'We don't want to have any confounded servants listening to what we have to say.' 'Corroboration, Mr. Fraser----' 'Don't call me out of my name.' 'Corroboration, Mr. Fraser, is sometimes useful--you will have to be quick if you wish to say anything before I ring the bell.' 'Look here. Of course I know you're only bluffing me, but I don't wish to make myself disagreeable. You give me those papers you've been talking about and my capital, and five per cent, interest, and you shall have the bill.' 'Mr. Fraser----' 'I wish you wouldn't call me by that name. What's the good of it?' 'I'll tell you what I might be persuaded to do. You give me that bill, and your word of honour that you will contradict any libellous stories you may hear reflecting on the genuineness of my father's signature, and so long as you refrain your own tongue from indiscretion I may keep still.' 'And I'm to lose my money?' 'And save your life.' 'Don't talk silly nonsense. I'm not going to let you rob me with my eyes open. Now I'll tell you what I'll do. You give me thirty thousand pounds.' 'Mr. Fraser, if you don't hand over that bill in sixty seconds I ring the bell. If I ring again, you pass into the hands of the police and the law must take its course.' 'Give you the bill? You don't suppose I've got it on me?' I stood with my watch in hand. 'Fifteen seconds.' 'My lord, you've had my money--you can't deny you've had my money! And you've had it all these years! A great gentleman like you don't want to rob a man like me! 'Thirty seconds.' 'My lord, listen to reason! I'm a poor man! I really am! I've had the most frightful losses! I've had to do with a lot of thieves!' 'Forty-five seconds.' 'Have mercy, my lord, have mercy! Make it half the money! Say ten thousand! Call it five! You don't want to leave me without a penny, my lord!' 'Sixty seconds. What they call the Birmingham Mystery will now be solved.' 'My lord, don't ring that bell.' He caught me by the arm. 'Remove your arm.' 'You shall have the bill.' 'Give it me.' He began to fumble with a pocket-book. 'My lord, I do ask you to listen to reason! I'm sure you don't want----' 'If you say another word I ring.' He handed me a slip of blue paper. It was a bill, dated some sixteen years back, promising to pay thirty thousand pounds three months after date. It was signed 'Sherrington.' An endorsement was scrawled across it--'Twickenham.' That endorsement was the little accident which had sent my double to San Francisco. When I had gathered the purport of the document I looked at Mr. Acrodato. Murder was in his eyes. 'What are you going to give me for it?' 'Your life.' 'You cursed thief?' I didn't like the words, nor the way in which he said them. There are occasions on which the devil enters into me. That was one. I was a much smaller man than he, but I have physical strength altogether beyond what the average stranger suspects, and a curious mastery of what we will call certain tricks.