Rogers admitted him with a look of quiet surprise and led the way across his office into the living-room behind, whose one window opened upon the air shaft. In this room were two easy chairs, a couch on which Rogers slept, a table with a green-shaded reading-lamp, two or three prints—all utterly without taste. Everything was in keeping with the surface commonplaceness of the man except a row of shelves containing a couple of hundred well-selected books.
Rogers motioned David to a chair and he himself leaned against his table, his hands folded across the copy of "Père Goriot" he had been reading.
"I'm very glad you came in," he said, in his low, even voice.
David gazed at Rogers in his attitude of waiting ease, and he suddenly felt that to speak to this unsuspecting man was impossible. It did not occur to him that perhaps Rogers had caught his strained look, and that perhaps this ease might be the mask of an agitation as great as his own. He dropped his eyes. But it was his duty to speak—and, in a way, his desire. He forced himself to look up. Rogers had the same look and attitude of quiet waiting.
"Mr. Rogers," David began, with an effort, "I have just been told something that I think I am bound to tell you. You hired me, befriended me, in the belief that I knew nothing about you. I feel it would not be honourable in me to remain your employe, in a sense your friend, if I concealed from you that I know what may be your secret. And there is another reason why I want you to know that I know: if the story is true, I want to tell you how much I sympathise."
"Go on," said Rogers in his even voice.
"It's doubtless all a mistake," said David, hurriedly, feeling that it was not. "I've just had a talk with a man I knew in prison—Bill Halpin. He's called to see me several times. He happened to see you. Something about you struck him at once as familiar, but he could not recognise you. He saw you again, and he thought he placed you. He called here, had a talk with you, and on going away purposely shook hands. There was no grip in your little finger—you could only half bend it. He said he placed you by that."
Rogers still leaned against the table, his figure quiet as before—but David could see that the quiet was the quiet of a bow drawn to the arrow's head. The tendons of his hands, still holding the book, were like little tent-ridges, and his yellowish face was now like paper.
"And who did he say I am?" his low voice asked.
"He told me that fifteen years ago you and he were friends, pals—that you were a famous safe-breaker—that you were 'Red Thorpe.'"