"Who is he?" she asked, showing by the subdued note of her voice that she had taken my warning to heart.
"That's more than I can say," I answered. "I discovered him in the room there, and when he came out I promptly sat on him."
"But what did he want?"
"If one can judge anything from his present attitude, he came to study the pattern of the carpet, Moira."
"Be serious, Jim, please."
"I couldn't if I tried," I said, rising to my feet. "It's too much like hard work. But let's look at the captive, Diana."
This time the shot went home, and in a way I was glad. I had four years' arrears to make up yet. It was not a very manly thing to do, I know—it certainly wasn't at all gentlemanly—but it gave me a deuce of a lot of satisfaction, and that's about all I can say in defence. She looked up at me with both hurt and contempt in her eyes, but I was far too engrossed in the business in hand to give her more than passing notice. When I came to think it over in calmer moments I realised that, despite all that had happened, the girl was just as much in love with me as ever she had been.
The fellow was young, at the most he could not have been more than twenty-four or five, and I saw instantly that he was the man I had called the Roman sentry—the chap who had been spying on the house the day Bryce had driven me home from the Heads. The life wasn't crushed out of him by any means; even as I examined him he stirred a little and his eyes opened. They were nice black eyes, the sort that brim over with humor, yet way at the back of them I caught a glimpse of something else. It was a queer mixture of anger and determination, and I saw just sufficient of it to warn me to take no unnecessary risks. Save for that first spasmodic movement he lay perfectly still, those black eyes of his laughing up at me and challenging. Somehow they filled me with a curious sense of unrest, a feeling as if everything that made life safe and secure was slipping away from me. I did not speak a word, however, but gave him back look for look, striving with my eyes to beat down the challenge I read in his. They said as plainly as so many words, "I'm the better man, and I'll beat you yet. Try and see if I don't."
"What are you doing here?" I demanded at length, seeing that one of us must speak, and he seemed the less likely.
"If I told you I was a somnambulist you wouldn't believe me, would you?" he replied.