"I suppose so," answered Agar apprehensively.

"Then I am going to tell you something which you must swear by all that you hold most sacred to keep a strict secret until such time as I give you leave to reveal it."

Arthur looked at him with a vague fear in his face. It seemed suddenly as if this man had always been in his life--as if he would never go out of it again.

"I am not sure that I care to hear it," he wavered.

"You must hear it. Almost the last words that Jem Agar spoke to me were requesting me to tell you this."

"You promise that that is true?"

Arthur was surprised at his own suspicions. It was so unlike him, whose nature, too weak to compa.s.s vice, had never allowed the suspicion of vice or deceit in others to trouble him.

"I promise," replied Seymour Michael.

Arthur gathered himself together for an effort. His distrust of this man was almost a panic.

"Then tell me," he said.

Michael leant back in his chair, fixing his pleasant eyes on Arthur's pale face.

"The estate is not yours," he said. "Your step-brother, Jem Agar, is not dead."

"Not dead!" repeated Arthur, without any joy in his voice. "Not dead!

Then who are you? Tell me who you are!"

"Ah! That I cannot tell you."

And Seymour Michael sat smiling quietly on Anna Agar's son.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Makes ill deeds done!

He is a wise liar who makes use of the truth at times. Seymour Michael was clever enough to stay his fantastic tongue in his further explanation to Arthur Agar.

"It is a long story," he said, "and in order to fully state the case to you I must go into some matters of which perhaps you have heard little.

Do you happen to be anything of a politician? Are you, I mean, interested in foreign affairs?"

Arthur confessed that he knew nothing of foreign affairs, a fact of which Michael had become fully aware on entering the narrow-minded, characteristic room.

"You perhaps know," Seymour Michael went on, in a tone of which the sarcasm was lost upon its victim, "that Russia is living in hopes of some day possessing India?"

"Oh--ah--yes!"

Arthur Agar was obviously not at all interested. There were so many things of a similar nature to be remembered--things which did not really interest him--and those nearer home had precedence in his mind. He knew, for instance, that Trinity Hall lived in hopes of heading the river that year, and that the Narcissus Club were going to give a narcissus-coloured dance in May week, at which entertainment even the jellies were to be yellow.

The General now launched into an explanation, couched carefully in language suitable to his hearer's limited knowledge of the facts.

"Russia," he said, "is now so large that, unless they make it larger still and get tropical resources to draw upon, it will fall to pieces.

They want India. Some day there will be a fight, a very large fight. But not yet. In the meantime it is a question of learning every inch of that country where the battle-fields will be, and every thought in the minds of those men who will look on at the fight. I--"

He paused, recollecting that the fame of his own name might have penetrated even to this out-of-the-way spot. "Some of us have been at this all our lives. Over there, on the Frontier, there are certain numbers of us, on both sides, playing a very deep game. Your brother is one of the players, a prominent man on the field; a half-back, one might call him."

There was a strong temptation to continue the allegory--to say that he himself was goal-keeper; but Seymour Michael was one of the few men who can in need make even their own vanity subservient to convenience.

"We watch each other," he went on, "like cats. We always know where the others are, and what they are doing. Your brother was one of the most closely watched by the other side. For some time we have been aware of an influence at work with a tribe of Hillmen who have hitherto been friendly to us, and we have not been able to find what this influence is, or how it is brought to bear upon them. We were so closely watched that we could not penetrate to the affected country. But at last the chance came. Your brother was gazetted as killed. We allowed the report to remain uncontradicted. We let the other side think that Jem Agar was dead, and therefore incapable of doing any more harm, and now he has gone up into that country to find out what they are after."

Arthur nodded.

"I see," he said. He was rather vague about it all, and had not quite realised yet that this was all true, that this man whom he still hated and distrusted without any apparent reason was real and living, speaking to him in real waking life and not in a dream. Moreover, he had not nearly realised that Jem was alive. The evidence of his own black clothes, of the sombre-edged stationery, of his mourning habit of life this term, was too strong upon a mind like his to be suddenly thrown aside. Perhaps he had discovered that the consolation of inheritance was greater than was at first apparent. In six weeks he had slipped very comfortably into Jem's shoes, and it seemed only right and proper that his life should have a background of the n.o.ble proportions of Stagholme.

Also, now Stagholme meant Dora; for he was worldly-wise enough to know that his own personal value in the world's estimation had undergone a great change in six short weeks. He knew that the man with the money usually wins.

It would almost seem that Seymour Michael divined his thoughts, at least in part.

"There are two reasons," he went on to say, "why absolute secrecy is necessary; first, for Agar's own sake. He is, of course, in disguise. No one suspects that he is there, and that is his only safeguard in the country where he is. Secondly--but I want your whole attention, please."

"Yes, I am listening."

Seymour Michael leant forward and emphasised his remark by tapping on the table with his gloved finger.

"The mission is so extremely dangerous that it comes almost to the same thing."

"What do you mean?" inquired Arthur Agar, whose gentle intellect only compa.s.sed subtleties of the drawing-room type.

"I mean that Jem Agar is almost as good as a dead man, although he was not killed at Pregalla."

The man who had wept in this same room six weeks before looked up with a gleam of something very like hope in his troubled eyes. Such is the power of love. For Arthur Agar had not been ignorant of the probability that in his step-brother, once dead but now living, he had had a rival. Sister Cecilia had seen to that.

"But when shall we know? When will he come back?" inquired he. And Seymour Michael, the subtle, began to see his way more clearly.

"Certainly not for six months, probably not for nine."

One may take it that no man is sent into the world a ready-made scoundrel. It all depends upon the circ.u.mstances of life. No one is safe right up to the end, and events may combine to make the very best of us into that thing which the world calls a villain.

Arthur Agar, all inexperienced, weak, hereditarily handicapped, suddenly found himself on the balance. And the scales were held, not by the hand of Justice, blind and clement, but by Seymour Michael, very open-eyed, with a keen watchfulness for his own purpose; bia.s.sed; unscrupulous. It must be admitted that circ.u.mstances were against Arthur Agar.

"There is nothing to be done," added Seymour Michael, with a smile which his companion could not be expected to fathom, "but to keep very quiet, and to make the best of your opportunities while you occupy the position of heir."

Arthur smiled in a sickly way. He felt suddenly as if this man could see right through him, and all the while he hated him. Seymour Michael meant "debts"--it was only natural that one of his race should think of money before all things--Arthur's thoughts were fixed on Dora. And guiltily he imagined himself to be detected.

"You will be doing no harm to Jem," said the tempter, with his pleasant laugh. "You are called upon to act the part well for his sake."