"Really, Mr. Barch, this is carrying your little pleasantries too far," he rapped out in a voice that had a little tremble in it. "Will you allow me to say that we are not accustomed to guests who get up and prowl about the place at all hours of the night, and turn up suddenly at half-past one in the morning with uninvited acquaintances."
"Quite so," said Cleek, "but the law is no respecter of any man's convenience, General."
"The law? The law?" The General's sudden fright was pitiful. He dropped back a step under the shock of the thing, and all the colour drained out of his lips and cheeks. "What utter absurdity! What have I to do with the law? What have you, Mr. Barch?"
"Cleek, if you want the truth of it, General—Cleek of the Forty Faces, Cleek of Scotland Yard. It's time to lay aside the mask of 'Philip Barch' forever."
"Cleek? Cleek?" The General's cry was scarcely more than a shrill whisper. "God! You that man? You? And all the time you have been here in my house. Oh, my God! is this the end?"
"Yes, I fear it is, General," said Cleek in reply, as he stepped past him and moved into the room. "If you dance to the devil's music in your youth, my friend, be sure he will come round with the hat in the days of your age! Last night one of the follies of your youth came to its inevitable end: last night a man was murdered who—— Stop! Doors won't lead a man out of his retribution. Come away from that one. The gentleman who is with me, General, is Mr. Maverick Narkom, superintendent of Scotland Yard. Isn't that enough to show you how impossible it is to evade what is to be? Besides, why should you want to get out of the room? It's not your life that's in danger, it's your honour; and there's no need to make any attempt to prevent either your wife or your son learning that when both are deep in the drugged sleep to which you sent them."
"My God!" The General collapsed into a chair.
"That's right," said Cleek. "Sit down to it, General, for it is likely to be a strength-sapping time. I've something to say to you; and Mr. Narkom has still something to hear. But first, for the sake of emergencies, and to have things handy if required, allow me to take a certain precaution."
As he spoke he moved over to the window, and switched the curtains over them.
"General," he said, facing about again, "the laws of society, the laws which prevail in civilized communities, are pretty rotten things. If a woman errs in her youth she pays for it all her whole life long—in sorrow, in tears, in never-ceasing disgrace. If the same law prevailed for both sexes, and men had to pay for the sins of their youth as women must for theirs, how many of them think you would be out of sackcloth to-day? Atonement is for the man, never for the woman. For Eve, youth must stand always as a time of purity, unspotted by a single sin. For Adam, it stands only as a time of folly that may be brushed aside and of sin that may be outlived. Probably you were no worse in the days of your youth, General, than ninety-nine men out of every hundred, but——" He gave his shoulders a shrug, and broke off.