“You are determined on that? No wavering?”
“No.”
“Very good, Biles. I give you the fairest warning. On the day that you meet the House of Commons, I shall place upon the paper a series of questions which will expose the very root of the Mazanderan scandal, and I shall supply full information on the subject to the Opposition Press. I have had every document in my possession for the last year. I can prove that you yourself were in it up to the neck; I have notes of all the transactions with Rimanez and Co. And I know all about the Party Funds also. If that once gets into print, Biles, you are done for—thumbs down!”
He imitated the old death sign of the Roman arena. The Premier sat as if frozen in his chair. His face had gone a dirty grey. Nordenholt towered over him with contempt on his features. Suddenly the Colonial Secretary sprang to his feet.
“This is blackmail, Nordenholt,” he cried furiously. “Do you think you can do that sort of thing and not be touched? You may think you are safe behind your millions; but if you carried out your threat there isn’t a decent man who would speak to you again. You daren’t do it!”
“If you speak to me like that again, Simpson, I’ll take care that no decent man speaks to you either,” Nordenholt said, calmly. “There’s another set of notes besides those on Mazanderan. I have the whole dossier of the house in Carshalton Terrace in my desk. I’ll publish them too, unless you come to heel. It will be worse than Mazanderan, Simpson. It will be prison.”
In his turn, the Colonial Secretary collapsed into his chair. Whatever the threat had been, it had evidently brought him face to face with ruin; and guilt was written across his face.
But Saxenham had paid no attention to this interruption. In his slow way he was evidently turning over in his mind what Nordenholt had said to the Prime Minister; and now he spoke almost in a tone of anguish:
“Johnnie, Johnnie,” he said. “Deny it! Deny it at once. You can’t sit under that foul charge. Our hands were clean, weren’t they? You said they were, in the House. There’s no truth in what Nordenholt says, is there? Is there, Johnnie?”
But the Premier sat like a statue in his chair, staring in front of him with unseeing eyes. The affairs of the Mazanderan Development Syndicate had been a bad business; and if the connection between it and the Government could be proved, after what had already passed, it was an end of Biles and the total discredit of his Party. Nordenholt, still on his feet, looked down at the silent figure without a gleam of pity in his face. Somehow I understood that he was playing for a great stake, though no flicker of interest crossed his countenance.