F.E. Mills Young (continued 3)

“You may reassure yourself. Great as you know our interest in you to be,” Simmonds replied imperturbably, “I don’t suppose either of us covets the distinction of hanging for you.”

Chapter Twelve.

Karl Van Bleit was neither popular nor especially respected among his fellows, nevertheless a sensation that had in it something of consternation supervened when the news burst like a bomb over Cape Town that he had been arrested on a charge of murder. His connection with the Smythes added considerably to the interest, and lent a social importance to the affair. Speculation was rife concerning the crime, the details of which were tardy in forthcoming; only the barest facts were known, and these were sufficiently unusual to strain public curiosity to the utmost. A sense of mystery enveloped the affair: the lonely bungalow; the hour; the unexplained connection between the three men, who had met by arrangement seemingly, for what reason had not transpired; the shooting affray, in which one man, Simmonds, had been killed; and finally the arrest of Van Bleit, who had on leaving the bungalow walked into town and given himself up to the authorities.

The whole business was, in the opinion of Theodore Smythe, worthy the shady character of his wife’s undesirable connection. Out of a feeling of delicacy he kept the verbal expression of his views from her. He did his utmost to console her; for she was not only inexpressibly shocked, but acutely alive to the danger of Van Bleit’s position. He even promised to secure for his defence the best services that money could procure. But he entertained no great belief that Karl would get out of the present mess. He had been extraordinarily lucky hitherto through a career of suspected crime; nothing beyond suspicion had clung to him; but it seemed as though this time at least the law had got its iron grip on him and would not be likely to let go. Putting his wife’s feelings out of the question, Smythe had a distinct dislike to the idea of a connection of his own suffering the penalty of the law.

“It’s such a beastly low-down, undignified position,” he complained.

Mrs Lawless read the news while she lingered over her breakfast. The midnight tragedy had already been seized upon to fill a column of the daily paper. Her face turned paler as she read, and the hand that held the newspaper was not quite steady. When she had read to the last line she laid the paper down beside her plate and sat staring out at the sunshine with wide startled eyes... Murder! ... There was something terrible in the mere sight of the word in print—something horribly revolting. Could it be possible that this man with whom she had talked so often, who had touched her with his hands, was guilty of this foul crime? She shivered at the mere remembrance that only the night before he had held her hand and touched it with his lips. He had parted from her and had gone straightway and done this thing... What violent deeds men who engage in desperate ventures will commit!

She rose from the table, and leaving her unfinished breakfast, went out into the garden. The news had shocked her. She looked like a woman who is frightened and at the same time infinitely relieved. As she paced up and down beneath the trees that cast their pleasant shade upon the path, one thought kept beating upon her brain with an insistence that drove out every other thought and lulled a long-endured pain at her heart like some blessed anodyne. She smiled as she looked up into the green tracery above her head.

“If she by her evil influence over him has saved him from danger,” her thought ran, “then I am grateful to her for coming into his life.”

And so she put behind her her jealousy of the woman who for the present dominated Lawless’ life.

Later in the morning Mrs Lawless ordered the car and drove into Cape Town to call on her friend.

She found Mrs Smythe reclining on a cane lounge on the stoep, a book beside her, which she was not reading, and the morning paper open at the page with the gruesome headline lying in her lap. She looked round as Zoë Lawless mounted the steps, and seeing who it was, got up and went to meet her.

“Oh! how good of you to come,” she said. “I have been thinking of you... Zoë, isn’t it awful? ... I can’t believe it. I can scarcely realise it yet.”

Tears rose in her eyes, already spoiled with futile weeping for a man so little worthy of her grief. She dabbed at them ineffectually with a wet handkerchief, and added with unconscious absurdity:

“Karl couldn’t have done it... He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Mrs Lawless put her hands upon her shoulders, and bending from her superior height, kissed the tremulous mouth.

“Poor Kate!” she said, and led her gently back to her seat.

“I feel,” said Mrs Smythe plaintively, “as though he were dead already... as though he, and not the other man, had met with a violent end. Oh! surely he will be able to explain... They were two to one... What could they have wanted with him? And why were they armed? Men who are peaceable citizens don’t carry firearms. Karl must have distrusted them to take a revolver with him... And yet, Colonel Grey—”

She broke off suddenly, and added in a voice of puzzled questioning:

“Zoë, you never liked Colonel Grey!”

Mrs Lawless leant back in a chair, her chin tilted slightly upward, gazing into the remote blueness of the sky. The flicker of a smile shone in the dark eyes, but the gravity of her features remained otherwise unchanged.

“That isn’t quite a correct statement,” she said. “As I told you before, it is Colonel Grey who doesn’t like me.”

Mrs Smythe regarded her doubtfully.

“I thought you were joking when you said that,” she replied. “If you really believe it, I think you are mistaken. He has often spoken of you, and it seemed to me that he greatly admires you. It is a strange thing to say in face of what has happened, but I always felt he was a man to be trusted.”

“You can’t be certain,” replied Zoë, “that your first impression of him is wrong. Quarrels between men—even violent quarrels—don’t necessarily make them rogues. I feel the same about him. I think he is an eminently trustworthy person.”

“But,” objected Mrs Smythe, “there is this affair with Karl... Karl always disliked him—he was rude to him once in this house. He made me angry, I remember, poor fellow!”

She sighed and again dabbed at her eyes with her ruined pocket-handkerchief.

“We’ve been more like brother and sister than cousins,” she explained apologetically. “He has confided his troubles to me since he was a boy, and now in this great trouble I can’t even help.”

She did not think it necessary to explain that in those early days, when he was an impecunious young man and she a good-looking girl with a larger dowry than most girls, he had expended much time and eloquence in endeavouring to persuade her to accept his name in exchange for her fortune. She had believed then in the honesty of his professions of love, though she had felt too sisterly towards him to yield to his wishes; and it had been her one desire ever since her own happy marriage to see him happily married also. In Mrs Lawless she believed she had found a worthy mate for him.

“Zoë,” she exclaimed suddenly, turning appealingly towards her friend, “you won’t let this shocking affair prejudice you against the poor boy! He may be able to justify himself. I can’t believe that there isn’t some explanation. It seems a horrible gigantic mistake... You won’t be prejudiced, will you?” she pleaded.

“I am not prejudiced, Kate,” the other answered.

There was in the steady voice, in the expression of the composed face, so little encouragement to be read that Mrs Smythe for the first time entertained serious doubts of Karl’s success. She had imagined that his suit was prospering satisfactorily; now, like a further darkening of the already dark cloud that depressed her spirit, it was borne in upon her consciousness that Zoë Lawless did not love him. She could not love him and remain so entirely unmoved in face of the awful fate that overshadowed him.

“Of course,” she went on, still more dejectedly, for her heart was sorely troubled, “no woman cares to have her name mixed up in a scandal like this. It would be only a great love that could live through such an ordeal. I suppose I’m foolish, Zoë, but I had hoped—”

She paused, unable to complete the sentence, and surveyed the dark glowing beauty of her silent companion with added distress in her eyes.

“Oh, Zoë!” she burst out impulsively. “He thinks the world of you... There’s a new quality comes into his voice whenever he speaks of you. You are the sunshine of the land to him—it’s his own phrase. If he thought he stood no chance of winning you, I don’t believe he would attempt to defend himself against this awful charge—I truly don’t.”

A wave of colour swept over Zoë Lawless’ face, but beyond the swift blush she showed no sign of embarrassment.

“My dear,” she said, “you are mistaken—utterly mistaken.”

“How can I be mistaken, Zoë, when I had it from his own lips? He would never forgive me for telling you... And, indeed, I ought to have held my peace. He could tell you so much more convincingly himself. I’m a fool to have spoken... It’s the wrong time to speak of such things. But my mind’s so full of him, poor boy!”

Mrs Lawless got up, and stooping over her chair kissed her affectionately.

“Don’t worry. You have done no harm,” she said. “If anyone could plead for him it would be you, you kind, dear soul. You make me feel—” She hesitated, and straightening herself stood slowly upright, looking gravely into the lifted face,—“mean,” she added, after a pause.

She clasped her hands behind her, and turning her back to the puzzled, questioning, tear-swollen eyes that stared up at her in helpless wonderment, gazed out upon the view. Through a break in the trees the great square rock that is Table Mountain showed in the clear atmosphere so surprisingly near that it seemed as though it formed a boundary to the garden. The sunlight lay warmly on its rugged prominences leaving the clefts and crannies in its grey sides cold and dark and secretive, the lurking-places of mystery and shadows, hiding ever from the light like the evil thoughts of a man’s mind. Zoë Lawless gazed at the mountain, looking blue in the brilliant sunshine, and her eyes were clouded as the dark clefts in its sides. She was ashamed of the part she had deliberately played, ashamed above all of having deceived this woman who was her friend.

“I’m wondering what you are thinking of me,” she said quickly. “And it hurts. I care... so much. You tempt me to tell you things—things that I keep double-locked in my heart—in order to justify myself.”

She turned round suddenly, frowning, and tapped her foot impatiently on the stone floor of the stoep.

“Merely to justify myself!” she repeated... “Was ever a more paltry reason given than that? Shall I tell you, Kate? ... Shall I show you the wound in my breast... the ugly, raw, unhealing wound that I am for ever tearing open with my own hand? I would tell you what I would not tell another human being sooner than you should think ill of me.”

“If that is your only reason for giving me your confidence, there is no need,” the other answered. “It’s just because I think so highly of you, Zoë, that I feel the disappointment so keenly. But perhaps it’s as well that you don’t care, because... in the event of...”

