Part 41 (2/2)

”It rests with you,” he said suddenly. ”He wants from you--silence. What has happened is as if it had never been. You are to allow him to take his place unquestioned in the society which befits his rank. He wishes to turn a new leaf.”

Aylmer met the look with blank incredulity, at first. Then his lips tightened with determination.

”And you?” he cried. ”You are taking him seriously? You are going to give him this money?”

Miller's out-turned palms expressed a vague pessimism.

”Is there an alternative?” he asked.

Aylmer laughed harshly.

”Blank refusal: what is his answer to that?”

The dark eyes searched the two expectant faces meditatively. The thin prehensile fingers picked at a loose splinter in the bulkhead.

”I think he would find a way,” he said slowly. ”I think--in fact he has threatened it--he would--_hurt_ you!”

Aylmer stared at the gray figure, puzzled, frowning. Miller had used a new voice for the two last syllables, a voice that shook ever so slightly with some concealed emotion. ”Hurt you,” he reiterated sharply, and then darted a quick, bird-like glance at Aylmer--a look full of interrogation.

Claire Van Arlen moved forward with a sudden startled movement.

”Hurt!” she cried. ”You mean that he would use torture?”

”I think,” said Miller, very slowly, ”that he would use anything.”

And then Aylmer began to laugh--loudly, gaily, and quite whole-heartedly. Miller's eyebrows proclaimed their owner's astonishment.

”Melodrama!” explained Aylmer, still chuckling. ”I remember Landon as a small boy, even before his Eton days. He bred these leanings then. He wasted his pocket money on 'bloods,' I think they are called--penny exhilarators for youths of tender years, crammed with impossible villainies. And now he is going to tie flaming splinters between my fingers and squeeze my thumbs in the crack of the door! This is the price I am to pay for refusing him social rehabilitation. We cannot congratulate him on his sense of humor, we really cannot.”

Miller paused over his reply, looked down, looked up, and then bridged a moment of hesitation with his usual expedient--a shrug.

”For the moment I fear he hasn't got one,” he said.

”Possibly not,” agreed Aylmer. He nodded towards the door. ”I'll take advantage of his concessions to come and see.” He gave another little confident nod to usher the other two before him. As the child ran forward he caught him up with his bound hands and raised him shoulder high. Then, stooping, he pa.s.sed out at Miller's heels on to the deck. He was laughing still, laughing up at the boy as the childish fingers steadied themselves in his hair.

”You won't be able to do that when they shave it to put the pitch plaster on,” he cried. ”And when they've stretched me on the rack, I shall be too tall to carry you out of a cabin. And as for being a pig man again, and carrying a spear after the thumbscrews have been applied, why, it simply won't bear thinking about!”

As he emerged on deck he looked about him keenly. Muhammed's was the first figure which caught his eye. The Moor was sitting on the gunwale opposite the companion, looking sh.o.r.eward. And the sh.o.r.e, to Aylmer's surprise, was very near on the starboard bow.

Suddenly he realized that it was not the mainland which he saw, but an archipelago of islands girdled with reefs. Rockbound channels were frames to pictures of the dun red African strand half a dozen miles away.

He looked aft. The sun was not far from its setting, hanging in a red disc above the distant hills of Algeria. The captain was at the tiller.

Beside him lounged Landon, watching a gray-painted torpedo boat which had emerged from the shelter of the islands and was about to pa.s.s close under their stern. The gold and crimson of the Spanish naval ensign floated at her flagstaff.

Landon looked round as he heard the footsteps of the newcomers on the deck. He nodded them a greeting without changing his seat, and did it with a studied air of contempt.

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