"Can you tell me where Jenner met Marshall on that night?" "No, I cannot. All I know is what he told me--that he had seen him two hours before he came to see me. He boasted of his blackmailing. That is all I can tell you." Geoffrey rose. "Well, you have given me some information, if not very much," he said. "Now I will go and see Roper to make certain how the bill came to be stolen." "My husband stole it when he was with Roper," said Mrs. Jenner. And with this last piece of information Geoffrey departed to follow up the clue. CHAPTER XVIII. THE MONEY-LENDER. Mr. Julian Roper had an establishment in Golden-square, Soho. Although this gentleman was over eighty, he had not yet repented of his many iniquities, but callously continued to conduct his evil transactions. His offices--two dingy rooms--were on the ground floor of the house; the apartments overhead being occupied by himself and a crabbed old woman who acted as his housekeeper. The hag was, if possible, worse than her master; and from long years of association, she possessed considerable influence over him; she was a widow--or at least it was as such that she described herself--for her husband had left her many years before in sheer disgust at her tyranny. Mrs. Hutt was her name; and she had a son who acted as clerk to Julian. When Geoffrey Heron arrived at this sordid temple of Mammon, he was received by the drudge--a young-old person of no particular age, dressed in a suit of rusty black. He informed the visitor that his master was absent. The clerk, who answered to the name of Jerry Hutt, gave Mr. Heron a broken-backed chair, and returned to his desk, which was smuggled away into a corner. With a shrug at the poverty of the place and the apparently enfeebled intellect of the person in charge, the young man took a seat and amused himself by taking stock of his surroundings. Jerry took not the slightest notice of Geoffrey after the first greeting; he wrote hard with his tongue thrust into his cheek, giving vent at times to a faint chuckle which was positively uncanny. Coming to the conclusion that he was half-witted, Heron came to regard him in the light in which most people saw him--more as an article of furniture than a man. But in this he, in common with the rest of the visitors to that den, was wrong. For underneath his assumed stupidity Jerry was as sharp as the proverbial needle. Luckily Heron had not long to wait. In about a quarter of an hour Jerry raised his big head and looked out of the window; a shuffling step was heard at the door; and a minute later someone came coughing and grumbling along the narrow passage. "Mr. Roper," chuckled Jerry, pointing towards the inner room. "Go in there."