Melville Davisson Post

“ He called to Lord Donald Muir, and he advanced to meet Dercum and the girl.
“Sir Henry,” he said, “will you release these young people to the dance and walk a moment with me?”
Dercum lifted his big Oriental face, looking out under his heavy eyelids. He moved the tips of the girl’s fingers to his lips, and he nodded to Muir.
“You will be a very brilliant couple,” he said. “I shall be charmed to observe you.”
And then he turned to the Chief of the American Secret Service.
“Ah, Walker,” he said, “I have not seen you since the old days in Washington.” ”

“ He had died in his greatest venture. The whole expedition had perished on one of the windswept plateaus of the Antarctic. It was Dercum who had gone in to find him, and he had found him frozen to death—the very dogs frozen, in one of those fearful depressions of temperature that sometimes descend in an immense blizzard on this wind-swept plateau. ”

“ The Secret Service agent made a slight gesture, as of one rejecting a suggestion. The gesture was unconscious. The man was thinking of what Lord Donald Muir was saying to him.
“I suppose he has the right to take her anywhere he likes, provided he remains within the jurisdiction of the English law.”
“Surely,” replied the boy. “Dercum is a clever beast; he will keep within the jurisdiction of the English law.”
Walker turned slightly, his face was outlined against the black square of the night framed in the window. ”

“ This girl, lovely and inexperienced, was entirely at Dercum’s will; as her guardian he would have exclusive control of her, and, with the man’s cleverness, what he wished he would accomplish. The English law, having put the girl into his charge, would not concern itself about intentions that could not be established. ”

“ The boy got up suddenly.
“And I can’t stop him,” he said, “unless I go and kill him; and the beast is too clever to be killed except in the nastiest way. ‘The duel has gone out with the lace coat,’ he laughs at me with his little reptilian eyes under the heavy eyelids. ”

“ The English law runs in South Africa; that is the theory It is a very fine theory, as it used to be lectured into us at the Hill—a great empire providing precisely the same measure of protection for its subject at the most distant point of its dominion that it provided for him in the very capital itself. ”

“ It’s precisely consistent with my estimate of him. What the brute’s after is the girl; when he gets her, he will get everything with her. Why hurry? When Dercum has degraded her enough, he will get all the rest of it ”