"I don't think I shall after all," he said. "Give me a telegram form."
He wrote the wire of excuse, and dispatched Smith with it. Then he sat down again to think, and his thoughts were black and evil. To have his life ruined by that social vampire Loane, armed with those letters betraying that bitterly repented folly of his adolescence, those dateless letters upon which malice could set any date it chose! It stirred him to a wild, phrenetic rage. He would kill Loane before he allowed the man to work his evil will. The thought shaped itself rapidly into a resolve, and Boscawen found himself rejoicing at the thought that Loane was to return in a week's time. That interview should be fateful.
Then he recoiled in sudden horror from his very thoughts, and their premeditation of murder. Was he mad? Was he to dash from Scylla into Charybdis? Was he to escape betrayal that he might be hanged, and hanged for such a thing as Loane?
A week later―three days before the date appointed for Boscawen's wedding―Isidore Loane again presented himself at Boscawen's flat in Hampton Gardens. He was admitted by a strange servant―a swarthy fellow of a certain portliness of bulk, with black glossy hair, black eyebrows and a square black beard, but shaven upper lip, who, in answer to his announcement of his name, informed him in a nasal voice and in speech vitiated by a foreign accent that Mr. Boscawen was expecting him.
He conducted Loane to Boscawen's study, and then, instead of departing to announce the visitor to Boscawen, the man closed the door and set his back to it.
Loane stared at him across the room in surprise.
"What's the matter?" he inquired gruffly. "What are you waiting for? Why don't you fetch Mr. Boscawen?"
The man bowed profoundly, and the voice in which he answered was Boscawen's.
"I am here at your service, Mr. Loane."
As he stood up again, the black beard had vanished, and, despite the simulated embonpoint, the stained skin, and blackened hair and eyebrows, it was unmistakably Boscawen who stood there smiling with a calm that was almost sinister.
Loane stared at him, frowning and changing colour slightly. Then he recovered himself.
"Now, what's the meaning of this? What's your game, eh?" he asked, very ill at ease. "Out with it! Let me know what's expected of me."
"Certain letters of mine to which you do me the honour to attach some value, Mr. Loane." Loane stared again, and forced a laugh.
"I dare say! Oh, I dare say! And so long as you put up the four thousand pounds we agreed upon, they're yours. But I don't quite see the need for this―er―masquerade."
"But you shall, Mr. Loane. You shall."
"The sooner you make it clear, then, the better. I've no time to waste on you. Are you buying the letters, or are you not?"
"I am not―not buying them."
"Very well, then. There's no more to be said. You leave me no alternative but to take them elsewhere." His uneasiness was manifestly increasing every moment, and his assumption of bluster served to heighten rather than to dissemble it.
"I leave you the alternative of surrendering them of your own free will―an alternative I should advise you to adopt, for you shall have no opportunity of offering them elsewhere."
Loane disliked the tone, and disliked still more the tight-lipped smile with which the other was regarding him.
"What do you mean?" he snapped. He reversed his cane as he spoke, and, holding it firmly within a foot or so of the ferrule, he swung the loaded head, and took a step towards Boscawen. Scenting mischief, he was by now thoroughly alarmed.
"Stand away from that door!" he shouted, between rage and fear. "Stand away and let me pass, or I'll beat your brains out!"
"You're so very hasty, Mr. Loane," said Boscawen, and checked his advance by levelling a revolver.
Loane halted abruptly, paused a moment, then fell back again. He was visibly trembling now, his eyes glared fearfully, and his face was pale.
"Wha-what do you mean?" he demanded, endeavouring to make his voice ring bold and challenging. "What are you going to do?"
Boscawen waved him to a chair.
"Sit down, Mr. Loane. Compose yourself. In spite of appearances, there is not the least cause for excitement. The game, I think, has gone rather against you, but you have the advantage of being able to show yourself a good loser. It is in the manner in which we bear our losses, Mr. Loane, that we reveal our true nature. Please sit down again while I explain the situation to you. You'll not find it without a certain interest, I can assure you."
Loane's scared, unblinking eyes riveted on Boscawen, and mechanically, as if hypnotised by the other's smile and leveled weapon, he sank into the deep, comfortable chair to which his host invited him.
Boscawen lowered the pistol, and came to sit on the arm of another chair, he faced his visitor across the hearth.
"I have resolved," he announced in the most level and unemotional of tones, "to shoot you dead, Mr. Loane, since apparently there is no other way of saving my reputation and my future from being wrecked at your hands. Now do, please, sit still and don't interrupt me. I have always been a firm believer in the unwritten law. To me the thing that is commonly known as crime is perfectly justifiable and proper where it is committed to prevent an injury to honour, to property, or to life. It becomes, in short, self-defence; and self-defence is justified by law―save that the law imposes rather narrow bounds upon what may be considered self-defence.
"When you look back upon your past, when you consider your present, and speculate upon your likely future, you will, I am sure, agree that in―er―disposing of you, as I intend, I am not only serving my own interests, but those of humanity at large. So that, from whatever point of view we regard this act of mine, we cannot. Unless blinded by narrow prejudice or personal interest, consider it anything, but meritorious."
"Are you mad?" gasped Loane, believing that, indeed, to be the clue to the other's extraordinary behaviour.
"Not consciously," answered Boscawen, smiling as if interested in the suggestion raised. "Has it occurred to you that my argument is illogical, or my conclusions ill-founded? Is not my reasoning soundness itself? Can you show me one single cogent cause why I should refrain from carrying out my intentions?"
"You'll hang for it!" spluttered the other, foaming at the mouth in his ever-increasing terror.
Boscawen calmly shook his head.
"You do my intelligence poor credit. Of all crimes, it has been shown that murder is the simplest to commit, the most difficult to trace to its perpetrator, it he be a man of sufficient intelligence, imagination and self-possession properly to handle the affair. Let me explain to you the reason for this disguise which I have assumed, that you may understand how very thoroughly I have laid my plans.
"A week ago, Mr. Loane, I dismissed my man, Smith―a most thorough and capable servant, who had been with me for five years. On the following evening a stoutish, swarthy, black-bearded fellow, speaking with a German accent and giving the name of Schuhmacher, asked the porter in the hall below to direct him to my chambers. I was that German, in the disguise which you have seen for yourself and failed to penetrate when I admitted you. It is fairly thorough, like the rest of my scheme.
"I left again after remaining up here―presumably with Mr. Boscawen―for half an hour; and, thoroughly to establish my identity, I engaged the porter in conversation before leaving, and made inquires regarding the ways and habits of this Mr. Boscawen, whose service I was entering that very night. The porter was inclined to be superior. I left, to return in an hour's time with my belongings―an artistic little collection over which I took considerable trouble.