T. Tembarom broke out into a sort of boyish resentment.
"I don"t believe he did look like him, anyhow," he cried. "I believe it"s all a bluff." His crude-sounding young swagger had a touch of final desperation in it as he turned on Palliser. "I"m dead sure it"s a bluff. What a fool I was not to think of that! You want to bluff me into going into this Cedric thing. You could no more swear he was like him than --than I could."
The outright, presumptuous, bold stripping bare of his phrases infuriated Palliser too suddenly and too much. He stepped up to him and looked into his eyes.
"Bluff you, you young bounder!" he flung out at him. "You"re losing your head. You"re not in New York streets here. You are talking to a gentleman. No," he said furiously, "I couldn"t swear that he was like him, but what I can swear in any court of justice is that the man I saw at the window was Jem Temple Barholm, and no other man on earth."
When he had said it, he saw the astonishing dolt change his expression utterly again, as if in a flash. He stood up, putting his hands in his pockets. His face changed, his voice changed.
"Fine!" he said. "First-rate! That"s what I wanted to get on to."
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
After this climax the interview was not so long as it was interesting.
Two men as far apart as the poles, as remote from each other in mind and body, in training and education or lack of it, in desires and intentions, in points of view and trend of being, as nature and circ.u.mstances could make them, talked in a language foreign to each other of a wildly strange thing. Palliser"s arguments and points of aspect were less unknown to T. Tembarom than his own were to Palliser.
He had seen something very like them before, though they had developed in different surroundings and had been differently expressed. The colloquialism "You"re not doing that for your health" can be made to cover much ground in the way of the stripping bare of motives for action. This was what, in excellent and well-chosen English, Captain Palliser frankly said to his host. Of nothing which T. Tembarom said to him in his own statement did he believe one word or syllable. The statement in question was not long or detailed. It was, of course, Palliser saw, a ridiculously impudent flinging together of a farrago of nonsense, transparent in its effort beyond belief. Before he had listened five minutes with the distinctly "nasty" smile, he burst out laughing.
"That is a good `spiel," my dear chap," he said. "It"s as good a `spiel" as your typewriter friend used to rattle off when he thought he saw a customer; but I"m not a customer."
Tembarom looked at him interestedly for about ten seconds. His hands were thrust into his trousers pockets, as was his almost invariable custom. Absorption and speculation, even emotion and excitement, were usually expressed in this unconventional manner.
"You don"t believe a darned word of it," was his sole observation.
"Not a darned word," Palliser smiled. "You are trying a `bluff," which doesn"t do credit to your usual sharpness. It"s a bluff that is actually silly. It makes you look like an a.s.s."
"Well, it"s true," said Tembarom; "it"s true."
Palliser laughed again.
"I only said it made you look like an a.s.s," he remarked. "I don"t profess to understand you altogether, because you are a new species.
Your combination of ignorance and sharpness isn"t easy to calculate on. But there is one thing I have found out, and that is, that when you want to play a particular sharp trick you are willing to let people take you for a fool. I"ll own you"ve deceived me once or twice, even when I suspected you. I"ve heard that"s one of the most successful methods used in the American business world. That"s why I only say you look like an a.s.s. You are an a.s.s in some respects; but you are letting yourself look like one now for some shrewd end. You either think you"ll slip out of danger by it when I make this discovery public, or you think you"ll somehow trick me into keeping my mouth shut."
"I needn"t trick you into keeping your mouth shut," Tembarom suggested. "There"s a straightway to do that, ain"t there?" And he indelicately waved his hand toward the doc.u.ments pertaining to the Cedric Company.
It was stupid as well as gross, in his hearer"s opinion. If he had known what was good for him he would have been clever enough to ignore the practical presentation of his case made half an hour or so earlier.
"No, there is not," Palliser replied, with serene mendacity. "No suggestion of that sort has been made. My business proposition was given out on an entirely different basis. You, of course, choose to put your personal construction upon it."
"Gee whiz!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed T. Tembarom. "I was "way off, wasn"t I?"
"I told you that professing to be an a.s.s wouldn"t be good enough in this case. Don"t go on with it," said Palliser, sharply.
"You"re throwing bouquets. Let a fellow be natural," said Tembarom.
