Part 9 (2/2)

”What? The Kite--old Jacob--he's there?”

”Personally superintending a situation which gets daily more impenetrable, for us. Each fright we give them adds another palisade to the defence.”

Landon took up the letters which he had laid down and went on opening and glancing through them. He pursed up his lips into an obstinately set expression; he a.s.sumed the air of a bargainer who has reached the limit of his purpose. For he fully understood the drift of Mr. Miller's remarks.

”We had better be plain with each other,” he said at last. ”My little expedition to the States has been a failure. As a matrimonial proposition I am, for the present, out of the running. They told me to come again in a year's time. t.i.tle-hunting American women have short memories, but some beastly reporter recognized me and ran two columns of reminiscences of the trial. That queered me, and after all the decree is not made absolute for another six months.”

”Is this antic.i.p.atory of the announcement that those eight hundred dollars are the only support between you and bed-rock after all?”

”You jump at my meaning. I'm going to take over the duties of your six, or of some of them, at any rate.”

The other's gray eyes reviewed his companion with a keenly calculating glance. There was no irritation in it, rather there was satisfaction.

Mr. Miller did not present the aspect of a man whose chances of receiving a debt of one hundred and twenty pounds had been made doubtful. He had more the look of a bull speculator watching a tape as the eighths and sixteenths are added every few minutes to the stock which he commands.

”You will fail,” he said drily. ”Without funds you must fail. One poor man, in spite of the story books, can do nothing against a hundred and wealth.”

”Possibly,” said Landon. ”But one may be permitted to try.”

”No,” said the other, stolidly. ”One may not be permitted, in Tangier.”

Landon looked up and for a moment silence hung heavily between the two men. The one who stood was the picture of heavy, imperturbable resolution. Landon, sitting back in his chair, was animate with energy, with a sort of tenseness which was almost magnetic. It was as if a panther faced a rhinoceros.

Then Landon shrugged his shoulders.

”Am I being threatened, my dear Miller?” he asked quietly.

”You are being informed,” said the other. ”The Syndicate which I represent is willing to finance you, for an adequate return. Without that it proposes to make Tangier an impossible residence for you.”

Landon stared his surprise and his obvious relief.

”They are going to speculate in me?” He pondered for a moment. ”I don't promise, or I haven't promised, that I shall allow old Jacob to buy the child back, if we get him, at all.”

Miller nodded weightily.

”That does not matter to us,” he announced. ”That is as you like.”

Landon's eyes were still wide and debating.

”Then your return comes--where?” he asked.

”We are willing to wait for it,” said the other. ”The first service we require from you is that you will renew your acquaintance with your cousin, Captain Aylmer, and endeavor to remove the distaste which I regret to think he feels for your company.”

Landon bent forward, leaned his elbows on the table and his chin on his closed fists. He stared at his companion with a concentrated, dispa.s.sionate examination which seemed to probe and fathom through the depths of the other's impenetrability.

Miller met the scrutiny with no other manifestation than an, if possible, increase of apathy.

Landon dropped his hands slowly upon the table and gave his head a tiny shake.

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