"
"I preferred it the other way," he remarked, still smiling his
inscrutable smile.
"You surely had no scruples about it."
"Not in the least. I'd as soon have killed you as to have taken a drink
of water. But I simply love to play any kind of game that tests me,
tries me, puts me to my utmost mettle. I played that game in my own
way."
"I was never very subtle," I said to him simply.
"No, on the contrary, you are rather dull. I dared not kill you--it
would have been a mistake in the game. It would have cost me her
sympathy at once. Since I did not, and since, therefore, you owe me
something for that fact, what do you say about it yourself, my friend?"
I thought for a long time, my head between my hands, before I answered
him. "That I shall pay you some day Orme, but not in any such way as you
suggest."
"Then it is to be war?" he asked, quietly.
I shrugged my shoulders. "You heard me."
"Very well!" he replied, calmly, after a while. "But listen. I don't
forget. If I do not have my pay voluntarily in the way I ask, I shall
some day collect it in my own fashion."
"As you like. But we Cowles men borrow no fears very far in advance."
Orme rose and stood beside me, his slender figure resembling less that
of a man than of some fierce creature, animated by some uncanny spirit,
whose motives did not parallel those of human beings.
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