第153章

Do you take ME for what you call a `con man'?""Good Lord, no!" answered Tembarom; and he looked straight at Palliser and spoke slowly."You're a gentleman, and you're paying me a visit.

You could no more try on a game to do me in my own house than--well, than I could TELL you if I'd got on to you if I saw you doing it.

You're a gentleman."

Palliser glared back into his infuriatingly candid eyes.He was a far cry from being a dullard himself; he was sharp enough to "catch on" to the revelation that the situation was not what he had thought it, the type was more complex than he had dreamed.The chap had been playing a part; he had absolutely been "jollying him along," after the New York fashion.He became pale with humiliated rage, though he knew his only defense was to control himself and profess not to see through the trick.Until he could use his big lever, he added to himself.

"Oh, I see," he commented acridly."I suppose you don't realize that your figures of speech are unfortunate.""That comes of New York streets, too," Tembarom answered with deliberation."But you can't live as I've lived and be dead easy--not DEAD easy."Palliser had left his chair, and stood in contemptuous silence.

"You know how a fellow hates to be thought DEAD easy"-- Tembarom actually went to the insolent length of saying the words with a touch of cheerful confidingness--"when he's NOT.And I'm not.Have another drink."There was a pause.Palliser began to see, or thought he began to see, where he stood.He had come to Temple Barholm because he had been driven into a corner and had a dangerous fight before him.In anticipation of it he had been following a clue for some time, though at the outset it had been one of incredible slightness.Only his absolute faith in his theory that every man had something to gain or lose, which he concealed discreetly, had led him to it.He held a card too valuable to be used at the beginning of a game.Its power might have lasted a long time, and proved an influence without limit.He forbore any mental reference to blackmail; the word was absurd.One used what fell into one's hands.If Tembarom had followed his lead with any degree of docility, he would have felt it wiser to save his ammunition until further pressure was necessary.But behind his ridiculous rawness, his foolish jocularity, and his professedly candid good humor, had been hidden the Yankee trickster who was fool enough to think he could play his game through.Well, he could not.

During the few moments' pause he saw the situation as by a photographic flashlight.He leaned over the table and supplied himself with a fresh brandy and soda from the tray of siphons and decanters.

He gave himself time to take the glass up in his hand.

"No," he answered, "you are not `dead easy.' That's why I am going to broach another subject to you."Tembarom was refilling his pipe.

"Go ahead," he said.

"Who, by the way, is Mr.Strangeways?"

He was deliberate and entirely unemotional.So was T.Tembarom when, with match applied to his tobacco, he replied between puffs as he lighted it:

"You can search me.You can search him, too, for that matter.He doesn't know who he is himself.""Bad luck for him!" remarked Palliser, and allowed a slight pause again.After it he added, "Did it ever strike you it might be good luck for somebody else?""Somebody else?" Tembarom puffed more slowly, perhaps because his pipe was lighted.

Palliser took some brandy in his soda.

"There are men, you know," he suggested, "who can be spared by their relatives.I have some myself, by Jove!" he added with a laugh."You keep him rather dark, don't you?""He doesn't like to see people."

"Does he object to people seeing him? I saw him once myself.""When you threw the gravel at his window?"

Palliser stared contemptuously.

"What are you talking about? I did not throw stones at his window," he lied."I'm not a school-boy.""That's so," Tembarom admitted.

"I saw him, nevertheless.And I can tell you he gave me rather a start.""Why?"

Palliser half laughed again.He did not mean to go too quickly; he would let the thing get on Tembarom's nerves gradually.

"Well, I'm hanged if I didn't take him for a man who is dead.""Enough to give any fellow a jolt," Tembarom admitted again.

"It gave me a `jolt.' Good word, that.But it would give you a bigger one, my dear fellow, if he was the man he looked like.""Why?" Tembarom asked laconically.

"He looked like Jem Temple Barholm."

He saw Tembarom start.There could be no denying it.

"You thought that? Honest?" he said sharply, as if for a moment he had lost his head."You thought that?""Don't be nervous.Perhaps I couldn't have sworn to it.I did not see him very close."T.Tembarom puffed rapidly at his pipe, and only, ejaculated:

"Oh!"

"Of course he's dead.If he wasn't,"--with a shrug of his shoulders,--"Lady Joan Fayre would be Lady Joan Temple Barholm, and the pair would be bringing up an interesting family here." He looked about the room, and then, as if suddenly recalling the fact, added, "By George! you'd be selling newspapers, or making them--which was it?--in New York!"It was by no means unpleasing to see that he had made his hit there.

T.Tembarom swung about and walked across the room with a suddenly perturbed expression.

"Say," he put it to him, coming back, "are you in earnest, or are you just saying it to give me a jolt?"Palliser studied him.The American sharpness was not always so keen as it sometimes seemed.His face would have betrayed his uneasiness to the dullest onlooker.

"Have you any objection to my seeing him in his own room?" Palliser inquired.

"It does him harm to see people," Tembarom said, with nervous brusqueness."It worries him."Palliser smiled a quiet but far from agreeable smile.He enjoyed what he put into it.