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Updated: June 2, 2025
He merely looked at Roden with a smile, which conveyed as clearly as words Von Holzen's suggestion that none of the three men named would be prepared to give Roden a very good character. "I had a letter, by the way, from Cornish this morning," said Roden, lapsing into his grander manner, which Von Holzen knew how to turn to account. "Ah bah!" he exclaimed sceptically.
"Ah," she said, rather more indifferently than before, "I think you exaggerate Herr von Holzen's importance in the world." "I do not exaggerate the danger into which Cornish will run if he is not careful," retorted Roden, half sullenly. There was a ring of anxiety in his voice. Mrs. Vansittart glanced sharply at him. It was borne in upon her that Roden himself was afraid of Von Holzen.
Instead, she stood her ground, and he, failing to get a grasp at her wrist, stumbled sideways against the table. In a moment she had run round it, and again they stared at each other, without a word, across the table where Percy Roden kept the books of the malgamite works. A slow smile came to Von Holzen's face, which was colourless always, and now a sort of grey.
Von Holzen's cottage was a few yards away. A light was burning there, and gleamed through the cracks of the curtains. Cornish went towards the cottage, then paused. "No," he muttered, holding his head with both hands. "It will keep." And he staggered away in the darkness towards the corner where the empty barrels stood against the fence. "One and one with a shadowy third."
Cornish give Herr von Holzen his due, then?" "Cornish does his best to upset Von Holzen's plans at every turn. He does not understand business at all. When that sort of man goes into business he invariably gets into trouble. He has what I suppose he calls scruples. It comes, I imagine, from not having been brought up to it." Roden spoke rather hotly.
He lay still, and his brain began to wander, but with an effort he kept a hold upon his thoughts. He was a strong man, who had never had a bad illness a cool head and an intrepid heart. Stretching out his legs, he found some object close to him. It was Von Holzen's desk, which stood on four strong legs against the wall.
As a matter of fact, the characteristic commanded her respect. She knew that her brother was not in Von Holzen's confidence. It was probable that no man on earth had ever come within measurable distance of that. He would, in all likelihood, hear nothing of the attempt to kill Cornish, and Cornish himself would be the last to mention it.
The man was dying. He was a Pole who understood no word of English. Indeed, these three men had no language in common in which to make themselves understood. "Can you do nothing at all?" asked Roden, for the second or third time. "Nothing," answered Von Holzen, without turning round. "He was a doomed man when he came here." The man lay on the bed and stared at Von Holzen's back.
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