Sir Stephen closed the door after him, then went back to the smoking-room and stood looking down at Falconer, who leant back in his chair with his cigar in his mouth and eyed Sir Stephen under half-closed lids with an expression which had something of mastery and power in it.

Sir Stephen bit at the end of his moustache, his thick black brows lowered, as if he scarcely knew how to begin the "chat," and Falconer waited without any offer of assistance. At last Sir Stephen said:

"You asked me outside just now, Falconer, if it was to be 'friend or foe?' I'm thinking the question ought to have come from me."

"Yes," assented Falconer, his eyes growing still narrower. "Yes, I suppose it ought."

"Would your answer have been the same as mine—'friends'?" asked Sir
Stephen in a low voice.

Falconer was silent for a moment, then he said:

"It oughtn't to have been. If ever a man had cause to regard another as an enemy, I've had cause to regard you as one, Orme!"

Sir Stephen flushed, then went pale again.

"There is no use in raking up the past," he muttered.

"Oh, I've no need to rake it up; it's here right enough, without raking," retorted Falconer, and he touched his breast with his thick forefinger. "I'm not likely to forget the trick you played me; not likely to forget the man who turned on me and robbed me—"

"Robbed!" echoed Sir Stephen, with a dark frown.

Falconer turned his cigar in his mouth and bit at it.

"Yes, robbed. You seem to have forgotten: my memory is a better one than yours, and I'm not likely to forget the day I tramped back to the claim in that God-forsaken Australian hole to find that you'd discovered the gold while I'd been on the trail to raise food and money—discovered it and sold out—and cleared out!"

His eyes flashed redly and his mouth twitched as his teeth almost met in the choice Havana.

Sir Stephen threw out his hand.

"I heard you were dead," he said, hoarsely. "I heard that you had died in a street row—in Melbourne."

Falconer's heavy face was distorted by a sneer.

"Yes? Of course, I don't believe you: who would?"

"As Heaven is my witness—!" exclaimed Sir Stephen; but Falconer went on:

"You didn't wait to see if it were true or not; you cleared out before I'd time to get back, and you took precious good care not to make enquiries. No; directly your partner's back was turned you—sold him; got the price and levanted."

Sir Stephen paced up and done, his hands clenched behind him; his fine leonine head bent; then he stopped in front of the chair, and frowned down into the scowling face.

"Falconer, you wrong me—it was not so bad, so black as it looked. It's true I sold the claim; but I swear that I intended saving half for you. But news was brought in that you were dead—a man said that he had seen you fall, that you were dead and buried. I had to leave the camp the night the money was paid: it would not have been safe to remain: you know what the place was, and that the man who was known to have money carried his life in his hand. I left the camp and tramped south. Before a month had passed, the money had gone; if I had had any doubts of your death, it was too late to enquire; it would have been useless; as I tell you, the money was gone. But I hadn't any doubts; in simple truth, I thought you were dead."

Falconer looked round the luxurious room.

"You lost the money? But you appear to have picked it up again; you seem to be pretty flourishing, my friend; when you got on your feet again and made your pile, why didn't you find out whether your old pal was alive or dead?"

Sir Stephen was silent for a space, then he raised his head and met the other's accusing gaze unflinchingly.

"I'll tell you—I'll tell you the whole truth, Falconer; and if you can make excuse for me, if you can put yourself in my place—"

He drew his hand across his brow as if the sweat had broken out upon it. "The luck was dead against me for a time, the old luck that had haunted you and me; then it swung round completely—as it generally does when it changes at all. I was out in Africa, on the tramp, picking up a day's work now and again at the farms—you know the life! One day I saw a Kaffir boy playing with some rough stones—"

Falconer nodded.

"Diamonds. I fancy I've read an account of the great Sir Stephen Orme's first beginnings," he put in with a touch of sarcasm.

Sir Stephen reddened.

"I daresay. It was the start, the commencement of the luck. From the evening I took those stones in my hands—great Heaven! I can see the place now, the sunset on the hill; the dirty brat playing in the dust!—the luck has stood by me. Everything I touched turned out right. I left the diamond business and went in for land: wherever I bought land towns sprang up and the land increased in value a thousandfold. Then I stood in with the natives: you've heard of the treaty—"

Falconer nodded.

"The treaty that enabled you to hand over so many thousand square miles to the government in exchange for a knighthood."

"No," said Sir Stephen, simply. "I got that for another business; but I daresay the other thing helped. It doesn't matter. Then I—I married. I married the daughter of a man of position, a girl who—who loved and trusted me; who knew nothing of the past you and I know; and as I would rather have died than that she should have known anything of it, I—"

"Conveniently and decently buried it," put in Falconer. "Oh, yes, I can see the whole thing! You had blossomed out from Black Steve—"

Sir Stephen rose and took a step towards the door, then remembered that he had shut it and sank down again, his face white as ashes, his lips quivering.

