“Well,” said Sleight, closing the door carefully.  “What news?”

“None,” said Renshaw bluntly.  “Look here, Sleight,” he added, turning to him suddenly.  “Let me out of this game.  I don’t like it.”

“Does that mean you’ve found nothing?” asked Sleight, sarcastically.

“It means that I haven’t looked for anything, and that I don’t intend to without the full knowledge of that d—­d fool who owns the ship.”

“You’ve changed your mind since you wrote that letter,” said Sleight coolly, producing from a drawer the note already known to the reader.  Renshaw mechanically extended his hand to take it.  Mr. Sleight dropped the letter back into the drawer, which he quietly locked.  The apparently simple act dyed Mr. Renshaw’s cheek with color, but it vanished quickly, and with it any token of his previous embarrassment.  He looked at Sleight with the convinced air of a resolute man who had at last taken a disagreeable step but was willing to stand by the consequences.

“I have changed my mind,” he said coolly.  “I found out that it was one thing to go down there as a skilled prospector might go to examine a mine that was to be valued according to his report of the indications, but that it was entirely another thing to go and play the spy in a poor devil’s house in order to buy something he didn’t know he was selling and wouldn’t sell if he did.”

“And something that the man he bought of didn’t think of selling; something he himself never paid for, and never expected to buy,” sneered Sleight.

“But something that we expect to buy from our knowledge of all this, and it is that which makes all the difference.”

“But you knew all this before.”

“I never saw it in this light before.  I never thought of it until I was living there face to face with the old fool I was intending to overreach.  I never was sure of it until this morning, when he actually turned out one of his lodgers that I might have the very room I required to play off our little game in comfortably.  When he did that, I made up my mind to drop the whole thing, and I’m here to do it.”

“And let somebody else take the responsibility—­with the percentage—­unless you’ve also felt it your duty to warn Nott too,” said Sleight with a sneer.

“You only dare say that to me, Sleight,” said Renshaw quietly, “because you have in that drawer an equal evidence of my folly and my confidence; but if you are wise you will not presume too far on either.  Let us see how we stand.  Through the yarn of a drunken captain and a mutinous sailor you became aware of an unclaimed shipment of treasure, concealed in an unknown ship that entered this harbor.  You are enabled, through me, to corroborate some facts and identify the ship.  You proposed to me, as a speculation, to identify the treasure if possible before you purchased the ship.  I accepted the offer without consideration; on consideration I now decline it, but without prejudice or loss to any one but myself.  As to your insinuation I need not remind you that my presence here to-day refutes it.  I would not require your permission to make a much better bargain with a good-natured fool like Nott than I could with you.  Or if I did not care for the business I could have warned the girl”—­