"An offer, sir?"
"Yes! I fancied that you loved Lucy and were broken-hearted by the news
of her engagement to Hope. I therefore intended to ask you to give me,
or rather lend me, five hundred pounds on condition that I helped you
to--"
"Stop, Professor," said Random, coloring, "I should never have bought
Miss Kendal as my wife on those terms."
"Of course! of course! and--as I say--there is no more to be said. I
shall therefore agree to Lucy's engagement to Hope"--Braddock carefully
omitted to say that he had already agreed and had been paid one thousand
pounds to agree--"and will congratulate you when you lead Donna Inez to
the altar."
"I never said anything about Donna Inez, Professor Braddock."
"Of course not: modern reticence. However, I can see through a brick
wall as well as most people. I understand, so let us drop the subject,
my boy. And this five hundred pounds--"
"I cannot lend it to you, Professor. The fact is, I lost heaps of coin
at Monte Carlo, and am not in a position to--"
"Very good, let us shelve that also," said Braddock with apparent
heartiness, although he was really very angry at his failure. "I am
sorry, though, as I wish to get back the mummy and to revenge poor
Sidney Bolton's death."
"How can the five hundred do that?" asked Random with interest.
"Well," drawled the Professor with his eyes on the young man's attentive
face, "Captain Hervey of The Diver came to me yesterday and proposed
to search for the assassin and his plunder on condition that I paid him
five hundred pounds. I am, as you know, very poor for a scientist,
and so I wished to borrow the five hundred from you on condition that
Lucy--"
"We won't talk of that again," said Random hurriedly; "but do you mean
to say that this Captain Hervey knows of anything likely to solve this
mystery?"
"He says that he does not, and merely proposes to search. From what I
have seen of the man I should think that he had all the capacities of a
good bloodhound and would certainly succeed. But he will not move a step
without money."
"Five hundred pounds," murmured Random thoughtfully, while the Professor
watched him closely. "I can tell you how to obtain it."
"How? In what way?"
"Don Pedro seems to be rich, and he wants the mummy," said the baronet.
"So when he comes here ask him to--"
"Certainly not: certainly not," raged Braddock, clapping on his hat in
a fury. "How dare you make such a proposition to me, Random! If this Don
Pedro offers the reward and Hervey finds the mummy, he will simply hand
it over to your friend."
"He can scarcely do that, since you have bought the mummy. But Don Pedro
is willing to purchase it from you."