Sir Stephen closed the door after him, then went back to the
smoking-room and stood looking down at Falconer, who leant back in his
chair with his cigar in his mouth and eyed Sir Stephen under
half-closed lids with an expression which had something of mastery and
power in it.
Sir Stephen bit at the end of his moustache, his thick black brows
lowered, as if he scarcely knew how to begin the "chat," and Falconer
waited without any offer of assistance. At last Sir Stephen said:
"You asked me outside just now, Falconer, if it was to be 'friend or
foe?' I'm thinking the question ought to have come from me."
"Yes," assented Falconer, his eyes growing still narrower. "Yes, I
suppose it ought."
"Would your answer have been the same as mine--'friends'?" asked Sir
Stephen in a low voice.
Falconer was silent for a moment, then he said:
"It oughtn't to have been. If ever a man had cause to regard another as
an enemy, I've had cause to regard you as one, Orme!"
Sir Stephen flushed, then went pale again.
"There is no use in raking up the past," he muttered.
"Oh, I've no need to rake it up; it's here right enough, without
raking," retorted Falconer, and he touched his breast with his thick
forefinger. "I'm not likely to forget the trick you played me; not
likely to forget the man who turned on me and robbed me--"
"Robbed!" echoed Sir Stephen, with a dark frown.
Falconer turned his cigar in his mouth and bit at it.
"Yes, robbed. You seem to have forgotten: my memory is a better one
than yours, and I'm not likely to forget the day I tramped back to the
claim in that God-forsaken Australian hole to find that you'd
discovered the gold while I'd been on the trail to raise food and
money--discovered it and sold out--and cleared out!"
His eyes flashed redly and his mouth twitched as his teeth almost met
in the choice Havana.
Sir Stephen threw out his hand.
"I heard you were dead," he said, hoarsely. "I heard that you had died
in a street row--in Melbourne."
Falconer's heavy face was distorted by a sneer.
"Yes? Of course, I don't believe you: who would?"
"As Heaven is my witness--!" exclaimed Sir Stephen; but Falconer went
on:
"You didn't wait to see if it were true or not; you cleared out before
I'd time to get back, and you took precious good care not to make
enquiries. No; directly your partner's back was turned you--sold him;
got the price and levanted."
Sir Stephen paced up and done, his hands clenched behind him; his fine
leonine head bent; then he stopped in front of the chair, and frowned
down into the scowling face.
"Falconer, you wrong me--it was not so bad, so black as it looked. It's
true I sold the claim; but I swear that I intended saving half for you.
But news was brought in that you were dead--a man said that he had seen
you fall, that you were dead and buried. I had to leave the camp the
night the money was paid: it would not have been safe to remain: you
know what the place was, and that the man who was known to have money
carried his life in his hand. I left the camp and tramped south. Before
a month had passed, the money had gone; if I had had any doubts of your
death, it was too late to enquire; it would have been useless; as I
tell you, the money was gone. But I hadn't any doubts; in simple truth,
I thought you were dead."
Falconer looked round the luxurious room.
"You lost the money? But you appear to have picked it up again; you
seem to be pretty flourishing, my friend; when you got on your feet
again and made your pile, why didn't you find out whether your old pal
was alive or dead?"
Sir Stephen was silent for a space, then he raised his head and met the
other's accusing gaze unflinchingly.
"I'll tell you--I'll tell you the whole truth, Falconer; and if you can
make excuse for me, if you can put yourself in my place--"
He drew his hand across his brow as if the sweat had broken out upon
it. "The luck was dead against me for a time, the old luck that had
haunted you and me; then it swung round completely--as it generally
does when it changes at all. I was out in Africa, on the tramp, picking
up a day's work now and again at the farms--you know the life! One day
I saw a Kaffir boy playing with some rough stones--"
Falconer nodded.
"Diamonds. I fancy I've read an account of the great Sir Stephen Orme's
first beginnings," he put in with a touch of sarcasm.
