CHAPTER XVIII
Jacob, on his return from the telephone, found to his surprise a familiar figure seated before the piano in the long drawing-room, an apartment more picturesque than ever now in the shaded lamplight, with its faded yellow satin furniture, its amber hangings, and its quaint perfume of bygone days. Lady Mary came to meet him.
“You see what I have done for you,” she whispered.
“Miss Bultiwell!”
Lady Mary nodded.
“You’ll have to be careful, though,” she warned him. “I can see that there has been some trouble – that the course of true love hasn’t been running exactly as it should.”
“I told you that,” Jacob reminded her dismally. “I am beginning to believe that she hates me.”
“Not she,” was the cheerful reply. “Look here, mother’s gone into the housekeeper’s room for a moment. Dad and Mr. Montague are adding up how much they have made out of you. You slip out on to the terrace there, before she turns around, and I’ll bring her out directly.”
Jacob did as he was directed, and, with the echoes of Sybil’s song still in his ears, stepped out on to a wide balcony and stood looking over the tops of the lime trees towards Buckingham Palace. Presently there was a rustle of skirts, the sound of voices, and the two girls appeared. Sybil stopped short when she saw Jacob, but Lady Mary stood in the way of her retreat.
“You know Mr. Pratt, don’t you?” she asked carelessly. “I thought so. Miss Bultiwell’s a perfect dear,” she continued, turning to Jacob. “She comes across the Square and sings to me sometimes after dinner and even condescends to play my accompaniments. You’ve no idea what a tax that is upon any one’s good nature.”
“I understood that you were to be alone this evening,” Sybil remarked.
“But we are alone – practically,” Lady Mary declared. “I am sure you wouldn’t count Mr. Montague, and Mr. Pratt is an old friend. – One moment, there’s my mother calling. Don’t move, either of you, or we shall have to sit in that stuffy drawing-room all the evening.”
They were alone, and Jacob found it exceedingly difficult to think of anything to say.
“I had no idea that you were persona grata in this household,” Sybil remarked coldly.
“I’m not – if it means what it sounds as if it did,” Jacob replied. “I am asked here because I am very rich and because the Marquis is interested in money-making schemes. Do you like being a nursery governess?”
“I hate it!”
“Worse than giving dancing lessons?”
“You needn’t rub it in. That was just an unfortunate episode.”
“Unfortunate, you call it?”
“Unfortunate,” she repeated, “for if those two men had been half as clever as I thought they were, they wouldn’t have bungled the matter, and I should have been able to make a real start in life.”
“With my money?”
“Yes, but not given by you. Taken from you!”
“Miss Bultiwell,” Jacob asked wistfully, “are you never going to get rid of this ridiculous prejudice against me?”
“Never!”
“You know – that I admire you more than any one else in the world?”
“I am glad to hear it, if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“It makes me unhappy.”
“Then I’m glad you find me attractive,” she declared. “I only wish I had really beautiful clothes and were far better looking. Then you might suffer more.”
“Some day,” he said, drawing nearer to her, “you will try me too high.”
She laughed scornfully.
“Are you trying to threaten me?”
He came nearer still. His hand rested against the wall, within a few inches of her. Her lips were a little parted, but her eyes flashed.
“What do you mean?” she demanded. “How dare you come so near to me!”
His eyes met hers steadily.
“I am going to propose,” he told her. “I can’t from the other side of the balcony.”
“Propose!” she repeated contemptuously.
“Will you marry me please, Sybil?” he asked.
“Will I – ”
“I think you will some day,” he went on. “It would make things simpler if you’d say ‘yes’ now.”
She was speechless. For the first time Jacob felt that he had scored. Perhaps it was not altogether to his disadvantage that at that moment a footman stepped out on to the balcony with a small package for him. Sybil slipped away and Jacob followed her into the room. Lady Mary looked up from the piano.
“One more song, Miss Bultiwell?” she suggested.
“If you will excuse me,” Sybil replied, “I must go home now.”
“Must you?” Lady Mary murmured, “Mr. Pratt will see you across the Square.”
“Quite unnecessary, thank you,” was the curt rejoinder.
“Besides, we rather want Mr. Pratt,” the Marquis, who had just made his appearance, intervened. “James can step across with Miss Bultiwell.”
Sybil moved quickly towards the door.
“Please don’t let any one stir,” she begged. “It is barely a hundred yards and I much prefer going alone.”
Lady Mary got up from the piano and detained Jacob as he turned to follow the other two men.
“Mr. Pratt,” she asked, “how did you contrive to offend Miss Bultiwell?”
