THE BUSINESS MINISTER (continued 2)

“I’m infinitely obliged to you. Miss Amber,” said Reggie, and rang for tea.

“Oh, no, don’t! I always thought that poor woman’s story was too miserably sad. I don’t know why you wanted it—no, no, I’m not asking—but if it could set anything right, or do anybody any good, it seems somehow to make it better. It wouldn’t be so uselessly cruel.”

“Over the past the gods themselves have no power,” Reggie said. “We can’t help her, poor soul. I dare say it’s something to her to know that her son is safe and making good—in spite of all the devilry.”

“Something to her—of course it is!” said Miss Amber, and looked divine.

“There’s that,” said Reggie, watching her.

“You won’t mind my saying professionally that you have been very useful. Miss Amber,” said Lomas. “You have cleared up what was a very tiresome mystery. I was being bothered. That’s a serious disturbance of the machinery of Empire.” He succeeded, as he desired, in setting the conversation to a lighter tune. He made Miss Amber’s eyes again merry. He did not prevent Reggie from looking at her. “You must promise me another opportunity to thank you,” he said, as she was going.

“Dear me, I thought you had been doing nothing else,” said she demurely, and looked at the table and made a face. “Oh, Mr. Fortune, what, what a tea! I leave all my reputation behind me. Men hate to see women eat, don’t they? But do men always make teas like this?”

“I’ve a simple mind. I live the simple life.”

She looked at him fairly. “You said simple. Do you know how I feel? I feel as if I hadn’t a secret left all my own,” and she swept away. He was a long time gone letting her out.

“And that’s that,” Reggie said when he came back.

“Really?” Lomas was dim behind cigar smoke.

“All quite natural now, isn’t it?”

“My dear fellow, you knew it all and you knew it right. You told me so. Kamerad, kamerad.”

Reggie lit his pipe. “Jealously, hate, mania. He broke the man the girl married. Curious that affair, wasn’t it? Even the great criminal, he runs in a groove, he keeps to one kind of crime. The same dodge for the son that he used for the father. Then either he lost track of the mother or he preferred to hurt her through the son. He was an epicure in his little pleasures. The son came along. I dare say Kimball took that department because the son was in it. And then he was ready to smash everything for the sake of his hate—damage his own career, do a filthy murder, die himself, if he could torture his sister’s child. Yes. The devil is with power, Lomas.”

“I fancy you annoy him a little, my dear Fortune. But how can you believe in the devil? You have just seen—her.”

Reggie smiled. “She is a woman, isn’t she?”

“I think you might act on that theory. When is it to be?”

“Lomas, old thing, you’re not only bland, you’re obvious. Which is much worse.”

Transcriber's Note

Extra pages preceding each chapter containing only the chapter title have been omitted.