Part 25 (1/2)

Lord Bellina looked helplessly at Levison for a moment. The elder man rose to the occasion.

”Let's get to business,” he said; ”something must be done.”

The woman nodded eagerly and quickly, and with the same unnatural glitter in her eyes.

”Have you seen any of the papers?” Levison said.

She shook her head.

”Well, Bally and I have been going through them, and, what's more, we have been seeing a whole lot of people, and getting various extra opinions. You know that I can say without boasting in the least that there are very few men in London who know the popular taste as I do.

I've made my success by realizing exactly what London will do and think just a day or two before it has made up its own mind. I have never made a mistake. I won't bother you now with an account of how I have arrived at my present conclusion. It is enough to say that I am certain of it, and that it is this:

”There is not the slightest doubt that if this man Joseph continues in his pleasant little games--you see, I speak without heat--theatrical business in London will be ruined for months. There is going to be a great wave of religious enthusiasm all over the place. This man--Joseph he calls himself--is going to lead it. The man is an extraordinary one.

He has a personality and a force greater, probably, than any living person in Europe to-day. There is no doubt about it. You, my dear Mimi, will have to forego your nightly triumphs. Public opinion will hound you off the stage and shut up my theatre, or compel me to let it as a mission-hall for ten pounds a night! As for you, Bellina, you will have to retire to your estates in Galway, and superintend the potato crop, and take an intelligent interest in the brood of the Irish national animal--the pig in short, Bally!”

Although he spoke jauntily enough, there was a deep vein of bitterness and sincerity underlying the Jew's words. He watched the faces of his two listeners with a quick and cunning scrutiny.

Mimi Addington spoke.

”You've hit the mark, Andrew,” she said, in a low voice, in which there was a curious hissing quality--”you've hit the mark, as you always do.

What you've said is perfectly true. I know it and feel it.”

Her eyes blazed, and she put one white and shapely hand up to the ivory column of her throat, wrestling with the agony of hysteria and hate, which once more threatened to master her. With a great effort of will, she calmed herself, and went on speaking.

”But all this, Andrew, depends upon one little word, 'if.'”

Lord Bellina looked quickly at Levison, with a glance which seemed to say that they had already arrived at precisely the same conclusion.

”That's it,” he said; ”there is always that little word, 'if.'”

There was a dead silence in the little room, and three faces, pale and full of sinister purpose, sought each other in a horrid trio of hate.

The girl's face was as it had been from the first, unredeemed evil. The countenance of the young peer had changed from its usual vacuous and dissipated weakness into something which, bad as it was, had still a quality of strength. He had sat cowering in the theatre while the terrible denunciation of the evangelist had laid bare the secrets of his life. And although he did not outwardly show how hard he had been hit, his resentment was no less furious though less vulgarly expressed, than that of Mimi.

The Israelite gave no indication of his inward feelings. In truth, they were of a quite different nature from those of the other two. He lived for two purposes. One was to make money, the other was to enjoy himself; he saw now that his money-making was menaced, and that his enjoyment would be spoiled--unless--

Mimi Addington became suddenly quite calm and business-like. She realized that she was in perfect accord with the other two.

”Now let's get to work,” she said. ”This Joseph must be got rid of at once. It can be done, I suppose, if we pay enough.”

”Quite so,” said Mr. Levison. ”It now only remains to form ourselves into a committee of ways and means.”

CHAPTER XIV

THE WARNING

Like a bell the preacher's voice rang through the crowded church.