Hearing the sound of lightly-falling footsteps behind him, Boris
Ivanovitch ceased his investigations of Sir Paul's kit-bag and
cautiously turned his head.
As he did so, he experienced a painful sensation. He felt a little
cold ring of steel pressed against his right temple, and from past
experience, both objective and subjective, he knew that a Colt
cartridge was held, so to speak, in leash within five inches of his
head.
For several infinitely long seconds Boris did not entirely revel in
the pause that followed.
It was, indeed, with some relief that he heard Paul's distinctly
pleasant, though slightly mocking, voice break the accentuated
silence and say:
"Don't be alarmed, Ivanovitch. I mean you no harm. I am simply
psychologically interested in your movements. The fact that I am
attempting to protect the contents of my kit-bag from your attentions
is of comparatively small importance."
Boris drew a little breath of relief, not the less sincere because he
was conscious that the muzzle of the revolver was withdrawn from his
temple.
He heard the door of the chamber close softly; then the pleasant voice
spoke again, though with a slightly harder ring in its tones.
"Stand up, Ivanovitch," said the voice, "and be seated. I have a good
deal to say, and it is not my habit to talk to any man when I find him
on his knees."
Boris rose a little unsteadily and faced about, to find the most
disconcerting eyes of Sir Paul bent full upon him.
Still retaining the revolver in his hand, the baronet seated himself
upon the edge of his bed and then motioned to his host to sit down
upon a chair.
For a few minutes the two men gazed at each other with curiosity and
interest. Swiftly, however, it came to Paul that a man in Boris's
apparent position was not likely to be engaged in theft. There sprang
into his brain the notion that the man was simply searching through
his belongings with the idea of blackmail.
It almost made Paul laugh to think that any man should attempt to
blackmail him. He had nothing to disguise, nothing to hide.
Indeed, as he sat easily on the edge of the bed, looking at the dark,
disconcerted face before him, he had half a mind to throw his weapon
aside and to tell Ivanovitch to go his way in peace.
"What did you find?" Paul asked.
Boris did not even blink his heavy-lidded eyes.
"Nothing," he said.
"Yet," rejoined Paul, almost meditatively, "you must have been here
some minutes at least before I arrived."
"I tell you," said Boris, almost earnestly, "that I found nothing."
"That is to say," said Paul, "nothing which you could turn to your own
good account."
Boris smiled a sour yet demure little smile.
"Precisely," he said evenly.
"Permit me," said the baronet, just as quietly, "to inform you that
you are a liar. I think you will be able to hand me something that is
of interest to us both."
"I was not aware that I could," replied Boris, with a touch of sarcasm
in his voice.
Paul picked up again the six-shooter which he had laid carelessly at
his side.
"Try," he said, and his voice was gently persuasive.
Just a flicker of vindictiveness crept into Boris' eyes, and under the
suasion of firearms he turned again to the bag.
After a few moments Paul, now schooled to infinite placidity, inquired
for the second time if he had found anything.
"Only a few papers," said Boris, crossly.
"Pardon me," said the baronet, "if I am not mistaken you have found
something that seems of interest to you. Be kind enough to hand it to
me."
The Russian turned about, and with a carefully-manicured hand offered
Paul a photograph which Paul had seen protruding from his pocket.
Paul took it and looked at it casually, though the muscles on his
closed jaws stood out in a manner that was not wholly pleasant to look
upon. It was, however, with unfathomable eyes that he surveyed the
portrait before him.
The photograph revealed the features of a girl with an astonishingly
quiet face. Her cheeks were round and soft, and her chin was round and
soft, too, but her mouth, a little full and pronounced, was distinctly
sad and set. A pair of large eyes looked out upon the world
unwaveringly and serenely, if a little sorrowfully, beneath a pair of
finely pencilled, level brows, which formed, as it were, a little bar
of inflexible resolve. A mass of dark hair was coiled upon the girl's
head after the manner of early Victorian heroines. It was a face at
once striking and wistful in its splendour.
Paul looked up from the picture to Ivanovitch.
"You," he said simply, "know everybody hereabouts. Therefore I feel
confident that you will be able to tell me the name of this girl. That
is all I ask you--at present."
Boris laughed and then checked his laughter.
"The lady," he said, "is Mademoiselle Vseslavitch, who, as you are
probably aware, lives no great distance away."
"So!" murmured Paul, and he nodded his head.
"Yes," said Boris, "and if it is of any interest to you to know it, I
propose to marry the lady."
"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 assume 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 circumstances--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 butterfly. 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
grass, the open sky, the joy of the weary body that has ridden hard
all the day!"
He laughed shortly.
"Do you think," he continued to the astonished Boris, "that there is
any soft, silk-bound pillow in Mayfair that could appeal to me when I
could sleep under the stars?
"Heavens!" He reached out his arms and brought them to his sides again
with a strenuous motion, all his muscles contracted. "I have learnt,"
he cried, "the lesson that life is not only real and earnest, but that
life is hard, that life is a battle--a battle to be won!"
His eyes fell upon his strong, sinewy, brown hands, and he clenched
his fists.
"I am not going back to England. I am going on--to win that girl of
the picture--from you!"
Boris regarded him pleasantly.
"It seems," he said, "that you are not in a very good humour this
evening."
"My humour suits me very well," answered Paul. He rose and walked over
to the door, and held it open.
"For the present," he said, "you may go, but if I were you I would be
careful how I indulged in any villainy."
Boris laughed lightly as he paused in the doorway.
"I am still thinking of Mademoiselle Vseslavitch," he said.
"Then you make a vast mistake," Paul answered. "She is not for you."
"We shall see what we shall see," tauntingly replied Boris, as he
closed the door behind him.
But his remarks did not prevent Paul, when he retired, from promptly
going to sleep.