“Well, then,” said the man, “I think we must talk. Yes, sit down again, please. I won’t keep you very long.”
Jane did as she was told.
“Well, Molloy’s gone,” he said. “You know what that means? He’s washed his hands of you. Just in case—just in case, you’ve been relying on Molloy, I would like to point out to you that his own position is none too secure. The firm he works for has not been entirely satisfied with him for some time. It is, therefore, quite out of the question that he should influence any decision that may be come to with regard to yourself. His going off like this shows that he realises the position and accepts it. Self-preservation is Molloy’s trump suit, first, last, and all the time. I shouldn’t advise you to count upon trifles like parental devotion, or anything of that sort. In a word—he can’t help you, but I can.”
The man leaned forward as he spoke, and a sudden smile changed his features.
“Just be frank,” he went on. “Tell me what you really heard, and I’ll see you through.”
Jane let her eyes meet his. That smile had puzzled her; it was so spontaneous and charming, but it did not reach his eyes.
She looked and found them cold and opaque, and as she looked, she saw the pupils narrow, expand, and then narrow again.
He got up from his chair, walked to the mantelpiece, stopped for a light to his cigarette, and came back again with a thin blue haze of smoke about him.
“Perhaps I haven’t been altogether frank with you,” he said. “That little romance of mine about a firm of chemists who employ your father—you didn’t really believe it? No, I thought not. The fact is, that first night I took you for just a schoolgirl, and one can’t tell schoolgirls everything. But now, now I’m talking to you as a woman. I can’t tell you everything, even so, but I can tell you this. It’s a Government matter, a most important one, and it is vital that I should know just what you overheard.”
Jane looked down.