“Dear Sir,—­I have to-day consulted Mr. Louis Carlyle, who thinks that you would like to see me.  I will call again in the morning, say at nine o’clock.  If this is too soon or otherwise inconvenient I entreat you to leave a message fixing as early an hour as possible.

“Yours faithfully,

“Herbert Draycott.

“P.S.—­I should add that I am the renter of a safe at the Lucas Street depository. H.D.”

A description of Mr. Draycott made it clear that he was not the West-End bookmaker.  The caller, the servant explained, was a thin, wiry, keen-faced man.  Carrados felt agreeably interested in this development, which seemed to justify his suspicion of a plot.

At five minutes to nine the next morning Mr. Draycott again presented himself.

“Very good of you to see me so soon, sir,” he apologized, on Carrados at once receiving him.  “I don’t know much of English ways—­I’m an Australian—­and I was afraid it might be too early.”

“You could have made it a couple of hours earlier as far as I am concerned,” replied Carrados.  “Or you either for that matter, I imagine,” he added, “for I don’t think that you slept much last night.”

“I didn’t sleep at all last night,” corrected Mr. Draycott.  “But it’s strange that you should have seen that.  I understood from Mr. Carlyle that you—­excuse me if I am mistaken, sir—­but I understood that you were blind.”

Carrados laughed his admission lightly.

“Oh yes,” he said.  “But never mind that.  What is the trouble?”

“I’m afraid it means more than just trouble for me, Mr. Carrados.”  The man had steady, half-closed eyes, with the suggestion of depth which one notices in the eyes of those whose business it is to look out over great expanses of land or water; they were turned towards Carrados’s face with quiet resignation in their frankness now.  “I’m afraid it spells disaster.  I am a working engineer from the Mount Magdalena district of Coolgardie.  I don’t want to take up your time with outside details, so I will only say that about two years ago I had an opportunity of acquiring a share in a very promising claim—­gold, you understand, both reef and alluvial.  As the work went on I put more and more into the undertaking—­you couldn’t call it a venture by that time.  The results were good, better than we had dared to expect, but from one cause and another the expenses were terrible.  We saw that it was a bigger thing than we had bargained for and we admitted that we must get outside help.”

So far Mr. Draycott’s narrative had proceeded smoothly enough under the influence of the quiet despair that had come over the man.  But at this point a sudden recollection of his position swept him into a frenzy of bitterness.

“Oh, what the blazes is the good of going over all this again!” he broke out.  “What can you or anyone else do anyhow?  I’ve been robbed, rooked, cleared out of everything I possess,” and tormented by recollections and by the impotence of his rage the unfortunate engineer beat the oak table with the back of his hand until his knuckles bled.