"Oh! Then Lambert's been here!" Dalrymple answered, jauntily.
George nodded.
"You've been crooked, Dalrymple. Now we'll have an accounting."
Dalrymple laughed.
"It's what I've come for; but first I advise you to hold your temper. It's late, but there are plenty of people still outside. Any more rough stuff and you'll spend the night in a cell, or under bail."
"If you lived nine lives," George commented, "you'd never be able to intimidate me."
Yet the other's manner troubled, and George's doubtful curiosity grew as he watched Dalrymple commence to draw the strings of the mask.
Dalrymple put down his hat and cane, bent swiftly, placed the palms of his hands on the desk, stared at George, his face inflamed, his eyes choked with malicious exultation.
"Your blackmail," he cried, "is knocked into a cocked hat. I married Sylvia half an hour ago."
Before George's response he lost some of his colour, drew back warily; but George had no thought of attacking him; it was too late now. That was why he experienced a dreadful realization of defeat, for a moment let through a flickering impression of the need for violence, but—and Dalrymple couldn't be expected to understand that—violence against George Morton who had let this situation materialize, who experienced, tumbling about his head, the magnificent but incomplete efforts of many years. That sensation of boundless, imponderable wreckage crushing upon him sent him back to his chair where for a moment he sat, sunk down, stripped of his power and his will.