So mused he on those stairs till he came to the old dark oaken door and rang.
He came in. Mr. Petre greeted him rather wearily, and they sank opposite each other into two deep chairs looking out into the gardens under the summer light—and upon his soul Charlie Terrard didn’t know how to begin.
At last he said:
“Mr. Petre, I have never talked to you about your own interests in your own country.” (Mr. Petre’s blood already ran cold.) “Honestly, I thought it would be impertinent.” (Mr. Petre was far beyond any effective impertinence. Panic was the emotion which those few words had stirred in him. Good God! What was coming next? And how should he meet it?) “But I ought to tell you what people are saying. I mean,” concluded Charlie firmly, “about your position in Rotor affairs.”
It was an odd, hoarse voice that answered him.
“What people are saying—eh, what?” Mr. Petre still kept his face too much turned away as he gasped out the words, and Terrard noted his hands grasping the arms of the chair.
“Mr. Petre,” said Charlie quietly, “you are Jevons; he’s only the original man; you’re Jevons now and you’re the American Rotor Combine.”
“Yes,” gasped the unfortunate man almost inaudibly ... at any moment a direct question would sink him. He prayed as no man yet prayed that Charlie would keep to affirmations which he had but to admit.
“Of course, the people who count know that you really control.... Anyhow, they make certain you control—I should say you control,” he continued, plunging boldly, “‘The American Rotor Trust.’ It’s a sort of commonplace with those who know, Mr. Petre, and I only mention it because it’s common knowledge, and to explain what I want to say next.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre desperately—it was the first he had heard of it. Then he added still more desperately, “I do....” He added those words in his terror of the alternative, “I don’t,” which would lead to heaven knows what cataract of revealing blunders. Follow the lead, he thought, follow the lead; it’s the only chance. Therefore it was that he had confessed himself to be the man behind Jevons, whoever the devil Jevons might be, or whatever the devil Jevons was. Yes. All right. He, the victim of this torture, controlled the American Rotor. “Yes, I do,” he added again, and looked down at the Temple greensward so tragically that he might have been confessing forgery and high treason and making a clean breast of it.