“I refused to put some money into her father’s business,” he explained. “Her father was hopelessly bankrupt and tried to palm off a false balance sheet on me. He afterwards shot himself. It was unfortunate, but I cannot see that I was to blame.”
Lady Mary sighed.
“Of course,” she said, “I feel I am being rather generous in trying to help you, because I am beginning to rather like you myself.”
“There doesn’t seem to be anything against your encouraging the feeling,” Jacob replied, with a rather sad twinkle in his eyes. “I don’t think Sybil will ever have me.”
She made a little grimace.
“I don’t like being a second choice,” she confessed. “Couldn’t you get to like me best?”
“What about the other fellow?”
“He’s coming in with Jack in a few minutes,” she said. “I must ask him about it. I think I shall tell him that my affections are wavering.”
“As soon as the coast is clear,” Jacob began, —
“Humbug!” she interrupted. “Go down and be fleeced.”
The scene was laid when Jacob reached the library. He slipped into the vacant chair and accepted the pen which the Marquis handed to him.
“Leave the cheque open, please,” Mr. Dane Montague begged. “We have to hand the money over in cash to-morrow morning.”
“Certainly,” Jacob assented. “By the bye, will you let me have one more glance at the undertaking to sell?”
“You can read it through as many times as you like,” the other replied, producing it. “It’s as tight a contract as can be drawn. The lawyer’s letter proves that.”
Jacob nodded, and, spreading the document out, tapped it with the end of his penholder.
“There is just one thing omitted which I think should be in,” he said.
“What’s that?” Mr. Montague demanded.
“Well, I think you ought to add ‘Leicester Square’ after the Empress Music Hall,” Jacob pointed out. “Curiously enough, there happens to be another Empress Music Hall in Shoreditch, the proprietor of which spells his name P-e-t-e-r. I looked it up in the telephone directory just now.”
There was a cold and ominous silence. Mr. Montague breathed heavily. The Marquis sighed.
“Most unfortunate!” he murmured.
“Most what?” Jacob asked, turning towards him.
“Most unfortunate,” the Marquis repeated. “You are the first person, Mr. Pratt, to whom this – er – enterprise has been suggested, who has seen through our little financial effort.”
Jacob was somewhat staggered. He looked across at Montague.
“You’re on top again, Pratt,” that gentleman conceded gloomily. “The music hall in question is the Shoreditch ‘Empress.’”
“And do you mean to say,” Jacob demanded incredulously, “that you have induced the people whose names are on that list to part with their money, believing they are going to acquire an interest in the Empress Music Hall in Leicester Square?”
“That’s all right,” Montague assented. “It was dead easy. You see, they were mostly the Marquis’s friends, toffs, without any head for business, and we swore them to absolute secrecy – told them if they breathed a word of it, the whole thing would be spoilt.”
“But you aren’t giving fifty thousand pounds for the Shoreditch Empress?”
The financier laughed scornfully.
“Not likely! That’s where the Marquis and I make a bit. We have another agreement with Peter, who’s a pal and a white man, to buy the place for fifteen thousand. Then we’ve an arrangement – ”
“You needn’t go on,” Jacob interrupted. “I can quite see that there are plenty of ways of working the swindle.”
“Swindle?” his host repeated, with a pained expression. “My dear Mr. Pratt!”
“Why, what else can you call it?” Jacob protested.
The Marquis coughed.
“It is only lately,” he said, “that, with the assistance of Mr. Dane Montague, I have endeavoured to supplement my income in this fashion. I do not understand the harshness of your term, Mr. Pratt, as applied to this transaction. I have little experience of city life, but I have always understood that money was made there, in financial and Stock Exchange circles, by buying from a man something which you knew was worth more money, selling it to another and – er – pocketing the difference. Surely this involves a certain amount of what a purist would call deceit?”
“On the contrary,” Jacob pointed out, “that is a fair bargain, because the two men have different ideas of the value of a thing, and each backs his own opinion.”
“But there are surely many cases,” the Marquis argued, “in which the seller knows and the buyer does not know? Is it incumbent on the seller to impart to the buyer his superior knowledge? I think not. Without a doubt, business in the city is conducted on the general lines of the man knowing the most making the most. I look upon our little transaction as being exactly on parallel lines. We knew that the Shoreditch Music Hall was meant. The people who advanced the money thought that the Leicester Square Music Hall was meant. Therefore, we make the money.”
Jacob rose to his feet. He was feeling a little dazed.
“Your ideas of commercial ethics, Marquis,” he acknowledged, “are excellent in their way, but do you imagine that they will be shared by the members of your family who have parted with their money?”
