"I can afford to speak freely before you," he said. "Say a word against me and I'll crush you. Put out a hand to injure me and I'll wipe you off the face of the earth. It's absolutely imperative that I should send an important telephone message to London at once, and here the machine has broken down and no chance of its being repaired for a day or two. Curse the telephone."
He lay back on his bed utterly exhausted by his fit of passion. One of the white bandages about his throat had started, and a little thin stream of blood trickled down his chest. Littimer waited for the next move. He watched the crimson fluid trickle over Henson's sleeping-jacket. He could have watched the big scoundrel bleeding to death with the greatest possible pleasure.
"What was Van Sneck doing here?"
The voice came clear and sharp from the bed. Littimer responded to it as a cowed hound does to a sudden yet not quite unexpected lash from a huntsman's whip. His manliness was of small account where Henson was concerned. For years he had come to heel like this. Yet the question startled him and took him entirely by surprise.
"He was looking for the lost Rembrandt."
But Littimer's surprise was as nothing to Henson's amazement. He lay flat on his back so that his face could not be seen. From the expression of it he had obtained a totally unexpected reply to his question. He was so amazed that he had no words for the moment. But his quick intelligence and amazing cunning grasped the possibilities of the situation. Littimer was in possession of information to which he was a stranger. Except in a vague way he had not the remotest idea what Littimer was talking about. But the younger man must not know that.
"So Van Sneck told you so?" he asked. "What a fool he must have been! And why should he come seeking for the Rembrandt in Brighton?"
"Because he knows it was there, I suppose."
"It isn't here, because it doesn't exist. The thing was destroyed by accident by the police when they raided Van Sneck's lodgings years ago."
"Van Sneck told me that he had actually seen the picture in Brighton."