"All right-John. But please ... I want to rest this afternoon. When all the work's done. I'll-I'll talk to you."
He came closer. "You wouldn't try to double-cross John Hilloran, would you?"
"You know I wouldn't!"
"I want you!" he burst out incoherently. "I've wanted you for years. You've always put me off. When I found you were getting on too well with that twister Tremayne, I went mad. But he's not taking you in any more, is he?"
"No-"
"And there's no one else?"
"How could there be?"
"You little beauty!"
"Afterwards, Hilloran. I'm so tired. I want to rest. Go away now-"
He sprang at her and caught her in his arms, and his mouth found her lips. For a moment she stood passively in his embrace. Then she pushed him back, and dragged herself away. "I'll go now," he said unsteadily.
She stood like a statue, with her eyes riveted on the closing door, till the click of the latch snapping home seemed to snap also the taut cord that held her rigid and erect. Then she sank limply back into her chair. For a second she sat still. Then she fell forward across the table, and buried her face in her arms.
Chapter VIII "VE VERE suppose'," said the Countess Anusia Marova, "to come to Monaco at nine o'clock. But ve are delay', and ze captayne tell me ve do nod zere arrive teel ten o'clock. So ve do nod af to urry past dinair to see ourselves come in ze port."
Dicky Tremayne heard the soft accents across the saloon, above the bull-voice drawl of Mr. George Y. Ulrig, who was holding him down with a discourse on the future of the Japanese colony in California. Dicky was rather less interested in this than he would have been in a discourse on the future of the Walloon colony in Cincinnati. A scrap of paper crumpled in the pocket of his dinner-jacket seemed to be burning his side.
The paper had come under his cabin door while he dressed. He had been at the mirror, fidgeting with his tie, and he had seen the scrap sliding on to the carpet. He had watched it, half-hypnotized, and it had been some time before he moved to pick it up. When he had read it, and jerked open the door, the alleyway outside was deserted. Only, at the end, he had seen Hilloran, in his uniform, pass across by the alley athwarthships without looking to right or left. The paper had carried one line of writing, in block letters: DON'T DRINK YOUR COFFEE.
Nothing else. No signature, or even an initial. Not a word of explanation. Just that. But he knew that there was only one person on board who could have written it. He had hurried over the rest of his toilet in the hope of finding Audrey Perowne in the saloon before the other guests arrived, but she had been the last to appear. He had not been able to summon up the courage to knock on the door of her cabin. His desire to see her and speak to her again alone, on any pretext, was tempered by an equal desire to avoid giving her any chance to refer to his last words of the previous night.
"The Jap is a good citizen," George Y. Ulrig droned on, holding up his cocktail-glass like a sceptre. "He has few vices, he's clean, and he doesn't make trouble. On the other hand, he's too clever to trust. He... Say, boy, what's eatin' you?"
"Nothing," denied Dicky hastily. "What makes you think the Jap's too clever to trust?"
"Now, the Chinaman's the honestest man in the world, whatever they say about him," resumed the drone. "I'll tell you a story to illustrate that. ..."
He told his story at leisure, and Dicky forced himself to look interested. It wasn't easy. He was glad when they sat down to dinner. His partner was the less eagle-eyed Mrs. George Y. Ulrig, who was incapable of noticing the absent-minded way in which he listened to her detailed description of her last illness. But halfway through the meal he was recalled to attention by a challenge, and for some reason he was glad of it.
"Deeky," said the girl at the end of the table. Dicky looked up. "Ve are in ze middle of an argument," she said.
"Id iss this," interrupted Sir Esdras Levy. "Der Gountess asks, if for insdance you vos a friendt off mine, ant bromised to tell nobody nothing, ant I see you vill be ruined if you don't know off der teal, and I know der teal vill ruined be if you know off it-vot shoot I to?"
This lucid exposition was greeted with a suppressed titter which made Sir Esdras whiffle impatiently through his beard. He waved his hands excitedly. "I say," he proclaimed magisterially, "dot a man's vort iss his pond. I am sorry for you, bud I must my vort keep."
'Owever," chipped in Mr. Matthew Sankin, and, catching his wife's basilisk eye upon him, choked redly. "However," said Mr. Matthew San-kin, "I 'old by the British principle that a man oughter stick by his mates-friends-an' he ain't- 'asn't-hasn't got no right to let "em down. None of 'em. That's wot."
"Matthew, deah," said Mrs. Sankin silkily, "the Countess was asking Mr. Tremayne the question, ay believe. Kaindly give us a chance to heah his opinion."
'What about a show of hands?" suggested Dicky. How many of you say that a man should stand by his word-whatever it costs him?" Six hands went up. Sankin and Ulrig were alone among the male dissenters. "Lost by one," said Dicky.
No," said the Countess. "I do not vote. I make you ze chairman, Deeky, and you 'ave ze last vord. 'Ow do you say?"