Sir Stephen reddened.
"I daresay. It was the start, the commencement of the luck. From the
evening I took those stones in my hands--great Heaven! I can see the
place now, the sunset on the hill; the dirty brat playing in the
dust!--the luck has stood by me. Everything I touched turned out right.
I left the diamond business and went in for land: wherever I bought
land towns sprang up and the land increased in value a thousandfold.
Then I stood in with the natives: you've heard of the treaty--"
Falconer nodded.
"The treaty that enabled you to hand over so many thousand square miles
to the government in exchange for a knighthood."
"No," said Sir Stephen, simply. "I got that for another business; but I
daresay the other thing helped. It doesn't matter. Then I--I married. I
married the daughter of a man of position, a girl who--who loved and
trusted me; who knew nothing of the past you and I know; and as I would
rather have died than that she should have known anything of it, I--"
"Conveniently and decently buried it," put in Falconer. "Oh, yes, I can
see the whole thing! You had blossomed out from Black Steve--"
Sir Stephen rose and took a step towards the door, then remembered that
he had shut it and sank down again, his face white as ashes, his lips
quivering.
--"To Sir Stephen Orme, the African millionaire, the high and lofty
English gentleman with his head full of state secrets, and his safe
full of foreign loans; Sir Stephen Orme, the pioneer, the empire
maker--Oh, yes, I can understand how naturally you would bury the
past--as you had buried your old pal and partner. The dainty and
delicate Lady Orme was to hear nothing--" Sir Stephen rose and
stretched out his hand half warningly half imploringly.
"She's dead, Falconer!" he said, hoarsely. "Don't--don't speak of her!
Leave her out, for God's sake!"
Falconer shrugged his shoulders.
"And this boy of yours--he's as ignorant as her ladyship was, of
course?"
Sir Stephen inclined his head.
"Yes," he said, huskily. "He--he knows nothing. He thinks me--what the
world sees me, what all the world, saving you, Falconer, thinks me: one
who has risen from humble but honest poverty to--what I am. You have
seen him, you can understand what I feel; that I'd rather die than that
he should know--that he should think badly of me. Falconer, I have made
a clean breast of it--I'm in your hands. I'm--I'm at your mercy. I
appeal to you"--he stretched out his white, shapely hands--"you have a
child of your own: she's as dear to you as mine is to me--I've watched
you to-night, and I've seen you look at her as she moved about and
talked and sang, with the look that my eyes wear when they rest on my
boy. I am at your mercy--not only mine, but my son's future--"
He wiped the sweat from his forehead and drew a long breath.
Falconer leant back and smoked contemplatively, with a coolness, an
indifference to the other's emotion which Sir Stephen found well-nigh
maddening.
"Yes," said Falconer, after a pause, "I suppose your house of cards
would come down with a crash if I opened my mouth say, at breakfast
to-morrow morning, and told--well, all I know of the great Sir Stephen
Orme when he bore the name of Black Steve. Even you, with all you
colossal assurance, could not face it or outlive it. And as for the
boy--it would settle his hash now and forever. A word from me would do
it, eh, Orme? And upon my soul I don't know why I shouldn't say it!
I've had it in my mind, I've kept it as a sweet morsel for a good many
years. Yes, I've been looking forward to it. I've been waiting for the
'physiological moment,' as I think they call it; and it strikes me that
it has arrived."
Sir Stephen's face grew strained, and a curious expression crept into
it.
"If you ask me why you should not, I can give you no reason," he said.
"If you were poor I should offer you money--more, a great deal more
than I received for the old claim; but I can see that that would not
tempt you to forego your revenge. Falconer, you are not poor; your
daughter wears diamonds--"
Falconer shrugged his shoulders.
"No, I'm not in want of money. You're not the only man who has had a
change of luck. No, you can't bribe me; even if I were hard up instead
of rather flush, as I am, I wouldn't take a hundred thousand pounds for
my revenge."
