Staff held her gaze in silence.
“You’re in love with her,” insisted the actress—“in love with this common thief and confidence-woman!”
Staff nodded gently. “Perhaps,” said he, “you’re right. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.... But, if you doubt my motive in advising you to go slow, consult somebody else—somebody you feel you can trust: Max, for instance, or your attorney. Meanwhile, I’d ask Mrs. Ilkington to be discreet, if I were you.”
Saluting them ceremoniously, he turned and left the hotel, deeply dejected, profoundly bewildered and ... wondering whether or not Alison in her rage had uncovered a secret unsuspected even by himself, to whom it should have been most intimate.
XII
WON’T YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOUR?
Slipping quickly into the room through an opening hardly wide enough to admit his spare, small body, the man as quickly shut and locked the door and pocketed the key. This much accomplished, he swung on his heel and, without further movement, fastened his attention anew upon the girl.
Standing so—hands clasped loosely before him, his head thrust forward a trifle above his rounded shoulders, pale eyes peering from their network of wrinkles with a semi-humourous suggestion, thin lips curved in an apologetic grin: his likeness to the Mr. Iff known to Staff was something more than striking. One needed to be intimately and recently acquainted with Iff’s appearance to be able to detect the almost imperceptible points of difference between the two. Had Staff been there he might have questioned the colour of this man’s eyes, which showed a lighter tint than Iff’s, and their expression—here vigilant and predatory in contrast with Iff’s languid, half-derisive look. The line of the cheek from nose to mouth, too, was deeper and more hard than with Iff; and there was a hint of elevation in the nostrils that lent the face a guise of malice and evil—like the shadow of an impersonal sneer.