The destruction of the guarantee apparently stung him more than the words that accompanied it. He did not relapse again into his former shamefaced terror, but as a malignant glitter came into his eyes, he regained his coolness.
“It may not be so difficult for others to understand, Miss Nevil,” he said, with polished insolence, “and as Bob Rushbrook's generosity to pretty women is already a matter of suspicion, perhaps you are wise to destroy that record of it.”
“Coward!” said Grace, “stand aside and let me pass!” She swept by him to the door. But it opened upon Rushbrook's re-entrance. He stood for an instant glancing at the pair, and then on the fragments of the paper that strewed the floor. Then, still holding the door in his hand, he said quietly:—
“One moment before you go, Miss Nevil. If this is the result of any misunderstanding as to the presence of another woman here, in company with Mr. Somers, it is only fair to him to say that that woman is here as a friend of MINE, not of his, and I alone am responsible.”
Grace halted, and turned the cold steel of her proud eyes on the two men. As they rested on Rushbrook they quivered slightly. “I can already bear witness,” she said coldly, “to the generosity of Mr. Rushbrook in a matter which then touched me. But there certainly is no necessity for him to show it now in a matter in which I have not the slightest concern.”
As she swept out of the room and was received in the respectable shadow of the waiting James, Rushbrook turned to Somers.
“And I'M afraid it won't do—for Leyton saw you,” he said curtly. “Now, then, shut that door, for you and I, Jack Somers, have a word to say to each other.”
What that word was, and how it was said and received, is not a part of this record. But it is told that it was the beginning of that mighty Iliad, still remembered of men, which shook the financial camps of San Francisco, and divided them into bitter contending parties. For when it became known the next day that Somers had suddenly abandoned Rushbrook, and carried over to a powerful foreign capitalist the secret methods, and even, it was believed, the LUCK of his late employer, it was certain that there would be war to the knife, and that it was no longer a struggle of rival enterprise, but of vindictive men.