Tembarom did not look as though he had slept particularly well, Miss Alicia thought, when they met the next morning; but when she asked him whether he had been disappointed in his last night's experiment, he answered that he had not.The experiment had come out all right, but Strangeways had been a good deal worked up, and had not been able to sleep until daylight.Sir Ormsby Galloway was to arrive in the afternoon, and he'd probably give him some- thing quieting.Had the coming downstairs seemed to help him to recall anything? Miss Alicia naturally inquired.Tembarom thought it had.He drove to Stone Hover and spent the morning with the duke; he even lunched with him.He returned in time to receive Sir Ormsby Galloway, however, and until that great personage left, they were together in Mr.Strangeways'
rooms.
"I guess I shall get him up to London to the place where Sir Ormsby wants him," he said rather nervously, after dinner."I'm not going to miss any chances.If he'll go, I can get him away quietly some time when I can fix it so there's no one about to worry him."She felt that he had no inclination to go much into detail.He had never had the habit of entering into the details connected with his strange charge.She believed it was because he felt the subject too abnormal not to seem a little awesome to her sympathetic timidity.She did not ask questions because she was afraid she could not ask them intelligently.In fact, the knowledge that this unknown man was living through his struggle with his lost past in the remote rooms of the west wing, almost as though he were a secret prisoner, did seem a little awesome when one awoke in the middle of the dark night and thought of it.
During the passage of the next few weeks, Tembarom went up to London several times.Once he seemed called there suddenly, as it was only during dinner that he told her he was going to take a late train, and should leave the house after she had gone to bed.She felt as though something important must have happened, and hoped it was nothing disturbing.
When he had said that Captain Palliser would return to visit them, her private impression, despite his laugh, had been that it must surely be some time before this would occur.But a little more than three weeks later he appeared, preceded only half an hour by a telegram asking whether he might not spend a night with them on his way farther north.
He could not at all understand why the telegram, which he said he had sent the day before, had been delayed.
A certain fatigued haggardness in his countenance caused Miss Alicia to ask whether he had been ill, and he admitted that he had at least not been well, as a result of long and too hurried journeys, and the strenuousness of extended and profoundly serious interviews with his capitalist and magnates.
"No man can engineer gigantic schemes to success without feeling the reaction when his load drops from his shoulders," he remarked.
"You've carried it quite through?" inquired Tembarom.
"We have set on foot one of the largest, most substantially capitalized companies in the European business world," Palliser replied, with the composure which is almost indifference.
"Good!" said Tembarom cheerfully.
He watched his guest a good deal during the day.He was a bad color for a man who had just steered clear of all shoals and reached the highest point of success.He had a haggard eye as well as a haggard face.It was a terrified eye when its desperate determination to hide its terrors dropped from it for an instant, as a veil might drop.Acertain restlessness was manifest in him, and he talked more than usual.He was going to make a visit in Northumberland to an elderly lady of great possessions.It was to be vaguely gathered that she was somewhat interested in the great company--the Cedric.She was a remarkable old person who found a certain agreeable excitement in dabbling in stocks.She was rich enough to be in a position to regard it as a sort of game, and he had been able on several occasions to afford her entertainment.He would remain a few days, and spend his time chiefly in telling her the details of the great scheme and the manner in which they were to be developed.
"If she can play with things that way, she'll be sure to want stock in it," Tembarom remarked.
"If she does, she must make up her mind quickly," Palliser smiled, "or she will not be able to get it.It is not easy to lay one's hands on even now."Tembarom thought of certain speculators of entirely insignificant standing of whom he had chanced to see and hear anecdotes in New York.
Most of them were youths of obscure origin who sold newspapers or blacked boots, or "swapped" articles the value of which lay in the desire they could excite in other persons to possess them.A popular method known as "bluff" was their most trusted weapon, and even at twelve and fifteen years of age Tembarom had always regarded it as singularly obvious.He always detested "bluff," whatsoever its disguise, and was rather mystified by its ingenious faith in itself.
"He's got badly stung," was his internal comment as he sucked at his pipe and smiled urbanely at Palliser across the room as they sat together."He's come here with some sort of deal on that he knows he couldn't work with any one but just such a fool as he thinks I am.Iguess," he added in composed reflectiveness, "I don't really know how big a fool I do look."Whatsoever the deal was, he would be likely to let it be known in time.
