“If you were more observant,” said Heyst with dispassionate contempt, “you would have known before I had been five minutes in the room that I had no weapon of any sort on me.”
“Possibly; but pray keep your hands still. They are very well where they are. This is too big an affair for me to take any risks.”
“Big? Too big?” Heyst repeated with genuine surprise. “Good Heavens! Whatever you are looking for, there's very little of it here—very little of anything.”
“You would naturally say so, but that's not what we have heard,” retorted Mr. Jones quickly, with a grin so ghastly that it was impossible to think it voluntary.
Heyst's face had grown very gloomy. He knitted his brows.
“What have you heard?” he asked.
“A lot, Mr. Heyst—a lot,” affirmed Mr. Jones. He was vying to recover his manner of languid superiority. “We have heard, for instance, of a certain Mr. Morrison, once your partner.”
Heyst could not repress a slight movement.
“Aha!” said Mr. Jones, with a sort of ghostly glee on his face.
The muffled thunder resembled the echo of a distant cannonade below the horizon, and the two men seemed to be listening to it in sullen silence.