But before speaking to us he leaned over and spoke to the cat. His eyes widened affectionately.
'Here, Mariette!' he said in a soft voice. 'You must not spit at my guests. Here!'
His voice was cultured, with deep rollings; he could play on it, you felt, as with the stops of an organ. Taking up the cat in his arms, folding it in the long cloak he had not yet removed, he sat down within range of the firelight. The eyelids drooped over his yellow-grey eyes, luminous, almost mesmeric. His fingers, which continued to stroke the head of the cat, were short, spatulate, and immensely strong. And the force of the man was intellectual as well as physical; you felt its power, you felt that he "was coiling his muscles for a deadly spring, and you braced yourself as though to meet a charge with a knife.
'I am sorry,' he said in his soft, deep voice, 'to have kept you waiting. It has been a long time, Monsieur Bencolin, since we have met. These are,' he nodded towards us, 'your associates?'
Bencolin introduced us. He was standing with his elbow on the mantelpiece, negligently. Galant turned first towards Chaumont and then towards me, nodding briefly. Afterwards he continued his scrutiny of the detective. Gradually an expression of smugness and complacence spread itself over his face like thin oil; he wrinkled the red, grotesque nose and smiled.
'I saw you to-night,' he went on, thoughtfully, 'for the first time in several years. My friend Bencolin grows old; there is much grey in his hair. Nowadays I could break you in pieces....'
He settled his vast shoulders under a very correct dinner jacket. His fingers tightened, playing softly with the neck of the cat, which continued to regard us with glassy yellow eyes. Suddenly he turned to me. 'You are wondering, monsieur, about this.' With the utmost delicacy he touched his nose. 'Ah, yes, you were! Ask Monsieur Bencolin about it. He is responsible.'
'We fought once, with knives,' Bencolin said, studying a design in the carpet. He did look old then; thin and drawn and leathery of skin, a tired Mephistopheles. 'Monsieur Galant was pleased to think himself a master of the apache's art. I struck with the handle of the knife, instead of using its blade. ...'
Galant pinched his nose. 'That,' he said, 'was twelve years ago. Since then I have perfected myself. There is no one in France who could . But we will let that go. Why are you here?' He laughed, loudly and not pleasantly. 'Do you fancy that you have anything against me ?'
It was, surprisingly enough, Chaumont who broke the long silence after this. He walked round a table into the firelight; he stood for a moment uncertainly, as though revolving suspicions, and then he said, with sudden vehemence:
'Look here .. . who the devil are you ?'
'Well, that depends,' said Galant. He was not astonished or irritated; he seemed to be musing. 'In his poetic way, Monsieur Bencolin would say that I am lord of the jackals - king of the cockleshells - high priest of demonology. .. . '
Chaumont stared at him, uncertainly still, and the other chuckled.
'Paris,' he continued,' "the underworld" - what romances are committed in thy name! Monsieur Bencolin is at heart of the bourgeoisie. He has the soul of a three-franc novelist. He looks into a frowsy cafe, full of labourers and tourists, and he sees in these people creatures of the night, full of sin, drugs, and butchery. The underworld. He! - what an idea!'
Behind these words, uttered with many knowing quirks and chuckles, you could see a struggle. These men were old enemies. You could feel the hatred between them, as palpable as the heat of a fire; but also between them was a wall which Galant dared not break to fly at his foe. His words were as small vicious scratchings against that wall, like the claws of a cat....
'Captain Chaumont,' said Bencolin, 'wishes to know who you are. I will tell both of you a little. To begin with, you bore the title of doctor of letters. You were the only Frenchman ever to occupy a chair in English Literature at Oxford.'
'Well, well, that is admitted.'
'But you were anti-social. You hated the world and your fellow men. Also, you found the remuneration too small for a man of really excellent family —’
'That too, is admitted.'
'Without any doubt, then,' Bencolin said, thoughtfully, 'we can trace this man's course by his own peculiar mentality. Here, we shall say, is a man of extreme brilliance, who has read books until his brain bursts with the weight of them; he is brooding, introspective, vicious of temper; he begins to look out upon what he considers a crooked world, wherein all moral values are hypocrisies. If a person has a reputation for honesty, that person must be the lowest of thieves. If a woman is reported virtuous, she must be a harlot. To feed this colossal hate of his - which is merely the hate of a misplaced idealist - he begins to root among the pasts of his friends, for he has the ear of what we call good society....’
All the bones in Galant's face seemed suddenly to have grown hard with wrath; when colour came into his face, it was confined to his nose, and the grotesque thing assumed a monstrous redness. But he sat motionless, his eyes open and fixed, stroking the cat softly.
'So,' continued Bencolin, 'he began, against this good society, a campaign. It was a sort of super-blackmail; let me call it a blackmail without honour. He had his files, his spies, his gigantic cross-indexed system, with every letter, photograph, hotel slip or its photostat copy, all carefully arranged, waiting for the proper moment. He waged war only against the highest names in the land; but he picked each small misstep out of the past, enlarged and touched it up, and then awaited his time. A woman about to be married, a candidate running for public office, a man just entering on a career of promise and honour .. . then he appeared. I do not think it was the money, especially. He drew fantastic sums from these people, but what he liked was to rip open reputations, smash idols, and have the power of saying: "There, you who have achieved such eminence! This is how I can tear you down! You think you can reach the high places ? Try!" '
Like a man hypnotized, Chaumont drew out a chair and sat down on its edge. He was staring at Galant as Bencolin's low voice went on:
'Do you understand, messieurs? It was the immense mirth of a man who shares his joke with the devil. Look at him now. He will deny what I say, but you can see the secret satisfaction in his face.... ‘
Galant jerked up his head. It was not Bencolin's accusations which had caused this touch on an open nerve, but the fact that he knew this very expression, of hidden delight, to be creeping round his mouth,
'But this was not all,' Bencolin mused, 'I spoke of blackmail without honour; there is such a thing. When he had bled his victim of everything, he stil! did not keep faith. He did not hand over the evidence after it had been paid for. He published it instead, as he had always intended to do. For his real purpose was to ruin somebody, so that the last bit of triumph could be extracted from the jest.... Oh, no! They could not prosecute him afterwards. He had covered himself too well; he never wrote to his victims, or threatened them except when the two were alone together, with no witnesses. But his reputation went round. That is why they do not receive him in the drawing-rooms any more, and why he has a bodyguard night and day.'
'For what you are saying’ Galant told him in a repressed voice. 'I could take you into court and —'