She suddenly lifted a warning finger.
"There he is now," she said in a low voice.
Locke turned around. His back had been to the door, leading to the seaward side of the verandah, which they had left open behind them. Mr. Marlin was peering cautiously around the jamb of the door—and now, as the blue eyes under the silvered hair, which was rumpled and astray, caught his, Locke's, the old man thrust a beckoning finger into view.
Locke glanced at Polly Wickes.
"I think," she said in a whisper, "that he has been acting more strangely just of late than ever before. He wants you for something. Of course, you must go and see what it is."
"All right," said Locke.
He walked quietly across the room, and out on to the verandah.
"You wanted to speak to me, Mr. Marlin?" he said pleasantly.
It was a queer, strangely contradictory figure, that of the little, stoop-shouldered, old man, who now seized his arm in feverish haste and led him hurriedly away from the door. And quite a different figure from the Mr. Marlin of the morning! The white clothes were spruce and immaculate, but he wore no hat, and, as Locke had already noted, his hair was dishevelled. The thin, almost gaunt face, a rather fine old face, had lost the calm and composure that had marked it, for instance, a few hours ago at lunch, and there was now a furtive, hunted look in the eyes, a spasmodic twitching of the facial muscles, a sort of pathetic tearing aside of the veil that had so jealously striven to hide the man's affliction; and yet too, and perhaps even more pathetic in this particular, there seemed to cling intangibly about the old financier a certain dignity of manner and bearing—the one heritage possibly of the days when he had been a power, his name a talisman in the money markets of the world.
"I don't want her to hear," said Mr. Marlin mysteriously. "I can't trust her, Locke."