What he was about to do he knew. For the manner of it he must profit by such circumstances as should offer themselves. He put up at the Swan Hotel―having previously ascertained that Pegram and the ladies were staying at the Crown-and during the whole of the next day he kept his room.
After dinner, as dusk was setting in, he stepped across to the Crown Hotel, and, strolling into the bar, he called for a whisky-and-soda. Through the glass doors he peered into the smokeroom, and his eyes gleamed with satisfaction as they lighted upon Pegram, sitting there with his paper and his post-prandial cigar. Wirgman was building heavily upon a slender foundation of probabilities. This, the first of the circumstances he had relied upon, proved as he had reckoned. He emptied his glass, and, moving over to the office, he inquired was Miss Drummond in the house. He received an affirmative reply. She was in her sitting room. Truly the gods of chance were fighting on his side, for here was the second circumstance making good the combination he had hoped to find.
He gave his card to a waiter; then, treading closely upon the fellow's heels, he pushed into the sitting-room after him, and without waiting to be announced, for he had a shrewd suspicion that he might be denied.
As he entered he had a swift vision of Miss Drummond―a tall, fair, showy woman―standing with brows contracted in a frown, regarding his card. Her mother, he was glad to see, was absent.
"Mr. Wirgman!" she exclaimed, catching sight of him. "This is an intrusion!"
He bowed and smiled darkly.
"I confess it. But I was afraid you might hesitate to see me; and as the communication I wish to make to you is of an urgent and most important character, I am confident that you will ultimately absolve me―thank me, perhaps―for having forced my way in."
"I have nothing to say to you."
"Possibly not. It was not with the hope of hearing you say anything that I came. But I have something to say to you that you may come to very bitterly regret not having heard if you deny me. I have come down from town and gone to the discomfort of putting up at that appalling hotel the Swan purposely to render you a service. Surely I deserve a hearing?"
She was only a woman, and curiosity got the better of her.
"What have you to say?" she inquired freezingly.
Wirgman glanced significantly at the interested waiter, whom she at once dismissed. When they were alone he unfolded his mission. He opened with an attempt to refute the slander she had heard against him and followed that up by most virulently maligning Pegram in his turn, dubbing him incidentally, a liar and a low person generally.
Miss Drummond checked his invective in full flow, and desired him to leave the room, whereupon, getting adroitly between her and the bell, he proceeded, with a readiness and elegance of diction that savoured almost of preparation, to tell her with a touching candour and honesty the opinion he had come to concerning herself. Much did he tell her that was scarcely true―but nevertheless fateful to hear―and much that was perfectly true―and therefore more hateful still. He spoke with smiling lips, which added venom to his utterance; and with a master hand he fanned the lady's spirit―an inflammable one at all times―into a very blaze of passion."
"Mr. Wirgman, you shall very bitterly regret this insolence before you are a day older!" she promised him. "Mr. Pegram shall hear of it at once."
Still smiling, Wirgman moved towards the door, leaving her a clear way to the bell should she wish to avail herself of it―as he hoped she might.
"He may hear of it, and welcome," said he, with studied offensiveness; "but if he has the effrontery to address me now or at any time, I shall receive him with the most picturesque thrashing that was ever bestowed."
She looked him over with quiet scorn. "It is like a brave man to tell a woman what he will do, is it not?" she inquired with withering sarcasm as she crossed to the bell.
"Madam, I do not tell you―I warn you. But send your preux chevalier to me by all means. You will save me the trouble of looking for him."
"You shall not have long to wait," she answered, and pressed the button.
Wirgman bowed and withdrew, well satisfied.
On the stairs be met the waiter hastening to answer her bell. "It will take her five minutes to tell 'Pegram her story," he reckoned; "five minutes for Pegram to console her and regale her with the promises of all the fine things he will perform. So that in ten minutes I may expect that gentleman to ask for me at the Swan Hotel."
He smiled quietly as he stepped out into the street.
"I may boast that I have cast my net with singular adroitness, and I am afraid you may find its toils exceedingly difficult to break through, my dear Pegram."
He stood for a moment on the steps of his hotel―a tall, conspicuous figure in his light drab overcoat and soft hat―and he leisurely lighted a cigarette. At that moment the landlord came out.
"A fine night Mr. Wirgman," said he.
"A very fine night," Wirgman agreed, adding idly: "Hardly a night to waste indoors. I think I'll take a stroll as far as the Head. See you later."
He moved away up the steep road that leads to Wimbush Head, with the conviction that he would very shortly be followed. Twice he paused on the way, and drew attention to himself by exchanging a remark upon the night, once with a couple of fishermen, and once with a policeman.
He had conjectured aright concerning Harry Pegram. Within a few minutes of his departure that gentleman was excitedly asking for him at the Swan, to receive from the landlord the information that he was gone toward Wimbush Head. After him, hotfoot and blind with fury, came Pegram now. But for all his haste he did not overtake him until he reached the edge of the cliff, where he saw him outlined against the sky.
"You blackguard!" was the greeting he had for Wirgman, as he rushed at him with stick upraised to strike.
The other caught his wrist as the blow descended, and, holding him for an instant in a crushing grip, he twisted the cane from his hand and flung it over the cliff. They heard it rattle on the shingle below. Then Wirgman spoke.
"Don't be a fool, Pegram," he said coldly, in his dominating way. "Suppose for a moment that you had struck me then as you intended? You might have killed me!"
"You would have been rightly served."
"Quite so, my dear fellow, quite so; but you would have hanged for it. And it can hardly be worth that to you."
Pegram cursed him and raved in an almost theatrical manner. But Wirgman's stronger mind gradually quelled his spirit, and soothed his anger into a mere dull, expressionless resentment.
"Now go home, Pegram," he said in the end; "and if, when you have slept on it, you still feel as you feel now, come to me in the morning. I have always found a deal of common sense blossoming in the morning sun. The night, I think, was made for poets, lovers, and other madmen whose ranting needs the cloak of darkness to disguise its sentimentality."
Pegram still lingered a little while, but in the end, with a sulky threat to return to the matter on the morrow in cold blood, he turned away and was gone. Wirgman continued to stand where he was until the other had been assimilated in the night and the sound of his steps had died away. Then with a short laugh of satisfaction, he sat down and carefully thought out the situation as it stood.
By comparison with what he had achieved, his next step was simple, for it depended upon his own unaided efforts and nowise upon such fortuitous circumstances as had help him hitherto.
Satisfied after some few minutes' deliberation, he rose again, and, flinging down his hat―in which were the initials "R. W."―he slipped quietly, over the edge of the cliff, and cautiously undertook what even in broad daylight was a difficult descent. Carefully groping his way, he reached the little creek below, and stood at last upon the shingle which the receding tide had left moist. He saw something glimmering, and picked up Pegram's silver-mounted walking-stick. He almost chuckled as he weighed it in his hand.