In Direst Peril Part 21

"You can commit any folly you please," he answered. "I've nothing to say to you; and if you choose to excite the suspicions of a lot of foreign sc.u.m like that, you can do it, and take the responsibility."

"Very well," I said, and the room was dead still for a s.p.a.ce of, I should say, four or five minutes; then the rumble of a cab was heard in the street and a step upon the stairs. It was a dreadful minute alike for Brunow and myself, and, looking at him, I felt a resurrection of pity in me.

"Is this bravado worth while any longer, Brunow?" I asked him. "I have no resource but to keep my word. If my man enters the room before you have spoken, he shall go on his errand, and then may Heaven have mercy on the soul of a traitor!"

Hinge's footstep came nearer, and his key touched the lock with a smart click. Brunow rose to his feet as if without any volition of his own, and made a sign with his hand against the door.

"You wish him to remain outside?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, and, falling back into the chair from which he had arisen, covered his white face with both hands. He had allowed his burning cigar to fall upon the carpet, and, a faint odor of acrid smoke reaching my nostrils, I looked for it, found it, and threw it into the empty grate. This trivial action seemed as important at the moment as anything else.

Hinge knocked at the door, but I told him to go down-stairs, and to detain the cab until I should call him. I heard the closing of the outer door, and heard every step of Hinge's feet until he reached the bottom of the stairs. Then the silence was so intense that I could hear Brunow's watch quite distinctly as it ticked in his pocket, and my own kept time to it.

"You have decided wisely," I said at last; "and when you have told me the truth you shall have your chance." He was silent for so long a time that I had to urge him. "I shall not wait forever."

"Well," he said, desperately, looking up at me for a mere instant, and then, burying his face in his hands again, "tell me what you want to know."

"I want," I told him, "to know the truth about the whole of this miserable business. Who employed you here?"

"Employed me!" he responded.

"Who paid you for this act of treachery?"

"You know all you want to know, it seems, already," he answered, sullenly, and at that I lost patience with him wholly.

"If I am not answered at once and without reserve," I said, "I will keep my part of the bargain, and leave you to your chance. Who paid you?"

"You can do what you like," he answered, rising. "I'm not going to betray a lady, anyhow."

"Thank you," I answered, with a more bitter disdain than I can easily express in words. "If you choose to make your confession in that form, it is as useful to me as it would be in any other. You were paid for this by a lady. Who was she? You will find it agreeable to have a little force exerted for the satisfaction of your own conscience, if that is the name you give it. Who was the lady?"

"I don't know that I'm bound to risk my life for her," he answered.

"It's in her way of business, and she's paid for it."

"And who is she?" I demanded once again.

"The Baroness Bonnar," said Brunow.

CHAPTER XVI

To say that I was not astonished would be absurd; but the words had scarcely been spoken a moment when I began to be aware that I was wondering at my own amazement. On the whole, there was n.o.body whom I knew and n.o.body at whose existence I could have guessed who was quite so likely to be engaged in an affair of that nature as the Baroness Bonnar.

He fell back into his arm-chair with a certain air of defiance and lit another cigar, as if by this time he were thoroughly determined to brazen the whole thing out, and to justify himself to himself, even if it were impossible to find a justification for any other. His cigar slipped from his nerveless fingers; as he reseated himself he stooped to pick it up, and, looking at it with a critical eye, began to smoke again. I verily believe that if any stranger had been present, I might have been supposed to be the more disturbed and self-conscious of the two. Perhaps I was, for throughout the whole of this singular interview I was haunted by a wondering inquiry as to what I should do with the man when I had completely exposed his infamy. I dare say I was a fool from the first to feel so, though I could not help it; but to surrender him to the vengeance he had invited seemed altogether an impossibility. In that respect at least he had me at a disadvantage, and I cannot help thinking that he knew it.

"The Baroness Bonnar!" I echoed. He made no answer, but leaned back in my arm-chair, smoking with an outside tranquillity, as if the whole affair were no business of his. "The Baroness Bonnar!" I repeated, and he gave a brief nod in affirmation. "And what," I asked, "does she propose to pay you for this unspeakable rascality?"

A decanter and a water-jug stood upon the table, and he helped himself, holding up his tumbler against the light to judge of the amount of spirit he had taken before adding the water he needed. When his shaking hand jerked the jug and he had taken more water than he thought necessary, he sipped critically at the contents of the tumbler and added a little more spirit. Then he sipped again, and settled himself back into his chair, as if resigned to boredom. I knew I had only to speak a word to put all these airs to flight, but I hesitated to speak it.

