“No, no thanks. I can walk all right.”
I stood up to show him that I could, and to my surprise I was really dizzy. I swayed and sat down awkwardly on the couch. But my mind was clearing.
“Stop there a bit,” he said authoritatively, and rang the bell.
“Here, Esmah,” he called to the Arab, “get a whisky, get two, large ones, and some soda.”
I swallowed the whisky, longing only to be left alone.
“That’s better,” I said, and this time I managed to rise quite steadily; “I’ll turn in, I think, if you don’t mind. Many thanks. Good-night.”
“Well, I’ll look you up to-morrow.”
He came to the foot of the staircase with me, and I felt he was watching me as I went up. I turned at the landing and smiled, I think quite naturally. He waved a hand, and I was rid of him at last and alone in my room.
I wanted to think everything out and understand as far as I could. But thought was blotted out by emotion. My mind seemed blackened by the sense of Edmund’s degradation. Less worthily, but I suppose not unnaturally, there simmered the sense of personal humiliation and affront.
Edmund had associated with Welfare and Jakoub in making of me their tool and dupe. In my bitterness I accused them of laughing at my innocence. But I knew at once I wronged them in that. I knew enough of the good in both of them to realise the wretchedness for them of our association during those weeks on the Astarte. Then I began dimly to perceive the hold that Jakoub had obtained over them. I tried to put away all these profitless ponderings and think out what was now to be done, how some shreds of honour were to be saved, or at least depravity concealed. I remembered the cargo of “curios” brought into my house, and realised it must be contraband, and the shop in Brighton only an agency for its sale.