Part 72 (1/2)
”What are you talking about? I did not throw stones at his window,” he lied. ”I'm not a school-boy.”
”That's so,” Tembarom admitted.
”I saw him, nevertheless. And I can tell you he gave me rather a start.”
”Why?”
Palliser half laughed again. He did not mean to go too quickly; he would let the thing get on Tembarom's nerves gradually.
”Well, I'm hanged if I didn't take him for a man who is dead.”
”Enough to give any fellow a jolt,” Tembarom admitted again.
”It gave me a `jolt.' Good word, that. But it would give you a bigger one, my dear fellow, if he was the man he looked like.”
”Why?” Tembarom asked laconically.
”He looked like Jem Temple Barholm.”
He saw Tembarom start. There could be no denying it.
”You thought that? Honest?” he said sharply, as if for a moment he had lost his head. ”You thought that?”
”Don't be nervous. Perhaps I couldn't have sworn to it. I did not see him very close.”
T. Tembarom puffed rapidly at his pipe, and only, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed:
”Oh!”
”Of course he's dead. If he wasn't,”--with a shrug of his shoulders,-- ”Lady Joan Fayre would be Lady Joan Temple Barholm, and the pair would be bringing up an interesting family here.” He looked about the room, and then, as if suddenly recalling the fact, added, ”By George! you'd be selling newspapers, or making them--which was it?--in New York!”
It was by no means unpleasing to see that he had made his. .h.i.t there.
T. Tembarom swung about and walked across the room with a suddenly perturbed expression.
”Say,” he put it to him, coming back, ”are you in earnest, or are you just saying it to give me a jolt?”
Palliser studied him. The American sharpness was not always so keen as it sometimes seemed. His face would have betrayed his uneasiness to the dullest onlooker.
”Have you any objection to my seeing him in his own room?” Palliser inquired.
”It does him harm to see people,” Tembarom said, with nervous brusqueness. ”It worries him.”
Palliser smiled a quiet but far from agreeable smile. He enjoyed what he put into it.
”Quite so; best to keep him quiet,” he returned. ”Do you know what my advice would be? Put him in a comfortable sanatorium. A lot of stupid investigations would end in nothing, of course, but they'd be a frightful bore.”
He thought it extraordinarily stupid in T. Tembarom to come nearer to him with an anxious eagerness entirely unconcealed, if he really knew what he was doing.
”Are you sure that if you saw him close you'd KNOW, so that you could swear to him?” he demanded.