“Hangman’s hemp—if I live long enough,” was the grim declaration, and Cleigh drew the rug over his knees.
“But it can’t be anything dreadful if they can laugh over it!” 154
“Did you ever hear Mephisto laugh in Faust? Cunningham is a queer duck. I don’t suppose there’s a corner on the globe he hasn’t had a peek at. He has a vast knowledge of the arts. His real name nobody seems to know. He can make himself very likable to men and attractive to women. The sort of women he seeks do not mind his physical deformity. His face and his intellect draw them, and he is as cruel as a wolf. It never occurred to me until last night that men like me create his kind. But I don’t understand him in this instance. A play like this, with all the future risks! After I get the wires moving he won’t be able to stir a hundred miles in any direction.”
“But so long as he doesn’t intend to harm us—and I’m convinced he doesn’t—perhaps we’d better play the game as he asks us to.”
“Miss Norman,” said Cleigh in a tired voice, “will you do me the favour to ask Captain Dennison why he has never touched the twenty thousand I deposited to his account?”
Astonished, Jane turned to Dennison to repeat the question, but was forestalled.
“Tell Mr. Cleigh that to touch a dollar of that money would be a tacit admission that Mr. Cleigh had the right to strike Captain Dennison across the mouth.”
Dennison swung out of the chair and strode off 155 toward the bridge, his shoulders flat and his neck stiff.
“You struck him?” demanded Jane, impulsively.
But Cleigh did not answer. His eyes were closed, his head rested against the back of the chair so Jane did not press the question. It was enough that she had seen behind a corner of this peculiar veil. And, oddly, she felt quite as much pity for the father as for the son. A wall of pride, Alpine high, and neither would force a passage!