“Haven’t you each received a letter from Quixtus’s solicitors? Haven’t you each signed an agreement not to worry him—on forfeiture of your allowance? Now I swear to God that if either of you molest her, you’ll be molesting Quixtus. I’ll jolly well see to that. She’ll tell me, and I’ll tell him—and bang! goes the monthly money.”
Vandermeer’s shrewd wits began to work.
“Molest her and we molest Quixtus? Oho! Is that the little game? She’s going to marry him, eh?”
“If she does, what the blazes has that got to do with you?” Huckaby cried, fiercely. “You just let the woman alone. You’ve got a damned sight more out of Quixtus than you ever expected, and you ought to be satisfied.”
“We ought to get more,” said Billiter, “considering what we’ve done for him.”
“You won’t,” said Huckaby, and seeing that they both still regarded Quixtus as a subject for further exploitation, “Let me tell you something,” said he, “a few simple facts that alter the situation completely. Let us take a turn down the street.”
And as they walked, he told them briefly of Hammersley’s death and the Marseilles visit and the return of Quixtus, a changed man, with Clementina and the child. The bee, on which they had reckoned for honey, had left Quixtus’s bonnet. There was no more Bedlamite talk about wickedness. Their occupation as evil counsellors had gone for ever. They had better accept thankfully what they had, and disappear. Any action directed against either Quixtus or Lena Fontaine would automatically bring about the demise of the goose with the golden eggs. At last he convinced them of the futility of blackmail; but they parted from him, each with a burning sense of wrong. Lena Fontaine and Huckaby had put them in the cart. They were left, they were done, they were stung—they were all things that slang has invented to describe the position of men deceived by those in whom they trusted.
“And she’s going to marry him,” said Vandermeer.
“Huckaby didn’t say so,” replied Billiter.
“He didn’t contradict it. She’s going to marry him, and you bet that son of a pawn-ticket will get his commission.”