Hague sat staring, fascinated, at the man in the long robe, who smoked yellow cigarettes and filled the air with their peculiar fumes. It seemed to him, suddenly, that he had taken leave of his senses, and that this cell—this pungent perfume—this man with the soul-searching eyes, the incisive voice—all were tricks of his senses.
What had he preserved the secret of his connection with the Hatton Garden firm for all these long years—each year determining to quit whilst safe, but each year lured on by the prospect of vaster gain—only to lay it at the feet of this Séverac Bablon, who would ruin him?
Faintly, sounds of occasional traffic penetrated. From a place of half-shadows beyond the table, Séverac Bablon's luminous eyes watched. Save for those distant sounds which told of a thoroughfare near by, silence lay like a fog upon the place, and upon the mind of Baron Hague.
It grew intolerable, this stillness; it bred fear. Who was Séverac Bablon? What was the secret of his power?
Hague looked up.
"Gott im Himmel!" he said hoarsely. "Who are you? Why do you persecute those who are Jewish?"
Séverac Bablon stretched his hand over the great carved table, holding it, motionless, beneath the lamp. From the bezel of the solitary ring which he wore gleamed iridescent lights, venomous as those within the eye of a serpent.
A device, which seemed to be formed of lines of fire within the stone, glowed, redly, through the greenness. The ring was old—incalculably old—as anyone could see at a glance. And, in some occult fashion, it spoke to Baron Hague; spoke to that which was within him—stirred up the Jewish blood and set it leaping madly through his veins.
Back to his mind came certain words of a rabbi, long since gone to his fathers; before his eyes glittered words which he had had impressed upon his mind more recently than in those half-forgotten childish days.
And now, he feared. Slowly, he rose from the big cushioned chair. He feared the man whom all the world knew as Séverac Bablon, and his fear, for once, was something that did not arise from his purse. It was something which arose from the green stone—and from the one who possessed it—who dared to wear it. Hague backed yet farther from the table, squarely, whereupon, beneath the globular lamp, lay the long white hand.