Charliewood sat down in obedience to a motion of his host's hand. He sat down with a sigh, for he knew that he had been summoned to Sir William Gouldesbrough's house to perform yet another duty which was certain to be distasteful and furtive.
Yes! there was no hope for it now. For the last few years the man about town had been under the dominion of a stronger will than his, of a more cunning, of a more ruthless brain. Little by little he had become entangled within the net that Gouldesbrough had spread for him. And the lure had been then and afterwards a lure of money—the one thing Charliewood worshipped in the world.
The history of the growth of his secret servitude to this famous man was a long one. Money had been lent to him, he had signed this or that paper, he had found his other large debts bought up by the scientist, and at the end of three years he had found himself willy nilly, body and soul, the servant of this man, who could ruin him in a single moment and cast him down out of his comfortable life for ever and a day.
No living soul knew or suspected that there was any such bond as this between the two men. Even Charliewood's enemies never guessed the truth—that he was a sort of jackal, a spy to do his master's bidding, to execute this or that secret commission, to go and come as he was ordered.
As yet all the services which Charliewood had rendered to Sir William, and for which, be it said, he was excellently paid, were those which, though they bordered upon the dishonourable and treacherous, never actually overstepped the borders.
Gouldesbrough employed Charliewood to find out this or that, to make acquaintance with one person or another, to lay the foundation, in fact, of an edifice which he himself would afterwards build upon information supplied by the clubman. There was no crime in any of these proceedings, no robbery or black-mail. And what happened after he had done his work Charliewood neither knew nor cared. Of one thing, however, he was certain, that whatever the scientist's motives might be—and he did not seek to probe them—they were not those of the ordinary criminal or indeed ever bordered upon the criminal at all. All that Charliewood knew, and realized with impotence and bitterness, was that he had allowed himself to become a mere tool and spy of this man's, a prober of secrets, a walker in tortuous by-paths.
"What did you wire to me for?" Charliewood said in a sulky voice. "What do you want me to do now?"
Sir William looked quickly at his guest, and there was a momentary gleam of ill-temper in his eyes, but he answered smoothly enough.
"My dear Charliewood, I wish you wouldn't take that tone. Surely we have been associated too long together for you to speak to me in that way now. It has suited your convenience to do certain things for me, and it has suited my convenience to make it worth your while to do them. There is the whole matter. Please let's be friendly, as we always have been."
Charliewood shrugged his shoulders.