Jack did not vouchsafe any answer, but sat there as if he had come for some definite purpose, something menacing, and was going to have it out with the other man.
“Kangaroo doesn’t think I came spying, does he?” asked Richard, aghast. “It’s too impossible.”
“I don’t know what he thinks,” said Jack. “But it isn’t ‘too impossible’ at all. It looks as if it had happened.”
Richard was now dumb. He realised the depths of the other man’s malevolence, and was aghast. Just aghast. Some fear too—and a certain horror, as if human beings had suddenly become horrible to him. Another gulf opened in front of him.
“Then what do you want of me now?” he asked, very coldly.
“Some sort of security, I suppose,” said Jack, looking away at the sea.
Richard was silent with rage and cold disgust, and a sort of police-fear.
“Pray what sort of security?” he replied, coldly.
“That’s for you to say, maybe. But we want some sort of security that you’ll keep quiet, before we let you leave Australia.”
Richard’s heart blazed in him with anger and disgust.