"Your duty. You have done more. You have watched my enemies even though I sneered at your well-meant warning," he said. "But if you have watched, you perhaps know where the pair are in hiding."

"Lyle lives at the First Avenue Hotel, in Holborn. Adams lives in a small furnished flat in Addison Mansions, close to Addison Road railway station."

"Lives there in preference to an hotel because he can go in and out shabby and down-at-heel without attracting comment--eh?"

"I suppose so. I had great difficulty in following him to his hiding-place without arousing his suspicions."

"Does he really mean mischief?" asked the princ.i.p.al of Statham Brothers, bending slightly towards his secretary.

"Yes; undoubtedly he does. The pair are here with the intention of bringing ruin upon you and upon the house of Statham," was Rolfe's quiet reply.

"Then only you can save me, Rolfe," cried the old man, starting up wildly.

"How? Tell me, and I am ready to act upon your instructions," Rolfe said.

The millionaire placed his hand upon the young man's shoulder and said:

"Repeat those words."

Rolfe did so.

"And you will not seek to inquire the reason of a request I may make to you, even though it may sound an extraordinary and perhaps mysterious one?"

"I will act as you wish, without desiring to know your motives."

The great financier stood looking straight into his secretary's eyes.

He was deeply in earnest, for his very life now depended upon the other's a.s.sent. How could he put the proposal to the man before him?

"Then I take that as a promise, Rolfe," he said at last. "You will not withdraw. You will swear to a.s.sist me at all hazards--to save me from these men."

"I swear."

"Good! Then to-day--nay, at this very hour--you must make what no doubt will be to you a great sacrifice."

"What do you mean?" asked Rolfe, quickly.

"I mean," the old man said, in a very slow distinct voice--"I mean that you must first sacrifice the honour of the woman you love--Maud Petrovitch."

"Maud Petrovitch!" he gasped, utterly mystified.

"Yes," he answered. "You have promised to save me--you have sworn to a.s.sist me, and the sacrifice is imperative! It is her honour--or my death!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

DESCRIBES THE MAN FROM NOWHERE.

Late that same night, in the small and rather well-furnished dining-room of a flat close to Addison Road station, the beetle-browed man known to some as John Adams and to others as Jean Adam was seated in a comfortable armchair smoking a cigarette.

He was no longer the shabby, half-famished looking stranger who had been watching outside Statham's house in Park Lane, but rather dandified in his neat dinner jacket, glossy shirt-front, and black tie. Adventurer was written all over his face. He was a man whose whole life history had been a romance and who had knocked about in various odd and out-of-the-way corners of the world. A cosmopolitan to the backbone, he, like his friend Leonard Lyle, whom he was at that moment expecting, hated the trammels of civilised society, and their lives had mostly been spent in places where human life was cheap and where justice was unknown.

Alone in that small room where the dinner-cloth had been removed and a decanter and gla.s.ses had been placed by his one elderly serving-woman, who had now gone for the night, he was muttering to himself as he smoked--murmuring incoherent words that sounded much like threats.

It was difficult to recognise in this well-groomed, gentlemanly-looking man, with the diamond in his shirt-front and the sparkling ring upon his finger, the low-looking tramp whose eyes had encountered those of the man whose ruin he now sought to encompa.s.s.

In half a dozen capitals of the world he was known as Jean Adam, for he spoke French perfectly, and pa.s.sed as a French subject, a native of Algiers; but in London, New York, and Montreal he was known as the wandering and adventurous Englishman John Adams.

Whether he was really English was doubtful. True, he spoke English without the slightest trace of accent, yet sometimes in his gesture, when unduly excited, there was unconsciously betrayed his foreign birth.

His French was as perfect as his English. He spoke with an accent of the South, and none ever dreamed that he could at the same time speak the pure, unadulterated c.o.c.kney slang.

He had just glanced at his watch, and knit his brows when the electric bell rang, and he rose to admit a short, triangular-faced, queer-looking little old man, whose back was bent and whose body seemed too large for his legs. He, too, was in evening-dress, and carried his overcoat across his arm.

"I began to fear, old chap, that you couldn't come," Adams exclaimed, as he hung his friend's coat in the narrow hall. "You didn't acknowledge my wire."

"I couldn't until too late. I was out," the other explained, in a tone of apology. "Well," he asked, with a sigh, as he stretched himself before he seated himself in the proffered chair, "what has happened?"

"A lot, my dear fellow. We shall come out on top yet."

"Be more explicit. What do you mean?"

"What I say," was Adams' response. "I've seen old Statham to-day."

"And he's seen you--eh?"

"Of course he has. And he's scared out of his senses--thinks he's seen a ghost, most likely," he laughed, in triumph. "But he'll find I'm much more than a ghost before he's much older, the canting old blackguard."

Lyle thought for a second.

"The sight of you has forearmed him! It was rather injudicious just at this moment, wasn't it?"

"Not at all. I meant to give him a surprise. If I'd have gone up to the house, rung the bell, and asked to see him, I should have been refused. He sees absolutely n.o.body, for there's a mystery connected with the house. n.o.body has ever been inside."

"What!" exclaimed the old hunchbacked mining engineer. "That's interesting! Tell me more about it. Is it like the haunted house in Berkeley Square about which people used to talk so much years ago?"

"I don't think it's ever been alleged to be haunted," responded Adams.

"Yet there are several weird and amazing stories told of it, and of the grim shadows which overhang it both night and day."

"What stories have you heard?" asked his companion, taking a cigarette from the box, for he had suddenly become much interested.

"Well, it is said that the place is the most gorgeously furnished of any house in that select quarter, and that it is full of art treasures, old silver, miniatures, and antique furniture, for old Statham is a well-known collector and is known to have purchased many very fine specimens of antiques during the past few years. They say that, having furnished the place from kitchen to garret in the most costly manner possible, he sought out the old love of his earlier days--a woman who a.s.sisted him in the foundation of his fortune, and invited her to inspect the house. They went round it together, and after luncheon he proposed marriage to her. To his chagrin, she declined the honour of becoming the wife of a millionaire."

"She was a bit of a fool, I should suppose," remarked the hunchback.

"They were fond enough of each other. She was nearly twenty years his junior, and though they had been separated for a good many years, he was still devoted to her. When she refused to marry him, there was a scene.

And at last she was compelled to admit the truth--she was the wife of another! A quarter of an hour later she left the house in tears, and from that moment the beautiful mansion, with the exception of two or three rooms, has been closed. He will allow n.o.body to pa.s.s upstairs, and the place remains the same as on that day when all his hopes of happiness were shattered."

"But you said there were stories concerning the house," Lyle remarked, between the whiffs of his cigarette.

"So there are. Both yesterday and to-day I've been making inquiries and been told many curious things. A statement, for instance, made to me is to the effect that one night about a month ago the chauffeur of the great Lancashire cotton-spinner living a few doors away was seated on the car at two o'clock in the morning, ready to take two of his master's guests down to their home near Epsom, when he noticed Statham's windows all brilliantly lit.