“Was it one that he could prove?”

“Easily.”

“Could I?”

“Anybody could.”

“Well, and what’s your price?”

“Fifty pounds.”

“Nonsense!  I’m not a rich man like Mr. Steel.”

“I don’t take less from anybody—­not much less, anyhow!”

“Not twenty in hard cash?”

“Not me; but look here, mister, you show me thirty and we’ll see.”

The voice drew uncomfortably close.  And there were steps upon the cross-roads at last; they were those of one advancing with lumbering gait and of another stepping nimbly backward.  The latter laughed aloud.

“Did you really think I would come to meet the writer of a letter like yours, at night, in a spot like this, with a single penny-piece in my pocket?  Come to my cottage, and we’ll settle there.”

“I’m not coming in!”

“To the gate, then.  It isn’t three hundred yards from this.  I’ll lead the way.”

Langholm set off at a brisk walk, his heart in his mouth.  But the lumbering steps did not gain upon him; a muttered grumbling was their only accompaniment; and in minute they saw the lights.  In another minute they were at the wicket.

“You really prefer not to come in?”

There was a sly restrained humor in Langholm’s tone.

“I do—­and don’t be long.”

“Oh, no, I shan’t be a minute.”

There were other lights in the other cottage.  It was not at all late.  A warm parallelogram appeared and disappeared as Langholm opened his door and went in.  Was it a sound of bolts and bars that followed?  Abel was still wondering when his prospective paymaster threw up the window and reappeared across the sill.

“It was a three-figured check you had from Mr. Steel, was it?”

“Yes—­yes—­but not so loud!”

“And then he sent you to the devil to do your worst?”

“That’s your way of putting it.”

“I do the same—­without the check.”

And the window shut with a slam, the hasp was fastened, and the blind pulled down.

CHAPTER XXVI

A CARDINAL POINT

The irresistible discomfiture of this ruffian did not affect the value of the evidence which he had volunteered.  Langholm was glad to remember that he had volunteered it; the creature was well served for his spite and his cupidity; and the man of peace and letters, whose temperament shrank from contention of any kind, could not but congratulate himself upon an incidental triumph for which it was impossible to feel the smallest compunction.  Moreover, he had gained his point.  It was enough for him to know that there was a certain secret in Steel’s life, upon which the wretch Abel had admittedly traded, even as his superior Minchin had apparently intended to do before him.  Only those two seemed to have been in this secret, and one of them still lived to reveal it when called upon with authority.  The nature of the secret mattered nothing in the meanwhile.  Here was the motive, without which the case against John Buchanan Steel must have remained incomplete.  Langholm added it to his notes—­and trembled!