Sir Stephen rose. There was an ominous change in his manner. His
nervousness and apprehension seemed to have suddenly left him, and in
its place was a terrible, stony calmness, an air of inflexible
determination.
"Good!" he said; and his voice had changed also, changed from its
faltering tone of appeal to one of steadfast resolution, the steadiness
of desperation. "I have made my appeal to you, Falconer, and I gather
that I have failed to move you; that you intend to exact your revenge
by--denouncing me!"
Falconer nodded coolly.
"And you think that I could endure to live under such a threat, to walk
about with the sword of Damocles over my head? You ought to know me
better, Falconer. I will not live to endure the shame you can inflict
on me, I will not live to tempt you by the sight of me to take your
revenge. I shall die to-night."
Falconer eyed him intently, and carefully selected a fresh cigar. When
he had as carefully lit it, he said callously:
"That's your business, of course. I shouldn't venture to interfere with
any plan of that kind. So you'd sneak out of it, eh, Orme? Sneak out of
it, and leave that young fellow to bear the brunt? Well, I'm sorry for
him! He seems the right sort--deuced good-looking and high-class--yes,
I'm d----d sorry for him!"
Once again Sir Stephen's lips twitched and the big drops of sweat stood
on his brow. He stood for a minute looking from right to left like a
hunted animal at bay--then with something between a groan and a cry of
savagery, he spring towards Falconer with his hands outstretched and
making for his tormentor's throat.
Before he could sweep the table aside and get at him, Falconer whipped
a revolver from his pocket and aimed it at Sir Stephen.
"You fool!" he said in his harsh, grating voice, "did you think I was
such an idiot as to trust myself alone with you unarmed? Did you think
I'd forgotten what sort of man you were, or imagined that you'd so
changed that I could trust you? Bah! Sit down! Stand back, or, by
Heaven, I'll shoot you as I would a dog!"
Sir Stephen shrank back, his hand to his heart, his eyes distended, his
face livid as if he were choking and sank into a chair. Falconer
returned the revolver into his pocket, and with his foot pushed the
inlaid Oriental table towards his host and victim.
"There! Take some brandy! You're too old to play these tricks! That
heart of yours was never worth much in the old days, and I daresay it's
still more groggy. Besides, we're not in a mining camp or the backwoods
now." He sneered. "We're in Sir Stephen Orme's palatial villa on Lake
Bryndermere."
Sir Stephen stretched out his hand and felt for the decanter, as if he
were suddenly blind and could not see it, and poured himself out some
brandy. Falconer watched him narrowly, critically.
"Better? Look here, Orme, take my advice and keep a guard on your
emotions: you can't afford to have any with a heart like that."
He paused and waited until Sir Stephen's ashy face had resumed a less
deathly pallor.
"And now I'll answer your appeal--I don't intend to denounce you!"
Sir Stephen turned to him with a gesture of incredulity.
"Sounds strange, doesn't it? Humph! Doesn't it strike you that I've had
my revenge already? If there is a sweeter one than to see the man who
has sold you grovelling at your feet, and praying for mercy, than I
don't know it! The great Sir Stephen Orme, too!" He laughed sneeringly.
"No, if I'd meant to give you away, Orme, I should have done it
to-night in your swell drawing-room, with all your swell guests round
you, with your son--ay, and my daughter--to hear the story--the story
of Black Steve! But I didn't mean it, and I don't--"
Sir Stephen drew a long breath of relief, and drank some more brandy.
"Thank God!" he murmured. "What can I say--what can I do to--to express
my gratitude--my sense of your forbearance, Falconer?"
Falconer, with his eyes narrowed to slits, looked at him keenly.
"Oh, I'll dispense with your gratitude, Orme. We'll agree to forgive
and--forget. This is the last word we'll say about it."
Sir Stephen, as if he could scarcely believe his ears, gazed at his
magnanimous foe in silence.
