“It only frightened Mrs. Lewin. Have you heard anything of her, by the way?”
“She is still at Vohitra.”
“I know. My wife talks of going out there when Mrs. Gilderoy returns. She can’t stand her in the same house.”
“I have not seen Mrs. Lewin for some weeks—not since she went out, in fact,” said Gregory deliberately. He looked at the man before him as if measuring him, almost stealthily, and licked his lips to moisten them in the tigerish fashion peculiar to him before some inhuman effort. Churton was not looking at him; he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, one hand still holding the half-empty tumbler, the other hanging loosely against his puttee. The massive lines of his head and neck were thrown into prominence by the forward thrust of his shoulders.
“Strong man to strong man!” said Gregory rapidly to his own heart. “And I like him ... but some one must go under. He has to be the sacrifice.”
“Mrs. Lewin declines to see me,” he said slowly, choosing his words with care. “She not unnaturally connects me with her husband’s death, as I was the unfortunate cause of his going to East Africa. Not being very logical she forgets her own anxiety that Captain Lewin should have a chance to show what stuff he was made of. Well, he showed it—but as I gave him the chance, his wife gives me the blame!”
Churton nodded without speaking. His attitude was sympathetic so far. Then Gregory did one of those things that had made men follow his order into death itself, and die silent, having bought him life, and—what he valued more—success. A touch of human weakness in his almost inhuman strength had been his great coup on occasions which had never been recorded, for something in his personality attracted men and women alike of an infinitely higher type than himself, and when he used that magnetism it had never failed him.
He laid his hand on Churton’s shoulder, and his quick panting voice was a broken whisper.
“Churton, I’m desperate! She is everything to me—but her husband, dead, is a stronger barrier even than living. She is making a shrine of his memory, and thinks she must be faithful to it.”
The real secret of Gregory’s influence was that his appeal was genuine, though made with a further end in view. He did not lay bare his secrets for a light reason. He could feel his own earnestness touching Bute Churton in spite of self-interest and the reserve of training and tradition. He looked up with a haggard face that would have shaken any resolution less ruthless than Gregory’s.