"That is bluff, too," Palliser replied more sharply still. "I am not taken in by it, bold as it is. Ever since you came here, you have been playing this game. It was your fool"s grin and guffaw and pretense of good nature that first made me suspect you of having something up your sleeve. You were too unembarra.s.sed and candid."
"So you began to look out," Tembarom said, considering him curiously, "just because of that." Then suddenly he laughed outright, the fool"s guffaw.
It somehow gave Palliser a sort of puzzled shock. It was so hearty that it remotely suggested that he appeared more secure than seemed possible. He tried to reply to him with a languid contempt of manner.
"You think you have some tremendously sharp `deal" in your hand," he said, "but you had better remember you are in England where facts are like sledge-hammers. You can"t dodge from under them as you can in America. I dare say you won"t answer me, but I should like to ask you what you propose to do."
"I don"t know what I"m going to do any more than you do," was the unilluminating answer. "I don"t mind telling you that."
"And what do you think he will do?"
"I"ve got to wait till I find out. I"m doing it. That was what I told you. What are you going to do?" he added casually.
"I"m going to Lincoln"s Inn Fields to have an interview with Palford & Grimby."
"That"s a good enough move," commented Tembarom, "if you think you can prove what you say. You"ve got to prove things, you know. I couldn"t, so I lay low and waited, just like I told you."
"Of course, of course," Palliser himself almost grinned in his derision. "You have only been waiting."
"When you"ve got to prove a thing, and haven"t much to go on, you"ve got to wait," said T. Tembarom--"to wait and keep your mouth shut, whatever happens, and to let yourself be taken for a fool or a horse- thief isn"t as gilt-edged a job as it seems. But proof"s what it"s best to have before you ring up the curtain. You"d have to have it yourself. So would Palford & Grimby before it"d be stone-cold safe to rush things and accuse a man of a penitentiary offense."
He took his unconventional half-seat on the edge of the table, with one foot on the floor and the other one lightly swinging.
"Palford & Grimby are clever old ducks, and they know that much. Thing they"d know best would be that to set a raft of lies going about a man who"s got money enough to defend himself, and to make them pay big damages for it afterward, would be pretty b.u.m business. I guess they know all about what proof stands for. They may have to wait; so may you, same as I have."
Palliser realized that he was in the position of a man striking at an adversary whose construction was of India-rubber. He struck home, but left no bruise and drew no blood, which was an irritating thing. He lost his temper.
"Proof!" he jerked out. "There will be proof enough, and when it is made public, you will not control the money you threaten to use."
"When you get proof, just you let me hear about it," T. Tembarom said.
"And all the money I"m threatening on shall go where it belongs, and I"ll go back to New York and sell papers if I have to. It won"t come as hard as you think."
The flippant insolence with which he brazened out his pretense that he had not lied, that his ridiculous romance was actual and simple truth, suggested dangerous readiness of device and secret knowledge of power which could be adroitly used.
"You are merely marking time," said Palliser, rising, with cold determination to be juggled with no longer. "You have hidden him away where you think you can do as you please with a man who is an invalid.
That is your dodge. You"ve got him hidden somewhere, and his friends had better get at him before it is too late."
"I"m not answering questions this evening, and I"m not giving addresses, though there are no witnesses to take them down. If he"s hidden away, he"s where he won"t be disturbed," was T. Tembarom"s rejoinder. "You may lay your bottom dollar on that."
Palliser walked toward the door without speaking. He had almost reached it when he whirled about involuntarily, arrested by a shout of laughter.
"Say," announced Tembarom, "you mayn"t know it, but this lay-out would make a first-rate turn in a vaudeville. You think I"m lying, I look like I"m lying, I guess every word I say sounds like I"m lying. To a fellow like you, I guess it couldn"t help but sound that way. And I"m not lying. That"s where the joke comes in. I"m not lying. I"ve not told you all I know because it"s none of your business and wouldn"t help; but what I have told you is the stone-cold truth."
He was keeping it up to the very end with a desperate determination not to let go his hold of his pose until he had made his private shrewd deal, whatsoever it was. At least, so it struck Palliser, who merely said:
"I "m leaving the house by the first train to-morrow morning." He fixed a cold gray eye on the fool"s grin.