'Here he is, governor! Keep him with you as long as you can—till you hear me whistle. I am on the track.'
He flung these words into the room with inconceivable speed, and stood aside to let the visitor pass through the doorway; but he had to wait an appreciable moment, because Heyst, seeing his purpose, had scornfully slowed his pace. When Heyst entered the room it was with a smile, the Heyst smile, lurking under his martial moustache.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Two candles were burning on the stand-up desk. Mr. Jones, tightly enfolded in an old but gorgeous blue silk dressing-gown, kept his elbows close against his sides and his hands deeply plunged into the extraordinarily deep pockets of the garment. The costume accentuated his emaciation. He resembled a painted pole leaning against the edge of the desk, with a dried head of dubious distinction stuck on the top of it. Ricardo lounged in the doorway. Indifferent in appearance to what was going on, he was biding his time. At a given moment, between two flickers of lightning, he melted out of his frame into the outer air. His disappearance was observed on the instant by Mr. Jones, who abandoned his nonchalant immobility against the desk, and made a few steps calculated to put him between Heyst and the doorway.
'It's awfully close,' he remarked
Heyst, in the middle of the room, had made up his mind to speak plainly.
'We haven't met to talk about the weather. You favoured me earlier in the day with a rather cryptic phrase about yourself. 'I am he that is,' you said. What does that mean?'
Mr. Jones, without looking at Heyst, continued his absentminded movements till, attaining the desired position, he brought his shoulders with a thump against the wall near the door, and raised his head. In the emotion of the decisive moment his haggard face glistened with perspiration. Drops ran down his hollow cheeks and almost blinded the spectral eyes in their bony caverns.
'It means that I am a person to be reckoned with. No—stop! Don't put your hand into your pocket— don't.'
His voice had a wild, unexpected shrillness. Heyst started, and there ensued a moment of suspended animation, during which the thunder's deep bass muttered distantly and the doorway to the right of Mr. Jones flickered with bluish light. At last Heyst shrugged his shoulders; he even looked at his hand. He didn't put it in his pocket, however. Mr. Jones, glued against the wall, watched him raise both his hands to the ends of his horizontal moustaches, and answered the note of interrogation in his steady eyes.
'A matter of prudence,' said Mr. Jones in his natural hollow tones, and with a face of deathlike composure. 'A man of your free life has surely perceived that. You are a much talked-about man, Mr. Heyst—and though, as far as I understand, you are accustomed to employ the subtler weapons of intelligence, still I can't afford to take any risks of the—er—grosser methods. I am not unscrupulous enough to be a match for you in the use of intelligence; but I assure you, Mr. Heyst, that in the other way you are no match for me. I have you covered at this very moment. You have been covered ever since you entered this room. Yes—from my pocket.'
During this harangue Heyst looked deliberately over his shoulder, stepped back a pace, and sat down on the end of the camp bedstead. Leaning his elbow on one knee, he laid his cheek in the palm of his hand and seemed to meditate on what he should say next. Mr. Jones, planted against the wall, was obviously waiting for some sort of overture. As nothing came, he resolved to speak himself; but he hesitated. For, though he considered that the most difficult step had been taken, he said to himself that every stage of progress required great caution, lest the man in Ricardo's phraseology, should 'start to prance'—which would be most inconvenient. He fell back on a previous statement:
'And I am a person to be reckoned with.'
The other man went on looking at the floor, as if he were alone in the room. There was a pause.
'You have heard of me, then?' Heyst said at length, looking up.
'I should think so! We have been staying at Schomberg's hotel.'
'Schom—' Heyst choked on the word.
'What's the matter, Mr. Heyst?'
'Nothing. Nausea,' Heyst said resignedly. He resumed his former attitude of meditative indifference. 'What is this reckoning you are talking about?' he asked after a time, in the quietest possible tone. 'I don't know you.'
'It's obvious that we belong to the same—social sphere,' began Mr. Jones with languid irony. Inwardly he was as watchful as he could be. 'Something has driven you out—the originality of your ideas, perhaps. Or your tastes.'
Mr Jones indulged in one of his ghastly smiles. In repose his features had a curious character of evil, exhausted austerity; but when he smiled, the whole mask took on an unpleasantly infantile expression. A recrudescence of the rolling thunder invaded the room loudly, and passed into silence.
'You are not taking this very well,' observed Mr. Jones. This was what he said, but as a matter of fact he thought that the business was shaping quite satisfactorily. The man, he said to himself, had no stomach for a fight. Aloud he continued: 'Come! You can't expect to have it always your own way. You are a man of the world.'
'And you?' Heyst interrupted him unexpectedly. 'How do you define yourself?'
'I, my dear sir? In one way I am—yes, I am the world itself, come to pay you a visit. In another sense I am an outcast—almost an outlaw. If you prefer a less materialistic view, I am a sort of fate—the retribution that waits its time.'
'I wish to goodness you were the commonest sort of ruffian!' said Heyst, raising his equable gaze to Mr. Jones. 'One would be able to talk to you straight then, and hope for some humanity. As it is—'
'I dislike violence and ferocity of every sort as much as you do,' Mr. Jones declared, looking very languid as he leaned against the wall, but speaking fairly loud. 'You can ask my Martin if it is not so. This, Mr. Heyst, is a soft age. It is also an age without prejudices. I've heard that you are free from them yourself. You mustn't be shocked if I tell you plainly that we are after your money—or I am, if you prefer to make me alone responsible. Pedro, of course, knows no more of it than any other animal would. Ricardo is of the faithful-retainer class—absolutely identified with all my ideas, wishes, and even whims!'
Mr Jones pulled his left hand out of his pocket, got a handkerchief out of another, and began to wipe the perspiration from his forehead, neck, and chin. The excitement from which he suffered made his breathing visible. In
