“Say Monday morning,” Mr. Dowling suggested, taking down his hat.  “I shall be playing golf to-morrow and Friday, and of course Saturday.  Monday morning you might let me have a report.”

Tavernake went back to his office.  After all, then, things were to come to a crisis a little earlier than he had thought.  He knew quite well that that report, if he made it honestly, and no other idea was likely to occur to him, would effectually sever his connection with Messrs. Dowling, Spence & Company.

CHAPTER IX

THE PLOT THICKENS

The man whom Tavernake had left walking up and down the corridor lost no time in presenting himself once more at the apartments of Mrs. Wenham Gardner.  He entered the suite without ceremony, carefully closing both doors behind him.  It became obvious then that his deportment on the occasion of his previous appearance had been in the nature of a bluff.  The air with which he looked across the room at the woman who watched him was furtive; the hand which laid his hat upon the table was shaking; there was a gleam almost of terror in his eyes.  The woman remained impassive, inscrutable, simply watching him.  After a moment or two, however, she spoke—­a single monosyllable.

“Well?”

The man broke down.

“Elizabeth,” he exclaimed, “you are too—­too ghastly!  I can’t stand it.  You are unnatural.”

She stretched herself upon the couch and turned towards him.

“Unnatural, am I?” she remarked.  “And what are you?”

He sank into a chair.  He had become very flabby indeed.

“What you are always calling me, I suppose,” he muttered,—­“a coward.  You have so little consideration, Elizabeth.  My health isn’t what it was.”

His eyes had wandered longingly toward the cupboard at the further end of the apartment.  The woman upon the couch smiled.

“You may help yourself,” she directed carelessly.  “Perhaps then you will be able to tell me why you have come in such a state.”

He crossed the room in a few hasty steps, his head and shoulders disappeared inside the cupboard.  There was the sound of the withdrawal of a cork, the fizz of a sodawater syphon.  He returned to his place a different man.

“You must remember my age, Elizabeth dear,” he said, apologetically.  “I haven’t your nerve—­it isn’t likely that I should have.  When I was twenty-five, there was nothing in the world of which I was afraid.”

She looked him over critically.

“Perhaps I am not so absolutely courageous as you think,” she remarked.  “To tell you the truth, there are a good many things of which I am afraid when you come to me in such a state.  I am afraid of you, of what you will do or say.”

“You need not be,” he assured her hastily.  “When I am away from you, I am dumb.  What I suffer no one knows.  I keep it to myself.”