Here she broke down completely, her thoughts so charged with gruesome possibilities that Mrs Lawless’ efforts at reassurance were futile. It was impossible, she declared, to accept comfort with the idea of the hangman’s rope ever present in her mind.

“I’m waiting for Theo to come up from town,” she said tearfully. “He’s gone to interview lawyers and barristers, and anyone who is likely to be able to help. Thank Heaven the assizes are on this month! I don’t know how I should bear a longer suspense.”

Mr Smythe reached home as Mrs Lawless was driving away. She stopped the car when she saw him, and he got out of the taxi he had driven up from town in and went to speak to her.

“You’ve been with Kate,” he said. “I’m glad of that. She’s horribly cut up, poor girl! It’s a bad business... very. Looks black for Karl.”

“You think,”—Mrs Lawless shivered involuntarily—“that he won’t be able to clear himself?”

At sight of the shiver and her white face he remembered her friendly relations with Van Bleit, and hesitated to give free expression to his thoughts.

“Oh! I don’t know,” he said... “You see, we know so little. The only thing that is positive is that he killed the man... He admits it. But men have done that before, you know, and haven’t swung for it. We won’t look on the worst side until we’ve got to.”

She realised that his desire was to spare her feelings, and a soft blush mantled her cheeks at the knowledge of what he was thinking.

“I’m not Kate,” she said quietly. “I wish you wouldn’t hold out hopes you don’t in the least entertain. You are afraid the case will go against him... Why don’t you say so frankly?”

“Because,” he answered jerkily, “I’ve got no grounds for supposing anything of the sort. But I’ve been interviewing men this morning whose business it is to see the more serious side, and it doesn’t tend to reassure one. Don’t let that worry you, though, Mrs Lawless; we are going to do the best we can for him.”

Again the swift rush of embarrassed colour warmed her face. The tell-tale crimson strengthened his misapprehension. He fell to wondering what women saw in Van Bleit that won their liking. His wife’s partiality for her cousin was the greatest unsolved puzzle of his life.

“We’ll do our best,” he repeated, wishful to allay her anxiety. “If it wasn’t for Grey... It’ll be rather like two dogs worrying over a bone. It will be interesting to see who wins. The odds are against us... But we’ll do our best.”

That phrase rang in Zoë Lawless’ ears like a refrain as she drove on... “We’ll do our best.” ... So Theodore Smythe, as well as his wife, imagined that Karl Van Bleit’s danger mattered to her. He had sought to hearten her with encouraging words; the very pressure of his hand when he bade her good-bye had conveyed a silent kindly sympathy, and his smile was meant to be reassuring. Apart from the shock the news had occasioned her, Van Bleit’s danger concerned her no more than the danger of the man in the street. Yet she by her actions had led these people to the inference they had drawn.

She frowned as the car spun along the dusty road, under the huge straggling trees that lined it on either side, and waved their long gaunt arms musically in the wind. It troubled her to remember now, in face of all that had happened, that she had stooped to such deception, even though her motive had not been entirely unworthy. She had taken advantage of Van Bleit’s attitude towards herself, had sought deliberately—as some women seek from motives of vanity—to attain an influence over him, and she had succeeded so far beyond her expectation. Her object had been to get possession of the letters that men were risking and sacrificing their lives to obtain. She had meant to destroy the letters had they come into her possession, and so put it out of the power of any man to turn them to his own use. In the accomplishment of this her one hope had been to save from danger the man who had so recklessly, for a sordid compensation, undertaken their recovery. Van Bleit’s feelings, as also to what extent she would have to lower her pride in the pursuance of her project, had scarcely been taken into consideration. All that had seemed up to now beside the main issue. But now things had undergone a change, and the man for whose sake she had been willing to sacrifice her own prejudices, had gone out of her life, slaying by his own act all possible hope of intercourse between them in the future...

She leant back in her seat, and closed her eyes to the sunshine, the garish, laughing, intrusive sunshine that seemed to mock her pain. She was mourning for him, setting up a headstone to him in her memory; for he was as dead to her as though Van Bleit’s bullet after effecting its deed of violence had sped through the darkness and spent itself in his heart. And upon the headstone she inscribed the one word “Waste.”

Chapter Thirteen.

Mrs Lawless was like a sick woman whose illness increased as the day advanced. She had recognised the finality of things on the night when Lawless walked out of her presence—out of her house, to return to the woman with whose lot he had thrown in his own. It was another of the mad, reckless acts that had governed his undisciplined nature. But to-day, with her mind disturbed with thoughts of death and deeds of violence, the memory of how she had let him go without exerting every effort to persuade him to reconsider his decision troubled her greatly. Why had she not humbled her pride and pleaded with him? ... Why had she let the thought that it would be derogatory to her dignity deter her from freely avowing her love for him? ... Might not the strength of her love have stood between him and this evil? ... She felt as though hers had been the hand to thrust him forth into the darkness for the second time. Once before, in the years that were gone, she had thrust him forth; and in the empty years that had succeeded she had learnt bitterly to regret the hard unforgivingness of that act. Her one cry then had been: “I didn’t understand... Oh! if only I could have the chance again.” The opportunity had been given her, and she had failed to recognise it. “He was so cold,” she excused herself. “I was afraid of him.” And then: “I could not have prevented him from doing what he had made up his mind to do... My power over him is dead...”

In that knowledge lay the bitterness of the sting...

In the afternoon, according to her promise, Julie Weeber arrived. She was somewhat diffident of intruding, uncertain how Mrs Lawless felt the news of Van Bleit’s arrest. Julie shared the popular belief that it would be a grievous shock to the woman whose name had been bandied about in connection with his for months. To make sure, she inquired of the native who opened the door to her whether Mrs Lawless were receiving.

“I would come another day, if it were more convenient,” she said.

“Missis is expecting you,” he answered, and showed her into the drawing-room.

Zoë Lawless was seated in a low chair near one of the windows, with her hands lying idly in her lap. She was very pale. Julie decided that she looked ill, and imagined that she understood the reason of her pallor.

“I came,” she explained, “because I said I would. But if you’d rather have me some other day, I’ll go away again.”

“I’d rather that you stayed,” Mrs Lawless answered, rising and shaking hands. “You see, I’m lonely. Why should you condemn me to my own society to-day?”

“I thought perhaps—”

Julie stammered and came upon an awkward pause, whereupon Mrs Lawless went quickly to her assistance.

“I know,” she said. “This shocking news is all so fresh. But, obviously, I cannot assist my friends by becoming a recluse, can I? We won’t speak of the subject, if you don’t mind. It is sufficiently painful to make the discussion of it depressing. My sympathy with Mrs Smythe is great. She is very fond of her cousin, and feels this deeply. And I am very fond of her... Sit here—will you?—with your back to the light. It’s more restful.”

Julie sat down wondering. She was beginning to reconstruct her ideas. There was nothing in Mrs Lawless’ manner to bear out the supposition that she was in love with Van Bleit. She did not suspect that Mrs Lawless was intentionally correcting her error, nor did she guess how her assumption of the truth of the common report embarrassed her hostess. This ugly misapprehension had struck at her on three separate occasions that day. It was strange that she had not realised before the construction that might be put on her friendship with Van Bleit. She wondered whether Lawless had shared the same belief. And then she remembered how in her first interview with him he had warned her against the man. Why, if he was so entirely indifferent, need he have concerned himself about her acquaintance?

She looked up suddenly and surprised Julie’s inquisitive eyes studying her intently. The girl smiled.

“It’s awfully sweet of you to have asked me to come and see you,” she said. “I’ve wanted to know you—oh! for ever so long.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know—unless it is because you are so beautiful. Women do admire other women whatever’s said to the contrary. I’ve watched you motoring past our house... I saw you pass this morning.”

She did not add that she had thought how sad she looked.

“Yes,” Mrs Lawless answered. “I went to see Mrs Smythe. If my thoughts had not been so occupied with other matters I would have stopped and driven you out with me then. It’s rather selfish to let you cycle out here when I have a car.”

“Oh no!” Julie contradicted eagerly. “I make nothing of this journey.”

“Nevertheless, I shall drive you next time. I want you to come out often. You play tennis, of course? There is a beautiful lawn there—wasting... Nobody plays on it.”

She pointed through the window to a stretch of green sward which the Hottentot gardener kept surreptitiously watered during the dry season, so that whatever else suffered from the long droughts the grass was always green.

“I should like that,” Julie said. “Do you play?”

“Not much. I’m a lazy person. But I have thought I should like to get a few young people out for a game occasionally. I enjoy looking on. If you would bring Mr Bolitho, I could manage to make up the numbers.”

Julie did not answer immediately. She sat looking out into the garden with heightened colour and vaguely perplexed eyes. She wondered why Mrs Lawless should have singled out Teddy Bolitho from the host of young men who would all have been willing to come. She wished that she had mentioned any name rather than his.

“You don’t like my plan?” Mrs Lawless said quietly.

Julie looked up.

“Yes... Yes, I do,” she said. “I was only—thinking. Of course Teddy Bolitho would come—anybody would, if you asked them. And it’s heavenly playing on a grass court; there are so few in the Colony. It’ll spoil it, though.”

“I would rather it were spoilt with use than wasted,” Mrs Lawless said... “We waste so much.”

She had risen, and now, moving nearer to the girl, she laid a strong, well-shaped hand upon her shoulder.

