“And their throats,” put in Marvin, eagerly. “That is because they are of Teuton descent. So different from the French, eh, Turner?”
Turner nodded a placid acquiescence. Then he turned, as far, it would appear, as the thickness of his neck allowed, toward Barebone.
“Saw in a French paper,” he said, “that the ‘Petite Jeanne’ had put in to Lowestoft, to replace a dinghy lost at sea. So I put two and two together. It is my business putting two and two together, and making five of them when I can, but they generally make four. I thought I should find you here.”
Loo made no answer. He had only seen John Turner once in his life—for a short hour, in a room full of people, at Royan. The banker stared straight in front of him for a few moments. Then he raised his sleepy little eyes directly to Miriam’s face. He heaved a sigh, and fell to studying the burning logs again. And the colour slowly rose to Miriam’s cheeks. The banker, it seemed, was about his business again, in one of those simple addition sums, which he sometimes solved correctly.
“To you,” he said, after a moment’s pause, with a glance in Loo’s direction, “to you, it must appear that I am interfering in what is not my own business. You are wrong there.”
He had clasped his hands across his abnormal waistcoat, and he half closed his eyes as he blinked at the fire.
“I am a sort of intermediary angel,” he went on, “between private persons in France and their friends in England. Nothing to do with state affairs, you understand, at least, very little. Many persons in England have relations or property in France. French persons fall in love with people on this side of the Channel, and vice versa. And, sooner or later, all these persons, who are in trouble with their property or their affections, come to me, because money is invariably at the bottom of the trouble. Money is invariably at the bottom of all trouble. And I represent money.”
He pursed up his lips and gazed somnolently at the fire.
“Ask anybody,” he went on, dreamily, after a pause, “if that is not the bare truth. Ask Colville, ask Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, ask Miriam Liston, sitting here beside us, if I exaggerate the importance of—of myself.”
“Every one,” admitted Barebone, cheerfully, “knows that you occupy a great position in Paris.”