That astute individual told me that he declined to advertise, or to give any kind of publicity to his requirements.
"If I were not afraid of publicity, I should not be obliged to pay you a pound a week," he remarked, with pleasing candour, "since advertisements would get me more information in a week than you may scrape together in a twelvemonth.

But I happen to know the danger of publicity, and that many a good thing has been snatched out of a man's hands just as he was working it into shape.

I don't say that this could be done in my case; and you know very well that it could not be done, as I hold papers which are essential to the very first move in the business." I perfectly understand the meaning of these remarks, and I am inclined to doubt the existence of those important papers.

Suspicion is a fundamental principle in the Sheldon mind.

My friend George trusts me because he is obliged to trust me--and only so far as he is obliged--and is tormented, more or less, by the idea that I may at any moment attempt to steal a march upon him.
But to return to his letter: "I should recommend you to examine the registries of every town or village within, say, thirty miles of Huxter's Cross.