"Come now," said Mr. Fox-Cordery, drawing a long breath of relief, "you have talked a lot of infernal bosh, and told any number of lies; but I will excuse you for everything if you will inform me where it took place."
"Not one word will I add to those I have already spoken."
"Hang it! I have a right to know. You could be forced to tell!"
"Make the attempt. For the second time, I bid you go."
He threw open the door, and stood aside to give his visitor unobstructed passage. Recognizing the uselessness of remaining any longer, Mr. Fox-Cordery laughed insolently in Rathbeal's face, and, feeling his way down the dark stairs, reached the lower landing in safety, and passed into the street.
Although he was not in the most amiable of humors, his mind was greatly relieved. Robert Grantham was dead. Of that he had been assured by Rathbeal; not, certainly, in such plain words as he would have preferred to hear, but in terms that left no doubt in his mind.
"I put his back up," he muttered, as he walked along, "and that is why he wouldn't speak out. Besides, he wasn't going to criminate himself. I was an idiot to take the trouble I did over the affair. Grantham was quite broken down at the time, and couldn't have lasted long under any circumstances. There isn't an office in England that would have taken a year's insurance on his life. He was done for; death was in his face. They have all played into my hands, every one of them."
But notwithstanding the relief he experienced, the events of the day were not of a nature to afford him pleasant reflection. He had been three times defied. First by Charlotte, then by John Dixon, then by Rathbeal. Charlotte he did not fear as an enemy; despite her outbreak, he had been too long accustomed to dominate her to be apprehensive of her. She was in his power, and had pledged herself to silence for two months. John Dixon and Rathbeal stood on a different platform; but even from them he had little if anything to fear. As to John Dixon's account of having seen Robert Grantham's face in a fog, he snapped his fingers at it. It was, at best, a clumsy invention; had he been in Dixon's place, he would have done better. His enemies had put him on his guard--that was all the good they had done for themselves.