"And may I ask," the big man answered, "why you have interfered in my private affairs and why you _think_--for she is going to do nothing of the sort--Miss Hunt is going from here?"

"Simply because the Holy Spirit wills it so," said the clergyman.

Llwellyn looked steadily at him and then at the woman.

Something he saw in their faces told him the truth.

He laughed shortly. "Let me tell you," he said in a voice which quivered with ugly pa.s.sion, "that in a short time all meddling priests will lose their power over the minds of others for ever. Your Christ, your G.o.d, the pale dreamer of the East, shall be revealed to you and all men at last!"

His manner had changed once more. Fierce as it was, there was an intense _meaning_ and power in it. He spoke as one having authority, with also a concentrated hate in his words, so real and bitter that it gave them a certain fineness.

"Yes!" he continued, lifting his arm with a sudden gesture:

""Far hence He lies In the lorn Syrian town, And on His grave, with shining eyes, The Syrian stars look down.""

Gortre answered him:

"You lie and you know you lie! and by the powers given to me I"ll tell you so from G.o.d Himself. Christ is risen! And as the day follows the night so the Spirit of G.o.d remains upon the earth G.o.d once visited, and works upon the hearts of men."

"Are you going?" said Llwellyn, stepping towards Gortre.

"No," the young man answered in sharp, angry tones. "It"s you that are going, Sir Robert. You know as well as I do that I can do exactly as I like with you if it comes to force. And really I am not at all disinclined to do so, despite my parson"s coat. Then you will have your remedy, you know. The newly made knight fighting a clergyman under such very curious circ.u.mstances! If this thing is to become open talk, then let us have it so. You can do me no harm. I came here at my vicar"s request and Miss Hunt"s. You know best if you can stand a scandal of this kind in your position. Now I"m going to use my last argument. Are you going at once or shall I knock you down and kick you out?"

He could not help a note of exultation in his voice, try as he would. He was still a young man, full of power and virility. His life had brought no trace of effeminacy with it. And as he saw this splendid lying intellect, the slave of evil, and rejoicing in it, as he heard the arrogant denial of Christ"s G.o.dhead coming sonorously from those polluted lips, a wild longing flared up in him. Like a sudden flame, the impulse to strike a clean, hard blow fired all his blood. The old Oxford days of athletic triumphs on field, flood, and river came back to him.

He measured the man scientifically with his eyes, judging his distance, alert to strike.

But Llwellyn made no further movement of aggression and uttered no word of menace. He did not seem in the least afraid of Gortre or in any way intimidated by him. Indeed, he laughed, a laugh which was very hollow, mirthless, and cold.

"Ah, my boy," he said, "I have a worse harm to work you than you can dream of yet. You will remember me some day. You can"t frighten me now.

I will go. I want no scandal. Good-bye, Gertrude. You also will remember and regret some day. Good-bye."

He went noiselessly out of the room, still with the strange flickering smile of prescience and fate upon his evil face.

When he had gone, Gertrude fell into a pa.s.sion of weeping. The strain had been too great. Basil comforted her as well as he could, and before he went promised to see Father Ripon that night and make arrangements that she should quietly disappear the next day to some distant undiscoverable haven.

Then he also went out into the night, through the silent squares of sleeping houses towards the Clergy House of St. Mary"s. Once more his nerves were unstrung and the old fears and the sense of waiting--Damocles-like for some blow to fall--poured over him.

Sir Robert walked swiftly to Oxford Street, where he found a cab. He ordered the man to drive him to the Sheridan Club. On the way he stopped at Charing Cross Station and ordered his luggage to be sent home at once to his house in Upper Berkeley Street. He had only been in London two or three hours, having crossed from Calais that afternoon.

He washed when he had arrived at the famous club, and then went up-stairs to the grill-room for some supper. It was the hour when the Sheridan is full of the upper Bohemian world. Great actors and musicians, a judge on his way through town from one watering-place to another,--for it was now the long vacation,--a good many well-known journalists, all sorts and conditions of men. All were eminent in their work, for that was a condition of membership.

Llwellyn was welcomed on all sides, though men noticed that he seemed preoccupied. His healthy appearance was commented on, his face browned, as was supposed, by the sun of the Riviera, his general fitness of manner and carriage.

He took supper by himself at a small table, choosing the menu with his usual extreme care, and more than once summoning the head waiter to conference. Although he kept glancing at his watch, as if expecting an arrival, he made a good meal, mixing his own salad of crisp white lettuce with deliberation.

He had sent a page early on his arrival to find out if Mr. Constantine Schuabe was in the club.

