Mr. Sidebotham got up and locked the door of his study and drew down the blinds of both windows.  Then he took a bunch of keys from his pocket and opened a black tin box.  He ferreted about among blue and white papers for a few seconds, enveloping himself as he did so in a cloud of blue tobacco smoke.

“I feel like a detective already,” Shorthouse laughed.

“Speak low, please,” returned the other, glancing round the room.  “We must observe the utmost secrecy.  Perhaps you would be kind enough to close the registers,” he went on in a still lower voice.  “Open registers have betrayed conversations before now.”

Shorthouse began to enter into the spirit of the thing.  He tiptoed across the floor and shut the two iron gratings in the wall that in American houses supply hot air and are termed “registers.”  Mr. Sidebotham had meanwhile found the paper he was looking for.  He held it in front of him and tapped it once or twice with the back of his right hand as if it were a stage letter and himself the villain of the melodrama.

“This is a letter from Joel Garvey, my old partner,” he said at length.  “You have heard me speak of him.”

The other bowed.  He knew that many years before Garvey & Sidebotham had been well known in the Chicago financial world.  He knew that the amazing rapidity with which they accumulated a fortune had only been surpassed by the amazing rapidity with which they had immediately afterwards disappeared into space.  He was further aware—­his position afforded facilities—­that each partner was still to some extent in the other’s power, and that each wished most devoutly that the other would die.

The sins of his employer’s early years did not concern him, however.  The man was kind and just, if eccentric; and Shorthouse, being in New York, did not probe to discover more particularly the sources whence his salary was so regularly paid.  Moreover, the two men had grown to like each other and there was a genuine feeling of trust and respect between them.

“I hope it’s a pleasant communication, sir,” he said in a low voice.

“Quite the reverse,” returned the other, fingering the paper nervously as he stood in front of the fire.

“Blackmail, I suppose.”

“Precisely.”  Mr. Sidebotham’s cigar was not burning well; he struck a match and applied it to the uneven edge, and presently his voice spoke through clouds of wreathing smoke.

“There are valuable papers in my possession bearing his signature.  I cannot inform you of their nature; but they are extremely valuable to me.  They belong, as a matter of fact, to Garvey as much as to me.  Only I’ve got them—­”

“I see.”

“Garvey writes that he wants to have his signature removed—­wants to cut it out with his own hand.  He gives reasons which incline me to consider his request—­”

“And you would like me to take him the papers and see that he does it?”