“Now, Sir James——” he began, and Jimmy spun round with an oath, his face white with passion.
“Jimmy,” he said in a harsh voice, “Jimmy is my name, and I want to hear no other, if you please.”
Mr. Spedding, used as he was to the wayward phases of men, was a little startled at the effect of his words, and hastened to atone for his blunder.
“I—I beg your pardon,” he said quickly. “I merely wished to say——”
Jimmy did not wait to hear what he said, but turned upon Connor.
“I’ve got a few words to say to you,” he said. His voice had gone back to its calm level, but there was a menace in its quietness.
“When I persuaded Angel to give you a chance to get away on the night the ‘Borough Lot’ was arrested, I hoped I could get you to agree with me that the money should be handed to Miss Kent when the word was found. I knew in my inmost heart that this was a forlorn hope,” he went on, “that there is no gold in the quartz of your composition. You are just beast all through.”
He paced the floor of the hall for a minute or two, then he stopped.
“Connor,” he said suddenly, “you tried to take my life the other night. I have a mind to retaliate. You may go ahead and puzzle out the word that unlocks that safe. Get it by any means that suggest themselves to you. Steal it, buy it—do anything you wish. The day you secure the key to Reale’s treasure I shall kill you.”
He talked like a man propounding a simple business proposition, and the lawyer, who in his early youth had written a heavy little paper on “The Congenital Criminal,” listened and watched, and, in quite a respectable way, gloated.