“I trust, sir,” the Marquis replied stiffly, “that they will behave like sportsmen and see the humour of the transaction.”
“I hope they will!” Jacob murmured fervently, as he took his leave.
“In any case,” the Marquis concluded complacently, “their cheques have been cashed.”
CHAPTER XIX
In the course of his financial peregrinations amongst the highways and byways of the city, Mr. Dane Montague made many acquaintances. It chanced that soon after the exploitation of the Shoreditch Empress Music Hall, a flotation which brought Mr. Montague many admirers from the underworlds of finance, it fell to his lot to give a luncheon party to celebrate the culmination of a subsidiary financial swindle and to plan further activities in the same direction. His guests were Philip Mason, the well-known man about town, and Joe Hartwell, the trans-atlantic young adventurer. After the third bottle of champagne, it transpired that the luncheon party had a further object.
“It’s queer that you should have run across the little beast, too,” Mr. Dane Montague observed. “Got it laid by for him, haven’t you?”
Mason’s good-looking but dissipated face was suddenly ugly.
“If I could wring his neck,” he muttered, “I’d do it to-morrow and thank my stars.”
“He’ll get his some day from this guy,” Joe Hartwell added earnestly. “I’m kind of hanging round for the chance.”
Mr. Montague ordered expensive cigars and the three men’s heads drew a little closer together.
“We ought to be able to put it across him,” the host continued. “We’ve brains enough, and between us we know the ropes. The only thing is that it’s pretty difficult to hurt him financially. I believe it’s a fact that he’s well on towards his second million.”
“There are other ways,” Hartwell remarked, draining his glass with slow, unwholesome deliberation. “If I’d got him in New York I should know what to do. I guess there are back doors in this little village.”
“Here’s one of the clan!” Montague exclaimed, looking up. “Sit down and have a drink with us, Felixstowe.”
Lord Felixstowe, who had paused at the table on his way through the restaurant, surveyed the little party without undue enthusiasm.
“Off it to-day, my children,” he announced. “I’m playing polo at Ranelagh this afternoon. Any one want to back the Crimson Sashes?”
Mr. Montague stretched out his hand and drew the young man a little nearer.
“Look here, Felixstowe,” he confided, “we’re talking about Pratt – Jacob Pratt. You know the little devil.”
“What about him?” his lordship enquired, helping himself to a cigar from the box on the table.
“Philip here, and Hartwell, have got it up against him hard. So have I. We think it’s about time he was taught a lesson. There might be something for you out of it.”
“What’s the scheme?” Felixstowe demanded. “It’ll have to be a devilish clever one to land him.”
“It need not necessarily be financial,” Montague pointed out, twirling his black moustache. “There are other ways of teaching a man a lesson, and these two boys have something of their own to get back, something that money won’t pay for. Men with a six-figure balance at their banker’s have had to face ruin before now.”
“Count me on the other side of the hedge,” Felixstowe declared promptly. “I wouldn’t hurt a hair of Jacob Pratt’s head. One of the best-natured little bounders I ever knew.”
Mason nodded.
“Fade away, Felix,” he enjoined. “You’re not in this show.”
Felixstowe left the restaurant and, crossing the courtyard, seated himself in a disreputable little two-seated car jammed between two dignified limousines, in which, after a fierce and angry toot, he sped out into the Strand. With very scant regard to the amenities of the traffic laws, and stonily deaf to the warning cries of a policeman, he threaded his way in and out of the stream of vehicles, shot across into Duncannon Street, and, with the blasphemous cries of a motor-omnibus driver still in his ears, pulled up before Jacob Pratt’s offices at the lower end of Regent Street. Jacob, who had just returned from luncheon, welcomed him with a nod and indicated the easy-chair, into which the young man sank with the air of one who has earned repose.
“Old top,” he announced, “they’re getting ready to put it across you.”
“Who are?” Jacob asked.
“The great Dane Montague, fresh from his city triumphs, Joe Hartwell, the American shark, and Philip Mason.”
Jacob smiled a little contemptuously.
“I dare say they’d like to do me a bad turn if they could!”
The young man extended his hand for Jacob’s case, took out a cigarette and tapped it upon the desk, lit it, and subsided still farther into the depths of his chair.
“Listen,” he continued, “this is no idle gossip I bring you. Five minutes ago I left the trio at the Milan, discussing over several empty bottles of Pommery and a badly hurt bottle of ’68 brandy no less a subject than your undoing.”
“Any specific method?” Jacob enquired.
“When I declined to join the enterprise, they dried up. All the same they mean mischief,” Felixstowe declared emphatically.
“But why should you think that they can hurt me?”
