Helzephron himself sat opposite. The handsome, hawk-like face was badly bruised. He stared at me with concentrated malignancy. Then he smiled, with a flash of large white teeth.
"Really, I should hardly have known you," he said.
"I should have recognized you anywhere, even with the bruises!" I replied. "Mr. Ashton left you your teeth, I see."
His face grew dark. He nodded twice. "I thought that," he said, half to himself.
"I saw the whole thing, and it was most amusing, Mr. Helzephron. I was sitting in the smaller arm of the gallery at the 'Mille Colonnes,' behind a centre-piece of flowers. I, and my companion, had concealed a periscope in the flowers, and got the whole thing framed, as it were. It gave a zest to the Burgundy. But I thought you'd have made a better fight of it!"
The man leapt from his chair with a savage curse and took two steps towards me, with clenched fist and lifted arm.
I looked up in that convulsed and purple face.
"Quite so!" I said quietly. "I'm tied up. It's quite safe to hit me."
If he was going to torture me, and I had few illusions on the matter, I was having my innings now. He had been a gentleman once, he had been a brave soldier. It was because I knew this that I could stab him.
He didn't strike. He began to walk up and down the room, swallowing his rage with an almost superhuman effort—being what he was. Perhaps shame helped him, perhaps it was cunning, but he sat down again, and though he trembled, his voice was calm.