“Don’t you make waste too,” she added gently. “I did when I was young... and it leaves me full of vain regrets. Some people think that youth is the best gift of the gods: but it is far from a perfect gift; for the proper appreciation of it is withheld. It is only when the gift is withdrawn that we realise all that it meant. If one could have one’s youth a second time, one would get the full value of the hours. You’ve got it now—that priceless gift; and you are inclined to be careless of it.”

“I wonder why you say this to me?” Julie murmured.

“Because I’ve been looking on. You say you have observed me... Interest is usually mutual. I have certainly felt interested in you.”

Julie coloured awkwardly, and looked down. She wondered whether Mrs Lawless had observed her friendship for the man whose name was the same as her own, and if she disapproved of it.

“I don’t think it altogether depends on oneself what one makes of one’s youth,” she said.

“There is much to be said for that argument,” Mrs Lawless answered. “But I could wish you had not found it out so soon.”

Julie looked up quickly.

“You mustn’t pity me,” she said. “I wouldn’t retrace one step of the past... It’s the future I would alter, if I could.”

“And how can you tell,” Mrs Lawless inquired, “what the future holds?”

The girl smiled drearily.

“I know very well what it doesn’t hold,” she answered. “That’s as far as I care to go.”

And then suddenly her wandering gaze fell on a photograph that stood in a silver frame on the piano, and she became silent, regarding it with an intensity that drew Mrs Lawless’ eyes to the object that excited her interest.

“You recognise it?” she said, and there was a quality in her voice such as Julie had never heard in any voice before. “That was taken before—he left the Army.”

It was a portrait of Lawless in regimentals, younger and handsomer than the man Julie knew; but there was lacking in the younger face something which the older face possessed. Julie could not determine what that something was.

“Yes, I recognise it... But I miss—the scar,” she said.

She blushed violently. It was the scar that had appealed so strongly to her youthful imagination. And then, raising her glance furtively to see whether her embarrassment were observed, she was profoundly disconcerted at the sight of the tears that were standing in the other woman’s eyes. Mrs Lawless moved away.

“I don’t know,” she said, “why I put that portrait there to-day... There’s a connection, I suppose, between it and one’s wasted youth. The portrait stands for waste... It is the sight of it that has set me thinking back.”

She crossed to the piano and lifted the frame as though her purpose were to remove it. Then, changing her mind, she set it again in its place, and came slowly back.

“I wonder what you think of my getting you here and depressing you with my reminiscences,” she said in a lighter tone. “It wasn’t my intention. I suppose it’s due to reaction following the shock of recent events. We’ll flee from gloomy subjects, shall we? ... Come out with me. I want to show you my garden...”

Whether it was owing to Mrs Lawless’ display of emotion, or the unexpected sight of the photograph in her room, or to both reasons combined, added to the strange new quality in her voice when she spoke of the portrait’s original, Julie conceived the idea that she too loved this man with the dominating personality,—the strangely aloof manner,—the air of quiet detachment that made him at once a figure attractive and unapproachable, so that women, while desirous of knowing him, hesitated to solicit an introduction. It was not strange that she should love him—that to Julie was a natural, almost an inevitable, consequence of knowing him—but it was incredible that he could remain indifferent to her regard. The only explanation she could arrive at was that he was ignorant of it. Julie understood at last the tragedy that occasionally looked out from Mrs Lawless’ beautiful eyes; and in her sympathy with her the pain at her own heart grew less. She had no thought of competing against this peerlessly lovely woman. It was unaccountable to her by the light of her new understanding that Lawless should have troubled to show any interest in her at all. She wondered whether, if she ever saw him again, she would find the courage to tell him the secret she had surprised...

That evening, after Julie had left her, Mrs Lawless took the portrait of Lawless from the piano, and sat with it in her hands examining it closely. She was wondering whether the woman he had gone away with now was the same woman he had wrecked his happiness for eight years ago—wondering in a quite impersonal, dulled sort of way. The thing was past remedying and altogether beyond her control. She remembered that in the past it had been the wound to her self-esteem she had felt the most bitterly. Her feelings had changed during the long years. She experienced little of the grief, the anger, the disgust that had moved her then. Her present sorrow was less a selfish emotion than sorrow for the man because of the waste he was making of life. She scarcely considered the woman outside her connection with Lawless, save, after the tragedy of the previous night, to be relieved that, since she was to influence him, she had removed him from other influences of a more actively dangerous nature. She was glad that he was out of Cape Town, otherwise she knew he would have been concerned in the affair that had cost one life and might yet cost another.

And while she sat there musing on these matters with the photograph in her hands, the door of the room opened, and to her astonishment Colonel Grey was announced. He followed quickly on his name, as though anticipating and anxious to prevent a refusal on her part to receive him, offering an apology for intruding on her as he entered.

Mrs Lawless laid the photograph face downwards on the sofa and rose to greet him. Her face expressed her surprise; his was grey and tired and haggard, and his blood-shot eyes looked like the eyes of a man who has not slept.

“I fear I have disturbed you,” he said. “I’m sorry to intrude, but I wish to see you.”

“You have disturbed me doing nothing,” she answered composedly. “I was wearied of my thoughts. Sit down and tell me what you wanted to see me for... Will you take anything?” she added, on a sudden thought, as he dropped wearily into a chair. “You look tired.”

“Thank you, no,” he answered. “I am less tired than worried. But I won’t distress you by going into that. I quite understand that the subject is painful to you, and for that reason I regret to inflict my company on you.”

Mrs Lawless looked slightly impatient. This man too! ... Was everyone she met to say the same thing to her, only in different words?

“Please disabuse your mind of any such impression,” she said. “Of course I feel sympathy with the trouble of my friends, but your presence cannot possibly increase my distress. Why should it?”

“I feared you might hold me responsible for what has occurred,” he said simply. “And the sight of me cannot fail to call up painful thoughts. I do not profess to be other than an enemy of the man you regard as a friend. You know too much of the matter for me to impose on you—even if I wished to do so. I can only say that I regret that our interests are opposed.”

She smiled faintly.

“You take rather much for granted, I think,” she said. “Why should you suppose I am interested in the matter at all? Women do not usually meddle in such dangerous and discreditable enterprises—you will forgive me for speaking of this as I feel... I cannot see that it is creditable to be concerned in this business of yours.”

“Perhaps not,” he said. “But then, again, perhaps you don’t fully understand. And aren’t you judging a little by results?”

“I think it is reasonable to draw conclusions from results in most instances,” she answered.

“From final results,” he returned... “But not at this stage.”

“I had hoped this was the last stage,” she said.

“I had hoped it might be,” he returned with some grimness of manner... “But we haven’t won yet.”

“Nor lost?”

“We can’t lose, Mrs Lawless. It has to be a fight to the finish.”

He regarded her fixedly. As was usual when in her presence, the distrust which he entertained for her at other times vanished to yield to a liking and confidence which he admitted with some reluctance, but which he was unable to subdue. Hers was a magnetic personality, and this in conjunction with her beauty robbed a man of his wits. At his age he should be impervious to the charm of women. But man is never too old to be influenced by the sex.

“It’s rather a big check we’ve come upon,” he resumed, after a momentary pause. “I’m sadly in need of assistance... That’s why I have come to you.”

She opened her eyes wide in astonishment.

“You never supposed that I might assist you?” she said.

“I am hoping you will,” he answered... “in a way in which only you can. I want you—if you will be so kind—to furnish me with Mr Lawless’ present address. He ought to be here, on the spot.”

She sat very still for a while, looking beyond him out through the window.

“Isn’t one broken head and one life sufficient?” she asked presently in a low, strangely controlled, unemotional voice. “It seems to me that your view of things is out of proportion, Colonel Grey, when you can sacrifice the lives of men for a packet of scandalous letters.”

“That means,” he said, “that you decline to give me the information?”

“I have not the information to give,” she answered with dignity.—“I should certainly not give it, if I had. ... My one fear is that Mr Lawless will hear of this affair and return.”

“I could wish I shared your belief,” he replied. “But I fancy you may ease your mind on that score... And there is less danger in this than you imagine... the dog that bites is chained.”

He eyed her narrowly as he referred thus to Van Bleit’s arrest; but he could make nothing of the calm, unchanging face, the quiet eyes that looked steadily back into his.

“You hate that man,” she said slowly. “You will—hang him, if you can.”

He sat forward and peered at her queerly from under his bent brows. He had half expected when he went there that evening that she would make an appeal to his clemency on behalf of the man against whom he would appear as principal witness. That she did not, spoke well for her pride and self-control. Such courage and restraint moved him to admiration. She hid her feelings magnificently, he decided, ignorant of how little she had to conceal.

“You think so,” he said, rising, and standing, hat in hand, in front of her, preparatory to taking his leave after his fruitless errand. “I should have thought you might have perceived that until I have got possession of the letters I have nothing to gain by his death. Denzil has the packet in his keeping, I believe. If I can get hold of it before the case comes on, Van Bleit shall account for the life he has taken.”

“And that is your reason for coming to me for the address?” she observed.

“That,” he answered bluntly, “is my reason. I want Grit Lawless for the job.”

Chapter Fourteen.

In a lonely shanty on the veld, twenty good miles from the nearest town. Lawless took up his quarters with the woman in whose society he had left Cape Town. The shanty was of corrugated iron lined with planks, and consisted of two small bedrooms and a living-room, divided from one another by matchboard partitions. There were primitive out-buildings that had served a former occupier for stables, and a disused mud hut stood in a sort of blank isolation some quarter of a mile distant. Behind the hut on steeply shelving ground was densely wooded cover, the only sign of shade in the whole picture. The hut had been used by natives apparently quite recently. The wooden blocks, curved to fit the neck, that serve the black man for pillow, stood on the ground. These blocks were joined together by a wooden chain, as is the marital custom of the land. Beside them was a worn and dirty blanket, and a calabash and mealie stamper lay against the wall close to the doorless opening. This primitive native home, with its rude implements and poor accommodation, was seemingly deserted. Probably the coloured occupants, having no lawful possession of the place, had fled precipitately at the coming of strangers who might question their right to be there, and were doubtless watching at no great distance until the white man should depart, as he always departed after the briefest of sojourns in that lonely spot. That they would return eventually was certain; no native, save under compulsion, vacates a place and leaves his blanket behind.