“Because you are on the straight and they are on the cross,” was the well-considered reply. “If three men of their brains mean mischief, well, they’re worth watching. They know the dirty ways and you don’t. The old game, you know – a feint in the front and a stab in the back. Keep your weather eye open, Jacob. Beware of them, whether they bring gifts or thunderbolts.”
“Anyway, it’s very friendly of you to come and warn me,” Jacob said gratefully.
“Not at all, old bean. I say, when are you going to get me a job?”
“What sort of a job do you want?”
“Your private secretary, couple of thou a year, and one of these cadaverous, ink-smudged chaps to do the work. What-ho!”
“You’re modest!”
“That’s what the governor says. He was on to me about you yesterday. Coming the man-of-the-world stunt, you know. Hand on my shoulder with a fatherly grip. ‘Jack,’ he said solemnly, ‘there’s one golden rule which people in our position must never forget. Make use of your friends.’”
“And relations,” Jacob murmured.
The young man grinned.
“To tell you the truth,” he said, “the old man overshot the bolt a bit there. Done ’em all in the eye for several thou of the best. I fancy he’s going to seek the seclusion of a distant clime for a month or two… But as I was saying, he’s always on to me about you. ‘My boy,’ he said, in his best Lord Chesterfield manner, ‘you have contracted a valuable acquaintance with that very personable and shrewd young financier whom you introduced to us at Ascot. It rests with you to see that that acquaintance is made of profit to the family.’”
“I am afraid,” Jacob observed, “that in that way I have been rather a disappointment.”
“The governor isn’t easily discouraged,” Felixstowe replied, “and the mater’s got something up her sleeve for you. But placing their own interests in the background, as my revered sire pointed out, it is certainly, in his opinion, up to you to find me a job.”
“You can go into the office and file letters, at three pounds a week, whenever you like,” Jacob suggested.
The young man picked himself up in hurt fashion.
“See whether we win our heat this afternoon against the Crimson Sashes,” he said. “I’ve a couple of ponies on, which ought to keep me going till Thursday, if we win. Shall I tool you down to Ranelagh, old chap?”
“What, in the bassinet I saw you in yesterday? There were three policemen running down St. James’s Street after you.”
“I can make her rip,” the young man promised. “Come on.”
“Not I!” Jacob replied, with a shudder. “Besides, you’d expect me to pay the fines.”
“So long, then,” Felixstowe concluded, as he picked up his hat and turned to go. “Keep your weather eye open. If I lose the match, I’ll probably drop in for that post.”
The young man, after a violent series of explosions from his reluctantly started engine, shot into Pall Mall and disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Jacob watched him from the window with a smile upon his lips. When he resumed his seat, however, the smile had vanished. He sat with his head resting upon his left hand, idly sketching upon a corner of the blotting pad. Presently he rang the bell for Dauncey.
“Dick,” he said, “Lord Felixstowe has just brought me a warning.”
“A warning,” Dauncey repeated.
“It appears,” Jacob went on, “that in the course of various insignificant adventures which have occurred to me during the last few months, I have made enemies. Mr. Dane Montague, Philip Mason, and Joe Hartwell are out on the warpath against me.”
“Financially?” Dauncey asked, with an incredulous smile.
Jacob shook his head.
“I think they’ve had enough of that. According to Felixstowe, they’re plotting something a little lower down. Keep an eye on me, Dick, if beautiful woman inveigles, or a ragged messenger from a starving father tries to lure me into the slums.”
Dauncey declined to take the matter lightly.
“You haven’t a thing to do for four days,” he remarked. “Why don’t you go down to Marlingden and see how the new ‘Mrs. Fitzpatricks’ are blooming?”
“It’s an idea, Dick,” Jacob declared. “I’m sick of town, anyway. Telephone Mrs. Harris and say I’m coming, and order the car around in half an hour. You can stay here till closing time and come across and see me after supper.”
The telephone tinkled at Jacob’s elbow. He picked up the receiver and listened for a moment. His own share of the conversation was insignificant.
“Of course you can,” he said. “Certainly, I shall be here… In five minutes?.. Yes!”
He replaced the receiver.
“Lady Mary Felixstowe is calling here, Dauncey,” he announced. “She can be shown in at once.”
Lady Mary, very smart in white muslin and a black hat, followed hard upon her telephone message. She was full of curiosity and without the least embarrassment.
“Don’t tell me that all your money is made in a little office like this!” she exclaimed, as she sank into the easy-chair.
“It isn’t,” he assured her. “It’s all made in America. I simply sit here and try to keep it.”
“Am I being at all unusual in visiting you like this?” she asked.
