"Were you?" Grenvil answered vaguely. "I really don't remember Mr. Trent."
"Then you deny ever having seen me until we met by the salmon pool a few days ago?" Trent looked at him like a hawk.
"I do," Grenvil retorted.
"Then if you do, why don't you resent my butting in like this? Why don't you call some men-servants and have me flung out for a damned nuisance? Say I threatened you, say anything an innocent man could and would say. Your attitude doesn't fool me in the least. You are playing a deep game but I can play a deeper."
Grenvil shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of weariness. "There are many things I cannot explain," he said.
"You are going to begin right now," Trent said. He was not in a mood to be trifled with. He firmly believed that this man was planning to send him to gaol for a period of years so long that he would come out a whitehaired broken man.
He looked round frowning as steps sounded along the corridor and a tap came on the door.
"Let me in Arthur," he heard Lady Daphne say, "I've had a most extraordinary letter from Aunt Alicia. I must see you about it."
She rattled the locked door impatiently. Her brother walked over to it. Trent could offer no objection. He was confused and annoyed that at a moment such as this the girl must interrupt. To Anthony Trent she was as one above and apart. There was no use in concealing that he himself was a crook no matter how differently he pursued the profession from the lesser lights whom he despised. And Arthur Grenvil was as crooked as he with less excuse for it.