And if they did--well, he would take good care that no evil chances came to him! If he laid hands on five thousand pounds, he would be out of Highmarket within five hours, and half-way across the Atlantic within five days.
No--Dave Myler was a good sort--one of the best--but he was a bit straight-laced, and old-fashioned--especially since he had taken a wife--and after all, every man has a right to do his best for himself.
And so, when Stoner came face to face with Mallalieu, on the lonely moor between High Gill and Highmarket, his mind was already made up to blackmail.
The place in which they met was an appropriate one--for Stoner's purpose.

He had crossed the high ground between the railway and the little moorland town by no definite track, but had come in a bee-line across ling and bracken and heather.

All around stretched miles upon miles of solitude--nothing but the undulating moors, broken up by great masses of limestone rock and occasional clumps and coverts of fir and pine; nothing but the blue line of the hills in the west; nothing but the grey northern skies overhead; nothing but the cry of the curlew and the bleating of the mountain sheep.

It was in the midst of this that he met his senior employer--at the corner of a thin spinney which ran along the edge of a disused quarry.

Mallalieu, as Stoner well knew, was a great man for walking on these moors, and he always walked alone.