“What do you want me to do?  Tell me again.”

“I have told you already.  I want you to become, for the time, the daughter of the man who died in America; you will claim your inheritance; I will provide you with all the papers; I will stand by you; I will back you up with such a story as will disarm all suspicion.  That is all.”

“Yes.  I understand.  Haven’t people been sent to prison for less, Joe?”

“Foolish people have.  Not people who are well advised and under good management.  Mind you, this business is under my direction.  I am boss.”

She made no reply, but took her candle and went off to bed.

In the dead of night she awakened her husband.

“Joe,” she said, “is it true that you know another girl who would do this for you?”

“More than one, Lotty,” he replied, this man of resource, although he was only half awake.  “More than one.  A great many more.  Half-a-dozen, I know, at least.”

She was silent.  Half an hour afterward she woke him up again.

“Joe,” she said, “I’ve made up my mind.  You sha’n’t say that I refused to do for you what any other girl in the world would have done.”

As a tempter it will be seen that Joe was unsurpassed.

It was now a week since he had received, carefully wrapped in wool, and deposited in a wooden box dispatched by post, a key, newly made.  It was, also, very nearly a week since he had used that key.  It was used during Mr. Emblem’s hour for tea, while James waited and watched outside in an agony of terror.  But Joe did not find what he wanted.  There were in the safe one or two ledgers, a banker’s book, a check-book, and a small quantity of money.  But there were not any records at all of monies invested.  There were no railway certificates, waterwork shares, transfers, or notes of stock, mortgages, loans, or anything at all.  The only thing that he saw was a roll of papers tied up with red tape.  On the roll was written:  “For Iris.  To be given to her on her twenty-first birthday.”

“What the deuce is this, I wonder?” Joe took this out and looked at it suspiciously.  “Can he be going to give her all his money before he dies?  Is he going to make her inherit it at once?” The thought was so exasperating that he slipped the roll into his pocket.  “At all events,” he said, “she sha’n’t have them until I have read them first.  I dare say they won’t be missed for a day or two.”

He calculated that he could read and master the contents that night, and put back the papers in the safe in the morning while James was opening the shop.

“There’s nothing, James,” he whispered as he went out, the safe being locked again.  “There is nothing at all.  Look here, my lad, you must try another way of finding out where the money is.”

“I wish I was sure that he hasn’t carried off something in his pocket,” James murmured.

Joe spent the whole evening alone, contrary to his usual practice, which was, as we have seen, to spend it at a certain music-hall.  He read the papers over and over again.