"No half measures with me--you remember me of old," said Falconer. "The
subject's done with," he moved his thick hand as he were sweeping it
away. "Pass the whiskey. Thanks. Now, let's have the chat you kept me
up for."
Sir Stephen wiped his lips and forced a smile.
"Tell me about yourself; what you have been doing since we--er--all
this long time."
Falconer shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, it isn't as interesting a story
as yours," he said. "I've just rubbed along with bad and good luck in
streaks; fortunately for me, the good ones were thicker and more
frequent than the bad ones. Lake yourself I married; like yourself, I'm
a widower. I've one child--Maude. She's been at school and under the
care of some people on the Continent, while I've been at work; and I've
come to England now to settle down. That tells enough of my story. I
know yours, as the rest of the world does. You're famous, you see."
There was a pause; then he looked over his glass, and said:
"What's you little game at the present moment, Orme?"
Sir Stephen looked at him interrogatively, as if he were still rather
confused by the terrible scene which they had gone through.
"Why have you built this place and got all these people here?" said
Falconer. "I know enough of Wirsch and Griffinberg and the Beltons to
be aware that they wouldn't come down to the lakes at this time of the
year unless there was something worth coming for, something--and a
pretty good sum--to be made."
Sir Stephen looked down at the floor for a moment, as if he were
considering; then he leant forward.
"I'll tell you," he said, with an air of decision, and with a return of
his usual coolness and aplomb. A dash of colour rose to his face, his
fine eyes grew bright; he was the "man of affairs," the great financier
again. "It's Africa this time," he said, in a low voice, and with a
glance at the door. "I've another treaty--"
Falconer nodded.
"I am making for a concession--a charter from the government."
Falconer nodded again.
"And I want a railway from Danville to Bualbec." His voice almost sank
to a whisper. "Griffinberg, Wirsch, and the rest are with me--or nearly
so--I have got them down to clench the matter. There are millions in
it--if I can bring it off; there is what is worth more than millions to
me--"
Falconer nodded.
--"A peerage for Sir Stephen Orme," said Falconer, with a grim smile.
"For Sir Stephen Orme's boy!" said Sir Stephen, with a flush, and a
flash of the dark eyes. "It is for his sake that I am making this last
throw; for my boy's, Falconer. For myself I am content--why shouldn't I
be? But for him--ah, well, you've seen him! You'll understand!"
Falconer leant back and smoked in silence.
"Plaistow is working the Colonial Office, the Beltons are feeling their
way in the city; Wirsch--but you know how the thing is done! I've got
them down here that they may work it quietly, that I may have them
under my eye--"
"And the lords and ladies--they're to have a finger in the pie because,
though they can't help you in the African business, they can in the
matter of the peerage?"
Sir Stephen smiled. "You'll stand in with us, Falconer? Don't refuse
me! Let me make some reparation--some atonement for the past!" He rose
and stood smiling, an imposing figure with his white hair and brilliant
eyes. Falconer got up slowly and stiffly.
"Thanks. I'll think it over. It's a big thing, as you say, and it will
either make you--"
--"Or break me!" said Sir Stephen, but he laughed confidently.
Falconer nodded.
"I'll go up now," he said.
Sir Stephen went to the door with him, and held out his hand.
"Good-night, Falconer!" he said. "Thank you--for my boy's sake!"
Falconer took the warm hand in his cold one and held it for a moment,
then dropped it.
"Good-night!" he said, with a nod and a sidelong glance.
Sir Stephen went back and poured himself out another _liqueur_ glass of
brandy and heaved a sigh of relief. But it would have been one of
apprehension if he could have seen the cruel smile which distorted
Falconer's face as he went through the exquisitely beautiful hall and
corridors to the luxurious room which had been allotted to him.
There was in the smile and the cold glitter of the eyes the kind of
look which the cat wears when it plays with a mouse.