“Bluff, with nothing behind it.  You don’t take me that way,” he said.  “Now I’ll put my cards right down in front of you.  Alton is not a fool, and you couldn’t tell him anything he doesn’t know already.  The trouble is, he can prove nothing.  He has a tolerably short temper, and one day he ’most hammered the life out of another man in the Somasco mill.  That man didn’t like him before, and it’s quite possible he fell foul of Alton after it, but where does that take in me?  Got hold of that, haven’t you?  Well, then, there’s just this difference between you and me.  I could tell Alton one or two things about you he didn’t know!”

“I would be willing to take my chance of his believing you,” said Deringham.

Hallam laughed.  “For a man of business you have a plaguy bad memory.  Now it seems to me quite likely that the man I talked about has had quite enough of fooling with Alton, and we’ll let what you asked for go at that, because there’s something else we’re coming to.  There was a cheque you gave me, and I had who it was drawn by and payable to put down on the slip when I passed it through my bank.  Now I’ve got that slip, and after I’d had a talk with him, Alton wouldn’t wonder what you gave me all those dollars for.”

Deringham was silent almost a minute, for he knew his opponent had seen the weak point.  Then he said, “If I admitted that you were right?”

Hallam raised his big hand, and pressed his thumb down slowly and viciously on the table.  “It don’t need admitting.  I’ve got you there,” he said.  “Still, I don’t know that I want to squeeze you.  Well, I once kept Alton out of Somasco to please you, and now I want you to keep him right here in Vancouver for a while.”

“I could not do it.”

“Well,” said Hallam, grinning, “if you couldn’t, I figure your daughter could.”

Deringham had all along been struggling with a sense of disgust, and now his anger mastered him.  It was, however, the rage of a weak man which is not far removed from fear.

“You infernal scoundrel,” he said.

Hallam laughed brutally.  “That may do you good, and it makes no difference to me,” he said.  “I want Alton to stop here just three weeks from to-day.  He’ll stay without pressing for two of them, I think—­and you’ve got to keep him during the third one.  There’s nothing going to hurt him, but it wouldn’t be wise to fool things, you understand?”

He took up his hat as he spoke, and moved towards the door, while Deringham’s eyes blazed when it closed behind him.

“Damn him!” he said, almost choked with impotent fury, and then sat down limply with a face that grew suddenly blanched.  His hand shook as he seized his glass, and some of the wine he needed was spilled upon the table, for his eyes grew dim as the faintness came upon him.  Deringham had been recommended a rest from all excitement and business anxieties before he sailed from England, and passion was distinctly injudicious considering the condition of one of his organs.