Littimer nodded. Evidently he had heard most of the story. Henson was silent for some little time. He was working out something in his mind.

His smile was not a pleasant one; it was nothing like his bland platform smile, for instance.

"Give me that black book," he said. "Do you know how to work the telephone?"

"I daresay I could learn. It doesn't look hard."

"Well, that is an extension telephone on the table yonder worked in connection with the main instrument in the library. I like to have my own telephone, as it is of the greatest a.s.sistance to me. Turn that handle two or three times and put that receiver to your ear. When the Exchange answers tell them to put you on to O,017 Gerrard."

Littimer obeyed mechanically, but though he rang and rang again no answer came. With a snarling curse Henson dragged himself out of bed and crossed the room, with limbs that shook under him.

He twirled the handle round pa.s.sionately.

"You always were a fool," he growled, "and you always will be."

Still no reply came. Henson whirled angrily, but he could elicit no response. He kicked the instrument over and danced round it impotently.

Littimer had never seen him in such a raging fury before. The language of the man was an outrage, filthy, revolting, profane. No yelling, drunken Hooligan could have been more fluent, more luridly diffuse.

"Go on," Littimer said, bitterly. "I like to hear you. I like to hear the smug, plausible Pharisee, the friend of the good and pious, going on like this. I'd give fifty years of my life to have just a handful of your future const.i.tuents here for a moment."

Henson paused suddenly and requested that Littimer should help him into bed.

"I can afford to speak freely before you," he said. "Say a word against me and I'll crush you. Put out a hand to injure me and I'll wipe you off the face of the earth. It's absolutely imperative that I should send an important telephone message to London at once, and here the machine has broken down and no chance of its being repaired for a day or two. Curse the telephone."

He lay back on his bed utterly exhausted by his fit of pa.s.sion. One of the white bandages about his throat had started, and a little thin stream of blood trickled down his chest. Littimer waited for the next move. He watched the crimson fluid trickle over Henson's sleeping-jacket. He could have watched the big scoundrel bleeding to death with the greatest possible pleasure.

"What was Van Sneck doing here?"

The voice came clear and sharp from the bed. Littimer responded to it as a cowed hound does to a sudden yet not quite unexpected lash from a huntsman's whip. His manliness was of small account where Henson was concerned. For years he had come to heel like this. Yet the question startled him and took him entirely by surprise.

"He was looking for the lost Rembrandt."

But Littimer's surprise was as nothing to Henson's amazement. He lay flat on his back so that his face could not be seen. From the expression of it he had obtained a totally unexpected reply to his question. He was so amazed that he had no words for the moment. But his quick intelligence and amazing cunning grasped the possibilities of the situation. Littimer was in possession of information to which he was a stranger. Except in a vague way he had not the remotest idea what Littimer was talking about.

But the younger man must not know that.

"So Van Sneck told you so?" he asked. "What a fool he must have been! And why should he come seeking for the Rembrandt in Brighton?"

"Because he knows it was there, I suppose."

"It isn't here, because it doesn't exist. The thing was destroyed by accident by the police when they raided Van Sneck's lodgings years ago."

"Van Sneck told me that he had actually seen the picture in Brighton."

Henson chuckled. The noise was intended to convey amused contempt, and it had that effect, so far as Littimer was concerned. It was well for Henson that the latter could not see the strained anxiety of his face. The man was alert and quivering with excitement in every limb. Still he chuckled again as if the whole thing merely amused him.

"'The Crimson Blind' is Van Sneck's weak spot," he said. "It is King Charles's head to him. By good or bad luck--it is in your hands to say which--you know all about the way in which it became necessary to get Hatherly Bell on our side. All the same, the Rembrandt--the _other_ one--is destroyed."

"Van Sneck has seen the picture," Littimer said, doggedly.

"Oh, play the farce out to the end," Henson laughed, good-humouredly.

"Where did he see it?"

"He says he saw it at 218, Brunswick Square."

Henson's knees suddenly came up to his nose, then he lay quite flat again for a long time. His face had grown white once more, his lips utterly bloodless. Fear was written all over him. A more astute man than Littimer would have seen the beads standing out on his forehead. It was some little time before he dared trust himself to speak again.

