“One way or another this shall end,” he murmured, gazing at the old woman in her lowly position among the heaped confusion of the floor; and he waited, eyeing at intervals the door.
At length the door opened, and the Soudanese came in, and he was leading by the hand Josephus Ilam. Jetsam stepped quickly behind them and shut and locked the door.
“Now then, Ilam,” said he, “sit down. Make him sit down, Jake.”
And quite obediently Ilam sat down on a chair, near the night-table. He made no remark; he scarcely looked round; his senses seemed to be dulled; it was as though his mind had retired to some fastness from which it refused to emerge.
“What do you want?” Ilam demanded gloomily. “What have you been doing?”
“I’m going to make one last appeal to you, Ilam,” said Jetsam. “I kidnapped you for this, I may tell you. I was determined to confront the mother and the son if necessity should arise. But you nearly did for me by swallowing too much of that blessed opiate. You are clumsy, even when you are a victim. However, you’ve got over it nicely, haven’t you? Pretty notion, wasn’t it,” he continued, “to conceal you in your own attic, where no one would ever think of looking for you? But it wanted doing, my weighty friend—it wanted doing.”
“What are you after?” Ilam asked again, as if in the grip of one fixed idea. “You’ve got the money—what else do you want?”
“You know perfectly well what I want,” said Jetsam. “My case is complete except for that photograph, and I’ve secured as much money as will keep me on my pins till I’ve forced you to see reason. But the photograph is lacking; you are aware of that. It’s certainly rather hard lines on you that you should be forced to give up the very thing whose possession by me will ruin you. But what would you have? I am desperate, and no one knows better than you and this sad creature here that my cause is just. Tell me where the photograph is.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Ilam doggedly.
Jetsam turned to Mrs. Ilam.