“I’ve had visits from lady clients before,” he replied. “Let us assume that you have come to consult me about an eight-roomed villa at Cropstone.”
“Cropstone?” she repeated. “That is the sort of garden city place, isn’t it, where one has a doll’s house with fifty feet of garden, a lecture hall with free cookery lectures twice a week, and a strap-hang in a motor-car to the station every morning.”
“One might accept that as a pessimistic impression of the place,” Jacob conceded.
Lady Mary sighed.
“That is where I shall have to live,” she said, “if I marry Maurice.”
Jacob was suddenly thoughtful. He was thinking of a small rose garden at Cropstone and a watering can.
“If you care enough,” he ventured gravely, “the conditions of life don’t seem to matter so much, do they?”
She made a little grimace.
“How is Miss Bultiwell?” she asked, with apparent irrelevance.
“I was going to ask you,” Jacob replied. “I have not seen her since the night I dined at your house.”
“She is still with my aunt, I believe,” Lady Mary continued. “The children adore her.”
“Have you seen her lately?” Jacob asked.
“Last week. Promise you won’t be broken-hearted if I tell you something?”
“I’ll try.”
“I met her in the Park – with whom do you think?”
“No idea.”
“With Maurice. Of course, I didn’t ask any questions, and they might have met accidentally, but I never saw Maurice look such an idiot. I think a man ought to be able to conceal his feelings, don’t you, Mr. Pratt? Should you look an idiot, now, if your fiancée were to discover you with another girl?”
“Such a thing would probably never happen,” Jacob answered. “I am of an extraordinarily faithful disposition.”
She laughed at him across the desk.
“Isn’t that queer! So am I! What a lot we have in common, Mr. Pratt!”
“I am beginning to realise it,” Jacob assented.
“If only I could make you forget Sybil!”
“If only Sybil would allow me to forget her!” Jacob groaned.
“What you need,” she said earnestly, “is to see more of other nice-looking, attractive young women of somewhat similar type.”
“There may be something in that,” he conceded.
“Apropos of which, let me explain my visit. I was told to telephone to you, but I hate a conversation down a tube, don’t you?”
“I certainly prefer your visit.”
“We’ve such a rag on,” Lady Mary continued. “We’re going to have a picnic fortnight up at our place in Scotland. We want to know whether you’ll come. Dad told me to say that there was plenty of fishing and a grouse moor for later on. Sailing, of course.”
“It sounds delightful,” Jacob replied enthusiastically. “Right up in Scotland you say? To tell you the truth, I was just wondering whether I couldn’t drop out of things quietly for a week or so.”
“It will be absolutely the end of us,” she declared, smiling out of her very blue eyes. “Maurice has been a perfect brute to me lately, apart from his flirtation with Miss Bultiwell, and I have almost left off loving him. I know we shall both fall. I’m so affectionate,” she sighed.
Jacob felt suddenly soothed. Lady Mary was looking very attractive and her eyes were full of challenge.
“But tell me,” he asked, “isn’t it very early for you to leave town?”
She nodded.
“To tell you the truth,” she confided, “dad seems to have got into terrible disgrace with all his relatives lately. Something to do with a money scheme, I think, in which they were all interested, and in which he seems to have done better than they did.”
“I quite understand,” Jacob murmured. “I think this temporary isolation is an excellent idea of your father’s. Sort of place, I suppose, where you get a post once a week and no telegrams.”
“You won’t mind?”
“Not I!”
“And you’ll come?”
“Rather! When do you start?”
“Some servants are going up to-day,” she replied, “and I think we shall go with them by the midnight train. Poor dad is being so worried. We’d like you to come to-morrow, or as soon as you can. And there’s just one thing more. Except for your own people here, dad would like you not to mention where you are going. He wants a little peace, poor man.”
“I won’t tell a soul except my secretary,” Jacob promised.
“Not even Jack,” Lady Mary persisted.
“Very well. Not even Lord Felixstowe.”
She rose, and he escorted her to the door.
“It’s going to be such an adventure,” she whispered, with a parting look.
Jacob called Dauncey into the office.
“Stroke of luck, Dick,” the former announced. “I shall be able to do better than Marlingden – drop out of it altogether, in fact. Felixstowe’s people have asked me to go up and stay with them in Scotland for a fortnight.”
“Capital!” Dauncey exclaimed. “You’ll be well out of the way there.”
“I shall leave my address with you and with no one else, Dick. For a fortnight you can consider me wiped off the face of the earth. Watch the investment accounts closely and act on your own initiative if necessary; but, above all things, see that Harris tries the new blight cure on ‘Mrs. Fitzpatrick.’”