Lawless and his companion settled into their temporary home and proceeded to do for themselves. The woman set the house to rights, while Lawless stabled the horses he had hired from the town, and went out to gather wood to make a fire. When he had collected a sufficient quantity, he returned to the house, piled the logs upon the hearth, and set light to them. They had brought provisions with them, and he filled a new tin kettle from his water-bag and set it on the flames. The woman emerged from the bedroom while he knelt upon the hearth, and stood in the doorway watching him with a light of admiration in her eyes.

“Say, baas, there are no sheets to the beds,” she drawled,—“nor blankets.”

He was intent on his occupation, and did not look round.

“Damn it!” he muttered. “I never thought of that... Of course not... We’ll have to sleep in our clothes.”

“Been jumped, I expect,” she said.

“Very likely. What an ass I was not to come better prepared.”

“Oh! what does it matter?” she returned. “We’ve both roughed it before. It’s a picnic. Get up, Grit. The cooking’s my department. You unpack the food stuff. I tumbled on a gridiron under one of the beds. It’s a bit rusty, but I’ll clean it in the flame; then we’ll cook some of those chops you bought. I’m hungry.”

He was hungry also, and he fell to with appetite, the roughness of the fare notwithstanding, when she placed the fizzling chops on a tin plate and brought them to the table. He cleared a space for them, and cut a chunk of bread from the loaf for himself and another for her, while she made the tea. Then they sat down to the first meal in their new quarters.

It was a silent meal. They were too hungry to talk, and both were tired after a long day in the saddle. It was more than three weeks since they had left Cape Town. They had stayed at different places, until, hearing of the shanty from a man in Stellenbosch, who was anxious to let it, and who told wonderful fairy-tales of the sport to be enjoyed in the neighbourhood. Lawless had decided to take it, and having paid the first month’s rent in advance, bought provisions and hired horses and set out with his companion to take possession of what the owner described as a comfortably furnished shooting-box. Comfort is largely a matter of comparison. Lawless had roughed it often, had fared worse, and been worse housed; but his new surroundings depressed him. It was probably the contrast between them and the recent comfort he had enjoyed that forced home the sordidness of the present life.

When they had supped he dragged his chair nearer the doorway and sat smoking, while the woman cleared away the remains of their meal. She joined him when she had finished her task, drawing up a chair opposite to his on the other side of the opening. Then she took a packet of cigarette-papers and tobacco from her pocket, and rolled herself a cigarette.

“You are dull, dear boy,” she remarked, as she caught the box of matches which Lawless tossed her in silence. “You are a man of action, and the solitudes are not to your taste. This life is the silly sort of mistake made by most honeymooners.”

Lawless looked across at her, a queer expression in his eyes. In the dim light, which mercifully concealed the thickness of the paint upon her face, she was really strikingly handsome. She looked younger than she appeared in the daytime.

“You ought always to sit in the twilight,” he said with brutal frankness.

She laughed good-naturedly.

“If you pay me compliments like that, Hughie, you’ll make me vain,” she said.

She drew at her cigarette, inhaling the smoke and discharging it through her nostrils. He watched her with an odd feeling of disgust. The bond between them was peculiar. The affection was without doubt stronger on her side than on his. But he ungrudgingly admitted she made a man a capital chum; and since throwing in his lot with hers he was keenly alive to the fact that many men envied him his possession. It had been a source of much annoyance to him, and of great gratification to Tottie, that she had been the object of offensive admiration at every place they visited. She had declared that it was because he was jealous that he determined to bury her in the wilds of the veld.

“You are the type of man who would be capable of murdering a woman, Grit,” she said.

“There you are mistaken,” he had answered. “If a woman once washed her hands of me, I should simply have done with her.”

“One can’t turn one’s back on an incident so as to forget it altogether,” she had objected.

“For the matter of that,” he had returned, “a man can’t command memory, but he can so put a thing out of mind that it ceases to disturb him.”

“Then, if ever I chance to elope with Van Bleit,” Tottie had flung at him audaciously, “I shall have the satisfaction of knowing my memory is relegated to the ashbin...”

They sat on until the light failed and darkness settled upon the veld, closing about them stealthily, and shutting out the immensity of the endless stretch of treeless waste that was all that could be seen from the house, a wide expanse of undulating veld held in the blue hollow of the sky. The darkness crept closer. It shut out the face of each from the other’s view. A small red glow marked where Tottie still held a cigarette between her painted lips, and a larger duller glow shone from the bowl of Lawless’ pipe.

“The moon will be up in a short while,” he said abruptly, and the words, quietly as he had spoken, snapped the silence almost violently, as a voice raised above a whisper in a death-chamber might do. “Shall we stay and see it rise?”

“Yes, if you like.”

She flung the end of her cigarette out into the darkness, and watched it where it lay like a somewhat fiery glow-worm until it smouldered out.

And then slowly the darkness began less to roll away than to disclose itself. Black objects stood out dimly from the shade, and the line of the horizon defined itself and almost imperceptibly, so gradual was the change, grew lighter. Tones of colour appeared in the picture; the black melted into purple, so rich and deep as to seem more dense than the sombre shade it superseded. And then abruptly the scene brightened. A soft yellow glow appeared in the sky, and the inverted curve of a blood-red moon showed above the horizon.

Lawless stood up, and knocking the ash from his pipe, leant with his shoulder pressed against the framework of the door, and watched the rising of the moon in silence until, like a thing released from restraining bonds, new-dipped in the life-blood of departed day, it shot up into the sky. He was not aware how long he remained thus, he was not aware that his companion had risen also and stood beside him, until he felt the touch of a hand upon his shoulder.

“Grit, it’s cold,” a voice said, rousing him from his meditations.—“And we haven’t any bedclothes.”

He turned his head slowly and surveyed her by the increasing light of the moon. Then he pushed her inside and shut the door.

“We’ll take a mattress off one of the beds,” he said, “and sleep in front of the fire...”

The next day Lawless announced his intention of going into town in quest of a further supply of comforts. Tottie suggested accompanying him, but he negatived the idea.

“I want your mount for a pack-horse,” he said.

“That’s all very fine,” she grumbled. “What am I to do all day by myself? Think of the risk in a place like this... The white woman and the black man, you know.”

He laughed grimly.

“You have a revolver. I’d back you against any nigger that happened along.”

He rode away in the morning sunshine with the second horse on a lead. For the first mile the woman accompanied him, walking beside him with her hand on his stirrup. Once or twice she looked up at him as he sat, a straight soldierly figure, in the saddle, with the strong stern face shaded by the wide-brimmed hat, and the keen sombre eyes fixed steadily ahead, and in her own eyes shone the light of loyal affection and admiration which so often appeared in them when they rested on him unseen.

“Bring some sort of a newspaper back with you, Grit,” she begged. “It’ll help to keep up the fiction that we’re still in the world, somehow.”

Then she parted from him and started to walk back alone, and he put the horses at a canter and rode forward into the blue haze that shrouded and softened the scene. The morning air was delicately fresh and crisp with a touch of sharpness in it like the feel of an English spring. The African winter, with its warm sunshiny days and cold nights, is the most perfect season in a land that boasts one of the finest climates in the world. White man’s weather, it is called; and it sets the white man thinking pleasantly of the land he speaks of and thinks of as Home. It set Lawless thinking of Home as he rode across the veld,—of a gabled grey-walled house set down in a pretty garden that gave upon a lane. The lane in summer was gay with wild flowers and shaded by find old elms, and he had walked there often with the beautiful woman who had lived in the grey stone house, the woman who had professed to love him, and who had written to him later that she never wished to see him again.

As he thought of it now a wave of bitterness surged over him. He recalled a sentence in her letter that had stung him at the time—that stung him still with a no less poignant pain: “I do not know you... I think I have never known you. You are a stranger to me, and, I see now, my greatest enemy.” ... There were other things in the letter that had hurt; but that sentence stood out luridly with no whit of the bitterness gone from it after all the years...

And so he rode, haunted by memories, his consciousness lashed with the knowledge that what she had written was true. And he knew that the pain of it all was still fresh in her memory as in his. He had read that in her face, and in the tones of her voice, when, at what cost to her pride he dimly understood, she had met and spoken with him again. And he was consciously, deliberately, adding to her distress. At the time it had been a matter of indifference to him what she thought of the life he was leading; now, with his thoughts of her softened by distance, he regretted that he had not deceived her as to the manner of his leaving Cape Town. It had been a poor sort of revenge to flout his mistress in her face—and unnecessary. A man usually conceals such ugly facts. But it could avail little to harbour regrets at this stage. The thing was at an end for ever. He was out of her life now. If she allowed her thoughts to dwell upon him at all, it would only be, he felt, as upon one who was dead to her, and who had caused her no less pain in his dying than he had caused her in his life.

Lawless was late in getting back to the shanty. The light had fallen and night was settling upon the land. While he was still a good way off he discerned the house by the flickering yellow glimmer of the candles Tottie had put in the window as a landmark for him. It was the only means of illumination she had at hand. There was an oil lamp in the house, but the paraffin, which Lawless was bringing with him, had been forgotten on the day of their arrival.

