Chapter Four.
“And so you see,” Holman said, and flung his coat upon the sands, and took a pack of cards from one of the pockets and shuffled them absently, “you don’t stand to lose anyhow. If you win it’s quits; if I win you get half your losses bade and simply render me a service which will trespass only on a few days—a week or two at most—of your time. It strikes me as a fairly generous offer.”
“It’s the undeniable generosity that gives it its Blackguard look,” was the answer. “What’s the nature of the service? ... You say you want me to deliver a letter to a certain person of Dutch extraction and to bring you back his reply. That would sound all right if there were no postal facilities; but in view of the very excellent postal arrangements in this country the request wears a sinister aspect. I don’t want to offend you, but—it’s shady, this business? Plainly I can’t go into the thing with my eyes shut.”
“I don’t ask you to. At the same time, the less wide open they are the better. There is nothing shadier in it than is customary in the gamble of party politics. It’s an attempt to overthrow the government. That, I take it, won’t disturb you particularly; you’re not interested. Despite your appreciation of the postal arrangements of this country, there is a leakage somewhere. I don’t choose to have my private communications tapped, that is why I send important messages by hand.”
Matheson pondered this, put a few questions as to the policy of the present government and the reason for the other’s objection to it, and then lay full length on his lack on the sands and deliberated upon the offer. Judged on its face-value it was worthy of consideration—the whole of his losses, which were considerable, back if he won; and if he lost half of them returned to him, with the sole obligation of carrying a letter for a friend, who was presumably a political agitator, and to return to him bearing a reply to his communication.
There was no danger in the undertaking; it would have appealed more strongly had the dangerous element intruded; there was no particular satisfaction in it beyond the pecuniary gain. Politics did not interest him; but he was averse to this backstairs method of abetting agitators. Agitators were insufferable nuisances. He had always felt that. Usually they were moved by motives of personal interest; and they lacked reasonableness. The latter placed them outside the limit of sympathy. When one can’t reason with a man one loses the desire to grasp his point of view. It struck him as odd that Holman should be one of these ill-balanced people; he had always regarded him as a shrewd and peculiarly level-headed man. As a political malcontent he appeared in a new light, a light that flared artificially about him and revealed a queer motley of anachronistic effects—modern civilisation practising the customs of bygone intrigue in a country that was young, in the accepted sense of development, and more ancient than history itself. He couldn’t understand it.
After a while he ceased to concern himself with that aspect of the case, and brought his attention to bear upon the more personal view. He would be blind to self-interest if he could not perceive that the proposal, apart from its unpleasant flavour of intrigue, was altogether favourable to himself. He believed it to be prompted by purely friendly feeling, and a desire to accommodate without humiliating him. Regarding it thus, he could only appreciate the generosity and good feeling which dictated it, and marvel at his own reluctance to accept this opportunity of regaining half, or all, that he had lost. But the reluctance remained, and revealed itself, even when he had overcome it sufficiently to decide in favour of closing with the offer, in the ungracious acquiescence which he gave.
“All right,” he said, sitting up and fidgeting with the sand. “That sort of thing isn’t exactly in my line, but I’ll do it—if I lose.”
“And ask no questions?” Holman said, without moving.