"So," he said, "I was right after all—liar! fool! You would risk all our lives for a few hours' flirtation with this silly girl."
"If it's only flirtation, Leon, what does it matter?" Curtis interposed. "For goodness' sake shut up wrangling and let's get home. I'm starving."
"I shall have something to say to you to-morrow morning," Hamar remarked, in an undertone, to Lilian Rosenberg.
"And I to you," was the furious reply. "I shall not forget the disrespectful way in which you have just spoken of me, in alluding to the scent."
She signalled to a taxi, and giving Kelson a friendly good-night, jumped into it and was speedily whirled away.
On the whole, the evening had been a disappointment. She had wanted to see the Unknown—the awful thing that had inspired Kelson and his colleagues with such unmitigated horror—and instead she had seen only an obsessed policeman—a cataleptic "copper"—who, had he not spoken in a strangely uncanny voice, would certainly have seemed to her absolutely ordinary.
With regard to Hamar's displeasure, she was not in the slightest degree disturbed. He would never dare say anything to her. And after all that had occurred he would never venture to "sack her." All the same she hated him. There was just sufficient in her conduct to make the name he had called her by applicable—therefore her bitterest wrath and indignation were aroused against him. He had behaved unpardonably. She could kill him for it.
"I'll just show him," she said to herself, "what that uncivil tongue of his can do. He shall see that it can do him infinitely more harm than all Kelson's love-making. For one thing I'll spoil his chances with Gladys Martin; and—I wonder if I could make use of what I know about him, as a means of getting friendly again with Shiel. At all events I'll try."
With this object in view she went round to Shiel's lodgings, and was informed by the landlady that Shiel was ill.
"Nothing serious I hope?" she asked.