“ ‘You can leave us,’ he said, and the old man went out of the room.
“Then he turned to me, and his face was hardly human. ‘Hast thou found me, oh mine enemy!’ he hissed. He never seemed to have the least doubt as to who I was. Poor fellow! The thought of my coming had haunted him like a nightmare, and driven him to furious wanderings. He was like a man under sentence of death, who was leading feverish years, not knowing at any time that the grim spectre would appear. So much he told me. His mother had confided the whole story to him on her death bed, and adjured him to keep the document which would mean his undoing should I ever appear. His life must have been hell on earth.
“He listened to my story without a word, but I could see that his mind was working all the time to devise a plan, and I knew I was in imminent peril. At the end he rose and paced the room. ‘You must give me time to think,’ he said, ‘I shall want the fullest proofs of your identity before I can say anything. Come and see me tomorrow night, at eight o’clock. Don’t come to the front door, I will have the French windows open for you.’ He let me out by the window, and I went to my cottage, half inclined to throw up the whole thing and go away. I was sorry for him, and it was only the thought of all that my mother had suffered that kept me to my purpose.
“I told Southgate nothing, as I had involved him quite enough. The next night I kept the appointment, I will confess in some trepidation, he had been so calm, so self-possessed, that I felt he had something behind it all. I found the window open and went in. The room was in semi-darkness.
“Reckavile did not offer to shake hands, but started at once in a voice of intolerable insolence. ‘Mr. Halley,’ he said ‘I have been considering your story, and congratulate you on your powers of invention. In any ordinary case I should simply send for the police and have you arrested on a charge of blackmail, but there are so many reasons for wishing to avoid a public scandal or digging up the past that I offer you a handsome sum, let us say 10,000 pounds, if you will take yourself off, and never come to England again.’
“For the moment I was going to leap at him, and take him by the throat, but some curious instinct held me back. In a flash I saw what his game was. He wished for some reason to provoke me to attack him. Perhaps then he could have killed me, and pleaded self-defence. He may have had witnesses for all I knew. Anyway I kept my temper. ‘Give me the marriage certificate of my mother’ I said, and I pulled out the miniature I had always carried with me. ‘That is her picture with me as a child’ I said. ‘It is her honour I am concerned with. Otherwise I would leave you alone with your title.’
“ ‘Wait a moment’ he said, and walked across the room to the cabinet containing the dictaphone there.”
Halley paused and pointed to the object, on which all eyes were fixed.
“ ‘You will take my offer?’ he asked. I noticed a curious clicking sound, but at the time thought nothing of it, it was only afterwards it came back to my mind, and the significance dawned on me. ‘You are trying to insult me,’ I said, and I am afraid I lost control of myself.
“ ‘Sign a document to say that your mother never married my father, and the money is yours,’ he said and smiled at me like a devil.