"Quite so; best to keep him quiet," he returned."Do you know what my advice would be? Put him in a comfortable sanatorium.A lot of stupid investigations would end in nothing, of course, but they'd be a frightful bore."He thought it extraordinarily stupid in T.Tembarom to come nearer to him with an anxious eagerness entirely unconcealed, if he really knew what he was doing.
"Are you sure that if you saw him close you'd KNOW, so that you could swear to him?" he demanded.
"You're extremely nervous, aren't you?" Palliser watched him with smiling coolness."Of course Jem Temple Barholm is dead; but I've no doubt that if I saw this man of yours, I could swear he had remained dead--if I were asked.""If you knew him well, you could make me sure.You could swear one way or another.I want to be SURE," said Tembarom.
"So should I in your place; couldn't be too sure.Well, since you ask me, I COULD swear.I knew him well enough.He was one of my most intimate enemies.What do you say to letting me see him?""I would if I could," Tembarom replied, as if thinking it over."Iwould if I could."
Palliser treated him to the far from pleasing smile again.
"But it's quite impossible at present?" he suggested."Excitement is not good for him, and all that sort of thing.You want time to think it over."Tembarom's slowly uttered answer, spoken as if he were still considering the matter, was far from being the one he had expected.
"I want time; but that's not the reason you can't see him right now.
You can't see him because he's not here.He's gone."Then it was Palliser who started, taken totally unaware in a manner which disgusted him altogether.He had to pull himself up.
"He's gone!" he repeated."You are quicker than I thought.You've got him safely away, have you? Well, I told you a comfortable sanatorium would be a good idea.""Yes, you did." T.Tembarom hesitated, seeming to be thinking it over again."That's so." He laid his pipe aside because it had gone out.
He suddenly sat down at the table, putting his elbows on it and his face in his hands, with a harried effect of wanting to think it over in a sort of withdrawal from his immediate surroundings.This was as it should be.His Yankee readiness had deserted him altogether.
"By Jove! you are nervous!" Palliser commented."It's not surprising, though.I can sympathize with you." With a markedly casual air he himself sat down and drew his documents toward him."Let us talk of something else," he said.He preferred to be casual and incidental, if he were allowed.It was always better to suggest things and let them sink in until people saw the advantage of considering them and you.To manage a business matter without open argument or too frank a display of weapons was at once more comfortable and in better taste.
"You are making a great mistake in not going into this," he suggested amiably."You could go in now as you went into Hutchinson's affair, `on the ground floor.' That's a good enough phrase, too.Twenty thousand pounds would make you a million.You Americans understand nothing less than millions."But T.Tembarom did not take him up.He muttered in a worried way from behind his shading hands, "We'll talk about that later.""Why not talk about it now, before anything can interfere?" Palliser persisted politely, almost gently.
Tembarom sprang up, restless and excited.He had plainly been planning fast in his temporary seclusion.
"I'm thinking of what you said about Lady Joan," he burst forth."Say, she's gone through all this Jem Temple Barholm thing once; it about half killed her.If any one raised false hopes for her, she'd go through it all again.Once is enough for any woman."His effect at professing heat and strong feeling made a spark of amusement show itself in Palliser's eye.It struck him as being peculiarly American in its affectation of sentiment and chivalry.
"I see," he said."It's Lady Joan you're disturbed about.You want to spare her another shock, I see.You are a considerate fellow, as well as a man of business.""I don't want her to begin to hope if--"
"Very good taste on your part." Palliser's polite approval was admirable, but he tapped lightly on the paper after expressing it."Idon't want to seem to press you about this, but don't you feel inclined to consider it? I can assure you that an investment of this sort would be a good thing to depend on if the unexpected happened.If you gave me your check now, it would be Cedric stock to-morrow, and quite safe.Suppose you--""I--I don't believe you were right--about what you thought." The sharp- featured face was changing from pale to red."You'd have to be able to swear to it, anyhow, and I don't believe you can." He looked at Palliser in eager and anxious uncertainty."If you could," he dragged out , "I shouldn't have a check-book.Where would you be then?""I should be in comfortable circumstances, dear chap, and so would you if you gave me the money to-night, while you possess a check-book.It would be only a sort of temporary loan in any case, whatever turned up.The investment would quadruple itself.But there is no time to be lost.Understand that."T.Tembarom broke out into a sort of boyish resentment.
"I don't believe he did look like him, anyhow," he cried."I believe it's all a bluff." His crude-sounding young swagger had a touch of final desperation in it as he turned on Palliser."I'm dead sure it's a bluff.What a fool I was not to think of that! You want to bluff me into going into this Cedric thing.You could no more swear he was like him than --than I could."The outright, presumptuous, bold stripping bare of his phrases infuriated Palliser too suddenly and too much.He stepped up to him and looked into his eyes.
"Bluff you, you young bounder!" he flung out at him."You're losing your head.You're not in New York streets here.You are talking to a gentleman.No," he said furiously, "I couldn't swear that he was like him, but what I can swear in any court of justice is that the man Isaw at the window was Jem Temple Barholm, and no other man on earth."When he had said it, he saw the astonishing dolt change his expression utterly again, as if in a flash.He stood up, putting his hands in his pockets.His face changed, his voice changed.
"Fine!" he said."First-rate! That's what I wanted to get on to."