"We alone are certain that the man Morse, for all his equanimity and the mask he has presented to London during the season, has been living under the influence of some dirty, cowardly fear or other!"
"Fear, if you like, Pat, but I don't think it is probably dirty, or even cowardly. You forget Miss Morse."
"Perhaps you're right. At any rate, if Gideon Morse is really menaced by some great danger, what cleverer trick could he have played? To let the world suppose that it's his whim and fancy to live like a rook at the top of an elm tree, when all the time he's providing against the possibility of annihilation, that's a stroke of genius."
"Good for you, Pat," said Arthur with a wink to me, "you're on the track of it."
"Indeed, and I think I am," said the big guardsman simply, "and here's the cunning of it, the supreme sense of self-preservation. If that man Morse is in fear of his life, and in fear for his daughter's too, he couldn't have invented a more perfect security than he has done. From all we know, from all Tom has told us, no one can get at them now but an archangel!"
"For my part," he said, "as I'm vowed to the service, I'm going straight to Brazil and I'm going to find out everything I can about the past life of Gideon Morse. I speak Spanish as you know. I think I'm fairly diplomatic, and in a little more than a couple of months I'll return with big news, if I'm not very much mistaken. And there's always the cable too. We are pledged to Tom, but beyond that we're united together to save the little lady from evil or from harm. To-morrow I sail for Rio."
"And I," I said, "have already made my plans. To-morrow I disappear absolutely from ordinary life. Only two people in London will know where I am, and what I am doing--Preston, my servant in Piccadilly, and one other whom I shall appoint at the offices of my paper. While Arthur is gathering information which will be of the greatest use, I must be working on the spot. I imagine there isn't much time to lose."
"You, Pat, will stay here, lead your ordinary life, and hold yourself ready for anything and everything when I call upon you. And as far as I can see," I concluded, "there will be a very pressing necessity for your help before much more water has flowed under Richmond Bridge."