"I know the house you mean," he said. "It is next door to the temporary residence of my esteemed friend, Gilead Gates. At the present moment the place is void--"

"And has been ever since your bogus 'Home' broke up. Years ago, before you used your power to rob and oppress us as you do now, you had a Home there. You collected subscriptions right and left in the name of the Reverend Felix Crosbie, and you put the money into your pocket. A certain weekly journal exposed you, and you had to leave suddenly or you would have found yourself in the hands of the police. You skipped so suddenly that you had no time even to think of your personal effects, which you understood were sold to defray expenses. But they were not sold, as n.o.body cared to throw good money after bad. Van Sneck got in with the agent under pretence of viewing the house, and he saw the picture there."

"Why didn't he take it with him?" Henson asked, with amused scorn. He was master of himself again and had his nerves well under control.

"Well, that was hardly like Van Sneck. Our friend is nothing if not diplomatic. But when he did manage to get into the house again the picture was gone."

"Excellent!" Henson cried. "How dramatic! There is only one thing required to make the story complete. The picture was taken away by Hatherly Bell. If you don't bring that in as the _denouement_ I shall be utterly disappointed."

"You needn't be," Littimer said, coolly. "That is exactly what did happen."

Henson chuckled again, quite a parody of a chuckle this time. He could detect the quiet suggestion of triumph in Littimer's voice.

"Did Van Sneck tell you all this?" he asked.

"Not the latter part of it," Littimer replied, "seeing that he was in the hospital when it happened. But I know it is true because I saw Bell and David Steel, the novelist, come away from the house, and Bell had the picture under his arm. And that's why Van Sneck's agent couldn't find it the second time he went. Check to you, my friend, at any rate. Bell will go to my father with Rembrandt number two, and compare it with number one. And then the fat will be in the fire."

Henson yawned affectedly. All the same he was terribly disturbed and shaken. All he wanted now was to be alone and to think. So far as he could tell n.o.body besides Littimer knew anything of the matter. And no starved, cowed, broken-hearted puppy was ever closer under the heel of his master than Littimer. He still held all the cards; he still controlled the fortunes of two ill-starred houses.

"You can leave me now," he said. "I'm tired. I have had a trying day, and I need sleep; and the sooner you are out of the house the better. For your own sake and for the sake of those about you, you need not say one word of this to Enid Henson."

Littimer promised meekly enough. With those eyes blazing upon him he would have promised anything. We shall see presently what a stupendous terror Henson had over the younger man, and in what way all the sweetness and savour of life was being crushed out of him.

He closed the door behind him, and immediately Henson sat up in bed. He reached for his handkerchief and wiped the big beads from his forehead.

"So the danger has come at last," he muttered. "I am face to face with it, and I knew I should be. Hatherly Bell is not the man to quietly lie down under a cloud like that. The man has brains, and patience, and indomitable courage. Now, does he suspect that I have any hand in the business? I must see him when my nerves are stronger and try and get at the truth. If he goes to Lord Littimer with that picture he shakes my power and my position perilously. What a fool I was not to get it away.

But, then, I only escaped from the Brighton police in those days by the skin of my teeth. And they had followed me from Huddersfield like those cursed bloodhounds here. I wonder--"

He paused, as the brilliant outline of some cunning scheme occurred to him. A thin, cruel smile crept over his lips. Never had he been in a tight place yet without discovering a loophole of escape almost before he had seen the trap.

A fit of noiseless laughter shook him.

"Splendid," he whispered. "Worthy of Machiavelli himself! Provided always that I can get there first. If I could only see Bell's face afterwards, hear Littimer ordering him off the premises. The only question is, am I up to seeing the thing through?"

CHAPTER XXIV

ENID LEARNS SOMETHING

Reginald Hensen struggled out of bed and into his clothing as best he could. He was terribly weak and shaky, far more weak than he had imagined himself to be, but he was in danger now, and his indomitable will-power pulled him through. What a fool Littimer had been to tell him so much merely so that he might triumph over his powerful foe for a few minutes.