“Ah!” Gastineau’s lips were contorted sarcastically. “A very apt motto at the present juncture. Nevertheless, one requires something more convincing than a trite copy-book text to persuade one of the desirability of living the rest of one’s life under a sword of Damocles. You know the fable of the wise fool who neglected to keep his pet lion cub’s claws pared. History, my good fellow, is full of such crass omissions and their consequences. So far as I am concerned, history shall not repeat itself.”
There was hateful, sneering determination in the man’s face as he spoke. Herriard knew well that he never relented, and wondered why his enemy did not make an end of the business without more parley. Gastineau’s hand, grasping the revolver, was kept well in front of him, the wrist forming a pivot on his crossed knee. A struggle was clearly out of the question; the alert eyes never left him, for all their owner’s mannered nonchalance. A sudden spring would mean a bullet through the heart before it came to a grapple.
“I can only repeat, Gastineau, that you can have nothing to fear from me.” Herriard spoke mechanically; the suspense was numbing his mind; suspense that was a mere question of time, not deliverance.
Gastineau smiled. “If I am far from believing it, it does not follow that I doubt your sincerity in making the declaration. Only, as I have said, fortunately or unfortunately, I know more of the world in general and of Mr. Geoffrey Herriard in particular than does that person himself. No, my dear fellow,”—there was a revolting irony in the term—“when I am a great man, a very great man, as, bar accidents, I mean to be, it would be a quite irresistible temptation to one like yourself to shake the ladder just as I had reached the topmost rung. Don’t protest; I know human nature. The temptation would be overpowering—I don’t mean to blackmail; I put you above that—but to stand, virtuously, public-spiritedly, of course, in my way. And it might not be as easy to put you to silence on that day as it is now. A man is a fool who starts to climb the highest ladder, leaving at the foot a fellow who has the power, and, maybe, the inclination, to twist it over.”
Herriard kept wondering why he did not make an end of his talk.
“So you know, or think you know,” Gastineau went on coolly, “that Martindale owed his death to me?”
“I know nothing,” Herriard protested, with the vision of Alexia before his eyes.
“You have at least a strong suspicion, which is sufficient for my purpose. A suspicion shared by that astute and able officer, Detective Inspector Quickjohn. Ah! I am sorry for you both, but you will recognize that it would be sheer folly on my part to enter the race handicapped by the extra and unnecessary weight of a suspicion of murder.”
His tone was so blandly reflective that Herriard regarded him in surprise; half wondering whether he was in his right senses. Nothing but the dangling revolver suggested a dread intent.
“Gastineau,” he said, steadying his voice, dry and strange from the desperate fear that was in him, “you are hideously wrong in thinking me likely to communicate my suspicions to any living creature. And you must be out of your mind to imagine that taking my life, if that is your meaning, will clear the way to the goal you aim at. Do you, clever man that you are, suppose that you can kill me with impunity? That my murder will not turn suspicion into a certainty leading to the gallows.”