Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/218

 as he stood behind his companion's glib explanations, stared at something in the face which he thought he had seen before. The grey beard and moustache were unfamiliar; the hair was wrong, but the forehead and the nose, the eyebrows "Ah?" Mr. Whitten said. "Yes . . . I recall you, Mr.—Mr."

It was the voice "Dixon."

"Exactly! I recall you distinctly."

It was the voice of Mr. Vandever!—Vandever, no longer clean-shaven, Vandever without his gold-rimmed glasses and his beamingly benign regard—but undoubtedly the benevolent Vandever. And Don, for the first time, looked at an old man infamous.

It held him like a horror. It revolted while it fascinated him. The squinting eyes, weak without their glasses, were hideously hypocritical. The false smile, the pretence of kindliness, the affected warmth of manner, were a disgusting villainy so incredible to him that he could not take his eyes from them. He did not hear what "Dixon" was saying. He stood gaping until Vandever held out a hand to him, and then the approach of contact with this dishonoured old rogue woke him to loathing and shame. He shook his head, red and stammering, refusing the hand-clasp; he looked at "Dixon" appealingly and saw in the man's face that he, too, was a partner in the abominable business; then he turned and hurried from the office with the echo of Dixon's "What the hell!" following him like the vile odour of this degradation from which he fled,