"In this problem, there's no chance of a compromise? The man couldn't find a way to tell his friend so that it wouldn't spoil the deal for his other friends?"
"Ve hof no gompromises," said Sir Esdras sternly.
Dicky looked down the table and met the girl's eyes steadily. "Then," he remarked, "I should first see my partners and warn them that I was going to break my word, and then I should go and do it. But the first condition is essential."
"A gompromise," protested Sir Esdras. "Subbose you hof nod der dime or der obbortunity?"
"How great is this friend?"
"Der greatest friendt you hof," insisted the honourable man vehemently. "Id mags no tifference."
"Come orf it," urged Mr. Sankin. "A Britisher doesn't let 'is best pal dahn."
"Well," drawled George Y. Ulrig, "does an American?"
"You say I am nod Briddish?" fumed Sir Esdras Levy, whiffling. "You hof der imberdinence-"
"Deeky," said the girl sweetly, "you should make up your mind more queekly. Ozairvise ve shall 'ave a quarrel. Now, 'ow do you vote?" Dicky looked round the table. He wondered who had started that fatuous argument. He could have believed that the girl had done it deliberately, judging by the way she was thrusting the casting vote upon him so insistently. But, if that were so, it could only mean . . .
But it didn't matter. With zero hour only a few minutes away, a strange mood of recklessness was upon him. It had started as simple impatience- impatience with the theories of George Y. Ulrig, impatience with the ailments of Mrs. Ulrig. And now it had grown suddenly to a hell-for-leather desperation.
Audrey Perowne had said it. "You should make up your mind more quickly." And Dicky knew that it was true. He realized that he had squandered all his hours of grace on fruitless shilly-shallying which had taken him nowhere. Now he answered in a kind of panic. "No," he said. "I'm against the motion. I'd let down any partners, and smash the most colossal deal under the sun, rather than hurt anyone I loved. Now you know-and I hope you're satisfied."
And he knew, as the last plates were removed, that he was fairly and squarely in the cart. He was certain then that Audrey Perowne had engineered the discussion, with intent to trap him into a statement. Well, she'd got what she wanted.
He was suspect. Hilloran and Audrey must have decided that after he'd left her cabin that afternoon. Then why the message before dinner? They'd decided to eliminate him along with the rest. That message must have been a weakness on her part. She must have been banking on his humanity-and she'd inaugurated the argument, and brought him into it, simply to satisfy herself on a stone-cold certainty. All right. . . .
That was just where she'd wrecked her own bet. A grim, vindictive resentment was freezing his heart. She chose to trade on the love he'd confessed-and thereby she lost it. He hated her now, with an increasing hatred. She'd almost taken him in. Almost she'd made him ready to sacrifice his honour and the respect of his friends to save her. And now she was laughing at him.
When he'd answered, she'd smiled. He'd seen it-too late-and even then the meaning of that smile hadn't dawned on him immediately. But he understood it all now. Fool! Fool! Fool! he cursed himself savagely and the knowledge that he's so nearly been seduced from his self-respect by such a waster was like a worm in his heart.
"But she doesn't get away with it," he swore savagely to himself. "By God, she doesn't get away with it!"
And savagely that vindictive determination lashed down his first fury to an intensely simmering malevolence. Savagely he cursed the moment's panic that had made him betray himself-speaking from his heart without having fully reckoned all that might be behind the question. And then suddenly he was very cold and watchful. The steward was bringing in the tray of coffee.
As if from a great distance, Dicky Tremayne watched the cups being set before the guests. As each guest accepted his cup, Dicky shifted his eyes to the face above it. He hated nearly all of them. Of the women, Mrs. Ulrig was the only one he could tolerate-for all her preoccupation with the diseases which she imagined afflicted her. Of the men, there were only two whom he found human: Matthew Sankin, the henpecked Cockney who had, somehow, come to be cursed rather than blessed with more money than he knew how to spend, and George Y. Ulrig, the didactic millionaire from the Middle West. The others he would have been delighted to rob at any convenient opportunity- particularly Sir Esdras Levy, an ill-chosen advertisement for a noble race.
Dicky received his cup disinterestedly. His right hand was returning from his hip pocket. Of the two things which it brought with it, he had one under his napkin: the cigarette-case he produced, and offered. The girl caught his eye, but his face was expressionless. An eternity seemed to pass before the first cup was lifted. The others followed. Dicky counted them, stirring his own coffee mechanically. Three more to go . . . two more . . .
Matthew Sankin drank last. He alone dared to comment. "Funny taste in this cawfy," he said.
"It tastes good to me," said Audrey Perowne, having tasted.
And Dicky Tremayne, watching her, saw something in her eyes which he could not interpret. It seemed to be meant for him, but he hadn't the least idea what it was meant to be. A veiled mockery? A challenge? A gleam of triumph? Or what? It was a curious look. Blind. . . .