He gave a short sharp whistle as he rode up, and she opened the door and came forth to meet him.

“Lend a hand at unloading,” he said, swinging himself out of the saddle. “The pack’s heavy. Come round this side.”

She helped him lift the sacks from the back of the led horse, and accompanied him to the stable to settle the animals for the night, carrying a dripping tallow-candle in her hand, by the feeble light of which they accomplished their task.

Lawless was very silent, almost taciturn, while he off-saddled and rubbed down his weary horse, giving to Tottie’s gossiping inquiries curt monosyllabic replies.

“Tired, Grit?” she asked, noting his preoccupation.

He swore.

“It’s something more than tired,” he said.

They left the stables, and walking back to where they had deposited the sacks, lifted them, and carried them indoors.

“Got my paper?” she inquired.

He took the newspaper from his pocket and flung it on the table with an oath. The woman looked at him searchingly. It occurred to her that he had been drinking. If it were not that, something had happened to put him out.

Lawless suddenly approached the table and struck the paper, lying where he had flung it, with his open hand.

“They’ve bungled this business again,” he said savagely,—“that pompous fool, Grey, and his crony, Simmonds... Simmonds has gone to his account, poor devil! And Van Bleit’s in tronk, awaiting his trial for murder.”

Tottie’s mouth fell open.

“And the letters?” she gasped.

Having fired his bomb. Lawless cooled down. He took out his pipe, filled, and lighted it, and dropped wearily into a chair.

“You’ll read it all in the paper,” he said. “There’s no mention of the letters.” He gave a short laugh. “My little plan, which I’ve rehearsed to you, in which you were to help, is knocked on the head. I might just as well never have come here. It’s that crass, pig-headed, officious old muddler’s doing. He never trusted me... He fancies I’ve done a bunk... That’s because you’re in it.” He laughed again. “It hasn’t occurred to them that you might be useful—I’m supposed to be simply enjoying myself.”

He smoked for a few minutes at a furious rate, while Tottie opened and read the paper with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands.

“It’s a case of the biter bit,” observed Lawless. “Looks as though they had intended murdering him... A silly sort of a game.”

“Do you think Van Bleit will hang for it?” she asked presently.

“It’s impossible to say. If it pans out at a term of imprisonment it’s checkmate. I’ve a mind to wash my hands of the job.”

Tottie looked up.

“Don’t do that,” she said earnestly. “The Colonel might take it that his suspicions were justified, if you did.”

“I don’t care a damn what he thinks. If a man can’t trust me, he can do the other thing.”

“But I care,” she said quickly. “I’m jealous for your honour, Grit.”

He lifted his head and surveyed her in surprise.

“You!” he said.

Then he laughed awkwardly at the half-shamed admiration he surprised in the woman’s eyes. She turned her face aside quickly, and resumed her reading of the paper.

“All right!” he said sheepishly.

When she had finished the case, she got up and stood opposite him on the other side of the hearth.

“What is your next move?” she asked.

“I don’t move,” he answered quietly, “until after the case is finished.”

“And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime,” he replied, smiling across at her, “you stay here with me in this God-forsaken hole.”

Chapter Fifteen.

Van Bleit’s trial occupied considerably less time than was anticipated. It came on early in the session, and was quickly disposed of. The evidence was contradictory and unsatisfactory. Van Bleit, who was put in the witness box by his counsel, gave the only clear and unreserved account of the night’s doings. His plea was that he killed Simmonds in self-defence. There had been ill-feeling between himself and Simmonds for some time. On the night in question he had gone to the bungalow in perfect good faith. There was nothing remarkable in his being armed. He had carried a revolver ever since he had roughed it in Rhodesia. At the bungalow he had met with a hostile reception. Simmonds had locked the door of the room and put the key in his pocket. He had then drawn a revolver from his coat pocket and had covered Van Bleit with it.

“I recognised that I must defend my life,” Van Bleit finished with fine dramatic effect. “A man hasn’t time to consider on such occasions; he acts on impulse. But I solemnly declare I had no intention to kill the man. I fired wildly, and I am certain no one could have been more distressed than myself when I discovered that my shot had proved fatal. I was scarcely conscious that I had fired until Simmonds fell.”

Colonel Grey corroborated his statement as to the locking of the door; but he added that there was nothing hostile in the act. He believed it had been done to guard against interruption. He further allowed that Simmonds had been somewhat hasty. He had been the first to produce a revolver. He had not, however, covered the prisoner with it. The prisoner had been excited and had fired without provocation.

The jury retired for about ten minutes. When they returned they pronounced the prisoner Not Guilty. The verdict was received with cheers. When a man has stood on trial for his life the tension of feeling is sufficiently strained to cause a strong reaction on his acquittal in favour of the accused.

Van Bleit left the court with his friends, and Smythe, who was as much astonished as relieved at the turn affairs had taken, drove him home to his wife as the surest proof he could offer her that her cousin was a free man.

“I don’t know how he does it,” he confided in Van Bleit’s counsel, who was a personal friend, and whose fee he was responsible for. “I take it, he’s reserved for something worse than hanging.”

The strain had told on Van Bleit. He had recognised that he stood in a particularly tight place. Death had been his constant companion sleeping and waking for so long that his nerve was shattered for the time. Excitement had kept him up hitherto, now that the necessity to brace himself was ended he collapsed like a deflated paper bag.

When he got alone with his cousin he gave way and blubbered feebly as a child blubbers who has been beaten and desires to but cannot retaliate. Mrs Smythe was shocked. She pressed whisky on him with a heart overflowing with pity, and he helped himself liberally from the decanter until his lachrymose condition gave place to a bombastic assurance that was almost as pitiful to witness. Mrs Smythe sent her husband off to his club, unmindful that he should encounter Karl in his present mood, and she and her cousin dined alone.

“We’ll have a nice quiet time together,” she said gently. “You’ll sleep here to-night, Karl?”

“I might as well—yes,” he replied.

He got up, wandered aimlessly round the room, and then came back, put his arms round her shoulders and kissed her.

“You haven’t told me anything about Her yet,” he said. “Has she been upset? ... anxious? ... I’ve thought about her day and night.”

Mrs Smythe looked troubled.

“You mean—Zoë?”

He stared at her in surprise.

“Why, who else?” he asked.

“She has been with me a lot,” she answered evasively. “She’s very kind, Karl—so sympathetic.”

“Of course she didn’t believe me guilty?” he questioned, his bold dark eyes holding hers, confident in the remembrance of his last interview with Mrs Lawless that she could not have thought unkindly of him in the interval.

“I don’t know... She never spoke of you,” Mrs Smythe returned unwillingly. “Zoë is very reserved.”

He smiled with some complacence.

“She won’t be reserved with me,” he said, “when I see her to-morrow. I’m living for to-morrow. I would have gone to her this evening only—”

He hesitated to complete the sentence, but Mrs Smythe understood.

“I think it just as well not to be too precipitate,” she said.

Something in her manner arrested him. He glanced at her sharply.

“You don’t know... you haven’t heard anything?” he stammered.

She had neither the heart nor the courage to shatter his hopes. She smiled at him and shook her head.

“Women don’t bare their hearts to one another,” she answered. “But I always feel with Zoë Lawless that she lives in the past.”

“Pshaw!” he returned easily. “You’re a sentimentalist, Kate.”

The following day when Van Bleit called upon Mrs Lawless he had occasion to remember his cousin’s words, and to wonder whether she might not have some grounds for her opinion. The message he received at the door was that Mrs Lawless was out. He left the magnificent basket of flowers he had brought with him, and scribbled hastily on a visiting card that he would call again on the morrow, and went away dissatisfied. She must have known that he would call that day. If she had felt kindly towards him she would have remained at home to receive him. He was undecided whether to infer from her action that she no longer had any wish to meet him, or if she was merely piqued that he had not gone straightway to her after his liberation, and desired to show by her coldness her displeasure at his negligence. The latter view appealing more to his self-esteem he inclined towards adopting it; though a knowledge of Zoë Lawless’ character should have dispelled any such supposition.

The next day when he reached the house and rang the bell, with considerably less confidence than on the former occasion, he was met with the same disconcerting message as before. Mrs Lawless was not at home. There could be no mistake this time as to the intention of the rebuff.

He ground his heel savagely into the gravel of the path and turned away. It was the trial and the charge of murder, he decided, which had probably shocked her. It was not sufficient apparently that he had been acquitted of the charge; womanlike, she held him responsible for the life he had taken.

He went back to his own rooms. He had left the Smythes. The animosity that existed between himself and Smythe rendered it inadvisable for them to remain long beneath the same roof. And he had no inclination for his cousin’s society. He shrank from the thought of her sympathy. It was humiliating beyond measure to have to acknowledge his defeat to her.

Then, like an inspiration, the advice Lawless had given him on the last occasion when they had lunched together flashed into his mind. He decided to adopt it, to leave Cape Town immediately. It did not seem to occur to him that had absence been likely to further his cause his recent detention should have considerably advanced him in favour.

At this crisis a telegraphic message arrived from Lawless himself.

“Congrats try change of air bed board and welcome here grit.”

Van Bleit read this message many times, and considered it for fully half an hour before he wrote a reply. He considered his reply with equal care, and made several alterations in the form before finally writing it out on a fresh form and dispatching it.

“good travelling with denzil might as well come your way karl.”

He put on his hat and went out. It remained for him to look up Denzil and inform him of the holiday he had planned. He had taken all the risks he intended taking. He had had experience of two men against one; on this occasion he determined the strength of numbers should be on his side.

