"I came to see Chris," Littimer said, doggedly. "And I came too late. Even if I had known that I was going to meet you, I should have been here all the same. Oh, I know what you are going to say; I know what you think. And some day I shall break out and defy you to do your worst."
Henson smiled as one might do at the outbreak of an angry child. His eyes flashed and his tongue spoke words that Littimer fairly cowed before. And yet he did not show it. He was like a boy who has found a stone for the man who stands over him with the whip. With quick intuition Henson saw this, and in a measure his manner changed.
"You will say next that you are not afraid of me," he suggested.
"Well," Littimer replied, slowly; "I am not so much afraid of you as I was."
"Ah! so you imagine that you have discovered something?"
Littimer apparently struggled between a prudent desire for silence and a disposition to speak. The sneer on the face of his enemy fairly maddened him.
"Yes," he said, with a note of elation in his voice, "I have made a discovery, but I am not going to tell you how or where my discovery is. But I've found Van Sneck."
A shade of whiter pallor came over Henson's face. Then his eyes took on a murderous, purple-black gleam. All the same, his voice was quite steady as he replied.
"I'm afraid that is not likely to benefit you much," he said. "Would you mind handing me that oblong black book from the dressing-table? I want you to do something for me. What's that?"
There was just the faintest suggestion of a sound outside. It was Enid listening with all her ears. She had not been long in discovering what had happened. Once the ghastly farcical incubus was off her shoulders she had followed Littimer upstairs. As she passed Henson's room the drone of voices struck on her ears. She stood there and listened. She would have given much for this not to have happened, but everything happened for the worst in that accursed house.