

“Bring him up at once!” commanded Spargo.  He turned to Breton when the boy had gone.  “There!” he said, laughing.  “This is the man about the stick—­you see if it isn’t.”

“You’re such a cock-sure chap, Spargo,” said Breton.  “You’re always going on a straight line.”

“Trying to, you mean,” retorted Spargo.  “Well, stop here, and hear what this chap has to say:  it’ll no doubt be amusing.”

The messenger boy, deeply conscious that he was ushering into Spargo’s room an individual who might shortly carry away a thousand pounds of good Watchman money in his pocket, opened the door and introduced a shy and self-conscious young man, whose nervousness was painfully apparent to everybody and deeply felt by himself.  He halted on the threshold, looking round the comfortably-furnished room, and at the two well-dressed young men which it framed as if he feared to enter on a scene of such grandeur.

“Come in, come in!” said Spargo, rising and pointing to an easy-chair at the side of his desk.  “Take a seat.  You’ve called about that reward, of course.”

The man in the chair eyed the two of them cautiously, and not without suspicion.  He cleared his throat with a palpable effort.

“Of course,” he said.  “It’s all on the strict private.  Name of Edward Mollison, sir.”

“And where do you live, and what do you do?” asked Spargo.

“You might put it down Rowton House, Whitechapel,” answered Edward Mollison.  “Leastways, that’s where I generally hang out when I can afford it.  And—­window-cleaner.  Leastways, I was window cleaning when—­when——­”

“When you came in contact with the stick we’ve been advertising about,” suggested Spargo.  “Just so.  Well, Mollison—­what about the stick?”

Mollison looked round at the door, and then at the windows, and then at Breton.

“There ain’t no danger of me being got into trouble along of that stick?” he asked. “’Cause if there is, I ain’t a-going to say a word—­no, not for no thousand pounds!  Me never having been in no trouble of any sort, guv’nor—­though a poor man.”

“Not the slightest danger in the world, Mollison,” replied Spargo.  “Not the least.  All you’ve got to do is to tell the truth—­and prove that it is the truth.  So it was you who took that queer-looking stick out of Mr. Aylmore’s rooms in Fountain Court, was it?”