"But so long as he doesn't intend to harm us--and I'm convinced he
doesn't--perhaps we'd better play the game as he asks us to."
"Miss Norman," said Cleigh in a tired voice, "will you do me the favour to
ask Captain Dennison why he has never touched the twenty thousand I
deposited to his account?"
Astonished, Jane turned to Dennison to repeat the question, but was
forestalled.
"Tell Mr. Cleigh that to touch a dollar of that money would be a tacit
admission that Mr. Cleigh had the right to strike Captain Dennison across
the mouth."
Dennison swung out of the chair and strode off toward the bridge, his
shoulders flat and his neck stiff.
"You struck him?" demanded Jane, impulsively.
But Cleigh did not answer. His eyes were closed, his head rested against
the back of the chair so Jane did not press the question. It was enough
that she had seen behind a corner of this peculiar veil. And, oddly, she
felt quite as much pity for the father as for the son. A wall of pride,
Alpine high, and neither would force a passage!
They did not see the arch rogue during the day, but he came in to dinner.
He was gay--in a story-telling mood. There was little or no banter, for he
spoke only to Jane, and gave her flashes of some of his amazing activities
in search of art treasures. He had once been chased up and down Japan by
the Mikado's agents for having in his possession some royal-silk tapestry
which it is forbidden to take out of the country. Another time he had gone
into Tibet for a lama's ghost mask studded with raw emeralds and
turquoise, and had suffered untold miseries in getting down into India.
Again he had entered a Rajput haremlik as a woman, and eventually escaped
with the fabulous rug which hung in the salon. Adventure, adventure, and
death always at his elbow! There was nothing of the braggart in the man;
he recounted his tales after the manner of a boy relating some college
escapades, deprecatingly.
Often Jane stole a glance at one or the other of the Cleighs. She was
constantly swung between--but never touched--the desire to laugh and the
desire to weep over this tragedy, which seemed so futile.
"Why don't you write a book about these adventures?" she asked.
"A book? No time," said Cunningham. "Besides, the moment one of these
trips is over it ends; I can recount it only sketchily."
"But even sketchily it would be tremendously interesting. It is as if you
were playing a game with death for the mere sport of it."