He was standing at the desk in the middle of the room, paying his bill, when the swing-doors were pushed open and Schuabe entered. He was in evening dress and carried a light overcoat on his arm.

Llwellyn gathered up his change and went to meet him. Had there been an attentive observer to mark the meeting of the two men he would have perhaps been a little surprised at the fashion of it.

Although Llwellyn was a six-months" stranger to London, and the meeting between the two men was obviously prearranged, _neither of the two men smiled as they shook hands_. Both were expectant of each other, pale, almost with some apprehension, it might have been fancied; and though the meeting seemed a relief to each, there was little human kindliness in it.

"Come down to the Hotel," said Schuabe; "we can"t possibly say anything here, every room is full."

They walked out of the club together, two figures of noticeable distinction, very obviously belonging to the ruling cla.s.ses of England.

The millionaire"s pale and beautiful face was worn and lined.

"Schuabe seems a bit done up," one man in the hall said to another as the two friends pa.s.sed through.

"Heat, I suppose," answered his companion. "Handsome chap, though; doesn"t seem to care for anything worth having, only books and politics and that. Wish I"d his money."

"So do I. But give me Bob Llwellyn of these two. Thoroughly decent sort _he_ is. Invented two new omelettes and a white soup. Forgets all about his thing-um-bobs--old Egyptian or something--they knighted him for directly he leaves the Museum."

"That"s the sort," answered a third man who had joined them. "I don"t object to a Johnny having a brain, and knowing a devil of a lot, if he"ll only jolly well keep it to himself. Bob does that. I"m going up-stairs to have a turn at poker. You fellows coming?"

Schuabe and Llwellyn walked to the Cecil, no great distance, saying little by the way, and presently they were in the millionaire"s great room, with its s.p.a.cious view over the river.

The place was beautifully cool and full of flowers. A great block of ice rose from a copper bowl placed on a pedestal. The carpet had been covered with light matting of rice straw, brought from Rawal-pindi. All the windows leading to the balcony were wide open, and the balcony was covered with striped awning, underneath which the electric lights glowed on the leaves of j.a.panese palms, seeming as if they had been cunningly lacquered a metallic green colour, and on low chairs of white bleached rushes.

The two men sat down in the centre of the room on light chairs, with a small Turkish table and cool drinks between them.

"You"ve had all my letters, my last from Jaffa?" asked Sir Robert.

"Yes, all of them," said Schuabe; "each one was carefully destroyed after I had read it and memorialised the contents. Let me say now that you have done your work with extraordinary brilliance. It has been an intellectual pleasure of a high order to follow your proceedings and know your plans. There is not another man in the world who could do what you have done. Everything seems guarded against, all is secure."

"You are right, Schuabe," said Llwellyn, in a matter-of-fact voice. "You bade me make a certain thing _possible_. You paid me proportionately to the terrible risks and for my unrivalled knowledge. Well, you and I are going to shake the whole world as no two other men have ever done, and what will be the end?"

"The end!" cried Schuabe, in a high, strained, unnatural voice. "Who shall say? What man can know? For ever more the gigantic fable of the Cross and the Man G.o.d will be overthrown. The temples of the world will fall into the abomination of desolation, and you and I, latter-day bringers of light--Lucifers!--will kill the pale Nazarene more surely than the Sanhedrists and soldiers of the past."

There was a thin madness in his voice. The great figure of the _savant_ shifted uneasily in its chair.

"That fellow Gortre, that abominable young priest, has been getting in my way to-night," he said with a savage curse. "I found him with Gertrude Hunt, the woman I"ve spent thousands on! The priests have got her; she"s going to "lead a new life." She has "found Christ"!"

Schuabe smiled horribly, a cunning smile of unutterable malice.

"He has crossed my path also," he said; "in some way, by a series of coincidences, he has become slightly involved in our lives. Leave the matter to me. So small a thing as the fanaticism of one obscure youth is nothing to trouble us. I will see to his future. But he shall live to know what is coming to the world. Then--it is easy enough. He thwarted _me_ one night also."

They were silent for a minute or two. Sir Robert lifted a long gla.s.s to his lips. His hand shook with pa.s.sion, and the ice in the liquid clinked and tinkled.

"Everything is now ready," he said at last, glancing at Schuabe. "Every detail. Ionides knows what he has to do when he receives the signal. He is a mere tool, and knows and cares nothing of what will happen. He is to direct the excavators in certain directions, that is all. It will be three months, so I calculate, after we have set the machinery in motion, before the blow will fall. It rests with you now to begin."

"The sign shall go at once," said Schuabe. His eyes glittered, his mouth worked with emotion.

"It is a letter with a single sign on it."