Chapter Nine
Enter Mr. Abel Fontaine
“I don’t blame you!” rapped Estephe Bernard. “Suppose we say, then, a thousand pounds if you show us the present hiding-place of Chao-Zhang, the payment to be in no way subject to whether we profit by your information or not?”
Abel Fontaine gave out a Gallic shrug of his shoulders and returned to the armchair which he had just quitted. He reseated himself, placing his hat and cane upon my writing-table.
“A little agreement in black and white?” he suggested smoothly.
Bernard raised himself up out of the white cane chair, and, bending forward over a corner of the table, scribbled busily upon a sheet of notepaper with my fountain-pen.
Fontaine was a big man, dark-haired and well-groomed, who toyed with a monocle most unsuitable to his type. During th
