the devil are you?" snapped the financier, forcing his spine to rigidity.
"I am the 'friend' on the telephone. I specially wanted you at the Devonshire to-night, and I thought that the fear of a robbery at Lowndes Square might make your arrival here more certain. I am he who devised the story of the inebriated cook and favoured you with a telegram signed 'Marie.' I am the humorist who pretended in a loud voice to send off telegraphic instructions to sell 'Solids,' in order to watch your demeanour under the test. I am the expert who forged your wife's handwriting in a note from the Kitcat. I am the patron of the cross-eyed menial who gave you the note and who afterwards raised you too high in the lift. I am the artificer of this gold sign, an exact duplicate of the genuine one two floors below, which induced you to visit me. The sign alone cost me nine-and-six; the servant's livery came to two pounds fifteen. But I never consider expense when, by dint of a generous outlay, I can avoid violence. I hate violence." He gently waved the sign to and fro.
"Then my wife?" Mr. Bowring stammered in a panic rage.
"Is probably at Lowndes Square, wondering what on earth has happened to you."
Mr. Bowring took breath, remembered that he was a great man, and steadied himself.
"You must be mad," he remarked quietly. "Open this door at once."
"Perhaps," the stranger judicially admitted. "Perhaps a sort of madness. But do come and sit down. We have no time to lose."
Mr. Bowring gazed at that handsome face, with the fine nostrils, large mouth, and square clean chin, and the dark eyes, the black hair, and long, black moustache; and he noticed the long, thin hands. "Decadent!" he decided. Nevertheless, and though it was with the air of indulging the caprice of a lunatic, he did in fact obey the stranger's request.
It was a beautiful Chippendale drawing-room that he entered. Near the hearth, to which a morsel of fire gave cheerfulness, were two easy-chairs, and between them a small table. Behind was extended a fourfold draught-screen.
"I can give you just five minutes," said Mr. Bowring, magisterially sitting down.
"They will suffice," the stranger responded, sitting down also. "You have in your pocket, Mr. Bowring— probably your breast-pocket— fifty Bank of England notes for a thousand pounds each, and a number of smaller notes amounting to another ten thousand."
"Well?"
"I must demand from you the first-named fifty."
Mr. Bowring, in the silence of the rose-lit drawing-room, thought of all the Devonshire Mansion, with its endless corridors and innumerable rooms, its acres of carpets, its forests of furniture, its gold and silver, and its jewels and its wines, its pretty women and possessive men— the whole humming microcosm founded on a unanimous pretence that the sacredness of property was a natural law. And he thought how disconcerting it was that he should be trapped there, helpless, in the very middle of the vast pretence, and forced to admit that the sacredness of property was a purely artificial convention.
"By what right do you make this demand?" he inquired, bravely sarcastic.
"By the right of my unique knowledge," said the stranger, with a bright smile. "Listen to what you and I alone know. You are at the end of the tether. The Consolidated is at the same spot. You have a past consisting chiefly of nineteen fraudulent flotations. You have paid dividends out of capital till there is no capital left. You have speculated and lost. You have cooked balance-sheets to a turn and ruined the eyesight of auditors with dust. You have lived like ten lords. Your houses are mortgaged. You own an unrivalled collection of unreceipted bills. You are worse than a common thief. (Excuse these personalities.) "
"My dear, good sir―" Mr. Bowring interrupted, grandly.
"Permit me. What is more serious, your self-confidence has been gradually deserting you. At last, perceiving that some blundering person was bound soon to put his foot through the brittle shell of your ostentation and tread on nothing, and foreseeing for yourself an immediate future consisting chiefly of Holloway, you have by a supreme effort of your genius, borrowed £60,000 from a bank on C.M.I.C. scrip, for a week (eh?), and you have arranged, you and your wife, to— melt into thin air. You will affect to set out as usual for your country place in Hampshire, but it is Southampton that will see you to-night, and Havre will see you to-morrow. You may run over to Paris to change some notes, but by Monday you will be on your way to frankly, I don't know where; perhaps Monte Video. Of course you take the risk of extradition, but the risk is preferable to the certainty that awaits you in England. I think you will elude extradition. If I thought otherwise, I should not have had you here to-night, because, once extradited, you might begin to amuse yourself by talking about me."
"So it's blackmail," said Mr. Bowring, grim.
The dark eyes opposite to him sparkled gaily. "It desolates me," the youngish man observed, "to have to commit you to the deep with only ten thousand. But, really, not less than fifty thousand will requite me for the brain-tissue which I have expended in the study of your interesting situation."
Mr. Bowring consulted his watch.
"Come, now," he said, huskily; "I'll give you ten thousand. I flatter myself I can look facts in the face, and so I'll give you ten thousand."
"My friend," answered the spider, "you are a judge of character. Do you honestly think I don't mean precisely what I say— to sixpence? It is eight-thirty. You are, if I may be allowed the remark, running it rather fine."
"And suppose I refuse to part?" said Mr. Bowring, after reflection. "What then?"
"I have confessed to you that I hate violence. You would therefore leave this room unmolested, but you wouldn't step off the island."
Mr. Bowring scanned the agreeable features of the stranger. Then, while the lifts were ascending and descending, and the wine was sparkling, and the jewels flashing, and the gold chinking, and the pretty women being pretty, in all the four quarters of the Devonshire, Mr. Bruce Bowring in the silent parlour counted out fifty notes on to the table. After all, it was a fortune, that little pile of white on the crimson polished wood.
"Bon voyage!" said the stranger. "Don't imagine that I am not full of sympathy for you. I am. You have only been unfortunate. Bon voyage!"
"No! By Heaven!" Mr. Bowring almost shouted, rushing back from the door, and drawing a revolver from his hip pocket. "It's too much! I didn't mean to— but confound it! what's a revolver for?"
The youngish man jumped up quickly and put his hands on the notes.
"Violence is always foolish, Mr. Bowring," he murmured.
"Will you give them up, or won't you?"
"I won't."
The stranger's fine eyes seemed to glint with joy in the drama.
"Then?"
The revolver was raised, but in the same instant a tiny hand snatched it from the hand of Mr. Bowring, who turned and beheld by his side a woman. The huge screen sank slowly and noiselessly to the floor in the surprising manner peculiar to screens that have been overset.
Mr. Bowring cursed. "An accomplice! I might have guessed!" he grumbled in final disgust.
He ran to the door, unlocked it, and was no more seen.
IV.
