Then with a snatch he took up his hat. “Enough of this,” he exclaimed with vicious impatience. “I am never sorry when words fail and we come to action. I have your answer, Herriard? You will not break off this engagement and make way for me?”
“Decidedly not. The question is hardly worth answering.”
The words, considering to whom spoken, were bold, but Gastineau seemed scarcely to hear them. On his way towards the door he had moved round to the side of the writing table. His eyes were fixed upon a card which lay on it, a card which announced the visit of Detective Inspector Quickjohn. Herriard had gone towards the door to open it, and now turned to see why his visitor lingered. Gastineau’s glance had shifted from Quickjohn’s card to the unfinished letter to himself which still lay open on the desk. In an instant he had grasped the fact that he had surprised Herriard in the act of writing to him.
“A letter to me,” he exclaimed, as with a swift movement he caught up the paper. “I may read it, and so save trouble, or, at least, delay.” As he spoke his eyes were rapidly running down the page. The purport of the letter was already his when Herriard put forth a protesting hand.
“It is of no importance now,” he said hastily. “Your visit has rendered it needless for me to write.”
But Gastineau kept the paper from the other’s hand. His face as he read grew dark and sneering, and a sneer was but that cynic’s handy mask. “It is written to me, intended for me,” he maintained, turning to evade Herriard’s effort to snatch the letter. “I have surely a right to read it.”
“You have none,” Herriard objected.
The sharp eyes had got the pith of the letter, and Gastineau threw it on the table. “So!” He seemed to reflect for a few moments, to be making a swift resolve. Herriard, intending to let him out, had left the door ajar. Gastineau moved suddenly forward, and, instead of, as the other expected, passing out, he quickly shut the door and locked it.
CHAPTER XXII
THE STRUGGLE
IT was all done in one swift action; the outcome of a planned determination. As Gastineau turned, Herriard saw that the scoffing contemptuous coolness had gone: his expression now was more that of a feline animal on the spring. The thought uppermost in his mind now was, “Is it possible that I ever called this man my friend?” He saw a crisis had come; how his letter should have hastened and accentuated it he could not comprehend. But that was due to the slower power of perception in his own mind compared with his adversary’s.