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Page 68
"Unfortunately," he replied, "a supply of money cannot be
influenced by the intensity of one's necessity for it."
He was a man indefinite in age. His oily black hair was brushed
carefully back. His clothes were excellent, with a precise
detail. Everything about him was conspicuously correct in the
English fashion. But the man was not English. One could not say
from what race he came. Among the races of Southern Europe he
could hardly have been distinguished. There was a chameleon
quality strongly dominant in the creature.
The woman looked up quickly, as in a strong aversion.
"What shall you do?" she said.
"I?"
The man glanced about the room. There was a certain display
within the sweep of his vision. Some rugs of great value, vases
and bronzes; genuine and of extreme age. He made a careless
gesture with his hands.
"I shall explore some ruins in Syria, and perhaps the aqueduct
which the French think carried a water supply to the Carthage of
Hanno. It will be convenient to be beyond British inquiry for
some years to come; and after all, I am an antiquarian, like
Prosper Merimee."
Lady Muriel continued to finger her gloves. They had been
cleaned and the cryptic marks of the shopkeeper were visible
along the inner side of the wrist hem. This was, to the woman,
the first subterfuge of decaying smartness. When a woman began
to send her gloves to the laundry she was on her way down. Other
evidences were not entirely lacking in the woman's dress, but
they were not patent to the casual eye. Lady Muriel was still,
to the observer, of the gay top current in the London world.
The woman followed the man's glance about the room.
"You must be rich, Hecklemeir," she said. "Lend me a hundred
pounds."
The man laughed again in his queer chuckle.
"Ah, no, my Lady," he replied, "I do not lend." Then he added.
"If you have anything of value, bring it to me . . . . not
information from the ministry, and not war plans; the trade in
such commodities is ended."
It was the woman's turn to laugh.
"The shopkeepers in Oxford Street have been before you, Baron . .
. . I've nothing to sell."
Hecklemeir smiled, kneading his pudgy hands.
"It will be hard to borrow," he said. "Money is very dear to the
Britisher just now - right against his heart . . . . Still. . . .
perhaps one's family could be thumb screwed. . . . . .An elderly
relative with no children would be the most favorable, I think.
Have you got such a relative concealed somewhere in a nook of
London? Think about it. If you could recall one, he would be
like a buried nut."
The man paused; then he added, with the offensive chuckling
laugh:
"Go to such an one, Lady Muriel. Who shall turn aside from
virtue in distress? Perhaps, in the whole of London, I alone
have the brutality - shall we call it - to resist that
spectacle."
The woman rose. Her face was now flushed and angry.
"I do not know of any form of brutality in which you do not
excel, Hecklemeir," she said. "I have a notion to, go to
Scotland Yard with the whole story of your secret traffic."
The man continued to smile.
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