Denzil was astonished, and not altogether delighted, when he heard Van Bleit’s proposal. He had no particular fancy for wintering on the high veld, and he did not desire to leave Cape Town.

“What makes you suspect treachery in Grit Lawless?” he asked. “I thought he was a particular chum of yours.”

“I thought so myself until I found out he was in Colonel Grey’s pay.”

“And how did you discover that?” the other inquired sceptically. “Told you, I suppose?”

“Not much,” Van Bleit answered craftily. “But I keep a watch on the Colonel’s doings, and I know fairly accurately all the visitors he receives at the bungalow. It was the greatest surprise in the world to me when I tracked Grit Lawless there. I watched him unseen go in and out on three separate occasions. He has passed me so close that by stretching out a hand he could have touched me, and bade me good-night in response to my ‘Good-night, baas,’ taking me for the Kaffir I disguised myself to represent. He is very wide awake is Grit Lawless, but I’m wider awake still. I’ve followed him up to the stoep of the bungalow and heard him greet the old man, unconscious of a listener. He can’t kid me. The only thing that puzzles me is his absconding with that she-devil. It’s just possible that he has had a split with the Colonel. But that doesn’t make him any friend of ours, you understand. Grit is cunning enough to play the game off his own bat. I’m not for trusting any man. We’ll go, but we’ll need to be wide awake.”

Denzil looked at the speaker admiringly. He was cunning himself; it was due to his fertile brain that the letters had fallen into Van Bleit’s hands, otherwise he would never have participated in the profits; but his cunning was not equal to the Dutchman’s, nor his courage. He was a nervous little fellow, and would gladly have parted with the letters for the handsome sum offered by the other side. He was always keenly alive to the danger of his profession as blackmailer. It was only his fear of Van Bleit that kept him in subjection. And he was sorely afraid that Van Bleit would overreach himself and land them both some day into difficulties with the law.

“Why go,” he asked sensibly, “if you don’t trust the man?”

Van Bleit shrugged his huge shoulders.

“It suits me to go somewhere,” he answered. “And I’d like to test the fellow.”

“You’re more than a match for him,” Denzil remarked tentatively.

Van Bleit smiled drily.

“I daresay, Dick,” he said. “But I’ve a fancy for your company... I shouldn’t like the Colonel to get worrying you just now.”

“You mean,” Denzil said stiffly, “that you distrust me?”

“Not you, my dear fellow, but your judgment,” Van Bleit replied easily. “If it hadn’t been for me you would have parted with a fortune for a beggarly sum long since.”

“I’d be content,” observed Denzil in an injured tone, “with a handsome sum down. Where’s the sense in squeezing a man past his endurance?”

“We’ve got to find out how far his endurance goes,” the other answered. “Your conscience is over sensitive, my boy, for a job of this kind. We’ve a handsome annuity in those letters... Why on earth should we sink it in a sum we should both squander in a year? There’s no reason in it, and no commercial instinct. Apart from that, I’ve gone through an experience that entitles me to redress. Do you suppose I’ve endured nothing in standing on my trial? I wasn’t responsible for Simmonds’ death; it was his own silly fault. But I might have had to pay for it. The other side has got to make that good to me, and it isn’t to be done cheaply. Putting a man’s private feelings on one side, think of the expense of counsel’s fees, and such things?”

Van Bleit was careful not to mention that all the expenses of his trial had been borne by Theodore Smythe, who laboured under the delusion that his wife’s cousin had very little ready money at his command. It was a mystery to him how Van Bleit lived. Had he suspected him of blackmailing, he would not have lifted a finger to save his neck from the rope.

Denzil nodded shortly.

“Yes, of course... I quite see your point,” he said. “At the same time, I wish you could come to some sort of agreement. I think after this Grey might meet you quite handsomely. And it would be satisfactory to me, at least, to be finished with the business. Men have got twenty years for blackmail before now.”

Van Bleit drew himself up and eyed his subordinate aggressively.

“If you’re funking it,” he said, “say so, and be done with it. I’m not going to work with a man I can’t be sure of. We have worked together so far satisfactorily that it will be regrettable if you separate our interests now. But it has to be now or never. I’m not throwing this up for any scruple. Do you, or do you not, stand in with me?”

Denzil’s nature was weak, prone to any influence; and the dominating personality of the other man bore him down easily.

“Of course I stand in with you,” he said. “Our interests are identical.”

“Good!” Van Bleit rejoined. “You’re a wobbler, Dick; but you generally rise to the occasion. Then you go with me to-morrow? You won’t find it very amusing, though it may have its exciting moments... Unless, of course, the lady is still keeping house for Grit. But from the invite I imagine she has left him in the lurch.”

“He’d scarcely ask you up there if he’d got any women about,” was the reply, which Van Bleit construed into a compliment. He smiled complacently.

“I wouldn’t mind hunting down the quarry on my own account,” he said. “She was devilishly handsome—and a dashed bad lot.”

Chapter Sixteen.

The result of the trial was as great a surprise for Lawless as it had been for Theodore Smythe. Lawless had ridden into Stellenbosch daily for the paper, and had scanned the columns eagerly for any mention of the case. On the day that he read of Van Bleit’s acquittal he sent off the telegram, the receipt of which had decided Van Bleit on a change of air.

He had ridden into town alone; Tottie, who usually accompanied him, had remained at home to attend, as she informed him, to the ravages her wardrobe had sustained through the hard wear of the veld. When Lawless got back he flung the paper in through the open doorway and rode on to the stable, where he off-saddled, and then returned to the house. Tottie, when he entered, was seated at the table in her favourite attitude, with her elbows upon it and her chin in her hands, devouring the paper with avidity. She looked up as his tall figure blocked the doorway and laughed.

“He’s got the devil’s own luck,” she said. “But this is all right for you, old man.”

Lawless walked up to the table.

“I’ve sent off a wire asking him here,” he said.

She laughed again.

“You don’t lose time... And what’s to become of me? Plainly, you wouldn’t expose me to such a risk as that.”

“I shall banish you to the hut we looked at on our arrival. It’s quarter of a mile away, and the bush just behind it. You’ll sleep there and spend your days in the bush.”

“What a lively programme!” she ejaculated.

“Fairly dull—yes.” He went nearer to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’m not going to pretend that you’ll get much joy of it,” he said. “But you wanted to help me.”

She looked up and nodded.

“Yes, I wanted to help... If I had to spend my nights as well as my days in the bush, I’d do it.”

His hand gripped her shoulder till it hurt.

“You’re the right stuff,” he said,—“the best stuff. You and I together will pull this off.”

That night was destined to be a night of surprises. Hardly had they supped, while they yet lingered at the table discussing their plans, a sound broke suddenly upon the silence, a sound so unusual that Lawless stopped abruptly in the middle of his talk, and Tottie’s head went up with a jerk like the head of a wild thing scenting danger. And so they remained for a while listening in attitudes of strained attention. The sounds were unmistakably made by the heavy creaking wheels of a waggon travelling towards them across the veld. Tottie looked at her companion inquiringly.

“It’s a surprise party, baas,” she said. “They’ve seen our light and are for outspanning.”

For answer Lawless pushed back his chair, and, rising, started to clear away the evidence of the tête-à-tête meal. She helped him swiftly and in silence, pausing every now and again to listen to the sounds that were gradually getting nearer, growing momentarily louder and more distinctive. The cracking of a whip was heard, and above it the noise of men’s voices raised in a rollicking song.

“Get into the bedroom,” Lawless commanded. “You must make your escape by the window, and sleep in the hut.”

“But—strangers!” she protested. “Why shouldn’t I participate in the fun?”

“We can’t run the risk,” he said.—“No! You make yourself scarce, and leave this to me. Strangers or no, they’re rowdy... I would rather have no woman in this.”

She demurred still, foreseeing a merry evening, and not relishing the part allotted to her; but he carried his point; and reluctantly she went into the bedroom and fastened the door upon herself. He waited until she was secure from observation, then he opened the outer door and stood in the lighted aperture, looking into the night.

“Hallo!” shouted a voice in English out of the darkness.

“Hallo!” he answered back.

A young man came forward, swinging a lantern in his hand.

“We’re outspanning here,” he said. “I never expected such luck as that this place was occupied. A fire is all we need. We carry provisions with us.”

“Come in and welcome,” Lawless answered. “How many of you are there? Whatever accommodation I have is at your service.”

“We are five,” the other answered. “They’re unharnessing the mules. We lost our driver at the last uitspan.” He lifted his lantern and looked about him. “This is a slice of luck. For two nights we’ve been jolly near frozen, sleeping in the wain.”

“I’m glad,” Lawless said, “that you happened this way. I was just about fed up with my own society. Let’s lend a hand with unharnessing the mules. It’s a Godsend a visitation like this.”

The young man looked at him curiously.

“If you’re so out of conceit with it all, why do you stay?” he asked.

“Because,” Lawless answered, and smiled strangely, “I was under the delusion I’d have companionship when I took the place. My tenancy expires shortly, and I shan’t renew it.”

The new-comer understood. He looked away from his companion and spat noisily on the ground.

“I’m glad we chanced by while you were still in possession,” he said.

They walked together by the fitful light of the lantern to where the rest of the party were busy with the mules. They lent a hand, and when the team was outspanned and haltered to the disselboom inside a hastily improvised laager, they repaired to the house, carrying provisions with them. Amongst the provisions was a limited quantity of whisky and any amount of Cape dop. Most of the party were already drunk. It was evident from the outset that they meant to make a night of it.

