It was with the hope of meeting a certain man that Roger had gone to the club. He had excused himself to Beverley on the plea of an appointment, because he had wanted to be alone, and had no intention of dining anywhere.
It was upon an impulse that he had taken the sealed envelope addressed to Justin O'Reilly. Afterward, he felt that his whole course of conduct, from the moment he had entered the room till the moment he had left the flat, was radically wrong. He ought, perhaps, to have shown himself to Beverley when she came in, despite Miss Blackburne's appeal. If he had done this, he would have learned the truth about that envelope. Seeing her husband at such a moment, Beverley must have betrayed herself, Roger thought, if there were anything to betray in connection with the envelope. Had its concealment been important, she would mechanically have sprung to hide it. Had it been left inadvertently by O'Reilly, for no concern of hers, Beverley's ignorance of his presence, or her indifference, would have cleared her in Roger's eyes.
He could not contemplate confessing to Beverley that he had hidden himself and then taken the envelope. She would probably say: "I never dreamed that you'd be mean enough to spy upon me! Why didn't you show yourself, like a brave man, instead of hiding?"
No, he would not tell Beverley that he had been a witness of the scene between her and the pearl-stringer; nor that he was responsible for the vanishing of O'Reilly's envelope. Let her think what she liked about its loss, just as he—Roger—was free to think what he liked about the loss of the pearls! He would wait for Beverley to tell him that the pearls were gone. Her carelessness, to say the best of it, her ingratitude and disloyalty, to say the worst, gave him the right to keep his knowledge to himself. He would wait and see what Beverley meant to do. Then he decided to send back the sealed letter to O'Reilly. Ten minutes after leaving home he had given the envelope to a messenger, with directions to take it at once to the Dietz.
It was when he had thus disciplined himself, that Roger turned toward the club. A man who was an old acquaintance of Roger's, and a friend of O'Reilly's, often dropped in there on a Sunday evening. Possibly he would come that night. Roger had thought of a question to ask. He saw that there might be a way to getting even with O'Reilly, a way just as efficacious, and more open, than the one he had sacrificed.
While he pretended to dine and read an "evening edition," a hateful little voice in Roger's brain chirped suggestions to him. What if Beverley had somehow been in O'Reilly's power? What if she had written him love letters which afterward she wished to get back, and he refused to surrender? What if she had contrived to steal them, and O'Reilly had followed, for reprisals? What if, since then, the man had been torturing her, and Clodagh Riley (a poor relation of Justin O'Reilly's, perhaps) had been acting as a go-between? What if the girl had pretended illness as an excuse to bring O'Reilly into the flat, and the man had frightened Beverley into giving him the pearls?
He was sipping his demi tasse, and had ceased to expect the man he wanted, when that man walked into the room. Before he could sit down at a neighbouring table Roger hailed him; a small, dark man of Jewish type, a man of forty-five, perhaps, with the brilliant eyes of a scientist and the arched brows of a dreamer.
"Hello, Doctor Lewis! I've been hoping you'd blow in!" Sands said cordially. "Won't you dine with me?"
"But you've finished. I'd be keeping you."
"I want a talk with you, my dear chap," Roger assured him.