"Certainly, you shall be promptly remunerated," he returned, and, thrusting a hand into a breast pocket, he withdrew a letter case stuffed with bank notes. "Pray let me put you right on that point at once by placing that in your safe," he added. "Take from it as the work progresses any sums you may reasonably require. When all is over I will call on you to account for the amount. To-night it stands at 750 pounds." I counted the notes. They were quite new, but perfectly genuine, and of the amount he had stated, and I promptly locked them up in the small strong room that adjoined my office, which, alas! had hitherto seen too little of all such valuables. Then I faced Don Jose again. "My next condition," I said slowly, "is that you give me your entire confidence. There must be nothing kept from me. You must tell me all-- absolutely all." "Ah, but--that is impossible," he replied gently. "I simply dare not reveal the details of the secret, which I want you to work on, to any single soul. If I did, my life would be taken within the following four and twenty hours." And all at once he shivered, as though he had himself caught instinctively some eerie presentiment of his doom. "But how can I hope to work successfully in the dark?" I cried, throwing up my hands. "Easily enough," he returned. "All you have to do is to carry out my instructions, then nothing need be feared. For instance, here is the first task which I desire you should undertake." And again he put his hand in his breast pocket, and this time he did not produce a pocket-book, but a tiny cutting which he explained came from that evening's _Globe_, and which set out this odd notice: To be sold--without Reserve--the Library and Effects of a Refugee Spanish priest, lately deceased. Contains many early printed Books, Horae, Liturgical, and other Manuscripts. By Auction to-morrow (Friday) at 3 PM. The Bromley Mart, King's Street, Covent Garden, WC. Now, almost in spite of myself, I felt flattered by this quaint and unexpected turn of negotiations which dropped so suddenly a mystery and touched on concrete things.