"Mr. Sherbrand will give you another chance. I know he will!—I'll ask him!" came impetuously in the big warm womanly baritone.
"You're a grand woman to luik at, and the lad'll gie in—an' the haill deil's dance to begin ance mair.... Na, na, my bonny leddy!" said Macrombie, "ye can never lippen to the promises o' a drunkard. Best lat me gang my gait to muckle Hell. Ay! I'll no' be lonesome there for want o' company.... Toch! what a regiment o' Macrombies deid an' damned will answer 'Present' to auld Satan's rollcall! Guid-nicht, my leddy, an' thanks to ye a' the same."
He took his cap from a peg, and from the corner a bundle of miscellaneous possessions, rolled up in apparently a worn alpaca office-coat, and girt about with knotted string. He saluted the Chief and Saxham, and nodded to the telegraph clerk, and went out of the cabin in a plodding kind of hurry as though no grass should grow under his feet before he set them for good upon the dreadful downward Road.
His vice had played into an enemy's hands, and he would trust himself no longer. He meted out judgment to rum-soaked Macrombie, assuming for himself the prerogative of the One Judge. But he got his chance in spite of himself, when Britain's Hour came.
CHAPTER XLI
SAXHAM LIES
At Saxham's nod Patrine rang up Lynette, and the familiar voice that came back, spun out to a spider-thread of sweetness across the distance, stabbed the listener to the heart like a delicate blade of gold-wrought steel. It said, with a quiver in it:
"Of course, I am not nervous at all. And I know how much Bawne would enjoy the night-flying. But if Owen were not there, perhaps I might be—afraid that something was wrong. Owen!"
"Say that I am here," the Doctor signed, and Patrine obeyed.
"Tell my darling to speak to me," said the voice, and Patrine, dropping the microphone from suddenly useless fingers, saw Saxham take it and force his stiff white lips to speech: