that there was some deception about the whole affair--that, plausible as Sebastian's possession of all which the dead man had left behind appeared; plausible, too, as was his undoubted position here and had been from his very earliest days, Julian would have given much now to overhear their conversation--a conversation which, he felt certain, in spite of it taking place thirty feet below where he was supposed to be by now asleep, related to his appearance on the scene.

Would it be possible? Could he in any way manage to thus overhear it? If he were nearer to the persianas, his ear close to the slats, his head placed down low, close to the boards of the room and of the balcony as well--what might not be overheard?

Thinking thus, he resolved to make the attempt, even while he told himself that in no other circumstances would he--a gentleman, a man of honour--resort to such a scheme of prying interference. But--for still the certainty increased in his mind that there was some deceit, some fraud in connection with Sebastian Ritherdon's possession of Desolada and all that Desolada represented in value--he did not hesitate now. As once he, with some of his bluejackets, had tracked slavers from the sea for miles inland and into the coast swamps and fever-haunted interior of the great Black Continent, so now he would track this man's devious and doubtful existence, as, remembering George Ritherdon's story, it seemed to him to be. If he had wronged Sebastian, if he had formed a false estimate of his possession of this place and of his right to the name he bore, no harm would be done. For then he would go away from Honduras for ever, leaving the man in peaceable possession of all that was rightly his. But, if his suspicions were not wrong----

He let himself down to the floor from the chair on which he had been sitting in the dark for now nearly an hour, and, quietly, noiselessly, he progressed along that solid floor--one so well laid in the past that no board either creaked or made any noise--and thus he reached the balcony, there interposing nothing now between him and it but the lowered blind.

Then when he had arrived there, he heard their voices plainly; heard every word that fell from their lips--the soft murmur of the woman's tones, the deeper, more guttural notes of the man.

Only--he might as well have been a mile away from where they sat, he might as well have been stone deaf as able to thus easily overhear those words.

For Sebastian and his companion were speaking in a 

 Prev. P 45/183 next