“You defy me!” he said. “You will not trust him with me or take my advice. Very well, my friend! Now listen! You want to ruin me! Well, if I go, the Bekwando Company shall go too, you understand! Ruin for me shall mean ruin for Mr. Scarlett Trent—ah, ruin and disgrace. It shall mean imprisonment if I can bring it about, and I have friends! Don't you know that you are guilty of fraud? You sold what wasn't yours and put the money in your pocket! You left your partner to rot in a fever swamp, or to be done to death by those filthy blacks. The law will call that swindling! You will find yourself in the dock, my friend, in the prisoners' dock, I say! Come, how do you like that, Mr. Scarlett Trent? If you leave this room with him, you are a ruined man. I shall see to it.”
Trent swung him out of the way—a single contemptuous turn of the wrist, and Da Souza reeled against the mantelpiece. He held out his hand to Monty and they left the room together.
CHAPTER XXXVII
“From a conversational point of view,” Lady Tresham remarked, “our guest to-night seems scarcely likely to distinguish himself.”
Ernestine looked over her fan across the drawing-room.
“I have never seen such an alteration in a man,” she said, “in so short a time. This morning he amazed me. He knew the right people and did the right things—carried himself too like a man who is sure of himself. To-night he is simply a booby.”
“Perhaps it is his evening clothes,” Lady Tresham remarked, “they take some getting used to, I believe.”
“This morning,” Ernestine said, “he had passed that stage altogether. This is, I suppose, a relapse! Such a nuisance for you!”
Lady Tresham rose and smiled sweetly at the man who was taking her in.