IT MAY BE that whatever the enigmatic telephone call had required Professor Blinkwell to arrange before 5 p.m. tomorrow had been accomplished when Myra returned to lunch, for he met her in his usual mood of cheerful complacency. and praised her for what she had done. He would be pleased, he said, and at leisure, to meet Kindell at four for tea.
"I don't see," she answered, "that I've done much yet, nor what I'm supposed to be going to do."
"My dear Myra! Can you not leave that to me to judge? If I am pleased, you may be content that you have done well. . . . There is a parcel on my desk. Will you secrete it somewhere now, and show it to him this afternoon, when I am not about, as containing the articles which you must conceal? I will provide you with opportunity to do that. . . . But do not give it to him today. I do not wish it to pass into his hands until you are on the point of leaving tomorrow. . . . It is possible that I may not be able to go myself till the next day."
Whatever pleasure Myra may have shown at the commencement of this speech gave way to a mutinous frown as its later purport penetrated her mind. Had she not had his explicit promise that she should not be directly involved in the handling of these illicit drugs? Was it not, apart from that contrary to the basic rule of his own conduct, the wisdom of which he had so often impressed upon her lazily receptive mind? And at a time when suspicion of complicity in such trafficking had approached him more nearly than they believed it had ever done before! And the parcel in their own room! There was excuse for the sullen rebellious pout that emphasized the heaviness of her lips as she protested, "You can't ask me to do that! You've told me ever so many times - - "
The Professor interrupted her with his usual suavity, but with an inflection in his voice which she knew to be a sign of rising anger not to be lightly provoked: "If I've told you ever so many times, there should be no occasion to do so again. You should have learnt by now that I mean what I say, neither more nor less."
It may be thought that if Myra, knowing Professor Blinkwell's occupations and moral code as she did, could think him incapable of a lying assurance, she must have been of a peculiar intellectual density, but there was reason behind his words.
It would not have occurred to either of them to tell the truth if they should have seen use in a lie. To do so would have seemed as foolish as to walk through a pool of water when a side-step! would find drier ground. But because your comrade carries an offensive weapon it does not follow that he will make a habit of sticking it into your own back.
Lying, like liars, differs. Much of it is no better (nor worse) than the poor shield of the weak. With some it may reach the degradation of habit, against which even friendship is not secure. With such, even the abject defensive value of it may be largely lost, for what is the power of a lie which is not believed? And as true words must be weighed in the same scale of discredit, those who fall so far become naked to every wind.
But there are others to whom the lie is a weapon for cool and I deliberate use. Having learnt its deadliness in efficient lips, they do not give it light or promiscuous exercise, nor use it so that it must destroy confidence in themselves where it is important that it should remain. Honour among thieves is no empty phrase It is of the necessity which is above law.
Myra knew her uncle to be cunning and ruthless; a man of heartless criminalities, and with no scruples at all. But she had found that what he promised would be performed; what he told her would happen, did. Now he had told her that he would not deviate from the rule that neither she nor he should have any part in the smuggling of the illicit drugs from which his fortune was made, and asked her to believe this, even while the parcel was in the room, and they were plotting together to procure Kindell to pass it through the English Customs in his own luggage. With a half-bewildered half-resentful mind, she yet bent to habit and experience, and the influence of a will more powerful if not more obstinate than her own. She said sullenly:
"Well, I don't know what to believe when you say two things at once. They're not sense. But I'll show him the parcel, if that's all you want me to do. . . . What shall I say if he asks to see what's inside?"
"My dear Myra! Are you a child? If you can't handle him in such a little matter as that - - ! And I've told you he's only to see that you've got it ready, and that you'll want him to take charge of it tomorrow. He needn't touch it at all."
"But he'd have to tomorrow. And besides - - "
"Myra, I sometimes think you're a fool. If he's coaxed into smuggling your parcel through, do you suppose that he'll want to know that it's full of things he ought to declare?"
"Well, I don't like doing it. That's a fact."
"You make that quite plain. But we all have to do things we don't like at times. And if you do just what I've told you - as I'm quite sure you will - you'll have nothing to worry over. Nothing at all."
With these words they parted to their own rooms, and, when four o'clock and William Kindell came, Myra did her allotted part, as her uncle had been sure that she would.
When he left the room, she showed the parcel, which she produced from beneath the head-cushion of a couch on which she had disposed herself with some exhibition of shapely limbs. She said, "I don't want to bother you with it now, but I thought you'd like to see that it isn't a dreadful size," assuming that it was agreed between them that he would give her the help she asked.
"Perhaps," he said, watching her more closely than she was aware, and in another mood than that which she wished to rouse "if you'd let me declare them among my own things, the duty wouldn't be such a lot to pay."
"No, indeed," she exclaimed, quickly controlling the startled note in her voice, "I couldn't possibly let you do that, especially when everyone knows how - - "
She stopped abruptly. She was about to end with "how poor you are," and recognized, somewhat late, that they were words which politeness might not approve. But the suggestion was one for which she had been unprepared, and her uncle's readiness was not hers. She concluded, "No, I couldn't possibly let you do that."
He might have replied, with less courtesy than truth, that he had not proposed that he should, but only asked whether it would be a large sum; but he responded easily, "Well, it's for you to say," and was paid with a grateful glance from lazily seductive eyes.
It may be said that both of them acted well.