’You may obtain news as to the mortal remains of your kinsman, the late Marquis of Restalrig, and as to his Will, by walking in the Burlington Arcade on March 11, between the hours of three and half- past three p.m.  You must be attired in full mourning costume, carrying a glove in your left hand, and a black cane, with a silver top, in your right.  A lady will drop her purse beside you.  You will accost her.’

Here the letter, which was typewritten, ended.

‘You won’t?’ said Merton.  ‘Never meet a black-mailer halfway.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Logan.  ‘But look here!’

He gave Merton another letter, in outward respect exactly similar to the first, except that the figure 2 was typewritten in the left corner.  The letter ran thus: 

   ’March 6, 4.25 p.m.

’SIR,—­I regret to have to trouble you with a second communication, but my former letter was posted before a change occurred in the circumstances.  You will be pleased to hear that I have no longer the affliction of speaking of your noble kinsman as “the late Marquis of Restalrig."’

‘Oh my prophetic soul!’ said Merton, ’I guessed at first that he was not dead after all!  Only catalepsy.’  He went on reading:  ’His Lordship recovered consciousness in circumstances which I shall not pain you by describing.  He is now doing as well as can be expected, and may have several years of useful life before him.  I need not point out to you that the conditions of the negotiation are now greatly altered.  On the one hand, my partners and myself may seem to occupy the position of players who work a double ruff at whist.  We are open to the marquis’s offers for release, and to yours for his eternal absence from the scene of life and enjoyment.  But it is by no means impossible that you may have scruples about outbidding your kinsman, especially as, if you did, you would, by the very fact, become subject to perpetual “black-mailing” at our hands.  I speak plainly, as one man of the world to another.  It is also a drawback to our position that you could attain your ends without blame or scandal (your ends being, of course, if the law so determines, immediate succession to the property of the marquis), by merely pushing us, with the aid of the police, to a fatal extreme.  We are, therefore reluctantly obliged to conclude that we cannot put the marquis’s life up to auction between you and him, as my partners, in the first flush of triumph, had conceived.  But any movement on your side against us will be met in such a way that the consequences, both to yourself and your kinsman, will prove to the last degree prejudicial.  For the rest, the arrangements specified in my earlier note of this instant (dated 2.45 P. M.) remain in force.’

Merton returned the letter to Logan.  Their faces were almost equally blank.

‘Let me think!’ said Merton.  He turned, and walked to the window.  Logan re-read the letters and waited.  Presently Merton came back to the fireside.  ’You see, after all, this resolves itself into the ordinary dilemma of brigandage.  We do not want to pay ransom, enormous ransom probably, if we can rescue the marquis, and destroy the gang.  But the marquis himself—­’