Squercum was by no means satisfied.  He had busied himself in this matter, and had ferreted things out, till he had pretty nearly got to the bottom of that affair about the houses in the East, and had managed to induce the heirs of the old man who had died to employ him.  As to the Pickering property he had not a doubt on the subject.  Old Longestaffe had been induced by promises of wonderful aid and by the bribe of a seat at the Board of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway to give up the title-deeds of the property,—­as far as it was in his power to give them up; and had endeavoured to induce Dolly to do so also.  As he had failed, Melmotte had supplemented his work by ingenuity, with which the reader is acquainted. ...