It was a bold thing to do, it was perhaps a foolish thing to do, and yet it was the game. Barter stared at him speechlessly. His lips moved, but he said nothing. Then his jaw fell as a dead man’s jaw falls, and being released at that instant, he dropped into the chair like a sack.
‘Now the best thing for you to do,’ said Phil, sternly regarding him, ‘will be to make a clean breast of it. I have been tracking you since the second day of our acquaintance.’
Barter groaned, with a tremulous and hollow sound, but made no other answer.
‘How many of those notes are in Steinberg’s hands?’ Phil asked.
The rascal’s wits had begun to work again, if only a little, and he could by this time have answered if he would. But he knew that his own cowardice, if nothing else, had given away the game. After such a confession as his own terror had made, what was the use of bluster or pretence? He could not guess how much was known. He was completely cornered, and must fight or yield. His native instinct at any moment was ready to teach him how much discretion was the better part of valour, and now to fight seemed mere madness. In the very terror of the night which thus suddenly enveloped him he saw one gleam of hope. There was one stroke to be made which might save him, in part at least, from the consequences of his own misdeed.
Philip gave these reflections but little time to grow distinct to Barter’s mind.
‘How many of those notes?’ he asked slowly, emphasising almost every word by a tap of his knuckles upon the table, ‘have passed into Steinberg’s hands?’
‘All,’ gasped Barter; ‘every one of them!’
‘That will do for the present,’ said Philip, and at that instant there came a loud summons at the door, whereat the miserable Barter started, and clasped his hands in renewed terror. He fancied an officer of justice there, his arrival accurately timed.
Philip, throwing a glance about the room, and assuring himself that there was no means of unobserved exit, answered the summons in person. He had until that moment kept perfect possession of himself except for his obedience to that overmastering intuition, but beholding Mr. Steinberg at the doorway he felt a great leap at his heart, and a sudden dryness in his throat. He examined these phenomena afterwards, and decided in his own mind that they were assignable to fear. He came to the belief which he cherishes until now, that he had to screw up his courage pretty tightly before he could face the idea of confronting the partners in rascality together. But here it may be observed in passing that this kind of self-depreciation is a favourite trick with men of unusual nerve, and is rarely resorted to by any but the most courageous.