Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 42).djvu/744

"Don't you make any mistake about it, my boy. I've not come over to Dieppe to be fooled with. I'm either going to have you or the money in four-and-twenty hours. If I have to have you, it will be penal servitude, and then the smile will come off that pretty face of yours."

Mr. Armitage was not smiling at that particular moment, as anyone could see; on the contrary, he looked very much disturbed. The way in which he leaned across the table helped me to realize the earnestness which I felt sure was in his voice as he replied to the other's threat, in words which, as I saw each fresh one shaped on his lips, surprised me more and more.

"Don't be absurd, Clarke. I can't perform the impossible. I can't get it in four-and-twenty hours; but you shall have your money, with a thumping interest, if you will only give me reasonable time."

"And pray, what do you call reasonable time, my beautiful—forger?"

"It won't take very much to make me break this glass against your face, Clarke. You may have the whip-hand of me, but I'll break your neck before you get a chance of laying the lash across my back."

I held my breath, expecting every moment to see something dreadful happen. The way Mr. Clarke snarled back at him!

"That's the tone you take, is it? You talk to me like that again, and I'll have you jailed to-night. Do you think you can both rob and murder me? I say you're a forger—forger—forger! Now you touch me with a glass, or anything else, if you dare. This will be the last time you ever show yourself in a decent place if you do."

There was a pause. Mr. Armitage leaned so far forward that I quite expected that he would take the other by the throat and strike him with his glass. I was just on the point of jumping up and doing something which would divert his attention, when he seemed all at once to change his purpose, and, leaning right back, positively laughed.

"What nonsense it is, Clarke, our talking like this. You'll do no more good by calling me names than I should do by knocking you down. I tell you again, you shall have your money, with thumping interest, if you'll wait."

"I know a good deal about you, my lad—about all there is to learn—but I don't know where you're going to get anything like that amount of money from, unless you've found someone else to rob."

I thought Mr. Armitage would resent this remark as he had done the others, and I believe that for a moment it was his intention to do so, but again he changed his purpose, and I saw these remarkable words come from his lips instead:—

"I have—I've found a woman."

It was not strange that Mr. Clarke looked at him as if he wondered if he was in earnest; then he asked, with a smile which made him an even more unpleasant-looking person than before:—

"What woman have you found this time?"

"If you are suggesting, as you appear to be, that I ever have robbed a woman up to now, I can only inform you, Clarke, with all possible courtesy, that you are a liar. I have not always treated women well—few men have; but no woman has ever suffered in pocket because of me up to the present time of speaking."

"That's between you and your conscience. Who is the woman you purpose, according to your own statement, to rob, at the eleventh hour?"

"It's the woman I intend to make my wife."

"Oh, so there is a woman you're going to make your wife—at last. What about——" I do not know what he was going to say; Mr. Armitage stopped him so suddenly, and positively shook his fist in his face.

"Stop that, Clarke; don't you mention any names. You keep your tongue between your teeth. I'm going to marry the woman I'm going to marry because I'm a thief, and because I'm such a cur that I shrink from paying the penalty. She's a wretched old fool who comes all to pieces; Heaven knows what's left of her when the various aids to beauty are put away for the night; but she's got money, and she's willing to give me money, enough to be rid of you and save myself from the treadmill. That's why I'm going to enter the bonds of holy matrimony, and that's a perfectly frank confession; franker, I daresay, than most men make in similar circumstances."

"This sounds as if it were going to be a marriage of real affection; a genuine love-match." The sneer which was on Mr. Clarke's face as he said this; the indescribable look which was on Mr. Armitage's as he replied:—

"If you only knew how I hate the woman; how every pulse throbs with loathing when she comes near me." He gave what seemed to me to be a great sigh. "As I live, it's a comfort to say that to someone. It makes me ill to be in the same room with her—got to that stage already. Heaven knows how