"I need not here speak in detailed words, because from things you have seen you know well enough what I am about to say, of whom I would speak if I could. But it is enough, William, to tell you what you already know. That I love some one else, and that if I am true to myself, which is after all the first duty of all of us, I could never marry you. I can never be to you what you wish or what I would like to be as your wife. I am stricken down with the knowledge of the pain all this will give you, though, thank God, it is not a pain for which you are unprepared. I dare not ask your forgiveness, I can say nothing to console you. I have acted wickedly and wrongly, but I cannot do anything else but what I am doing.
"Forgive, if you can. Think kindly, if you can, of Marjorie."
Now he knew. He folded the letter gently, kissed it – an odd action for a man so strong – and put it in the inside pocket of his coat, which pressed next his heart.
Then he rang the bell.
"Ask Mr. Guest to come," he said.
"Very well, Sir William," the butler answered, "but Mr. Charliewood has just arrived."
"Then ask him in," Gouldesbrough answered.
Charliewood came into the room.
"By Jove!" he said, "you look about as seedy as I've ever seen you look!"
Sir William went up to him and put his hand upon his shoulder.
"Look here," he said, "I've had a smack in the face this morning, Charliewood. You know what it is, I need not tell you. And look here, too, I'm going to ask you to help me as you've never helped me before. I'm afraid, old fellow, I've often been a nuisance to you, and often rather rubbed in the fact that you owe me money, and that you've had to do things for me. Forgive me now, if you will. I'm going to call upon you for active friendship."
"Oh," Charliewood answered, "we won't talk about friendship between you and me. I've done what I had to do and there's enough."
Sir William still held him by the shoulder. "You don't really feel that, Charliewood?" he said in a quiet voice, and as he did so the magnetism of his personality began to flow and flood upon the weaker man and influence him to kindliness.
"Well, well," he said, "what is it now? I suppose we've been running round a vicious circle and we've come to the last lap?"
"That's just about it," Sir William answered. "Just let me say that this is the last service I shall ever ask from you. I'll give you back all the I.O.U.'s and things, and I'll give you enough money to put yourself absolutely right with the world, then we'll say good-bye."
Charliewood started. "That's awfully good of you," he said. "I don't think that I want to say good-bye. But still, what is it?"
"Rathbone," Sir William answered, pronouncing the name with marked difficulty.
"It's all over then?" Charliewood answered.
"Yes."
"I thought it would be. I have told you all that has been going on, and I knew it would be."
"She's written to me this morning," Gouldesbrough said. "A kind letter, but a letter finishing it all."
Then the weaker, smaller man became, as so often happens in life, the tempter – the instrument which moves the lever of a man's career towards the dark sinister side of the dial.
Charliewood was touched and moved by the unexpected kindness in his patron's voice.
"Don't say it's finished," he said; "nothing is finished for a man like you, with a man like me to help him. Of course it's not finished. You have not always been all you might to me, William, but I'll help you now. I'll do anything you want me to do. Buck up, old boy! You will pass the post first by a couple of lengths yet."
"How?"
"Well, what were you going to ask me to do?"
They looked each other in the face with glowing eyes and pale countenances, while a horrible excitement shone out upon them both.
At that moment the door opened very quietly, and an extraordinary person came into the room.
He was a short, fat, youthful-looking man, with a large, pink, and quite hairless face. The face was extremely intelligent, noticeably so, but it was streaked and furrowed with dissipation. It told the story not of the man who enjoyed the sensuous things of life in company, and as part of a merry progress towards the grave, but it betrayed the secret sot, the cunning sensualist private and at home.
This man was Mr. Guest, Sir William's faithful assistant in science, a man who had no initiative power, who could rarely invent a project or discover a scientific fact, but a man who, when once he was put upon the lines he ought to go, could follow them as the most intelligent sleuth-hound in the scientific world.
Wilson Guest was perhaps the greatest living physicist in Europe. He was of inestimable value to his chief, and he was content to remain between the high red-brick walls of the old house in Regent's Park, provided with all he needed for his own amusements, and instigated to further triumphs under the ægis of his master.
"Well, what is it?" said this fat, youthful and rather horrible-looking person.
"We've come to grips of the great fact, Guest," Sir William answered, still with his hand upon Charliewood's shoulder.
The pink creature laughed a hollow and merciless laugh.
"I knew it would come to this," he said, "since you have added another interest to your scientific interests, Gouldesbrough. Why have you called me in to a consultation?"
Gouldesbrough's whole face changed; it became malignant, the face of a devil.
"I'm going to win," he said. "I've had a knock-down blow, but I'm going to get up and win still! Mr. Rathbone must disappear. That can be easily arranged with the resources at our command."
Guest gave a horrible chuckle.
"And when we've got him?" he said.
"He must disappear for always," Gouldesbrough answered.
"Quite easy," Guest replied. "Quite easy, William. But, not until we've done with him, shall he?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, isn't it the last condition of our experiments that we should have some one a slave, a dead man to the world, to use as we shall think fit? Here's your man. Do what you like to him afterwards. Let's make your rival a stepping-stone to your final success."
Then the three men looked at each other in fear.
Charliewood and Sir William Gouldesbrough were pale as linen, but the short, fat man was pink still, and laughed and chuckled nervously.
CHAPTER VI
"WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOUR?"
Mr. Eustace Charliewood's chambers were in Jermyn Street. But few of his many friends had ever seen the interior of them. Such entertaining as the man about town did – and he was always one of those who were entertained, rather than one of those who offer hospitality – was done at his club.
The man who looked after the place and valeted his master was therefore the more surprised when Charliewood had called him up one morning after breakfast.
"Look here, William," Charliewood had said, "I've got a gentleman coming to dinner. We've some business to talk over, so I shan't dine him at the club. I suppose you can manage a little dinner here?"
"Certainly, sir, if necessary," the man answered. "Of course you're not in the habit of dining at home, and you've not got your own things. That is if you mean a proper little dinner, sir."
"I do, I do, William," his master answered hurriedly.
"But, there, that needn't matter," the man answered, "we can have everything in if you like, sir."
"That will be best," Charliewood answered. "I leave everything