“And that’s the reason you failed to pay the amount agreed upon into my account last month?”
“That was my reason—yes.” He stared back into the dominating, inscrutable grey eyes, and his own were stern and unyielding. “You’ve come to me to-night with a request for more money, I suppose?”
“I have. I’m short—in debt, in fact. I must have something at once to go on with.” There was a perceptible pause. The Colonel ended it.
“I’m not paying for work that isn’t performed,” was his curt response to this appeal. “You’ll have to satisfy me that you are earning your pay before you get anything further. Suppose you give an account of what you have done up to the present,—of what you purpose doing in the near future that justifies a further outlay. There has been nothing but a verbal agreement between us, which is no more binding on one side than on the other—save for the final agreement you hold for a sum down when you deliver, or cause to be delivered, the packet of letters into my hands. When I undertook to make you a monthly allowance, it was on the understanding that you pursued your quest with conscientious persistence; there was no question of leisure for the following of your amusements. I have not been exacting in demanding hitherto a full account of service rendered in exchange for money received. It has occurred to me that you might have given a fuller account than you have done unasked.”
“Probably I should have,” Lawless replied, “had I not been perfectly aware of the distrust with which you regard me, which you have never succeeded in controlling or concealing since you first engaged my services. You have—whether intentionally or not, I can’t say—insulted me more than enough. You have openly questioned my honesty. And you expect me to swallow all that—for a consideration... And I do swallow it... Why? ... I hardly know... For the consideration, perhaps.”
He moved away to the window, halted there, and turned sharply upon his heel.
“You want to hear what I’ve done,” he said, coming back, and hovering uncertainly between a small table on which a lamp burnt and the chair from which he had risen. He was too excited to seat himself. Colonel Grey watched him curiously, the old struggle between liking for the man and distrust of him still battling for the supremacy. It was odd that, in spite of the distrust, in face of prejudice, the liking remained. “I’ve been in the Stellenbosch district ever since leaving Cape Town—”
“Alone?” interrupted the Colonel.
“Not alone—no! ... I went there solely on your business—”
“With a companion?”