“Thanks,” said Sagesse, handing over the money which Monsieur Jaques pocketed. Five dollars for just a lie was the best bargain he had ever made.
As Sagesse came through the warehouse, he found Gaspard still seated on the spar end watching the sail-patchers at their work. He could have shot him with all the pleasure in life, yet he greeted him cheerily and with a smile.
It is a profound popular mistake to attribute no sense of honour to a scoundrel.
He has the keenest sense of honour—in others. He feels when he is betrayed just as an honourable man feels only, perhaps, more acutely.
“And now that we have finished business,” said Jaques, “will you not take some refreshment, you and your friend?” He opened a door leading from the warehouse to a room, half sitting-room, half office, ushered them in, and opening another door, called for coffee, rum, and cigarettes.
In a moment, a servant, bearing a huge tray spread with the ordinary Martinique petit déjeuner, entered. Gaspard scarcely heard the entrance of the servant, he was examining a picture hanging on the pine boarding of the wall, a small, old-fashioned wood-engraving that had struck his eye immediately he entered and now held him fascinated as the serpent on the Place du Fort had held old M. Seguin.
It represented a man small and hideous, holding in one hand an immense sword and in the other hand a whip.
He was dressed in a shirt and loose trousers, a broad sash was round his waist and from the sash peeped the butt of a pistol.
The thing was horrible and grotesque. The man’s head and face were scarcely larger than the head and face of a child; yet the face had in it the ferocity of a demon; it was of extraordinary breadth across the cheek bones.
The limbs, as far as the clothing allowed them to be seen, were deformed, and as Gaspard stood fascinated and repelled, a shiver ran through him. He had seen this man—this thing—before—where? Impossible to say; in some past life, in some dream—glimpsed, perhaps, in the midst of some crowd, through the fumes of tobacco in some bar—somewhere, at some time in his life, he had seen that hideous head.