“I have nothing to reproach myself with,” Herriard said, beginning to tire of the scene.
“That,” retorted Gastineau, “shows you in a more contemptible light still.” The fire was glowing now, any instant might bring the flame. “You think yourself a clever fellow, Herriard, but your really clever man discriminates. He does not play tricks upon men cleverer than himself.”
“I am not aware that I have tried to play a trick on you, Gastineau.”
“No? What do you call the withholding your knowledge of the one man in Europe who could cure me?”
“I did not. I——”
Gastineau stopped him with a sharp, impatient gesture. “Don’t trouble to deny it. You met and knew Hallamar weeks, months, before it suited you to mention him to me. Oh, don’t protest: I have neither time nor inclination to listen to your lies. I don’t blame you. I might have done the same in your place. My being a helpless cripple, a man with both feet literally in the grave, a brain without a body, meant everything to you. You played your game, taking the risk, and lost it; lost it through a miscalculation of our respective smartness.”
“You are wrong, Gastineau, utterly,” Herriard broke in with indignation.
“Am I?” he returned, with a sneer. “I know you, Geoffrey Herriard, better, possibly, than you know yourself. You have been playing a dangerous game; are playing it still; but you have made more than one false move, and the game is lost. There only remains for you to pay.”
He stopped; shutting his lips with the suggestion that he had no more to say. The pause of that dark, evil mind, between speech and action, was like the crouching of a tiger for its spring; like the breathless hold-up which precedes the first flash of a storm. Gastineau stood facing Herriard with a world of concentrated malignity blazing in his eyes, the tokens of the fiery soul behind them. Herriard waited, nervously alert. He saw the futility of protesting against the charges; this man was his enemy, whose cue and desire it was to quarrel; a struggle, terrible, perhaps to the death, was inevitable.
For some moments the two men watched each other, the one seeming to cast about for an opening for attack, the other apprehensively strung for defence. Surely that keen, active brain would not need to wait long. No. Gastineau’s lips parted, showing the white teeth, still set as he spoke through them, spoke as with a purpose of making an end quickly.