Page:Rowland--The closing net.djvu/333

Rh You talk like a man who has reached the end of his string."

"I have," he answered sombrely.

Léontine looked up quickly. "In what way, Ivan?" she asked. "If it is money don't forget that you have rich and influential friends."

He smiled and let his beautifully shaped hand rest for a moment on hers while he toyed with his spoon.

"Thank you, my dear. It is not altogether money. I have still a bone or two buried under the lilac-bush. But I have failed in my purpose, which was to live ruthlessly and consistently at the expense of a society which I despise. I have failed. I can no longer hold my organisation—the association which I myself created. Chu-Chu has ousted me. He has been working with the patient cunning of a fox or wolf, and he has made himself the leader of the pack." Ivan looked at me with a sardonic smile; and, impatient as I was to learn more of Chu-Chu's present movements, something in the man's face held me an attentive and fascinated listener. His voice, too, had a queer lifelessness, the weary indifference of a man on his death-bed, and his words contained the accent of a valedictory. Léontine was watching him closely, puzzled and disturbed.

"Chu-Chu has made himself the leader of the pack," he answered. "My own life at this moment is no more safe than Frank's; and as for my liberty, that is less so." He looked at me and laughed. "That letter of yours making me the custodian of your safety is a joke, my dear boy. I am about as able to protect you at this moment as you are to protect your little friend, the Countess Rosalie."