' And he promptly entered; shutting the board-room door
after him, as carefully as if he were about to plot a murder.
He was the man at a pound a week who made the inquiries. It was no
virtue or merit in Nadgett that he transacted all his Anglo-Bengalee
business secretly and in the closest confidence; for he was born to be
a secret. He was a short, dried-up, withered old man, who seemed to have
secreted his very blood; for nobody would have given him credit for the
possession of six ounces of it in his whole body. How he lived was a
secret; where he lived was a secret; and even what he was, was a secret.
In his musty old pocket-book he carried contradictory cards, in some of
which he called himself a coal-merchant, in others a wine-merchant,
in others a commission-agent, in others a collector, in others an
accountant; as if he really didn't know the secret himself. He was
always keeping appointments in the City, and the other man never seemed
to come. He would sit on 'Change for hours, looking at everybody who
walked in and out, and would do the like at Garraway's, and in other
business coffee-rooms, in some of which he would be occasionally seen
drying a very damp pocket-handkerchief before the fire, and still
looking over his shoulder for the man who never appeared.
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