caverns of his eyes turned upon Heyst. Then briskly: 'But my object is to keep you in this room. Don't provoke me, by some unguarded movement, to smash your knee or do something definite of that sort.' He passed his tongue over his lips, which were dry and black, while his forehead glistened with moisture. 'I don't know if it wouldn't be better to do it at once!'
'He who deliberates is lost,' said Heyst with grave mockery.
Mr Jones disregarded the remark. He had the air of communing with himself.
'Physically I am no match for you,' he said slowly, his black gaze fixed upon the man sitting on the end of the bed. 'You could spring—'
'Are you trying to frighten yourself?' asked Heyst abruptly. 'You don't seem to have quite enough pluck for your business. Why don't you do it at once?'
Mr Jones, taking violent offence, snorted like a savage skeleton.
'Strange as it may seem to you, it is because of my origin, my breeding, my traditions, my early associations, and such-like trifles. Not everybody can divest himself of the prejudices of a gentleman as easily as you have done, Mr. Heyst. But don't worry about my pluck. If you were to make a clean spring at me, you would receive in mid air, so to speak, something that would make you perfectly harmless by the time you landed. No, don't misapprehend us, Mr. Heyst. We are—er—adequate bandits; and we are after the fruit of your labours as a—er—successful swindler. It's the way of the world—gorge and disgorge!'
He leaned wearily the back of his head against the wall. His vitality seemed exhausted. Even his sunken eyelids drooped within the bony sockets. Only his thin, waspish, beautifully pencilled eyebrows, drawn together a little, suggested the will and the power to sting—something vicious, unconquerable, and deadly.
'Fruits! Swindler!' repeated Heyst, without heat, almost without contempt. 'You are giving yourself no end of trouble, you and your faithful henchman, to crack an empty nut. There are no fruits here, as you imagine. There are a few sovereigns, which you may have if you like; and since you have called yourself a bandit—'
'Yaas!' drawled Mr. Jones. 'That, rather than a swindler. Open warfare at least!'
'Very good! Only let me tell you that there were never in the world two more deluded bandits—never!'
Heyst uttered these words with such energy that Mr. Jones, stiffening up, seemed to become thinner and taller in his metallic blue dressing-gown against the whitewashed wall.
'Fooled by a silly, rascally innkeeper!' Heyst went on. 'Talked over like a pair of children with a promise of sweets!'
'I didn't talk with that disgusting animal,' muttered Mr. Jones sullenly; 'but he convinced Martin, who is no fool.'
'I should think he wanted very much to be convinced,' said Heyst, with the courteous intonation so well known in the Islands. 'I don't want to disturb your touching trust in your—your follower, but he must be the most credulous brigand in existence. What do you imagine? If the story of my riches were ever so true, do you think Schomberg would have imparted it to you from sheer altruism? Is that the way of the world, Mr. Jones?'
For a moment the lower jaw of Ricardo's gentleman dropped; but it came up with a snap of scorn, and he said with spectral intensity:
'The beast is cowardly! He was frightened, and wanted to get rid of us, if you want to know, Mr. Heyst. I don't know that the material inducement was so very great, but I was bored, and we decided to accept the bribe. I don't regret it. All my life I have been seeking new impressions, and you have turned out to be something quite out of the common. Martin, of course, looks to the material results. He's simple—and faithful—and wonderfully acute.'
'Ah, yes! He's on the track—' and now Heyst's speech had the character of politely grim raillery—'but not sufficiently on the track, as yet, to make it quite convenient to shoot me without more ado. Didn't Schomberg tell you precisely where I conceal the fruit of my rapines? Pah! Don't you know he would have told you anything, true or false, from a very clear motive? Revenge! Mad hate—the unclean idiot!'
Mr Jones did not seem very much moved. On his right hand the doorway incessantly flickered with distant lightning, and the continuous rumble of thunder went on irritatingly, like the growl of an inarticulate giant muttering fatuously.
Heyst overcame his immense repugnance to allude to her whose image, cowering in the forest was constantly before his eyes, with all the pathos and force of its appeal, august, pitiful, and almost holy to him. It was in a hurried, embarrassed manner that he went on:
'If it had not been for that girl whom he persecuted with his insane and odious passion, and who threw herself on my protection, he would never have—but you know well enough!'
'I don't know!' burst out Mr. Jones with amazing heat. 'That hotel-keeper tried to talk to me once of some girl he had lost, but I told him I didn't want to hear any of his beastly women stories. It had something to do with you, had it?'
Heyst looked on serenely at this outburst, then lost his patience a little.
'What sort of comedy is this? You don't mean to say that you didn't know that I had—that there was a girl living with me here?'
One could see that the eyes of Mr. Jones had become fixed in the depths of their black holes by the gleam of white becoming steady there. The whole man seemed frozen still.
'Here! Here!' he screamed out twice. There was no mistaking his astonishment, his shocked incredulity— something like frightened disgust.
Heyst was disgusted also, but in another way. He too was incredulous. He regretted having mentioned the girl; but the thing was done, his repugnance had been overcome in the heat of his argument against the absurd bandit.
'Is it possible that you didn't know of that significant fact?' he inquired. 'Of the only effective truth in the welter of silly lies that deceived you so easily?'
'No, I didn't!' Mr. Jones shouted. 'But Martin did!' he added in a faint whisper, which Heyst's ears just caught and no more.
