With this missive committed irrecoverably to the care of his majesty's mails, Victor Grenier's spirits rose. Now, indeed, he was in the whirlpool. Would he emerge high and dry in the El Dorado of gilded vice which he longed to enter, or would fortune consign him to Portland again—perchance to the scaffold? He could not say. He would not feel safe until Philip Anson was a myth, and Victor Grenier a reality, with many thousands in the bank.
Already he was planning plausible lies to keep Mason out of his fair share of the plunder. A few more forged letters would easily establish the fact that he was unable to obtain a bigger haul than, say, fifty thousand pounds.
And what did Mason want with twenty-five thousand pounds? He was a gnarled man, with crude tastes. Twenty, fifteen, ten thousand would be ample for his wants. The sooner he drank himself to death the better.
With each fresh cigar Mason's moiety shrank in dimensions. The murder was a mere affair of a vengeful blow, but this steady sucking of the millionaire's riches required finesse, a dashing adroitness, the superb impudence of a Cagliostro.
But if his confederate's interests suffered, the total fixed in Grenier's original scheme in nowise became affected.
He meant to have a hundred thousand pounds, and he firmly decided not to go beyond that amount. His letter to the bankers named one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and he calculated that by stopping short at two-thirds of the available sum he would not give any grounds for suspicion or personal inquiry.
Yet he would shirk nothing. Mr. Abingdon and Miss Atherley must be avoided at all events; others he would face blithely. He took care to have ever on the table in his sitting room a goodly supply of wines and spirits.
If anyone sought an interview, it might be helpful to sham a slight degree of intoxication. The difference between Philip drunk and Philip sober would then be accounted for readily.
But rest—that was denied him. It was one thing to harden himself against surprise; quite another to forget that disfigured corpse swirling about in the North Sea.
He wished now that Philip Anson had not been cast forth naked. It was a blunder not to dress him, to provide him with means of identification with some unknown Smith or Jones.