“Will you do it now?”
“No.”
“What if I compel you?”
“Compel me! My good fellow, you are talking nonsense.”
Pelham was fast losing his self-control: he leaped forward and seized Tarbot by the arm.
“Scoundrel!” he said. “Notwithstanding that certificate, I have my reasons for suspecting you. Analyze that medicine at once before my eyes, or, by heaven, I’ll have you in a court of justice.”
“You must be mad, Pelham,” said Tarbot calmly. “I will analyze the medicine, certainly, but at my own good time and pleasure. Now leave the house. Your words are insulting. You forget yourself. Too great a portion of this world’s riches has overbalanced your brain. I have heard of such cases before. When you can exercise self-control I will speak to you again.”
CHAPTER XX.
THE PRICE OF HIS SIN.
Pelham never quite remembered how he got into the street. He was only conscious of having completely lost his self-control, of a mad whirl of emotions, which deprived him, for the moment, of all ordinary sense and prudence. A loathing for the man with whom he had been conversing, a certainty that there was a real foundation for his appalling fears, both combined to overbalance a brain already strained to the utmost. When the cold night air, however, blew on his heated forehead he quickly recovered himself, and seeing that he could do nothing further went home.
Having seen Pelham out, Tarbot returned to his smoking-room. There was a grim determination about his thin lips and a frown between his brows—thought was working hard in his active brain. After a short time given to reflection, he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, laid it in its accustomed place on the mantelpiece, turned off the electric light and went up-stairs.