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When Larssen had closed the door behind him, Olive felt as if a big strong arm of support had suddenly been taken away from her. Larssen's mere presence, even if he remained silent, gave her a fictitious sense of her own power, which now was crumbling away and leaving her with a feeling of insecurity and self-distrust. Openly it expressed itself in peevish annoyance.
She offered her hand with a radiant smile, and Larssen took it masterfully and raised it to his lips. Rivière noted that it was not the shipowner who had moved forward to meet Olive, but Olive who had come gladly to him. They stood by the fireplace, and Olive chatted animatedly to her guest. Rivière scarcely recognized his wife in this transformation of spirit.
For a moment Rivière's fist clenched; then his fingers loosened, and he watched without stirring. Larssen must, in view of his action on the Hudson Bay coup, believe Matheson to be dead. To him, Olive was now a widow. Therefore Rivière had no quarrel with the shipowner on the ground of what he was now witnessing.
Larssen quickly resolved to get at him in indirect fashion through Olive, and accordingly he answered evenly: "Think it over by all means. There's plenty to consider. Take the draft scheme and look it through at your leisure.... Now what's the plan of amusement for to-night?" Before going to the Casino, Olive made an excuse to return to her rooms at the Hespérides.
"Mr Larssen changed into evening dress, sir, and went off in his small covered car. I don't know where he's gone, sir, but he told me if anything important arose I was to ring him up at P. O. Richmond, 2882." That telephone number happened to be quite familiar to Rivière. It was the number of his own house at Roehampton.
A low cry of expostulation came from Elaine. "It's an ugly, brutal fact," pursued Larssen, pressing home his advantage to the fullest extent. Now that he had probed for and reached the raw nerve of feeling, he intended to keep it tight gripped in the forceps of his words. "It's brutal, but it's true. Unwittingly, you have shortened her life." "I've sent Mr Matheson away," faltered Elaine.
On his urgent recommendation, therefore, the managing editor of the Daily Truth consented to run Clifford Matheson's full-page advertisement and to insert the interview, contingent on his depositing with Martin a cheque for £250,000 to indemnify the paper against a possible libel action on the part of Lars Larssen.
When he came back from the search, he had an envelope in his hand addressed "Lars Larssen, Esq." "All I could find was this envelope for you, sir. There seems to be no record of Mr Rivière's address." The shipowner slit open the letter and read it with a countenance that gave no clue whatever to what was passing in his mind.
Olive had moaned at intervals, in a delirium of fever. The seaman, who had been the man on watch when the "Starlight" struck the unlighted derelict, had cursed intermittently at the cause of the disaster. "Why didn't they show a blasted light?" he kept on repeating with obstinate illogicality. "Why didn't the fools show a blasted light?" "Old man Larssen will give you hell when we get to shore."
I called you up to say that your husband has sailed for Canada on 'La Bretagne. I had a line from Cherbourg this morning." "So had I." "I suppose he explained matters to you?" "No, he referred me to you for explanations. Just like Clifford!... What about Rivière is he coming to Monte?" Lars Larssen had to tread warily here. So he answered: "I didn't quite catch that name."
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