I thought it possible, nay, I thought it probable. If I had only made a clean breast of it when the scoundrel had first accosted me the night before!
"The thing now is, what am I to do?"
"I should have thought," I gasped, "that the thing now is what am I to do."
"Nothing of the sort. You have placed yourself outside the pale of consideration. It is myself I must consider." He said this with a lordly wave of the hand.
Crushed though I was, I found his manner a little trying.
"It is my misfortune that my ears are ever open to the promptings of mercy."
"I had not previously supposed that a characteristic of that kind was a misfortune."
"It is a misfortune, and one of the gravest kind. It is one, moreover, against which I have had to battle my whole life long. The truly fortunate man is he who can always mete out justice. But the still, small voice of mercy I have ever heard. It is a weakness, but it is mine own. My obvious duty to society would be to take prompt steps to rid it of such a man as you."
That was a pleasant sort of observation to have addressed to one.
"It strikes me that you take rather a strained view of your duty, sir."
"That would strike you. It doesn"t me. But I will be frank with you.
Why should I not be frank--although you are not frank with me. Though perhaps I can afford to be frank better than you can."
He threw his ancient overcoat, faced with ancient mock astrachan, wide open. He tilted his ancient silk hat on to the back of his head. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his ancient trousers.
"The plain fact is, Mr. Tennant, that I am a victim of the present commercial depression."
He looked it, every inch of him. Though, at the moment, I scarcely cared to tell him so.
"The depreciation in landed property, and in various securities, has. .h.i.t me hard."
"To what securities do you allude?"
I fancy he made an effort at recollection, and that the effort failed.
"To South American securities, and others. But I need not particularise." He repeated the former lordly gesture with his hand.
"The truth is that my income is not only seriously crippled, but that I am, at this present moment, actually in want of ready cash." I believed him, without his protestations. I judged from his looks. "Now, if I do something for you, will you do something for me?"
"What will you do for me?"
"Keep silence. I am not compelled to blurt out all I know. If I show mercy to you, what return will you make me for my kindness?"
I did not quite like his way of putting it. But that I had to stomach.
"What return will you require?"
He looked at me; then round the room; then back again to me. He was evidently making up his mind as to what it would be advisable for him to say.
"I should require you to make me an immediate, and, of course, temporary advance of 100--in gold."
"A hundred pounds? I am not exactly a poor man; on the other hand, I am emphatically not a rich one. To me a hundred pounds are a hundred pounds. Say ten."
"Say ten! I"ll be hanged if I say ten! And you"ll be hanged if you try to make me."
"Twenty."
"Nor twenty."
"I"m afraid I could not go beyond thirty."
"Then the discussion is at an end."
"Suppose--I only say suppose, mind--that I was able to find fifty."
"I won"t take a penny less than a hundred pounds--not one centime."
"Would you undertake to go abroad?"
"Go abroad! I"ll be shot if I would. You might go abroad. I have my business to attend to. You forget that I am a private detective in a very extensive way."
"For how long will you keep silence?"
"A month."
"Then, in that case, I must decline to advance you even so much as a hundred pence."
"Two months."
"No--nor in that case either."
"Three months."
"If you will undertake to keep silence until you are compelled to speak, I will give your suggestion my most careful consideration."
"Give it your most careful consideration! Oh, will you? It strikes me, Mr. Tennant, that you are as far from understanding me as ever. If you don"t put the money down upon that table at once I go to the police."
He straightened his hat. He began to b.u.t.ton up his overcoat. He looked, and, it struck me, sounded as though he meant it. I hesitated. If the woman who hesitates is lost, so also is the man. I was lost before; I was lost again, because I hesitated. I was conscious that still the bold part was the better part; that I should be wise to go to the authorities and tell them the whole plain truth, although so tardily. I knew that this man was a mean bloodsucker; that he would spend my money, and then come to me for more and more, and, after all, would hang me if he could. But I dared not face the prospect of being handed, there and then, to the police; of being delivered by him into their clutches, with his evidence to hang me. I wanted to see my wife, my child, again. I wanted, if I could, to prepare them for the cloud which was about to burst in storm upon their heads. I wanted breathing s.p.a.ce; time to look about me; to make ready. I wanted to postpone the falling of the hammer. So I gave him the hundred pounds which he demanded, bitterly conscious all the while of what a fool I was for giving it.
He would not take my cheque. Nothing would do for him but gold. I had to send a clerk to the bank to get it. He thrust the washleather bag in which it came, as it was, into his pocket. He was good enough to say that he would not insult me by counting it; he would treat me as one gentleman should always treat another. Then, with a triumphant grin, and an airy raising of his hat, he left me to enjoy my reflections--if I could.
CHAPTER V.
THE FACE IN THE DARKNESS.
I did not go home even when he had left me, though shortly afterwards I started to. As I was going along Throgmorton Street I met MacCulloch.
He was jubilant. He had pulled off a big stake over some race or other--upon my word, I forget what. It was one which had been run that day. He asked me to have a small bottle with him. While we were having it three other fellows joined us. Then MacCulloch asked the lot of us to go and dine with him. I knew that I ought not to, but I didn"t care.