I got a job at the Ritz, but I was took ill a few days
afterwards. I went to see a doctor. From him I got my
death-warrant, sir."
"Is it heart?"
"It's heart, sir," the man acknowledged. "The doctor told me I
might snuff out at any moment. I can't live, anyway, for more
than a year. I've got a little girl."
"Now just why have you come to see me?" Francis asked.
"For just this, sir," the man replied. "Here's my account of
what happened," he went on, drawing some sheets of foolscap from
his pocket. "It's written in my own hand and there are two
witnesses to my signature--one a clergyman, sir, and the other a
doctor, they thinking it was a will or something. I had it in my
mind to send that to Scotland Yard, and then I remembered that I
hadn't a penny to leave my little girl. I began to wonder--think
as meanly of me as you like, sir--how I could still make some
money out of this. I happened to know that you were none too
friendly disposed towards Sir Timothy. This confession of mine,
if it wouldn't mean hanging, would mean imprisonment for the rest
of his life. You could make a better bargain with him than me,
sir. Do you want to hold him in your power? If so, you can have
this confession, all signed and everything, for two hundred
pounds, and as I live, sir, that two hundred pounds is to pay for
my funeral, and the balance for my little girl.
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