It was by no means unpleasing to see that he had made his hit there. T. Tembarom swung about and walked across the room with a suddenly perturbed expression.
“Say,” he put it to him, coming back, “are you in earnest, or are you just saying it to give me a jolt?”
Palliser studied him. The American sharpness was not always so keen as it sometimes seemed. His face would have betrayed his uneasiness to the dullest onlooker.
“Have you any objection to my seeing him in his own room?” Palliser inquired.
“It does him harm to see people,” Tembarom said, with nervous brusqueness. “It worries him.”
Palliser smiled a quiet but far from agreeable smile. He enjoyed what he put into it.
“Quite so; best to keep him quiet,” he returned. “Do you know what my advice would be? Put him in a comfortable sanatorium. A lot of stupid investigations would end in nothing, of course, but they'd be a frightful bore.”
He thought it extraordinarily stupid in T. Tembarom to come nearer to him with an anxious eagerness entirely unconcealed, if he really knew what he was doing.
“Are you sure that if you saw him close you'd KNOW, so that you could swear to him?” he demanded.
“You're extremely nervous, aren't you?” Palliser watched him with smiling coolness. “Of course Jem Temple Barholm is dead; but I've no doubt that if I saw this man of yours, I could swear he had remained dead—if I were asked.”