Then with clenched fists he walked to the other side of the room and returned.

He was himself again.
"Sir James, I will not waste your time by saying that I am sorry.
Only an hour ago I met Von Behrling in a little restaurant in the city, and gave him twenty thousand pounds for that envelope." "You paid him the money," the Minister remarked slowly, "without opening the envelope." Bellamy admitted it.
"In such transactions as these," he declared, "great risks are almost inevitable.

I took what must seem to you now to be an absurd risk.

To tell you the honest truth, sir, and I have had experience in these things, I thought it no risk at all when I handed over the money.

Von Behrling was there in disguise.