“Humph!  That means you love another.”

“I am not bound to tell you my private affairs, Professor.”

“Quite so:  quite so; but Inez is a pretty and romantic name.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, sir,” said Random stiffly.

Braddock chuckled, having read the truth in the flush which had crept over Random’s tanned face.

“I ask your pardon,” he said elaborately.  “I am an old man, and I was your father’s friend.  You must not mind if I have been a trifle inquisitive.”

“Say no more, sir:  that is all right.”

“I don’t agree with you, Random.  Things are not all right and never will be until my mummy is discovered.  Now you can help me.”

“In what way?” asked the other uneasily.

“With money.  Understand, my boy,” added the Professor in a genial way which he knew well how to assume, “I should have preferred Lucy becoming your wife.  However, since she prefers Hope, there’s no more to be said on that score.  I therefore will not make the offer I came here to make.”

“An offer, sir?”

“Yes!  I fancied that you loved Lucy and were broken-hearted by the news of her engagement to Hope.  I therefore intended to ask you to give me, or rather lend me, five hundred pounds on condition that I helped you to—­”

“Stop, Professor,” said Random, coloring, “I should never have bought Miss Kendal as my wife on those terms.”

“Of course! of course! and—­as I say—­there is no more to be said.  I shall therefore agree to Lucy’s engagement to Hope”—­ Braddock carefully omitted to say that he had already agreed and had been paid one thousand pounds to agree—­“and will congratulate you when you lead Donna Inez to the altar.”

“I never said anything about Donna Inez, Professor Braddock.”

“Of course not:  modern reticence.  However, I can see through a brick wall as well as most people.  I understand, so let us drop the subject, my boy.  And this five hundred pounds—­”

“I cannot lend it to you, Professor.  The fact is, I lost heaps of coin at Monte Carlo, and am not in a position to—­”

“Very good, let us shelve that also,” said Braddock with apparent heartiness, although he was really very angry at his failure.  “I am sorry, though, as I wish to get back the mummy and to revenge poor Sidney Bolton’s death.”

“How can the five hundred do that?” asked Random with interest.

“Well,” drawled the Professor with his eyes on the young man’s attentive face, “Captain Hervey of The Diver came to me yesterday and proposed to search for the assassin and his plunder on condition that I paid him five hundred pounds.  I am, as you know, very poor for a scientist, and so I wished to borrow the five hundred from you on condition that Lucy—­”

“We won’t talk of that again,” said Random hurriedly; “but do you mean to say that this Captain Hervey knows of anything likely to solve this mystery?”