But Victor Durnovo had something to say to Gordon which circumstances had brought to a crisis.
“Look here,” he said, leaning forward and throwing away the cigarette he had been smoking. “This Simiacine scheme is going to be the biggest thing that has ever been run on this coast.”
“Yes,” said Gordon, with the indifference that comes from nonparticipation.
“And I’m the only business man in it,” significantly.
Gordon nodded his head, awaiting further developments.
“Which means that I could work another man into it. I might find out that we could not get on without him.”
The black eyes seemed to probe the good-natured, sensual face of Maurice Gordon, so keen, so searching was their glance.
“And I would be willing to do it—to make that man’s fortune—provided—that he was—my brother-in-law.”
“What the devil do you mean?” asked Gordon, setting down the glass that was half raised to his lips.
“I mean that I want to marry—Jocelyn.”
And the modern school of realistic, mawkishly foul novelists, who hold that Love excuseth all, would have taken delight in the passionate rendering of the girl’s name.
“Want to marry Jocelyn, do you?” answered Maurice, with a derisive little laugh. On the first impulse of the moment he gave no thought to himself or his own interests, and spoke with undisguised contempt. He might have been speaking to a beggar on the roadside.
Durnovo’s eyes flashed dangerously, and his tobacco-stained teeth clenched for a moment over his lower lip.
“That is my desire—and intention.”
“Look here, Durnovo!” exclaimed Gordon. “Don’t be a fool! Can’t you see that it is quite out of the question?”
He attempted weakly to dismiss the matter by leaning forward on his writing-table, taking up his pen, and busying himself with a number of papers.
Victor Durnovo rose from his chair so hastily that in a flash Maurice Gordon’s hand was in the top right-hand drawer of his writing-table. The good-natured blue eyes suddenly became fixed and steady. But Durnovo seemed to make an effort over himself, and walked to the window, where he drew aside the woven-grass blind and looked out into the glaring sunlight. Still standing there, he turned and spoke in a low, concentrated voice:
“No,” he said, “I can’t see that it is out of the question. On the contrary, it seems only natural that she should marry the man who is her brother’s partner in many a little—speculation.”
Maurice Gordon, sitting there, staring hopelessly into the half-breed’s yellow face, saw it all. He went back in a flash of recollection to many passing details which had been unnoted at the time—details which now fitted into each other like the links of a chain—and that chain was around him. He leapt forward in a momentary opening of the future, and saw himself ruined, disgraced, held up to the execration of the whole civilised world. He was utterly in this man’s power—bound hand and foot. He could not say him no. And least of all could he say no to this demand, which had roused all the latent chivalry, gentlemanliness, brotherly love, that was in him. Maurice Gordon knew that Victor Durnovo possessed knowledge which Jocelyn would consider cheap at the price of her person.
There was one way out of it. His hand was still on the handle of the top right-hand drawer. He was a dead shot. His finger was within two inches of the stock of a revolver. One bullet for Victor Durnovo, another for himself. Then the old training of his school days—the training that makes an upright, honest gentleman—asserted itself, and he saw the cowardice of it. There was time enough for that later, when the crisis came. In the meantime, if the worst came to the worst, he could fight to the end.
“I don’t think,” said Durnovo, who seemed to be following Gordon’s thoughts, “that the idea would be so repellent to your sister as you seem to think.”
And a sudden ray of hope shot athwart the future into which his listener was staring. It might be so. One can never tell with women. Maurice Gordon had had considerable experience of the world, and, after all, he was only building up hope upon precedent. He knew, as well as you or I, that women will dance and flirt with—even marry—men who are not gentlemen. Not only for the moment, but as a permanency, something seems to kill their perception of a fact which is patent to every educated man in the room; and one never knows what it is. One can only surmise that it is that thirst for admiration which does more harm in the world than the thirst for alcoholic stimulant which we fight with societies and guilds, oaths and little snips of ribbon.
“The idea never entered my head,” said Gordon.
“It has never been out of mine,” replied Durnovo, with a little harsh laugh which was almost pathetic. “I don’t want you to do anything now,” he went on more gently. It was wonderful how well he knew Maurice Gordon. The suggested delay appealed to one side of his nature, the softened tone to another. “There is time enough. When I come back I will speak of it again.”
“You have not spoken to her?”
“No, I have not spoken to her.”
Maurice Gordon shook his head.
“She is a queer girl,” he said, trying to conceal the hope that was in his voice. “She is cleverer than me, you know, and all that. My influence is very small, and would scarcely be considered.
“But your interests would,” suggested Durnovo. “Your sister is very fond of you, and—I think I have one or two arguments to put forward which she would recognise as uncommonly strong.”
The colour which had been returning slowly to Maurice Gordon’s face now faded away again. His lips were dry and shrivelled as if he had passed through
