“Call cook and put your mistress to bed at once. I am going back to Ecclesby to-night. I don’t know how long I shall be away. I shall wire to Mrs. Smith to come here to-morrow.”
The girl went out to fetch the cook. Lizzie looked at him with stupid gravity.
“Think I believe you’re a-going to Ecclesby? You’re going to that Piccadilly Circus woman.”
Goddard sprang forward, caught her by the loose collar of her dressing gown, and shook her till the stuff tore.
“Do you want me to kill you?” he said, between his teeth, glaring at her.
She was frightened, and began to whimper.
Goddard stood for a moment looking at her. Then he passed his hand through his hair in a passionate gesture.
“O God!” he cried, in a low, trembling voice, and then strode out of the room.
He sought mechanically his still unpacked bag, his overcoat and necessaries, and went out into the night. At St. Pancras Station he found Gleam waiting on the platform. He was conscious of the Member asking him for certain explanations concerning the Midland Grand Hotel and Lady Phayre, and of listening to details of the leakage of secrets, Rosenthal’s defection, to congratulations, encouragement, adieux as the train moved off, but it was all a phantasmagoria in which his intellect worked independently of himself. The glorious news he was carrying, the certain victory that was to crown his hopes and ambitions, the thousands of lives whose destiny he was bearing in his hands—all loomed like vague shadows at the back of his consciousness. But his brain was on fire with passionate love for Lady Phayre, and wild hatred of the woman from whom he had just parted. If man ever carried the fires of hell in his heart it was Goddard, that night, as he was on his way to realise the first great ambition of his life.