—"To Sir Stephen Orme, the African millionaire, the high and lofty English gentleman with his head full of state secrets, and his safe full of foreign loans; Sir Stephen Orme, the pioneer, the empire maker—Oh, yes, I can understand how naturally you would bury the past—as you had buried your old pal and partner. The dainty and delicate Lady Orme was to hear nothing—" Sir Stephen rose and stretched out his hand half warningly half imploringly.

"She's dead, Falconer!" he said, hoarsely. "Don't—don't speak of her!
Leave her out, for God's sake!"

Falconer shrugged his shoulders.

"And this boy of yours—he's as ignorant as her ladyship was, of course?"

Sir Stephen inclined his head.

"Yes," he said, huskily. "He—he knows nothing. He thinks me—what the world sees me, what all the world, saving you, Falconer, thinks me: one who has risen from humble but honest poverty to—what I am. You have seen him, you can understand what I feel; that I'd rather die than that he should know—that he should think badly of me. Falconer, I have made a clean breast of it—I'm in your hands. I'm—I'm at your mercy. I appeal to you"—he stretched out his white, shapely hands—"you have a child of your own: she's as dear to you as mine is to me—I've watched you to-night, and I've seen you look at her as she moved about and talked and sang, with the look that my eyes wear when they rest on my boy. I am at your mercy—not only mine, but my son's future—"

He wiped the sweat from his forehead and drew a long breath.

Falconer leant back and smoked contemplatively, with a coolness, an indifference to the other's emotion which Sir Stephen found well-nigh maddening.

"Yes," said Falconer, after a pause, "I suppose your house of cards would come down with a crash if I opened my mouth say, at breakfast to-morrow morning, and told—well, all I know of the great Sir Stephen Orme when he bore the name of Black Steve. Even you, with all you colossal assurance, could not face it or outlive it. And as for the boy—it would settle his hash now and forever. A word from me would do it, eh, Orme? And upon my soul I don't know why I shouldn't say it! I've had it in my mind, I've kept it as a sweet morsel for a good many years. Yes, I've been looking forward to it. I've been waiting for the 'physiological moment,' as I think they call it; and it strikes me that it has arrived."

Sir Stephen's face grew strained, and a curious expression crept into it.

"If you ask me why you should not, I can give you no reason," he said. "If you were poor I should offer you money—more, a great deal more than I received for the old claim; but I can see that that would not tempt you to forego your revenge. Falconer, you are not poor; your daughter wears diamonds—"

Falconer shrugged his shoulders.

"No, I'm not in want of money. You're not the only man who has had a change of luck. No, you can't bribe me; even if I were hard up instead of rather flush, as I am, I wouldn't take a hundred thousand pounds for my revenge."

Sir Stephen rose. There was an ominous change in his manner. His nervousness and apprehension seemed to have suddenly left him, and in its place was a terrible, stony calmness, an air of inflexible determination.

"Good!" he said; and his voice had changed also, changed from its faltering tone of appeal to one of steadfast resolution, the steadiness of desperation. "I have made my appeal to you, Falconer, and I gather that I have failed to move you; that you intend to exact your revenge by—denouncing me!"

Falconer nodded coolly.

"And you think that I could endure to live under such a threat, to walk about with the sword of Damocles over my head? You ought to know me better, Falconer. I will not live to endure the shame you can inflict on me, I will not live to tempt you by the sight of me to take your revenge. I shall die to-night."

Falconer eyed him intently, and carefully selected a fresh cigar. When he had as carefully lit it, he said callously:

"That's your business, of course. I shouldn't venture to interfere with any plan of that kind. So you'd sneak out of it, eh, Orme? Sneak out of it, and leave that young fellow to bear the brunt? Well, I'm sorry for him! He seems the right sort—deuced good-looking and high-class—yes, I'm d——d sorry for him!"

Once again Sir Stephen's lips twitched and the big drops of sweat stood on his brow. He stood for a minute looking from right to left like a hunted animal at bay—then with something between a groan and a cry of savagery, he spring towards Falconer with his hands outstretched and making for his tormentor's throat.

Before he could sweep the table aside and get at him, Falconer whipped a revolver from his pocket and aimed it at Sir Stephen.

"You fool!" he said in his harsh, grating voice, "did you think I was such an idiot as to trust myself alone with you unarmed? Did you think I'd forgotten what sort of man you were, or imagined that you'd so changed that I could trust you? Bah! Sit down! Stand back, or, by Heaven, I'll shoot you as I would a dog!"

Sir Stephen shrank back, his hand to his heart, his eyes distended, his face livid as if he were choking and sank into a chair. Falconer returned the revolver into his pocket, and with his foot pushed the inlaid Oriental table towards his host and victim.

"There! Take some brandy! You're too old to play these tricks! That heart of yours was never worth much in the old days, and I daresay it's still more groggy. Besides, we're not in a mining camp or the backwoods now." He sneered. "We're in Sir Stephen Orme's palatial villa on Lake Bryndermere."

Sir Stephen stretched out his hand and felt for the decanter, as if he were suddenly blind and could not see it, and poured himself out some brandy. Falconer watched him narrowly, critically.

