"What do you want here, fellow?" demanded Perry, opening the door and discovering the little, cringing, shabby figure shrinking into the shadow. "This is not the clerk’s office." "Could I—can I—speak a word with the—the lord?" stammered Samuel. Mr. Perry looked very searchingly at him for a minute or so. Then he relaxed a little and made room for him to pass into the room, which he did, smoothing his flaxen wig over his forehead with his moist palm, and evidently in a desperately uneasy frame of mind. "Do you want to speak to Me?" demanded Lord Beachcombe, in a haughty voice, that sounded so terrible to the clerk, that he could hardly stammer out, "Y—yes." "And what have you to say?" inquired Mr. Perry, in a more encouraging tone. "Speak out, man, don’t be frightened; nobody will hurt you." "Ah! but he would, if he knew," quavered Samuel, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "You mean Mr. Double? I suppose you want to tell us something he is concealing from us, eh? Well, we will protect you from him," said Mr. Perry magnanimously. "’Tis not so much him I’m afraid of as the captain," whispered Samuel, glancing from side to side, as though he expected to see him lurking somewhere about. Then he approached Lord Beachcombe on tiptoe. "What will you give me if I get you those certificates?" "Damnation!" cried Beachcombe, starting up, black with fury; "are my private affairs known to every quill-driver in the town?" Samuel turned livid with terror. "I only know where they are," he whimpered; "I don’t know anything about them." "Well, where are they?" demanded Beachcombe threateningly. A glint of cunning sparkled in Samuel’s eye. "It wouldn’t be any use for me to tell your lordship where they are. No one can get at them but me, and as I shall be suspected, it’s worth a good deal for the risk I run—if the certificates are any use to your lordship." "How do you know what certificates these are, if you say you don’t know anything about them?" interposed Mr. Perry. "Because I heard the captain tell Mr. Double that he could afford to let Lord Beachcombe have everything else, so long as he kept the two certificates back. So he put them where nobody knows but himself and Double and me. And he’ll have them out if I don’t hurry and get there first." "You need not be uneasy about that," said Beachcombe, with a grin of malicious joy. "Captain Freemantle is on his way to Newgate Prison by now, and if those—papers—find their way into my possession, I think it is safe to say that he will never come out except to make the journey to Tyburn." "On his way to Newgate?" cried the little clerk, rubbing his hands with glee. "Then, if we can agree on the price, your lordship can have them in an hour." "If you bring them to me—without reading them—in an hour, I will give you ten guineas," said Lord Beachcombe magnificently.