"What does she pay you?" I asked again, and he turned upon me with a wretched attempt at a smile and a wave of the hand in which he held his cigar.

"It isn't usual to discuss these things," he answered.

"You wish me to understand," I said, "that for the sake of an amour with a woman of her age you have broken the most sacred oath a man could take, and have betrayed to life-long misery an old man who trusted you, and who never did you any harm. You have confessed yourself contemptible already, but surely you have a better excuse for your own villainy than this?" He was still silent, and smoked on with the same effort after an outward seeming of tranquillity, though his white face and shaking hand belied him. "What did you get in money?"

"Look here, Fyffe," he answered, inspecting the ash of his cigar with the aspect of a connoisseur, and evading my glance, "your position gives you an advantage, but you are trying to make too much use of it. I had the most perfect a.s.surances that the old man would be treated kindly, and I know that n.o.body has any intention to do anything but keep him out of mischief."

I am very much ashamed of it now, and I think I was even a little conscious of shame about it then, but I felt inclined to comprehend the man, to fathom his depths of self-excuse, and I bore with his evasions and his explanations in a spirit of savage banter.

"Come," I said, "we shall get to understand each other before we part.

What were you paid?"

"In money?" he asked, flicking the ash from his cigar and settling himself with ostentatious pretence of ease. "In money--nothing."

At that very minute a knock sounded at the door, and mechanically consulting my watch, I saw that it was already nearly midnight. I had no reason to expect a visitor at that hour, and I stood listening in silence, while Hinge answered the summons at the door. There was a murmur of voices outside, and when I looked at Brunow I saw him start suddenly forward as if in the act to rise. For a second or two he set in an att.i.tude of enforced attention, leaning forward with a hand on either arm of the chair, as if prepared to spring to his feet; but observing that my eye was upon him, he sank back again and began to smoke once more. This time nothing but the rapidity with which he puffed at his cigar was left to indicate his discomposure.

Hinge rapped at the door, and when I bade him enter, came in followed by a stranger, whose aspect was simply and purely business-like. This man bowed to me and then to Brunow, and receiving no response from either of us, stood for a moment as if embarra.s.sed.

"Captain Fyffe, I believe?" he said, rather awkwardly.

"That is my name," I answered. "What is your business?"

"I beg pardon for coming here, sir," he responded, "but I have been waiting all night to find the Honorable Mr. Brunow, and I have only just heard that he was here. Can I have a word with you, sir?" He turned to Brunow as he spoke. "Sorry to trouble you, sir, but you remember what you promised me. I took your word of honor, sir, and I've made myself personally responsible."

"d.a.m.n it all!" cried Brunow, rising, with a whiter face than ever; "do you suppose that a gentleman is to be badgered about a thing of this kind at this hour of the night in another gentleman's rooms? Wait outside. Go down-stairs and wait for me, and I will arrange with you when we go home together."

"Very well, sir," the man replied. He was perfectly respectful, though there was an underlying threat in his manner. "I'll do as you wish. But I hope you understand--"

"I understand everything!" cried Brunow, with an imperious wave of the arm. "Do as you are told!"

"Hinge," I said, seeing a sudden light upon the complication of affairs which lay before me, "Mr. Brunow and I have business with each other which may detain us for some little time. This person can wait in your room until Mr. Brunow is at liberty."

"I beg your pardon, sir," the man responded, "I've spent a good deal of time about this business already, and it's getting late. I shall be glad to know when I may expect to be able to talk to Mr. Brunow."

"You will wait outside," I answered; "and I think I may guarantee that you will not be kept waiting long."

The man retired, and I turned on Brunow, as certain of the position of affairs at that moment as I was half an hour later.

"This man," I said, "has a business claim upon you, and you have promised to satisfy him to-night. Now, I know something of your affairs, and I can guess pretty well that without to-night's action you might not have been in a position to meet him. You had better make a clean breast of it, and it will pay you to remember once for all that I hold your life in my hands, and that I am not altogether indisposed to use my power. What were you paid, or what are you to be paid?"

"I have told you everything I had to tell," said Brunow, falling back into his former sullen att.i.tude. "You can do just as you please, Fyffe, but I shall say no more."

I took between my thumb and finger the sheet which lay upon the table, inscribed, as he knew perfectly well, with the names and addresses of the people mainly concerned in our enterprise, and held it up before him.

"Very well," he said, after looking at it and me, and reading no sign of wavering in my face, "I was to get five hundred pounds."

"Provided always," I suggested, "that your plot came to a successful issue."