High Noon Part 15

"Indeed!" said Paul.

He placed the picture carefully in his breast-pocket.

"You must forgive my being rude," he added, "but I should not now be in this country if I had not every intention of marrying the lady myself."

Boris was a man used to being hard hit. He was steeled against cunningly and swiftly-dealt blows, such as he himself administered, but this declaration of Sir Paul's, that he intended to marry Mademoiselle Vseslavitch, took him quite back.

"Oh!" he exclaimed softly, and his voice had a certain note of surprise in it.

The baronet smiled a little grimly, but his eyes were as serene and as cold as ever.

Boris's "Oh!" had told him much.

He realized that he had dealt his host an exceedingly well-landed blow. Then the baronet's smile died, for, following the train of his suspicious thoughts, he instinctively grasped and held on to the idea that just as Boris had been searching his kit-bag for the purpose of blackmail, so that individual purposed marriage with Mademoiselle Vseslavitch to the same end.

This notion disquieted him greatly.

It disturbed him so much that the hard eyes hardened. Only the baronet's friends knew that they sometimes hardened because of the softness behind their gaze.

Paul's heart, indeed, rose in revolt against the suggestion that this man should for a moment presume to reach out and touch the hand of Mademoiselle Vseslavitch. Not for such a man as Boris was the girl with the calm yet, at the same time, troubled eyes, that had looked out from the picture.

Paul made a shrewd guess that if Boris had his hopes set on her, the girl with the dark hair and steadfast eyes stood in some peril.

The mere thought of it quickened his blood, and the quickening of his blood livened his brain still more, so that he watched, almost cat-like, the glance of Boris's eyes as they followed the placing of the lady's picture in Paul's pocket.

For a couple of minutes nothing was said. Each man knew instinctively that he must move to the attack, but realized that a mistake at the opening of the game might possibly spell disaster.

It was the baronet who broke the silence.

"No man, except one such as you," he said, "would dream of regarding Mademoiselle Vseslavitch as a possible wife unless he were so equipped with all the arts of blackmail that he had some reason to hope for his success."

By this time Boris had got back his composure.

"You seem," he said casually, "to endow me with an exceedingly poor character."

"Not exactly," said Paul. "I endow you with an exceedingly dangerous one."

There was another pause, and the two pairs of eyes sought each other, and the heavy-lidded, slumberous eyes of Boris flickered and faltered beneath those of Paul.

"I am about to present to you an argument," continued the baronet, "which unswervingly follows my present conception. Long experience of this wicked world--by which I mean that particular kind of vulture-like humanity which preys upon better men than itself--enables me to a.s.sume that you are without question a blackmailer, a bad blackmailer, and a blackmailer of no common type.

"But I have also learnt this, that no blackmailer can stand alone. His offence is the most cowardly offence in the world. A blackmailer is always a coward, and a coward is invariably afraid of isolated action.

I am therefore very certain that you do not stand alone in this attempt."

It had come upon Paul suddenly that this man was connected in some way with the scene he had witnessed at Lucerne--that he was the one for whom the fat man had acted as agent. And then, in a flash, he recalled the name "Boris" which Mademoiselle Vseslavitch had spoken; at that moment, too, Paul placed the personality of the Frenchman Virot. He and the fat man of Lucerne were one.

Boris's eyes left those of Paul and studied the panel behind the baronet's head.

"I should say," Paul continued, "that you were the headpiece, the brain-piece, of a well-planned scheme of crime."

The faint colour in Boris's face became fainter still. Paul believed he was pursuing the right trail.

"Now with such men as yourself--mind, I am not speaking so much from knowledge as from an intuition as to what I should do myself were I placed in similar circ.u.mstances--it is probable that you have sufficient intelligence, not only to rob your victims, but to rob your friends.

"Another piece of life's philosophy that roughing it has taught me is that the robber is always poor. I come, therefore, to the natural deduction that you are hard up."

Paul's whole expression of face changed suddenly. The coldness left it. And his keen eyes smiled with a smile that invited confidence from the man before him.

"Well?" said Boris. "And what of it?"

"Then," Paul continued coolly, "such a sum as two hundred thousand roubles would not come amiss to you. Such a sum I am prepared to pay you--under certain conditions."

All the pleasantness in Paul's face vanished again, and he looked at Boris with narrowed eyes.

"You realize that in my offering you such a sum," he said, "it will, of course, cost you something to earn it. A man who speculates must spend his own money to gain other people's. A criminal--you must forgive the word, but it is necessary--who seeks to make a great _coup_ at the expense of others must put up a certain amount of money to bring it off.

"I think, however, that I am offering you quite enough to enable you to buy either the silence or the inactivity of your fellow criminals.

Two hundred thousand roubles is a good deal of money, and your gang cannot be so large that you will not be able to afford a sufficient sum to render them your servants."

"Have a care," cried Boris, angrily, at last; "you don't know what you say."

"What do you mean?" demanded Paul.

"I mean," said Boris, "that I do not propose to be insulted any longer in my own house. Your offer of money is an affront which you will pay well for." He looked thoughtfully away for a few moments; then he turned sharply.

"I will be perfectly frank with you," he said with an amazingly good attempt at breezy honesty. "All of my friends are not particularly nice people, and if they had any idea that you were objectionable to me, not even the consideration of tapping your vast wealth would restrain them from putting you out of the way."

"There is such a thing," said Paul, lightly, "as killing the goose which lays the golden eggs."

"Yes," replied Boris, gravely, "but even a supply of golden eggs may be retained at too dear a price.

"However," he went on with an air of gaiety, "this is rather too serious a matter to consider to-night. I simply intended to throw out a kindly hint."

"I'm sure you are very good," said Paul, with a fine sarcasm. "I had not looked to you for such consideration."

Boris laughed, showing his fine teeth, and gave Paul a quizzical look.

"Don't you think," he began softly, "that you had better turn back and retrace your steps to-morrow?"

Paul looked at him scornfully.

"Do you think I have set out on this errand to be turned back by you?"

he said to Boris.

"I suppose," Paul cried, with a certain tone of irony in his voice, "that you think I am a mere society b.u.t.terfly. What do you think I care for all the scented drawing-rooms in the world, for polo, for Hurlingham, for a stuffy reception in some great house in town?

Nothing--nothing! Give me the open prairie land, the tall, brown gra.s.s, the open sky, the joy of the weary body that has ridden hard all the day!"

He laughed shortly.