'I kept her out of sight as long as I could,' said Heyst. 'Perhaps, with your bringing up, traditions, and so on; you will understand my reason for it.'
'He knew. He knew before!' Mr. Jones mourned in a hollow voice. 'He knew of her from the first!'
Backed hard against the wall he no longer watched Heyst. He had the air of a man who had seen an abyss yawning under his feet.
'If I want to kill him, this is my time,' thought Heyst; but he did not move.
Next moment Mr. Jones jerked his head up, glaring with sardonic fury.
'I have a good mind to shoot you, you woman-ridden hermit, you man in the moon, that can't exist without— no, it won't be you that I'll shoot. It's the other woman-lover—the prevaricating, sly, low-class, amorous cuss! And he shaved—shaved under my very nose. I'll shoot him!'
'He's gone mad,' thought Heyst, startled by the spectre's sudden fury.
He felt himself more in danger, nearer death, than ever since he had entered that room. An insane bandit is a deadly combination. He did not, could not know that Mr. Jones was quick-minded enough to see already the end of his reign over his excellent secretary's thoughts and feelings; the coming failure of Ricardo's fidelity. A woman had intervened! A woman, a girl, who apparently possessed the power to awaken men's disgusting folly. Her power had been proved in two instances already—the beastly innkeeper, and that man with moustaches, upon whom Mr. Jones, his deadly right hand twitching in his pocket, glared more in repulsion than in anger. The very object of the expedition was lost from view in his sudden and overwhelming sense of utter insecurity. And this made Mr. Jones feel very savage; but not against the man with the moustaches. Thus, while Heyst was really feeling that his life was not worth two minutes, purchase, he heard himself addressed with no affectation of languid impertinence but with a burst of feverish determination.
'Here! Let's call a truce!' said Mr. Jones.
Heyst's heart was too sick to allow him to smile.
'Have I been making war on you?' he asked wearily. 'How do you expect me to attach any meaning to your words?' he went on. 'You seem to be a morbid, senseless sort of bandit. We don't speak the same language. If I were to tell you why I am here, talking to you, you wouldn't believe me, because you would not understand me. It certainly isn't the love of life, from which I have divorced myself long ago—not sufficiently, perhaps; but if you are thinking of yours, then I repeat to you that it has never been in danger from me. I am unarmed.'
Mr Jones was biting his lower lip, in a deep meditation. It was only towards the last that he looked at Heyst.
'Unarmed, eh?' Then he burst out violently: 'I tell you, a gentleman is no match for the common herd. And yet one must make use of the brutes. Unarmed, eh? And I suppose that creature is of the commonest sort. You could hardly have got her out of a drawing-room. Though they're all alike, for that matter. Unarmed! It's a pity. I am in much greater danger than you are or were—or I am much mistaken. But I am not—I know my man!'
He lost his air of mental vacancy and broke out into shrill exclamations. To Heyst they seemed madder than anything that had gone before.
'On the track! On the scent!' he cried, forgetting himself to the point of executing a dance of rage in the middle of the floor.
Heyst looked on, fascinated by this skeleton in a gay dressing-gown, jerkily agitated like a grotesque toy on the end of an invisible string. It became quiet suddenly.
'I might have smelt a rat! I always knew that this would be the danger.' He changed suddenly to a confidential tone, fixing his sepulchral stare on Heyst. 'And yet here I am, taken in by the fellow, like the veriest fool. I've been always on the watch for some beastly influence, but here I am, fairly caught. He shaved himself right in front of me and I never guessed!'
The shrill laugh, following on the low tone of secrecy, sounded so convincingly insane that Heyst got up as if moved by a spring. Mr. Jones stepped back two paces, but displayed no uneasiness.
'It's as clear as daylight!' he uttered mournfully, and fell silent.
Behind him the doorway flickered lividly, and the sound as of a naval action somewhere away on the horizon filled the breathless pause. Mr. Jones inclined his head on his shoulder. His mood had completely changed.
'What do you say, unarmed man? Shall we go and see what is detaining my trusted Martin so long? He asked me to keep you engaged in friendly conversation till he made a further examination of that track. Ha, ha, ha!'
'He is no doubt ransacking my house,' said Heyst.
He was bewildered. It seemed to him that all this was an incomprehensible dream, or perhaps an elaborate other-world joke, contrived by that spectre in a gorgeous dressing gown.
Mr Jones looked at him with a horrible, cadaverous smile of inscrutable mockery, and pointed to the door. Heyst passed through it first. His feelings had become so blunted that he did not care how soon he was shot in the back.
'How oppressive the air is!' the voice of Mr. Jones said at his elbow. 'This stupid storm gets on my nerves. I would welcome some rain, though it would be unpleasant to get wet. On the other hand, this exasperating thunder has the advantage of covering the sound of our approach. The lightning's not so convenient. Ah, your house is fully illuminated! My clever Martin is punishing your stock of candles. He belongs to the unceremonious classes, which are also unlovely, untrustworthy, and so on.'
'I left the candles burning,' said Heyst, 'to save him trouble.'
'You really believed he would go to your house?' asked Mr. Jones with genuine interest.
'I had that notion, strongly. I do believe he is there now.'
'And you don't mind?'
'No!'
'You don't!' Mr. Jones stopped to wonder. 'You are an extraordinary man,' he said suspiciously, and moved on, touching elbows with Heyst.
