"What are you talking about? I did not throw stones at his window," he lied. "I"m not a school-boy."
"That"s so," Tembarom admitted.
"I saw him, nevertheless. And I can tell you he gave me rather a start."
"Why?"
Palliser half laughed again. He did not mean to go too quickly; he would let the thing get on Tembarom"s nerves gradually.
"Well, I"m hanged if I didn"t take him for a man who is dead."
"Enough to give any fellow a jolt," Tembarom admitted again.
"It gave me a `jolt." Good word, that. But it would give you a bigger one, my dear fellow, if he was the man he looked like."
"Why?" Tembarom asked laconically.
"He looked like Jem Temple Barholm."
He saw Tembarom start. There could be no denying it.
"You thought that? Honest?" he said sharply, as if for a moment he had lost his head. "You thought that?"
"Don"t be nervous. Perhaps I couldn"t have sworn to it. I did not see him very close."
T. Tembarom puffed rapidly at his pipe, and only, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed:
"Oh!"
"Of course he"s dead. If he wasn"t,"--with a shrug of his shoulders,-- "Lady Joan Fayre would be Lady Joan Temple Barholm, and the pair would be bringing up an interesting family here." He looked about the room, and then, as if suddenly recalling the fact, added, "By George! you"d be selling newspapers, or making them--which was it?--in New York!"
It was by no means unpleasing to see that he had made his. .h.i.t there.
T. Tembarom swung about and walked across the room with a suddenly perturbed expression.
"Say," he put it to him, coming back, "are you in earnest, or are you just saying it to give me a jolt?"
Palliser studied him. The American sharpness was not always so keen as it sometimes seemed. His face would have betrayed his uneasiness to the dullest onlooker.
"Have you any objection to my seeing him in his own room?" Palliser inquired.
"It does him harm to see people," Tembarom said, with nervous brusqueness. "It worries him."
Palliser smiled a quiet but far from agreeable smile. He enjoyed what he put into it.
"Quite so; best to keep him quiet," he returned. "Do you know what my advice would be? Put him in a comfortable sanatorium. A lot of stupid investigations would end in nothing, of course, but they"d be a frightful bore."
He thought it extraordinarily stupid in T. Tembarom to come nearer to him with an anxious eagerness entirely unconcealed, if he really knew what he was doing.
"Are you sure that if you saw him close you"d KNOW, so that you could swear to him?" he demanded.
"You"re extremely nervous, aren"t you?" Palliser watched him with smiling coolness. "Of course Jem Temple Barholm is dead; but I"ve no doubt that if I saw this man of yours, I could swear he had remained dead--if I were asked."
"If you knew him well, you could make me sure. You could swear one way or another. I want to be SURE," said Tembarom.
"So should I in your place; couldn"t be too sure. Well, since you ask me, I COULD swear. I knew him well enough. He was one of my most intimate enemies. What do you say to letting me see him?"
"I would if I could," Tembarom replied, as if thinking it over. "I would if I could."
Palliser treated him to the far from pleasing smile again.
"But it"s quite impossible at present?" he suggested. "Excitement is not good for him, and all that sort of thing. You want time to think it over."
Tembarom"s slowly uttered answer, spoken as if he were still considering the matter, was far from being the one he had expected.
"I want time; but that"s not the reason you can"t see him right now.
You can"t see him because he"s not here. He"s gone."
Then it was Palliser who started, taken totally unaware in a manner which disgusted him altogether. He had to pull himself up.
"He"s gone!" he repeated. "You are quicker than I thought. You"ve got him safely away, have you? Well, I told you a comfortable sanatorium would be a good idea."
"Yes, you did." T. Tembarom hesitated, seeming to be thinking it over again. "That"s so." He laid his pipe aside because it had gone out.
He suddenly sat down at the table, putting his elbows on it and his face in his hands, with a harried effect of wanting to think it over in a sort of withdrawal from his immediate surroundings. This was as it should be. His Yankee readiness had deserted him altogether.
"By Jove! you are nervous!" Palliser commented. "It"s not surprising, though. I can sympathize with you." With a markedly casual air he himself sat down and drew his doc.u.ments toward him. "Let us talk of something else," he said. He preferred to be casual and incidental, if he were allowed. It was always better to suggest things and let them sink in until people saw the advantage of considering them and you. To manage a business matter without open argument or too frank a display of weapons was at once more comfortable and in better taste.
"You are making a great mistake in not going into this," he suggested amiably. "You could go in now as you went into Hutchinson"s affair, `on the ground floor." That"s a good enough phrase, too. Twenty thousand pounds would make you a million. You Americans understand nothing less than millions."
But T. Tembarom did not take him up. He muttered in a worried way from behind his shading hands, "We"ll talk about that later."
"Why not talk about it now, before anything can interfere?" Palliser persisted politely, almost gently.
Tembarom sprang up, restless and excited. He had plainly been planning fast in his temporary seclusion.
"I"m thinking of what you said about Lady Joan," he burst forth. "Say, she"s gone through all this Jem Temple Barholm thing once; it about half killed her. If any one raised false hopes for her, she"d go through it all again. Once is enough for any woman."
His effect at professing heat and strong feeling made a spark of amus.e.m.e.nt show itself in Palliser"s eye. It struck him as being peculiarly American in its affectation of sentiment and chivalry.
"I see," he said. "It"s Lady Joan you"re disturbed about. You want to spare her another shock, I see. You are a considerate fellow, as well as a man of business."
"I don"t want her to begin to hope if--"
"Very good taste on your part." Palliser"s polite approval was admirable, but he tapped lightly on the paper after expressing it. "I don"t want to seem to press you about this, but don"t you feel inclined to consider it? I can a.s.sure you that an investment of this sort would be a good thing to depend on if the unexpected happened. If you gave me your check now, it would be Cedric stock to-morrow, and quite safe. Suppose you--"
"I--I don"t believe you were right--about what you thought." The sharp- featured face was changing from pale to red. "You"d have to be able to swear to it, anyhow, and I don"t believe you can." He looked at Palliser in eager and anxious uncertainty. "If you could," he dragged out , "I shouldn"t have a check-book. Where would you be then?"
"I should be in comfortable circ.u.mstances, dear chap, and so would you if you gave me the money to-night, while you possess a check-book. It would be only a sort of temporary loan in any case, whatever turned up. The investment would quadruple itself. But there is no time to be lost. Understand that."