“There is the money,” he said softly, “and there is Jean le Roi!”
It was a night of shocks for him. Again his eyes were dilated. He shrank back in his chair and clutched at Hurd’s sleeve.
“It is himself!” he whispered hoarsely. “It is Jean le Roi! God in Heaven, he will kill us!”
Johnson collapsed for a moment. In his face were all the evidences of an abject fear, and Stephen Hurd was in very nearly as evil a plight. The man who was threading his way through the tables towards them was alarming enough in his appearance and expression to have cowed braver men.
“Jean le Roi—he fears nothing—he cares for nothing, not even for me, his father,” Johnson muttered with chattering teeth. “If he feels like it he will kill us as we sit here.”
Hurd, who was facing the man, watched him with fascinated eyes. He was over six feet high, and magnificently formed. Notwithstanding his ready made clothes, fresh from a French tailor, his brown hat ludicrously too small and the blue stubble of a recently cropped beard, he was almost as impressively handsome as he was repulsive to look at. He walked with the grace of a savage animal in his native woods; there was something indeed not altogether human in the gleam of his white teeth and stealthy, faultless movements. He came straight to where they sat, and his hand fell like a vice upon the shoulder of the shrinking elder man. It was further characteristic of this strange being that when he spoke there was no anger in his tone. His voice indeed was scarcely raised above a whisper.
“What are you doing here, old man?” he asked. “Why did you not meet me? Eh?”
“I will tell you, tell you everything, Jean,” Johnson answered. “Sit down here and drink with us. Everything shall be made quite clear to you. I came for your sake—to get money, Jean. Sit down, my boy.”
Jean le Roi sat down.
“I sit with you,” he said, “and I will drink with you, because I have no money to pay for myself. But we are not friends yet, old man! I will hear first what you have done. And who is this?”