The Professor had recovered his hunger. The chill of the night air, the sudden excitement of the summons, and, though he did not realise it, the absence of patchouli odours in his nostrils, had recalled an appetite.
The space and air of the huge room, with its high roof, was soothing after Bloomsbury Court Mansions.
Supper was spread for two on a little round table by the windows. Schuabe ate little, but watched the other with keen, detective eyes, talking meanwhile of ordinary, trivial things. Nothing escaped him, the little gleam of pleasure in Llwellyn's eyes at the freshness of the caviare, the Spanish olives he took with his partridge--rejecting the smaller French variety--the impassive watchful eyes saw it all.
It was too late for coffee, Llwellyn said, when the man brought it, in a long-handled brass pan from Constantinople, but he took a _kümmel_ instead.
The two men faced each other on each side of the table. Both were smoking. For a moment there was silence; the critical time was at hand. Then Schuabe spoke. His voice was cold and steady and very businesslike. As he talked the voice seemed to wrap round Llwellyn like steel bands. There was something relentless and inevitable about it; bars seemed rising as he spoke.
"I am going to be quite frank with you, Llwellyn," he said, "and you will find it better to be quite frank with me."
He took a paper from the pocket of his smoking jacket and referred to it occasionally.
"You owe me now about fourteen thousand pounds?"
"Please correct me if I am wrong in any point. Your salary at the British Museum is a thousand pounds a year, and you make about fifteen hundred more."
"I have made it my business to know everything, Professor. For example, they are about to offer you knighthood."
Llwellyn stirred uneasily, and the hand which stretched out for another cigarette shook a little.
"I need hardly point out to you," the cold words went on, and a certain sternness began to enforce them, "I need hardly point out that if I were to take certain steps, your position would be utterly ruined."
"Bankruptcy need not entirely ruin a man."
"It would ruin you. You see _I know where the money has gone_. Your private tastes are nothing to me, and it is not my business if you choose to spend a fortune on a cocotte. But in your position, as the very mainspring and arm of the Higher Criticism of the Bible, the revelations which would most certainly be made would ruin you irreparably. Your official posts would all go at once, your name would become a public scandal everywhere. In England one may do just what one likes if only one does not in any way, by reason of position or attainments, belong to the nation. You _do_ belong to the nation. You can never defy public opinion. With the ethical point of view I have nothing personally to do. But to speak plainly, in the eyes of the great mass of English people you would be stamped as an irredeemably vicious man, if everything came out. That is what they would call you. At one blow everything--knighthood, honour, place--all would flash away. Moreover, you would have to give up the other side of your life. There would be no more suppers with Phryne or rides to Richmond in the new motor-car."