"We have, you see," continued Wilbraham, in his disagreeable, sneering voice, "some rather important information to communicate to the committee, if you will pardon the interruption. Presently I will ask Signor Cristofero to communicate it. But for the moment might I be allowed to ask for a little personal explanation? Since I entered the room I heard a remark or two relating to myself and various friends of mine which struck me as somewhat strange...."
M. Croza courteously bowed to him, with hostile eyes.
"You have a right to an explanation, sir. As you have entered at what I can but call such a very inopportune moment, you heard what I was saying--words uttered, need I say, in no malicious spirit, but in a sincere and public-spirited desire to discover the truth. I was accusing and do accuse, no one; I was merely laying before the committee information communicated to me this morning by Mr. Henry Beechtree."
Charles Wilbraham turned on this gentleman the indifferent and contemptuous regard with which one might look at and dismiss some small and irrelevant insect.
"And who, if I may ask, is Mr. Henry Beechtree?"
"The correspondent, sir, of one of the newspapers of your country--the _British Bolshevist_."
Charles laughed. "Indeed? Hardly, perhaps, an organ which commands much influence. However, by all means let me hear Mr. Beechtree's information. I am, I infer, from what I overheard, engaged in some kind of conspiracy, together with my friends M. Kratzky, Sir John Levis, and this gentleman here. May I know further details, or are they for the private edification of the committee only?"
Charles heavily sarcastic, ponderously ironic--how well Henry remembered it.
"Are we," he went on, "supposed to have spirited away, or even murdered, the missing delegates, may I ask?"
"That," said M. Croza politely, "was Mr. Beechtree's suggestion--only, of course, a suggestion, based on various facts which had come to his knowledge. You can, doubtless, disprove these facts, sir, or account for them in some other way. No one will be more delighted than the committee over which I preside."
"Might I hear these sinister facts?" Charles was getting smoother, more unctuous, more happy, all the time. It was the little curl of his lip, so hateful, so familiar, with which he said these words, which seemed to snap something in Henry's brain. He pushed back his chair and sprang to his feet, breathless and dizzy and hot. He regarded not the cries of "Order," from the chair and the table; order or not, he must speak now to Charles.