Page:The Avenger.djvu/32

18 Heneage and Mason exchanged glances of quiet amusement whilst the Colonel helped himself to cheese.

"Dear old boy," the latter murmured, "he's off on his hobby. Let him go on! He enjoys it more than anything in the world."

Heneage nodded assent, and the Colonel returned to the subject with avidity a few moments later.

"This man Morris Barnes," he affirmed, "seems to have been a somewhat despicable, at any rate, a by no means desirable individual. He was of Jewish origin, and he had not long returned from South Africa, where Heaven knows what his occupation was. The money of which he was undoubtedly possessed he seems to have spent, or at any rate some part of it, in aping the life of a dissipated man about town. He was known to the fair promenaders of the Empire and Alhambra, he was an habitué of the places where these—er—ladies partake of supper after the exertions of the evening. Of home life or respectable friends he seems to have had none."

"This," Mason declared, leaning back and lighting a cigarette, "is better than the newspapers. Go on, Colonel! Your biography may not be sympathetic, but it is lifelike!"

The Colonel's eyes were full of a distinct and vivid light. He scarcely heard the interruption. He was on fire with his subject.

"You see," he continued, "that the man's days were spent amongst a class where the passions run loose, where restraint is an unknown virtue, where self and sensuality are the upraised gods. One can easily imagine that from amongst such a slough might spring at any time the weed of tragedy. In other words, this man