Page:When It Was Dark.djvu/339

Rh A curious thing happened. The enormous overbearing brutality of the man, his vitality, seemed to cow and beat down the master mind.

Schuabe, for the moment, was weak in the hands of his inferior. As yet he had heard nothing of what the other had come to tell; he was conscious only of hands of cold fear knocking at his heart.

He seemed to shrink into himself. For the first and last time in his life, the inherited slavishness in his blood asserted itself.

He had never known such degradation before. The beauty of his face went out like an extinguished candle. His features grew markedly Semitic; he cringed and fawned, as his ancestors had cringed and fawned before fools in power hundreds of years back.

This inexpressibly disgusting change in the distinguished man had its immediate effect upon his companion. It was new and utterly startling. He had come to lean on Schuabe, to place the threads of a dreadful dilemma in his hand, to rest upon his master mind.

So, for a second or two, in loathsome pantomime the men bowed and salaamed to each other in the centre of the room, not knowing what they did.

It was Sir Robert who pulled himself together first. The fear which was rushing over him in waves gave him back a semblance of control.

"We must not quarrel now," he said in a swift, eager voice. "Listen to me. We are on the brink of terrible things. Gertrude Hunt came back to me, as you know. She told me that she was sick to death of her friends the priests, that the old life called her, that she could not live apart from me. She mocked at her sudden conversion. I thought that it was real. I laughed and mocked with her. I trusted her as I would trust myself."