Part 73 (1/2)
T. Tembarom broke out into a sort of boyish resentment.
”I don't believe he did look like him, anyhow,” he cried. ”I believe it's all a bluff.” His crude-sounding young swagger had a touch of final desperation in it as he turned on Palliser. ”I'm dead sure it's a bluff. What a fool I was not to think of that! You want to bluff me into going into this Cedric thing. You could no more swear he was like him than --than I could.”
The outright, presumptuous, bold stripping bare of his phrases infuriated Palliser too suddenly and too much. He stepped up to him and looked into his eyes.
”Bluff you, you young bounder!” he flung out at him. ”You're losing your head. You're not in New York streets here. You are talking to a gentleman. No,” he said furiously, ”I couldn't swear that he was like him, but what I can swear in any court of justice is that the man I saw at the window was Jem Temple Barholm, and no other man on earth.”
When he had said it, he saw the astonis.h.i.+ng dolt change his expression utterly again, as if in a flash. He stood up, putting his hands in his pockets. His face changed, his voice changed.
”Fine!” he said. ”First-rate! That's what I wanted to get on to.”
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
After this climax the interview was not so long as it was interesting.
Two men as far apart as the poles, as remote from each other in mind and body, in training and education or lack of it, in desires and intentions, in points of view and trend of being, as nature and circ.u.mstances could make them, talked in a language foreign to each other of a wildly strange thing. Palliser's arguments and points of aspect were less unknown to T. Tembarom than his own were to Palliser.
He had seen something very like them before, though they had developed in different surroundings and had been differently expressed. The colloquialism ”You're not doing that for your health” can be made to cover much ground in the way of the stripping bare of motives for action. This was what, in excellent and well-chosen English, Captain Palliser frankly said to his host. Of nothing which T. Tembarom said to him in his own statement did he believe one word or syllable. The statement in question was not long or detailed. It was, of course, Palliser saw, a ridiculously impudent flinging together of a farrago of nonsense, transparent in its effort beyond belief. Before he had listened five minutes with the distinctly ”nasty” smile, he burst out laughing.
”That is a good `spiel,' my dear chap,” he said. ”It's as good a `spiel' as your typewriter friend used to rattle off when he thought he saw a customer; but I'm not a customer.”
Tembarom looked at him interestedly for about ten seconds. His hands were thrust into his trousers pockets, as was his almost invariable custom. Absorption and speculation, even emotion and excitement, were usually expressed in this unconventional manner.
”You don't believe a darned word of it,” was his sole observation.
”Not a darned word,” Palliser smiled. ”You are trying a `bluff,' which doesn't do credit to your usual sharpness. It's a bluff that is actually silly. It makes you look like an a.s.s.”
”Well, it's true,” said Tembarom; ”it's true.”
Palliser laughed again.
”I only said it made you look like an a.s.s,” he remarked. ”I don't profess to understand you altogether, because you are a new species.
Your combination of ignorance and sharpness isn't easy to calculate on. But there is one thing I have found out, and that is, that when you want to play a particular sharp trick you are willing to let people take you for a fool. I'll own you've deceived me once or twice, even when I suspected you. I've heard that's one of the most successful methods used in the American business world. That's why I only say you look like an a.s.s. You are an a.s.s in some respects; but you are letting yourself look like one now for some shrewd end. You either think you'll slip out of danger by it when I make this discovery public, or you think you'll somehow trick me into keeping my mouth shut.”
”I needn't trick you into keeping your mouth shut,” Tembarom suggested. ”There's a straightway to do that, ain't there?” And he indelicately waved his hand toward the doc.u.ments pertaining to the Cedric Company.
It was stupid as well as gross, in his hearer's opinion. If he had known what was good for him he would have been clever enough to ignore the practical presentation of his case made half an hour or so earlier.
”No, there is not,” Palliser replied, with serene mendacity. ”No suggestion of that sort has been made. My business proposition was given out on an entirely different basis. You, of course, choose to put your personal construction upon it.”
”Gee whiz!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed T. Tembarom. ”I was 'way off, wasn't I?”
”I told you that professing to be an a.s.s wouldn't be good enough in this case. Don't go on with it,” said Palliser, sharply.
”You're throwing bouquets. Let a fellow be natural,” said Tembarom.
”That is bluff, too,” Palliser replied more sharply still. ”I am not taken in by it, bold as it is. Ever since you came here, you have been playing this game. It was your fool's grin and guffaw and pretense of good nature that first made me suspect you of having something up your sleeve. You were too unembarra.s.sed and candid.”