Mr. Nash considered. The expression which had been on his face a few minutes ago had nearly vanished. The ex-butler had expressed himself in terms which the solicitor felt might justify him in modifying the attitude he had been disposed to take up. That Morgan had been, and still was, presumptuous went without saying; at the same time, as matters were turning out, it seemed that there were things which might be said on the other side; at least so it appeared to Herbert Nash. On the whole, he was inclined to concede as much. He took a few steps, to and fro, beside the groyne; then planting himself directly in front of Morgan, he told him his mind, rather in sorrow, perhaps, than in anger; indeed his bearing altogether was very different from what it had been.  
"I tell you what it is, Morgan, your conduct, from first to last, has been bad."
 
Mr. Morgan smiled at him, affably.
 
"Has it? That's good, coming from you."
 
"That's where you've got the wrong end of the stick; whatever I've done I've done nothing to you."
 
"No; and therefore you think that I've no right to put a finger in the pie you've found."
 
"You'd no right to force yourself into my place, and run the rule over my things."
 
"That was luck, Nash, pure luck. I didn't call intending to run the rule over your things; is it likely? But if you will carry papers in your letter-case, you shouldn't leave your letter-case lying about."
 
"Idiot that I was! I found what I'd done soon after I'd started, but I was fool enough not to come back for it."
 
"You weren't an idiot; not at all; it was the best thing that could have happened for both of us--that I should find it."
 
"I'm afraid I can't agree. To begin with, see how awkward you've made it for me with my wife."
 
"Have I?"
 
"She can't understand what I have done which gives you any title to call yourself my friend--you!"
 
"Can't she?"
 
"And how am I going to explain? I may only be--as you suggest--a poor brute of a country solicitor; but you forget that she's a lady."
 
"Not for one moment. Mrs. Nash is a perfect lady; none knows that better than I do. But, if I help you to make your fortune; if we become partners in, say, a mercantile speculation; if I show you how to pour gold, and all the pretty things gold can buy, into her lap, will she require any better explanation? I think not. My dear fellow, you exaggerate the difficulties she will make; believe me.
 
"You talk very largely, but how are you going to do these things? I had the letter, and I didn't see my way."
 
"You didn't? Then that shows how fortunate it was that you communicated the contents of the letter to me; because I do. Tell me--now be frank; I'll be perfectly frank with you; it's to our common interest to be frank with each other--how far did you go?"
 
"I looked up Mr. Frank Clifford."
 
"And found?"
 
"That Marlborough Buildings is the head office of Peter Piper's Popular Pills; of which business Clifford's the managing director."
 
"And what else?"
 
"That's as far as I got; I meant to go on after--after----"
 
"After the honeymoon? I see; I've got a great deal further than that, a great deal. I take it you're aware that Peter Piper's Popular Pills is one of the medicines of the hour; the profits are stupendous; sometimes amounting to a hundred thousand pounds in a year, possibly more."
 
"I dare say; that doesn't want much finding out, everybody knows it; but what's it to do with us?"
 
"A good deal."
 
"How?"
 
"We're going to have a share of the business, and of the profits, and probably of former profits also."
 
"Are we indeed? How are we going to manage it?"
 
"Do you know who the proprietor was?"
 
Again the two men eyed each other; this time as if Nash was trying to read in Morgan's eyes the answer to his question.
 
"He was Donald Lindsay of Cloverlea."
 
"You don't mean it?"
 
"I do."
 
"Are you sure?"
 
"Perfectly. He called himself Joseph Oldfield; he was a bachelor; he was a reserved man, standoffish, of secretive habits. He had a flat in Bloomsbury Square, I've seen it, where he was supposed to spend most of his time in thinking out new advertising dodges; the present position of Peter Piper's Popular Pills is principally owing to clever advertising. The proprietor was his own advertising agent, he was a master of the art. He called himself, as I've said, Joseph Oldfield in town, and in the country he was Donald Lindsay of Cloverlea."
 
"The old fox!"
 
"I don't think you can exactly call him that; there was nothing in the opprobrious sense foxy about him. He was one of those men who live double lives, owing, one might say, to the pressure of circumstances; there are more of them about than is supposed. He bought the pill business when it was at a very low ebb; he hadn't very much money himself, at that time, and I dare say he got it for a song. Mrs. Lindsay was just dead; his girl was with her nurses, or at school; for business purposes he called himself Oldfield; it isn't every man who cares to have it known that he's associated with a patent medicine; in England it's quite a common custom for a man to carry on a business under an alias, under half-a-dozen aliases sometimes. As time went on I take it that his secretive habit grew stronger; he became less and less disposed to have it known that Donald Lindsay had anything to do with pills, which do rather stink in people's nostrils; and so he drifted into the double life. That's the word, drifted."
 
"You seem to have got up his history."
 
"I have a way of finding out things; people have noticed it before. Now take Mr. Frank Clifford; I can tell you something about him. He's a young man, a protégé of Oldfield's--we'll call him Oldfield. Oldfield had faith in him, he'd have trusted him with his immortal soul. That's how it was that it was such a shock to him to learn that he had been taking liberties with his name."
 
"But had he?"
 
"Had he what?"
 
"Been taking liberties with Lindsay's name?"
 
"He forged those bills which Guldenheim and his friends got hold of."
 
"That's what I guessed; but guessing's one thing, proof's another."
 
"Of course it is; I've the proof. I have some of the bills; I got hold of them rather neatly, though, as a matter of abstract right, I've as much title to them as anybody else. When you show Mr. Clifford one of them he won't deny he forged it."
 
"Yes; when I show it."
 
"Exactly. I said when you show it to him; and you're going to show it, if necessary, that's part of the scheme; though it mayn't be necessary, since it's quite possible he'll capitulate at once. My dear chap, at the present moment, to all intent's and purposes, Mr. Frank Clifford is the sole proprietor of one of the finest businesses in the world, and one of the largest fortunes in England, while the actual owner is starving in town."
 
"It's hard u............