Page:Robert Barr - Lord Stranleigh Philanthropist.djvu/140

 philosophic Blake. "If you advertised in your own name, you could get all the money you demanded. To him that hath shall be given."

"In my own name, yes. That's just the trouble. The secrecy I had hoped to preserve is itself suspicious. I feel the all-seeing eye of the post-office upon me, and I dread the police-station."

You don't need to dread it," cried Blake, as he rose upstanding, and brushed the knees of his trousers, abandoning his task in despair. "I'm the person who would bear the brunt. These letters are all re-directed to me. This house is leased in my name. I beg you to observe that the solicitors in London have abandoned the task of re-directing by hand, and the later letters are all decorated by a rubber stamp, bearing the words: 'E. J. Blake, Saltwater House, Marine Parade, Lyme Regis.' No," concluded the flippant Blake, "the aristocracy in this case goes scathless, and it's me for the prison cell, as my American friends remark."

"My dear Blake, if you'd read less American slang, and peruse, as I do, the classics of our own time, par example, 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,' you would comprehend the inadequacy of such protection as you offer me. The post-office department, besides acting as our modern argosy