"Good-night," replied Julian as he entered the room, and, after Sebastian was out of earshot (as he calculated), turned the key in the lock. Then, as he sat himself down in his chair, after again producing his revolver and placing it by his side, he thought to himself:
"Yes! he spoke truly. Their conversation below will not disturb me, nor will there be any chance of my overhearing it. All right, Sebastian, you understand the old proverb about one for me and two for yourself. But you have for gotten a little fact, namely, that a sailor can move about almost as lightly as a cat when he chooses, and, if I think you and your respected housekeeper have anything to say that it will be worth my while to hear--why, I shall be a cat for the time being."
[CHAPTER XIV.]
"THIS LAND IS FULL OF SNAKES."
The truth was, as the reader is by now very well aware, that Julian no more believed in either Sebastian's lawful possession of Desolada or in his being the son of Charles Ritherdon, than he believed that George Ritherdon had concocted the whole of that story which he narrated ere his death. "For," said the young man to himself, "if it were true, his manner and her manner--that of the superb Madame Carmaux--would not be what they are. 'Think it out,' our old naval instructor in the Brit, used to say, 'analyze, compare, exercise the few brains Heaven has mercifully given you.' Well, I will--or, rather, I have."
And he had done so. He had thought it all over and over again--Sebastian's manner, Madame Carmaux's manner, Sebastian's slight inaccuracies of statement, Madame Carmaux's pretence of being asleep when she was awake, and her strange side-glances at him when she thought he was not observing her.
"I played Hamlet once at an amateur show in the Leviathan," he mused. "It was an awful performance, and, if it had been for more than one act, I should undoubtedly have been hissed out of the ship. All the same it taught me something. What was it the poor chap said? 'I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pounds.' Well, I'll take my uncle's word--for uncle he was and he was telling the truth--for a thousand pounds, too. Only, how to prove it? That is the question--which, by-the-bye, Hamlet also remarked."
That was indeed the question. How to prove it!
"That fellow is no more Charles Ritherdon's son than I'm a soldier," he went on, "and I am the son. That I'm sure of! Everything, every fresh look on their faces, every word they say, convinces me only the more certainly. Even this shifting of the room I am to occupy: why, Lord bless me! does he think I'm a fool? Yet, all the same, I don't see how it is to be proved. Confound them! Some one played a trick on Charles Ritherdon after George had stolen me--for steal me he did--some trick or other. And she, this Madame Carmaux was in it. Only why--why--why?"
He clenched his hands in front of his forehead, as he recalled now Mr. Spranger's words: "It is a blank wall against which you will push in vain." Almost, indeed, he began to fear that such was the case; that never would he throw down that wall which rose an adamantine object between him and his belief. Yet, even as he did so, he recollected that he was an Englishman and a sailor; that, consequently, he must be resolved not to be beaten. Only, how was it to be accomplished; how was the defeat to be avoided?