you tell me.” [Pg 61] [Pg 61] “O-oh,” sighed the girl, and she fell back in her chair. Clement knew why she was overcome. His confirmation of the suspicions that the little lawyer Hartley Hard had fired at her, had forced her soul to face an ugly conviction. Clement, inexpressibly sorry for her, followed her action with his eyes. He would like to help her, he felt in his heart an almost agonized desire to do something to soothe her wounded soul. She was so gentle, so young to have suffered a shock. He half turned in his eagerness to help her. Something—a shadow where there should have been the gray-blue light of the open sea—caused him to lift his eyes. Behind her chair, close behind, crouching against the bow of the boat that shielded them from the wind, filling up the space through which Clement should have been able to gaze straight out to sea, he saw a figure. A great, a bulky figure. The black, the stealthy figure of a mountain of a man—listening. He poised there for a minute—then he vanished. IV Heloise had had her warning—and so had Mr. Neuburg. What effect his warning would have on the girl, Clement did not know. Time alone would show[Pg 62] that. But he knew what would be the effect on the big and sinister man. [Pg 62] It would be a direct declaration of war. Neuburg had heard something which must tell him definitely that he—Clement Seadon—meant to prevent Heloise Reys from having anything to do with Henry Gunning and his wild-cat schemes. In other words the mountainous Mr. Neuburg knew that Clement meant to prevent him getting the million pounds which he considered his legitimate plunder. And if Clement knew anything that was not the sort of threat that the big man would suffer quietly. It was going to be a fight, and, an ugly one. He made no mistake about this Neuburg. He was a brilliant fellow and a criminal to boot. He would not only employ all his cunning, but he would also stop at nothing to gain his ends. Clement was perfectly certain that if it came to the pinch, Mr. Neuburg would kill him, or have him killed, if he felt it necessary.
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