“I expect,” Lawless said, as he preceded his visitors into the living-room, “that you’ll be glad of a hot supper. My culinary powers are not great, such as they are I’ll be happy to cook for you.”

“Don’t you bother, baas,” the young man who had first introduced himself exclaimed. “I’ll cook for them. You supply the fire and the roof, that’s quite enough.”

Lawless was immeasurably relieved. Tottie had done all the cooking their simple household had required; he had very little idea of the art himself. But he knew where the cooking utensils were kept, and supplied them; and the young man set about making a stew that smelt very appetising as it heated over the fire. The others sprawled before the hearth and drank while they waited for the meal. Before it was ready a further interruption occurred that made an addition to the numbers already assembled. It was indeed a night of surprises for the man who acted as host to these unexpected and none too welcome guests.

The new-comer made his appearance on horseback, and rode right up to the window before anyone suspected his approach. The sound of his horse’s hoofs was deadened by the noisy chaff round the fire. He looked in through the open window upon the rowdy group, and, leaning from the saddle, gripped the sill with his hand.

“Hallo, there!” he shouted in a cheery voice. “Got room for another? I’ve lost my bearings on this tractless waste, and seeing your uitspan calculated some sort of hospitality was going forward. I’m going to stable my mount. May I come in? I’m Tom Hayhurst.”

Lawless started, and looked round. The name conveyed much to him. It conveyed something to several others present; they looked up with a grin of welcome.

“Good old Tom!” said one man. “I haven’t seen him since we were at the poor man’s diggings together.”

Tom Hayhurst’s face beamed in upon them.

“Who’s baas here?” he asked.

“I am,” Lawless answered quietly, stepping forward to the aperture. “There’s room for your mount in the stable. Come in.”

“Right!” the young man answered. “I don’t know you from the devil. Got a lantern, anyone?”

Someone handed him a lantern through the window, and he rode away, whistling. One of the men laughed.

“Old Tom has been missing lately. Wonder where he’s been?” he mused.

“There are plenty of us can’t always account for our movements,” someone else answered, amid a fresh guffaw of mirth. “But wherever he’s been in the interval, he’s always good company. Say, baas, you’ve got a picnic to-night.”

Lawless made no reply. The name of Tom Hayhurst had roused memories, had taken him back to a lonely bungalow in Cape Town, where a man had related to him briefly how Tom Hayhurst had failed him in an important mission. He had been for wringing Tom Hayhurst’s neck at the time. He did not feel especially friendly towards him on that particular night; but Hayhurst had happened upon his dwelling out of the darkness, and claimed his hospitality, as was customary in the veld.

He moved back to the ring round the fire, and seated himself on an upturned box and stared thoughtfully into the flame. The arrival of the new-comer was strangely annoying to him.

Hayhurst came in noisily, and shaking hands with the man who had been at the diggings with him, nodded to the rest. They made way for him at the fire. He stood in front of it, looking curiously at Lawless while he warmed his hands at the blaze. The scar on Lawless’ face seemed to hold his attention.

“My name’s Hayhurst,” he remarked somewhat pointedly.

Lawless surveyed him with an air of quiet aloofness, and, without removing the pipe from his mouth, replied:

“So you said before.”

Hayhurst was not easily disconcerted, but he reddened slightly and gave an awkward laugh.

“It’s damned cold,” he said. “I’m chilled to the bone. If anyone presses me, I’ll take a glass of dop... Don’t overdo it with water.”

Stephens, the man from the diggings, handed him a glass. Young Hayhurst drank the contents, and remained a while staring into the empty tumbler with a thoughtful smile on his face. Then he put the tumbler down, and returned to his occupation of warming his hands. He glanced again at Lawless.

“I’ve heard of you,” he said,—“from a chap who won’t tell any more tales of anyone, good or bad... That mark on your face gives you away.”

“Don’t be personal, Tom,” hiccoughed his friend.

Lawless got up.

“I’ve heard of you, too,” he returned curtly. “The repetition of the information wouldn’t be likely to make you vain, so we won’t go into that.”

There was a perceptible hang in the conversation. The men broke off in their talk to listen, and the man who was cooking the supper looked up from his task to stare. The sense of something in the air penetrated even to the dulled wit of the most intoxicated of the party, a man of rough appearance and no education, who spent all his spare time in getting drunk, and crowded as much work into his sober hours as three ordinary men would have accomplished. He shook his head gravely, and then with solemn deliberation refilled his ever-empty glass from the bottle of dop at his elbow.

“Don’t mix your drinks,” he counselled... “bad for the constitootion—very.”

He maundered on, but nobody heeded him. Hayhurst was looking steadily into the keen eyes of the man whom he recognised from the description he had once listened to of the peculiar scar on his face. He had no shadow of a doubt as to the man’s identity.

“Since what I have heard of you,” he returned, “might be calculated to make you vain, I’ll spare your modesty. As for my own reputation!” He laughed suddenly. “That wouldn’t pay for whitewashing, would it, boys?”

He gazed round on the group with the laugh still in his eyes. Rentoul, who had given the advice against mixing one’s liquor, looked up owlishly.

“You never done a dirty trick, Tom,” he said... “Nothin’ mean about you. Gimme your ’and, me boy. No need for whitewashing... What say?—Tom’s all ri’, ain’t ’e?”

Hayhurst flung himself down on the hearth beside him, and stretched his legs, encased in dusty gaiters, towards the fire.

“Tom’s a good sort,” Rentoul continued, blinking round on the rest... “Always said so—goo’ sort!—but fond of his liquor. You’re drunk, Tom... Been takin’ wets along the road.”

Hayhurst laughed again.

“The veld’s so overstocked with pubs—ain’t it?” he said.

“Here, hand out the plates, someone—will you?—this mess is ready,” announced the chef.

There was a general move. The clattering of plates and knives superseded the talk; and for a fairly lengthy interval conversation gave place entirely to the sound of hungry men feeding noisily in rude and primitive fashion.

Chapter Seventeen.

When supper was ended the plates were pushed into a bucket of water and left to soak until they should be required again. One of the men got hold of the newspaper, and read it aloud to the rest. The names of Van Bleit and Simmonds were familiar to everyone present. Some of them had been personally acquainted with the owners of the names, and all were interested more or less in the case.

“It’s the best man that has reached his terminus,” Stephens remarked. “I could spin a yarn or two about Van Bleit.”

“Who couldn’t?” laughed another man. “But he always comes up smiling, somehow. I should say this let off was the biggest surprise he ever had.”

“’E served me an ugly trick once,” muttered Rentoul darkly, endeavouring to obtain a further supply of dop from the empty bottle beside him... “Over a woman that was... When I was down with dysentery too.”

He sat up with a poor attempt to look sober, and leaning forward tried to push the floor away, which, in the most annoying manner, threatened to hit him in the face. To avoid collision with it, he stood upon his feet, and turning round two or three times to get his balance, raised his arms and solemnly addressed the grinning group of listeners.

“Dysentery’s a crool complaint, gets a grip on a man. Reg’lar epidemic it was in camp that year. Doctor done ’is best to stamp it out, but whot could ’e do in that beastly ’ole? I done whot I could to ’elp ’im. ‘Boys, the doctor’s right,’ I says. ‘You’re a dirty lot o’ swine. Look at your camps. D’you expect the doctor to go round an’ stick ’is nose into your stinking places? Why don’t you clean up? ... Personal cleanliness... I know... I’ve seen it afore.’” He pointed at the grinning faces about him, and became personal and aggressive. “You wouldn’t wash your dirty mugs if you could ’elp it, any of you.”

“That’ll do, Mat,” someone interrupted.

“Neither would I,” resumed the orator in a more conciliatory tone, “unless I ’ad to. But we’ve got to be clean... We’ve got to ’elp the doctor... We’ve got to fight this thing. Coming events cast their shadders before. It’ll be here amongst us next. And it ain’t no use waitin’ for the Government. What’s the use of the Government when you’re out prospecting with six boys, an’ the lions come on you an’ kill three of them? Whot d’you do? S’pose you got a gun loaded in two barrels... Do you run back to call the p’lice? ... Do you go for the magistrate to come an’ ’elp yer? Where’d you an’ your boys be? ... No! You put your barrel into their guts and pull the trigger—yes, every time. An’ we got to do the same with the dysentery. ’E don’t come on you with a bound; ’e crawls through the grass, like a snake. ’E comes on gradually and slow... takes you unawares. We’ve got to stamp ’im out. We’ve got to pull the trigger, and not wait for the Government...”

“Sit down, Mat, and give somebody else a chance,” Stephens interrupted, with a wink at the rest.

“You can ’ave your say,” retorted Mat, “when I’ve finished.” He turned round and round, emphasising his remarks with repeated blows of one hard soiled fist upon the grimy palm of the other hand. “We’ve got to stamp it out,” he shouted. “We’ve got to fight it. I remember when I was young—”

“For God’s sake, dry up!” interposed another. “You’ve missed your vocation.”

“Who’re you gettin’ at with yer ‘vocation’?” Rentoul demanded with bitter superiority. “I don’t know anything about vocation. I picked up my eddication off jam tins and pickle bottles. I’ve no time for vocation. If you’d been in Jo’burg when I was there, you’d ’ave ’ad no time for eddication either. You’d ’ave been in tronk, where they makes yer wash yer face every morning—behind the ears too. To hell with yer! I’ve said all I want ter say... We’ve got to stamp it out.”

He fell to muttering, and eyeing the last interrupter malevolently, sat down again.

