The dark blood flooded his heavy features:
“I do not desire to take it to the courts,” he said. “I am willing to offer compensation.”
“We couldn’t accept. Don’t you understand, Mr. Puma? We simply must have that particular hall for the Combat Club.”
Puma remained perfectly silent for a few moments. There was still, on his thick lips, the suave smile which had been stamped there since his appearance in her house.
But in this man’s mind and heart there was growing a sort of dull and ferocious fear––fear of elements already gathering and combining to menace his increasing prosperity.
Sullenly he was aware that this hard-won prosperity was threatened. Always its conditions had been unstable at best, but now the atmospheric pressure was slowly growing, and his sky of promise was not as clear.
Some way, somehow, he must manage to evict these women. Twice Sondheim had warned him. And that evening Sondheim had sent him an ultimatum by Kastner.
And Puma was perfectly aware that Karl Kastner knew enough about him to utterly ruin him in the great Republic which was now giving him a fortune and which had never discovered that his own treacherous mission here was the accomplishment of her ruin.