If Sinners Entice Thee

“Then the matter resolves itself into a simple one – a mere question of price.”

“I refuse to treat with you.”

“Then you will not marry Liane. She will be spared the misery of becoming Princess d’Auzac.”

“Misery!” he echoed. “I can give her wealth, position – everything which makes a woman happy.”

“I doubt whether any woman can be happy with a man whose conscience is overshadowed, like yours,” his companion observed. “Why, her face would remind you hourly of that which you must be ever striving to forget.”

“What does it matter to you?” he snarled. “I shall marry her.”

“Then before doing so you will pay me for my services. Your stroke is a bold one, Zertho, but remember that you can marry her only through me. It is worth a good sum to obtain such a beautiful wife.”

“Whatever it may be worth, you’ll never get it,” d’Auzac declared determinedly.

The two men faced each other.

“In which case she will be enabled to release herself,” observed the inventor of the infallible system.

“Who will suffer, then? Why you, yourself.” Zertho stood leaning upon the back of the armchair in which he had been sitting. He well knew by this man’s attitude that he meant to “squeeze” him. Nevertheless, he treated his remarks with derision, laughing disdainfully.

“You appear to fancy that because you are now wealthy no words of mine can injure you,” the thin-faced man said. “Well, you are welcome to that opinion. The ostrich buries its head in the sand when pursued. You bury yours in the millions which have unexpectedly come to you.”

“It is sufficient for you to know that I’ll never part with another sou,” Zertho answered with impatience.

“Very well, my dear friend, we shall see. Of all men you in the past have been among the most discreet, and none have ever accused you of the folly of impatience; but I tell you plainly that you shall never marry Liane Brooker,” he said distinctly, without the slightest undue warmth.

“I intend to marry her,” Zertho answered. “In a month she will be my wife.”

“You dare not act like that.”

“But I shall.”

“Then you defy me? Very good. We now understand one another.”

“No, I do not defy you,” Zertho exclaimed quickly. “But in this matter I shall follow my own inclination entirely. I intend to marry Brooker’s daughter.”

“Without my sanction?”

“Don’t you intend to give it? It surely is no affair of yours?”

“No, I shall not give it,” he answered carelessly tossing his dead cigar-end into the ash-tray. “Liane shall never become your wife.”

“What! you would tell her?” Zertho gasped, his face suddenly pale and anxious.

“I have already told you that I’m not in the habit of showing my opponent my hand.”

“I love Liane. I must marry her,” he blurted forth.

“Love! Fancy you, Zertho d’Auzac, declaring that you love a woman!” the man exclaimed, laughing heartily in derision. “The thing’s too absurd. I know you too well.”

Zertho bit his lip. If any other man had spoken thus he would have knocked him down; but, truth to tell, he was afraid of this dark-faced, crafty-eyed Englishman. Since first he had known him, in the days when he was down on his luck, he had always felt an antipathy towards him, because he treated everything and everybody with such amazingly cool indifference. He saw that money only would appease him. He calculated roughly how much he had already paid him, and the reflection caused him to knit his brows.

“A few minutes ago you said it was a question of price,” he said at length. “Well, what are your views?”

“Since then they have changed.”

“Changed! How?”

“You say that I have received from you all that you intend I shall receive. Well, let it remain so. You will not marry her.”

Zertho regarded him with a puzzled expression.

“I asked you to name your price,” he said. “What is it?”

Max Richards, lying back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head, turned towards his visitor and answered, —

“I have offered to treat with you, but you refused. My offer is therefore withdrawn. I have enough money at present. When I want more I shall come to you.”

“But, my dear fellow,” exclaimed Zertho, dismayed, “you cannot mean that you refuse to accept anything further for the slight service you have, up to the present, rendered me?”

“Our compact is at an end,” the man answered coldly. “No word will pass my lips on one condition, namely, that you release Liane, and – ”

“I will never do that!” he cried in fierce determination. “She shall be my wife. Come, name your own terms.”

“Ah! I thought you would not be so unwise as to utterly defy me!” exclaimed the man, smiling in triumph. “The prize is too great to relinquish, eh?”

Zertho nodded.

“Come, don’t name a figure too exorbitant. Let it be within reason,” he said.

“It will be entirely within reason,” the other answered, fixing his dark eyes intently upon Zertho’s.

“Well?”

“Nothing!” he laughed.

“Nothing? I don’t understand.”

“I want nothing,” he repeated, rousing himself, and bending forward in the lamplight, his eyes still fixed upon the man he was addressing.

“You refuse?”

“Yes, I refuse,” he said in a deep intense voice. “I have, it is true, bought and sold many things in my brief and not unblameworthy career, but I have never yet sold a pure woman’s life, and by Heaven! I never will!”

Zertho stood in abject dismay. He had been utterly unprepared for this. Anger consumed him when he recognised how completely he had been misled, and how suddenly all his plans were checkmated by this man’s unexpected caprice.

“You’ve suddenly withdrawn into the paths of rectitude,” he observed with a sickly smile when at last he found voice. “It will be a new and interesting experience, no doubt.”