“We’ve got to stamp it out,” he said. “Gimme the bottle, Tom. You’ve swilled too much of that dysentery mixture, me boy. You’re drunk—tha’s what you are.”

“Van Bleit was running some quarry in Cape Town,” an older man observed, continuing the conversation from where it had been broken off. He sucked thoughtfully at his pipe and stared into the fire... “Woman with lots of money, I heard—and looks too. Must be hard up for an honest man if she takes on Karl.”

“This case will have about finished that game, I should fancy,” the chef of the party remarked.

Lawless got up, and flung a fresh log on the fire. He kicked it into position with his boot, and pressed it down among the glowing embers, pressing heavily as though it were some enemy he trod beneath his foot. Then he turned slowly round.

“Time’s been standing still for some of you,” he said. “I’ve been in Cape Town recently. There’s nothing in that report.”

Rentoul looked up from his corner.

“Whot you talking about?” he asked. “Time always stands still... We move—Time don’t move. If you come back in a thousand years, Time will still be ’ere, I tell you... I read it in them magazines.”

“Did you see Van Bleit when you were there?” someone asked, ignoring the dissertation on Time.

“I did. I lunched with him the day I left. He is by way of being a—chum of mine.”

Rentoul made a clumsy effort to get upon his feet.

“Then I’m goin’ to ’it you,” he said. “I can’t get at ’im, but I’ll bash your mug in, see if I don’t.”

“Oh! sit down, and don’t be a silly ass,” Lawless returned irritably.

Tom Hayhurst pulled the quarrelsome member back into his place.

“Go easy, Mat; he’s baas here,” he said.

Rentoul scowled darkly.

“I don’t own any man baas,” he muttered thickly. “I don’t care a damn for any man breathing... All men are equal. I don’t care for you, nor anyone. In a few years we’ll all be the same. When some digger comes along and digs up my skull and Cecil Rhodes’ skull, who’ll tell which was Mat Rentoul’s, and which Rhodes’?”

Somebody laughed.

“They’ll only need to look at the size of the cavity in the craniums, Mat,” he said.

“There you go again!” Rentoul rejoined acrimoniously. “Fancies yerself a British encyclopaedia don’t yer?”

The oldest of the party, who was slightly grizzled, and had the appearance of one who might have done something in the world and had somehow missed his opportunities, looked hard at Lawless.

“Weren’t you in the C.M. at one time?” he asked. “The name conveys nothing, but I seem to remember your face.”

Lawless nodded.

“That’s right,” he said. “I knew you the minute I saw you. But as I stood for law and order in those days and you didn’t, I did not insist on the acquaintance. It was only the accident of the different sources from which we drew our pay that put me in the right and you seemingly in the wrong. The Police were too damned interfering with the privileges of humanity for my taste. That’s why I chucked it.”

“Good!” The grizzled man smiled in appreciation of the speaker’s sentiments, and tossed his nearly empty tobacco-pouch across to him. “Fill up,” he said. “That’s good stuff.”

Lawless caught the pouch, filled his pipe, and tossed it back again to the owner.

“It was while I was in the Police I got chummy with Van Bleit,” he volunteered.

Tom Hayhurst rose unexpectedly and swaggered through the group sprawling before the hearth, until he stood close to Lawless, with his back towards the fire.

“I wouldn’t mind making a wager there isn’t a man here who hasn’t heard of ‘Grit,’” he said.

His face was flushed, his mien slightly defiant, as though he challenged, not only the men he addressed, but the stern, keen-eyed man who surveyed him disapprovingly with his strangely penetrating, inscrutable grey eyes.

“‘Grit’!” The grizzled man looked up with a laugh. “Of course. That was the name you went by in the days when you weren’t Lawless either in name or occupation. To think I should forget!”

“You’re too damned modest,” yelled a youngster. “The chaps tell stories about you up in Rhodesia to-day.”

“Fairy-tales,” Lawless responded, smoking indifferently.

“That’s a lie, anyway,” retorted Hayhurst. “I know one or two facts.”

“Among facts I know about you,” Lawless replied sharply, “is that you gab too freely. Sit down, and shut up.”

Hayhurst looked nettled. He lost his ready assurance and lapsed into a sulky mood.

“I’ll knock any man’s head off who says that about me,” he muttered.

“Well, come and knock mine off,” was the curt invitation; and during the derisive laughter that followed Hayhurst sat down.

“Shake!”

Mat Rentoul had emerged from his corner, and, swaying at Lawless’ elbow, unsteadily advanced his huge fist.

“Shake!” he repeated peremptorily. And on the command being complied with, he turned about and harangued the rest. “Said I’d ’it ’im, didn’t I? Well, ’e can ’it me, if ’e likes. I’ll ’it any man whot isn’t a friend of ’is. That woman I spoke of—”

“Oh! dry up,” shouted Lawless, beginning to lose his temper.

“’It me, if you like,” returned Mat imperturbably... “I’ve said you might... Gave ’er ’is last thick ’un, ’e did, and ’elped ’er back to ’er friends. She told me ’erself... You did—you lie!—an’ took in yer belt two ’oles when you fancied she wasn’t looking. I don’t care what hell’s scum you chum with... they won’t do you any ’arm.”

“Oh! let him alone, Grit,” the man whose pouch he had shared, and who was called Graves, interposed carelessly. “Nobody’s listening. Send round the bottle, boys. There’s been too much leakage in one quarter. Play fair.”

Somebody produced a tin whistle, and after a very creditable performance on it, took a draught from a glass another man offered him, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and started a familiar music-hall ditty.

“You take solo, Tom,” Stephens suggested.

Hayhurst, who was lying sulking, with his elbow on the floor and his hand supporting his head, kicked out a dusty riding-boot aggressively, but made no other move.

“I’m holding my jaw,” he said.

“Don’t be a jackass. If you won’t take the solo, I will.”

The other rolled over and sat up.

“There’s one thing I object to more strongly than singing myself on the present occasion,” he remarked, “and that’s listening to you. Give me the note, Bill, and then go ahead.”

The men sat round, smoking and listening, while Bill played his little tin whistle, and the youngster sang in a throaty tenor some jingling absurdity about a girl and a balloon. Each in his way was an artist, and made music out of the poor material. Mat Rentoul grew noisily hilarious, and then tearful; but he joined in the chorus with the rest. Lusty and strong rang out the voices from half a dozen stalwart throats, all of which needed lubricating when the song was finished before they started afresh. Through the open window the sound floated out into the night. The stars that hung low in the purple heavens blinked as it were with astonishment at this rude breaking of the surrounding peace, and someone, crouching in the darkness against the mud wall of the hut, with the dirty blanket wrapped around her to protect her from the cold, opened wide eyes and listened intently to the unfamiliar noise.

One by one the voices trailed off, till only the tenor was left singing to the thin accompaniment of the tireless tin whistle. Then that too ceased, and the night was silent again, given over to the watchful stars and the stirless air, as they waited for the dawn.

Lawless looked round on his sleeping guests, and stirred the fire noisily with his boot until it leapt into flame. Slumber had overtaken these men where they sprawled before the hearth. Some rested easily with their heads pillowed on their arms; one—it was Rentoul—lay like a log on his back, his great mouth open, breathing stertorously, and his twitching limbs flung wide.

“Hogs!” he muttered.

He fetched a pillow from one of the bedrooms, and lifting Rentoul’s inert head slipped it underneath. As he straightened himself after the performance of this office he became aware of a pair of eyes that followed his movements with interest, and perceived that among those silent figures one at least was wakeful and alert.

Hayhurst sat up, and then got upon his feet.

“Not all hogs this journey,” he said. And added: “The bed where that pillow came from will serve me better than the floor.”

Lawless nodded.

“There’s a bed apiece,” he answered. “The floor to-night is good enough for these.”

He flung on fresh logs, and stepping between the closely packed forms, took up the lamp from the table and led the way to the bedrooms. Before separating for the night Hayhurst held out his hand.

“To show there’s no ill-feeling,” he explained with a self-conscious laugh.

Notwithstanding the late carousal of the previous night, the morning found the men early astir. Rentoul awoke only half sober, and had to sharpen his faculties with a nip before he rose, and, despite his overnight homily on personal cleanliness, wiped the dust from his hair and beard with a grimy hand and sat down to breakfast unwashed. In the clear light of day they were a rough, strangely assorted lot; only the older man, Graves, with his air of distinction and education, stood out from the rest, like a man-of-war among a flotilla of “tramps”—but a man-of-war that has been in battle and come out of it badly damaged.

“Rum go, our meeting again, like this,” he said to Lawless, while they stood in the sunshine together and watched the others inspanning the mules. “I’d ask you to make a return call, only,”—he lifted his shoulders and smiled—“I’m a descendant of Cain—a wanderer upon the earth. I’ll own my six feet some day, I suppose, and come to anchor.”

Lawless glanced at the speaker with interest.

“I’m something of a rolling stone myself,” he answered. “I doubt I shall ever lay claim to greater acreage than you.”

“Ah!” Graves stroked the back of his head reflectively, and stared vaguely away into space. “Failures!” he muttered... “Eh?... And to think of some of the fellows who’re on top!”

“It’s another form of selfishness, theirs,” Lawless replied. “They’ve gone for the one thing, and stuck to it. A single idea would never satisfy either you or me. One man takes Wealth for his mistress; another, being polygamous, goes for a bevy of mistresses that we may bring under a common heading—Pleasure. The fool pursues Ambition, and the sentimentalist his Ideal... And when it comes to the finish—as Rentoul says—who shall say which man’s skull it is he turns up?” Graves nodded assent.