Morse struck the table with his hand.
"I wish I'd sent a bullet through his heart instead of playing fancy fireworks round him. But I feared London and your colossal law and order. It's perfectly true, he didn't influence me in the least on that night. He came to sell his employers, to sell the Hermandad for a hundred thousand pounds."
"It would have been cheaper than this." I waved my hand to indicate the expensive crow's-nest of my future father-in-law.
Morse laughed.
"It wouldn't have made the least difference," he said. "The man couldn't hurt me at the time because he had to obey the orders of the villainous Society at his back. The old Marquis da Silva, who is simply a tool in their hands, insisted that I was not to be even interfered with in any way until the two years of grace from my first warning were up. Though their object was to get hold of half my fortune, and Midwinter's to revenge himself personally upon me, the Society and he didn't dare do anything until the moment struck. There were too many political issues still involved.
"That's why I made Mr. Mark Antony Midwinter dance out of the Ritz Hotel on that night."
"It's what Arthur Winstanley said."
"That young man will go far. Now, Kirby, I think you understand everything, and you've got to throw in your lot with Juanita and me, for a time at any rate, and never say you didn't know what you were up against."
I took a glass of claret and lit a cigarette.
"I understand the facts, as you say, but I don't understand you. Allowing for all your natural and deep anxiety about Juanita, I simply fail to understand why you regard this Midwinter and his companion or companions with such apprehension. Surely you could have the man locked up to-morrow, knowing what you know about him."