“The undertaking referred to in the two documents of even date, signed respectively by Lord Plowden and Stormont Thorpe, is to the effect that at some hour between eleven A.M. and three P.M. of September 12th, instant, Lord Plowden shall produce before a special meeting of the Committee of the Stock Exchange, the person of one Jerome P. Tavender, to explain to said Committee his share in the blackmailing scheme of which Lord Plowden, over his own signature, has furnished documentary evidence.”
The nobleman continued to look down at the paper, after the power to hold it without shaking had left his hand. There came into his face, mingling with and vitiating its rich natural hues of health, a kind of grey shadow. It was as if clay was revealing itself beneath faded paint. He did not lift his eyes.
Thorpe had been prepared to hail this consummation of his trick with boisterous and scornful mirth. Even while the victim was deciphering the fatal paper, he had restrained with impatience the desire to burst out into bitter laughter. But now there was something in the aspect of Plowden's collapse which seemed to forbid triumphant derision. He was taking his blow so like a gentleman,—ashen-pale and quivering, but clinging to a high-bred dignity of silence,—that the impulse to exhibit equally good manners possessed Thorpe upon the instant.
“Well—you see how little business you've got, setting yourself to buck against a grown-up man.”
He offered the observation in the tone of the school-teacher, affectedly philosophical but secretly jubilant, who harangues a defeated and humiliated urchin upon his folly.
“Oh, chuck it!” growled Lord Plowden, staring still at the calamitous paper.
Thorpe accepted in good part the intimation that silence was after all most decorous. He put his feet up on the corner of the desk, and tipping back his chair, surveyed the discomfited Viscount impassively. He forbore even to smile.
“So this swine of a Tavender came straight to you!” Lord Plowden had found words at last. As he spoke, he lifted his face, and made a show of looking the other in the eye.
“Oh, there are a hundred things in your own game, even, that you haven't an inkling of,” Thorpe told him, lightly. “I've been watching every move you've made, seeing further ahead in your own game than you did. Why, it was too easy! It was like playing draughts with a girl. I knew you would come today, for example. I told the people out there that I expected you.”
“Yes-s,” said the other, with rueful bewilderment. “You seem to have been rather on the spot—I confess.”