King of the Castle. Fenn George Manville

      “You’ll do nothing – ”

      He did not finish the sentence.

      “Carte blanche?” said Gellow again.

      “Well, yes.”

      “Right; and every lie I tell goes down to your account, dear boy. Bye-bye. Off you go,” he said aloud, as he sprang on the stones. “I’m very sorry, Glyddyr; I apologise. If I had known she would follow me, I wouldn’t have come.”

      “Give way,” said Glyddyr, thrusting the boat from the steps; and he sank down in the stern, heedless of the dripping seat, and thinking deeply as the pier seemed to slip away from him, and with it the woman who had for years been, as he styled it, his curse.

      He only glanced back once, and saw that Chris Lisle was being helped up into a sitting position, but the little crowd closed round him, and he saw no more, but sat staring hard at his yacht, and seeing only the face of the woman just drawn from the sea.

      Then he seemed to see Chris recovering, and taking advantage of his absence to ruin all his hopes with Claude.

      “If these two, Claude and Denise, should meet and talk,” he thought.

      “If Gartram should learn everything. If Denise should not recover. Hah!”

      Glyddyr uttered a low expiration of the breath, as he recalled how closely Gellow’s interests were mixed up with his own.

      “And I have given him carte blanche,” he thought; “and he will say or do anything to throw them off the scent – or do anything,” he repeated, after a pause. “No, he dare do no harm; he is too fond of his own neck.”

      He had come to this point when he reached the side of his long, graceful-looking yacht, and as soon as he was aboard he gave his orders; the mooring ropes were cast off, and the sails hoisted. Then, fetching a glass from the cabin, Glyddyr carefully scanned the pier and shore, but could see nothing but little knots of people standing about discussing the adventure, while the largest knots hung about the door of the hotel.