If Sinners Entice Thee Part 23

"The bigger your promise the greater your success. I've always found it the same with all the wheezes I've worked," he replied. "I saw you driving with Brooker's daughter a few days ago. You seem to be having an uncommonly good time of it," he added.

"Can't complain," Zertho said, leaning back with a self-complacent air.

"Patrician life suits me after being so many years an outsider."

"No doubt it is pleasant," his companion answered with a meaning look, "if one can completely bury the past."

"I have buried it," Zertho answered quickly.

Max Richards, the inventor of "The Agony of Monte Carlo," regarded the man before him with a supercilious smile. "And you pay me to prevent its exhumation--eh?"

"I thought we had agreed not to mention the matter again," Zertho exclaimed, darting at his crafty-looking fellow-adventurer a look of annoyance and suspicion.

"My dear fellow," answered the other quite calmly, "I have no desire to refer to it. If you are completely without regret, and your mind is perfectly at ease, well, I'm only too happy to hear it. I have sincere admiration, I a.s.sure you, for a man who can forget at will. I wish I could."

"I do not forget," Zertho snapped. "Your confounded demands will never allow me to forget."

The thin-faced man smiled, lazily watching the smoke ascend from an unusually good weed.

"It is merely payment for services rendered," he observed. "I'm not the lucky heir to an estate, therefore I can't afford to give people a.s.sistance gratis."

"No," cried Zertho in a tumult of anger at the remembrance of recent occurrences. "No, you're an infernal blackmailer!"

Richards smiled, quite undisturbed by his visitor's sudden ebullition of wrath, and, turning to him said,--

"My dear fellow, whatever can you gain by blackguarding me? Why, every word you utter is in self-condemnation."

Zertho was silent. Yes, it was the truth what this man said. He was a fool to allow his anger to get the better of him. Was it not Napoleon who boasted that the success of all his great schemes was due to the fact that he never permitted his anger to rise above his throat?

His face relaxed into a sickly smile.

"I'm weary of your constant begging and threatening," he said at last.

"I was a fool in the first instance. If I had allowed you to speak no one would have believed you. Instead of that, I generously gave you the money you wanted."

"I'm glad you say `generously'," his companion observed, smiling.

"Generosity isn't one of your most engaging characteristics."

"Well, I've been generous to you--too generous, for you have now increased your demands exorbitantly."

"I'm poor--while you can afford to pay."

"I can't--I won't afford," retorted Zertho, determinedly. "When men grow wealthy they are always imposed upon by men such as you," he added.

"I admit that the service you rendered deserved payment. Well, I liquidated the debt honourably. Then you immediately levied blackmail, and have ever since continued to send me constant applications for money."

"A man who can afford to forget his past can afford to be reminded of the debt he owes," answered the man, still smoking with imperturbable coolness.

"But I tell you I won't stand it any longer. You've strained the cord until it must now snap."

"Very well, my dear fellow," answered the other, with an air of impudent nonchalance. "You know your own business best. Act as you think fit."

"I shall. This is my last visit here."

"No doubt. My present wheeze is getting about played out. A good thing like this can't run for any length of time. In a week, for obvious reasons, I shall lock up the doors and depart with Mother Valentin, leaving the landlord looking for his rent and my clients thirsting for my vitals. Yes, you are right, my dear Zertho, when you say this will be your last visit here. But if the mountain will not come to Mahomet, the latter must go to the mountain. I may, perhaps, call upon you, my dear Zertho."

"No, you sha'n't. I shall give orders that you are not to be admitted."

"You will scarcely do that, I think," he answered, still smiling. The whole bearing of the man betrayed confidence in his position.

"But I tell you I will. I have come here to-night in fulfilment of your demand. It is, however, the last time that we shall meet."

"I hope so."

"Why?"

"I hope that you'll pay me a sum sufficient to obviate the necessity of us meeting again. I a.s.sure you that the pleasure of your company is not unmixed with dislike."

"It is mutual," Zertho snapped, annoyed at the man's unmitigated insolence. "I'll pay you nothing more than what you demanded in your letter yesterday," and taking from his pocket a wallet of dark-green leather with silver mountings, he counted out four five-hundred-franc notes, and tossed them angrily upon the table, saying, "Make the best of them, for you won't get another sou from me."

The man addressed stretched out his hand, took the notes, smoothed them out carefully, and slowly placed them in his pocket.

"Then we are enemies?" he observed at last, after a long pause. He looked straight into Zertho's face.

"Enemies or friends, it makes no difference to me. It does not alter my decision."

His companion slowly knocked the ash from his cigar, then continued smoking in silence.

"Well, you don't speak," exclaimed Zertho, impatiently, at last, twirling his dark moustache. "What is your intention?"

"I never show my hand to my opponent, my dear fellow," was the quick retort. "And I know you are never unwise enough to do so."

Zertho had his match in this _chevalier d'industrie_, and was aware of it.

"You think I'm still in fear?" he said.

"I don't know; neither do I care," the other answered. "If you don't pay me there are others who no doubt will."

Zertho sprang quickly from his chair with a look of murderous hatred in his dark face and flas.h.i.+ng eyes. "You would still threaten me!" he said between his teeth. "You taunt me because you believe I am entirely in your hands."

"I do not believe," the other replied with cool indifference. "I know."

"You are an infernal scoundrel!"

"I might pa.s.s a similar compliment," he said. "But I see no reason why the pot should comment unfavourably upon the blackness of the kettle.

I'm merely a.s.sisting you to obtain a pretty wife--a wife, by Heaven, too pure and good and beautiful for any such as you, and--"

"What do you mean?" Zertho interrupted with a start. This man evidently knew more than he had suspected. "You are not a.s.sisting me in the least."

But Richards laughed aloud, and with a deprecatory wave of the hand, replied,--

"It's no good to bluff me. I know it is your intention to marry Liane Brooker, whose beauty is so admired everywhere, and who is as good as she's pretty. I happen to know something of her--more, perhaps, than you think. Well, only by my a.s.sistance can you obtain her. Therefore, you won't be such an idiot as to quarrel with me."