“Then I have business with you,” continued Mr. Sylvester, laying the man’s own card down on the table before him. “My name is Sylvester,” he proceeded, with a calmness that surprised himself; “and I am the uncle of the young man upon—whom you are at present presuming to levy blackmail.”
The assurance which for a moment had deserted the countenance of the other, returned with a flash. “His uncle!” reechoed he, with a low anomalous bow; “then it is from you I may expect the not unreasonable sum which I demand as the price of my attentions to your nephew’s interest. Very good, I am not particular from what quarter it comes, so that it does come and that before the clock has struck the hour which I have set as the limit of my forbearance.”
“Which is seven o’clock, I believe?”
“Which is seven o’clock.”
Mr. Sylvester folded his arms and sternly eyed the man before him. “You still adhere to your intention, then, of forwarding to Mr. Stuyvesant at that hour, the sealed communication now in the hands of your lawyer?”
The smile with which the other responded was like the glint of a partly sheathed dagger. “My lawyer has already received his instructions. Nothing but an immediate countermand on my part, will prevent the communication of which you speak, from going to Mr. Stuyvesant at seven o’clock.”
The sigh which rose in Mr. Sylvester’s breast did not disturb the severe immobility of his lip. “Have you ever considered the possibility,” said he, “of the man whom you overheard talking in the restaurant in Dey Street two years ago, not being Mr. Bertram Sylvester of the Madison Bank?”