"You have got a nerve," he said. "You tell me a pack of lies--that's all right, you've got money. But when I take you at your word, it's 'insolence' and 'stand up.' How's that, if you please?" He sat and laughed for a little in contemptuous jerks. "Your niece, indeed! The girl's my daughter."
Neither Joan nor Robert believed him for a moment. They thought of Cynthia, and compared that image at their hearts with the actual man who sprawled on the chair in front of them. Robert counted him up, his heavy features, his grime-engrained, spoilt hands, the whole degraded, unkempt look of him. Cynthia's father! The claim was preposterous.
"Her father!" cried Robert Daventry, leaning across the table. "Look at yourself in the glass!"
The sneer stung the reaper to a fury. He sprang to his feet, and from habit his hand slipped to the knife at the back of his waistband. But he mastered himself in a second or two. He was there for other ends than violence, and he withdrew his hand.
"I sha'n't forget that," he said, in a perfectly quiet voice, which contrasted in the strangest way with the convulsion of his face. "You got home there. Right home;" and he sat down again.
Joan interposed before her husband could say another word, and used soft words. The man was not Cynthia's father to be sure, but he knew something of the girl's history. That was certain--and he knew more than either Joan or Robert knew themselves. If she was to fight her battle with success, she must know what he knew.
"You could not expect us to accept your mere statement," she said.
"No, that's reasonable," said the reaper, and he began his story. But the insult rankled in his breast and as he spoke he kept turning a murderous eye on the man who had inflicted it.
He told the story of the earthquake at Valparaiso, and the flight of James Challoner across the Andes. It was a story told with a wealth of detail, and difficult altogether to discredit. Neither Joan nor Robert did altogether discredit it. It might be true or it might not. This man might have obtained it from James Challoner, or might somehow have come across it by himself. But they were still convinced he could not be James Challoner himself.
"We shall want more proof than that," said Joan calmly, and Robert nodded his head. Neither of them had felt more confidence than at this moment since the crumpled slip of paper had been brought into the dining-room.