He had resumed his noiseless, feline, oblique prowling, in which an observer would have detected a new character of excitement, such as a wild animal of the cat species, anxious to make a spring, might betray. Schomberg saw nothing. It would probably have cheered his drooping spirits; but in a general way he preferred not to look at Ricardo. Ricardo, however, with one of his slanting, gliding, restless glances, observed the bitter smile on Schomberg's bearded lips—the unmistakable smile of ruined hopes.
“You are a pretty unforgiving sort of chap,” he said, stopping for a moment with an air of interest. “Hang me if I ever saw anybody look so disappointed! I bet you would send black plague to that island if you only knew how—eh, what? Plague too good for them? Ha, ha, ha!”
He bent down to stare at Schomberg who sat unstirring with stony eyes and set features, and apparently deaf to the rasping derision of that laughter so close to his red fleshy ear.
“Black plague too good for them, ha, ha!” Ricardo pressed the point on the tormented hotel-keeper. Schomberg kept his eyes down obstinately.
“I don't wish any harm to the girl—” he muttered.
“But did she bolt from you? A fair bilk? Come!”
“Devil only knows what that villainous Swede had done to her—what he promised her, how he frightened her. She couldn't have cared for him, I know.” Schomberg's vanity clung to the belief in some atrocious, extraordinary means of seduction employed by Heyst. “Look how he bewitched that poor Morrison,” he murmured.
“Ah, Morrison—got all his money, what?”
“Yes—and his life.”
“Terrible fellow, that Swedish baron! How is one to get at him?”