“In Mexico,” Antony said softly, “I found oil. It was very good oil, as Roger said later, but there wasn’t much of it. My luck again! But I made Roger share it this time. You remember how I reappeared in England? Through that window over there, while Roger was giving a big dinner-party, sitting where I’m sitting now. You were here, George. Roger and I made it up before the lot of you—after a silence of years. Entirely on my side, the quarrel—Roger always loved me. We made it up, you remember, George? I wanted, you see, to plant Roger with that oil. Cascan Oil—it sounded like a big thing at the time. That was the last big dinner-party Roger ever gave. He was unhappy at home—some love misunderstanding—and he took to me, Roger did. He went head over heels into that bucket-shop. Of course he soon saw through me and my oil—the man wasn’t born who could take Roger in—but he let the company go on. He wanted to see how far I’d go. Giving me my head, you know. He had packets of money in reserve, and thought he could put the thing right any moment. But he got reckless—watching me and wondering how far I’d go. Roger had always loved me ever since we were children—he never thought of me but as a naughty baby with a bee in my red head about him. I could see all the time he was wondering how far I dared go. And he was unhappy at home, poor Roger; he and his wife somehow couldn’t get their particular ways of loving each other to work well together. So he had nothing to do but get reckless and chuckle over the naughty baby. I went the limit. The bucket-shop crashed on Roger’s head. He tried to pull up, chucked his money in, and other people’s, but it wouldn’t save it. Clear case of dirty work. A greasy bubble, Cascan Oil. Left a nasty mess when it burst. And all the papers signed in Roger’s name. Telephone rang in the next room while we were in here. I was sitting where you are, Trevor. Roger looks at me with a kind of crooked smile. ‘Come with me,’ he says, and I went. Into that room, the library. Roger didn’t trouble to switch on the light; the telephone was on the desk beside the door. The police were after him, said the man on the telephone—the police after Sir Roger Poole, Bart, M.P., and all the rest of it! ‘Listen,’ says Roger. And I listened while he told me a few things about myself. ‘A poor husk of a man,’ he called me. ‘A graveyard of a brother you are,’ he said. ‘And the epitaph on your grave will be Dolor Ira,’ he said, for Roger was a great Latin scholar and could lash out bits of Tacitus as easily as a parson might give you the Bible. I thought he was going to shoot me, I was ready for it—but he’d shot himself. Roger loved me, you know——”
“Then why the hell,” Tarlyon blazed out, “did you take this cursed house?”
Antony mauled his cigar.
“Because,” he said with a grin, “it just happened that way. It was fate to find it empty—a fine, large house like this at a low rent while all England was yelling for houses. But I might not have taken it if Diavalen had been against it——”
“Oh,” said Tarlyon to that.
Antony looked at his wrist-watch, and jumped up in a mighty hurry. “God, the time’s gone! Excuse me a moment.”
“We will not!” cried Tarlyon, and had his back against the library door almost before you saw him leave the table.
But Antony walked his way to the library door without a word.
“Don’t, old Antony, don’t!” Tarlyon begged.
“Out of my way!” said Antony. He said it as though he was thinking of something else, which was Antony’s most dangerous way of saying anything.