"That de Mersch was crumbling up," she suddenly completed my unfinished
sentence; "oh, that was only a grumble--premonitory. But it won't take
long now. I have been putting on the screw. Halderschrodt will ... I
suppose he will commit suicide, in a day or two. And then the--the fun
will begin."

I didn't answer. The thing made no impression--no mental impression at
all.




CHAPTER FOURTEEN


That afternoon we had a scene, and late that night another. The memory
of the former is a little blotted out. Things began to move so quickly
that, try as I will to arrange their sequence in my mind, I cannot. I
cannot even very distinctly remember what she told me at that first
explanation. I must have attacked her fiercely--on the score of de
Mersch, in the old vein; must have told her that I would not in the
interest of the name allow her to see the man again. She told me things,
too, rather abominable things, about the way in which she had got
Halderschrodt into her power and was pressing him down. Halderschrodt
was de Mersch's banker-in-chief; his fall would mean de Mersch's, and so
on. The "so on" in this case meant a great deal more. Halderschrodt,
apparently, was the "somebody who was up to something" of the American
paper--that is to say the allied firms that Halderschrodt represented.
I can't remember the details. They were too huge and too unfamiliar, and
I was too agitated by my own share in the humanity of it. But, in sum,