"Better? Look here, Orme, take my advice and keep a guard on your emotions: you can't afford to have any with a heart like that."

He paused and waited until Sir Stephen's ashy face had resumed a less deathly pallor.

"And now I'll answer your appeal—I don't intend to denounce you!"

Sir Stephen turned to him with a gesture of incredulity.

"Sounds strange, doesn't it? Humph! Doesn't it strike you that I've had my revenge already? If there is a sweeter one than to see the man who has sold you grovelling at your feet, and praying for mercy, than I don't know it! The great Sir Stephen Orme, too!" He laughed sneeringly. "No, if I'd meant to give you away, Orme, I should have done it to-night in your swell drawing-room, with all your swell guests round you, with your son—ay, and my daughter—to hear the story—the story of Black Steve! But I didn't mean it, and I don't—"

Sir Stephen drew a long breath of relief, and drank some more brandy.

"Thank God!" he murmured. "What can I say—what can I do to—to express my gratitude—my sense of your forbearance, Falconer?"

Falconer, with his eyes narrowed to slits, looked at him keenly.

"Oh, I'll dispense with your gratitude, Orme. We'll agree to forgive and—forget. This is the last word we'll say about it."

Sir Stephen, as if he could scarcely believe his ears, gazed at his magnanimous foe in silence.

"No half measures with me—you remember me of old," said Falconer. "The subject's done with," he moved his thick hand as he were sweeping it away. "Pass the whiskey. Thanks. Now, let's have the chat you kept me up for."

Sir Stephen wiped his lips and forced a smile.

"Tell me about yourself; what you have been doing since we—er—all this long time."

Falconer shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, it isn't as interesting a story as yours," he said. "I've just rubbed along with bad and good luck in streaks; fortunately for me, the good ones were thicker and more frequent than the bad ones. Lake yourself I married; like yourself, I'm a widower. I've one child—Maude. She's been at school and under the care of some people on the Continent, while I've been at work; and I've come to England now to settle down. That tells enough of my story. I know yours, as the rest of the world does. You're famous, you see."

There was a pause; then he looked over his glass, and said:

"What's you little game at the present moment, Orme?"

Sir Stephen looked at him interrogatively, as if he were still rather confused by the terrible scene which they had gone through.

"Why have you built this place and got all these people here?" said Falconer. "I know enough of Wirsch and Griffinberg and the Beltons to be aware that they wouldn't come down to the lakes at this time of the year unless there was something worth coming for, something—and a pretty good sum—to be made."

Sir Stephen looked down at the floor for a moment, as if he were considering; then he leant forward.

"I'll tell you," he said, with an air of decision, and with a return of his usual coolness and aplomb. A dash of colour rose to his face, his fine eyes grew bright; he was the "man of affairs," the great financier again. "It's Africa this time," he said, in a low voice, and with a glance at the door. "I've another treaty—"

Falconer nodded.

"I am making for a concession—a charter from the government."
Falconer nodded again.

"And I want a railway from Danville to Bualbec." His voice almost sank to a whisper. "Griffinberg, Wirsch, and the rest are with me—or nearly so—I have got them down to clench the matter. There are millions in it—if I can bring it off; there is what is worth more than millions to me—"

Falconer nodded.

—"A peerage for Sir Stephen Orme," said Falconer, with a grim smile.

"For Sir Stephen Orme's boy!" said Sir Stephen, with a flush, and a flash of the dark eyes. "It is for his sake that I am making this last throw; for my boy's, Falconer. For myself I am content—why shouldn't I be? But for him—ah, well, you've seen him! You'll understand!"

Falconer leant back and smoked in silence.

"Plaistow is working the Colonial Office, the Beltons are feeling their way in the city; Wirsch—but you know how the thing is done! I've got them down here that they may work it quietly, that I may have them under my eye—"

"And the lords and ladies—they're to have a finger in the pie because, though they can't help you in the African business, they can in the matter of the peerage?"

Sir Stephen smiled. "You'll stand in with us, Falconer? Don't refuse me! Let me make some reparation—some atonement for the past!" He rose and stood smiling, an imposing figure with his white hair and brilliant eyes. Falconer got up slowly and stiffly.

"Thanks. I'll think it over. It's a big thing, as you say, and it will either make you—"

—"Or break me!" said Sir Stephen, but he laughed confidently.

Falconer nodded.

"I'll go up now," he said.

Sir Stephen went to the door with him, and held out his hand.

"Good-night, Falconer!" he said. "Thank you—for my boy's sake!"

Falconer took the warm hand in his cold one and held it for a moment, then dropped it.

"Good-night!" he said, with a nod and a sidelong glance.

Sir Stephen went back and poured himself out another liqueur glass of brandy and heaved a sigh of relief. But it would have been one of apprehension if he could have seen the cruel smile which distorted Falconer's face as he went through the exquisitely beautiful hall and corridors to the luxurious room which had been allotted to him.

There was in the smile and the cold glitter of the eyes the kind of look which the cat wears when it plays with a mouse.