“Missing from his home since Friday, Mr. Gordon Selsbury. Tall, fair, fresh complexion, rather good-looking.”
“Missing from his home since Friday, Mr. Gordon Selsbury. Tall, fair, fresh complexion, rather good-looking.”
Gordon licked dry lips. Life was drab and sordid, but nothing in life was quite so vulgar and hateful as the popular press. The only time in his life that he had ever experienced a nightmare, the vision had taken a particularly hideous shape. He dreamt that he had been locked up for smothering a chorus girl, and was ordered by the judge to write his impressions of the murder in a Sunday newspaper.
“You will perhaps think better of this in a fewdays,” he said huskily. “I feel sure that, when you realise what you are doing——”
She sat down at his beautifully tidy writing-table, took up a pen, and snatched from his stationery rack a sheet of notepaper.
“Now tell me what you like for breakfast,” she said. “Smoked haddock ... salmon steak ... fish is good for the brain. Do you mind if I call you Gord?”
Oneday Diana came back from a conscientious tour of the stores and found a thin and middle-aged lady sitting in the drawing-room. She greeted Diana with a deferential smile. She was such a middle-aged lady as might have stepped from the pages of a late Victorian novel, and Diana regarded her steadily, for she wore no hat, had the skimpy beginnings of a purple wool jumper on her knees, and in her hands two knitting needles that seemed to be operating of their own volition all the time she talked.
“Good afternoon! You’re Miss Ford, aren’t you, my dear? I’m Miss Staffle, and I do hope we are going to be good friends!”
“I hope so,” said Diana. “We’ll be better friends when I understand. Are you a guest of ours?”
Click-flash-flicker went the needles. Diana looked in awe. She was the only woman in the world who had never knitted a jumper.
“Well ... yes. Mr. Selsbury thought you would be rather lonely. It doesn’t do for us girls to be too much alone. We brood.”
“I’m brooding at this minute.” Diana was very incisive in business hours. “Do I understand that you have been engaged as a chaperone?”
“Companion,” murmured Miss Staffle.
“That makes it easier,” Diana opened her pocket-book. “Your salary is——?”
Miss Staffle murmured the amount.
“Here is two months’ pay,” said Diana. “I have decided not to engage a companion.”
She rang the bell; the needles became stationary.
“Eleanor,” to the svelte parlourmaid, “Miss Staffle is leaving before tea. Will you see that her boxes are brought down, and tell Trenter to have a nice clean taxi waiting?”
“But, my dear”—Miss Staffle’s voice was slightly acidulated—“Mr. Selsbury engaged me, and I am afraid....”
“Mr. Selsbury doesn’t want a companion,” said Diana. “Now, my angel, are you going to give me trouble, or are you going to be a sweet little cherub and fly?”
Gordon came home prepared to face a stormand ready to present a rocky face either to the waves of her wrath or the drizzle of her tears. He found her trying a new record on a brand-new gramophone, her feet moving lightly to the magical rhythm of “I Ain’t Nobody’s Darling.” He resented the gramophone, but had other matters of greater moment to discuss. There was no sign of the excellent Miss Staffle.
“Anybody been?” he asked carelessly.
She stopped whistling.
“Nobody except an elderly lady who made the curious mistake of thinking I wanted a companion.”
“Where is she?” asked Gordon, his heart sinking.
“I didn’t trouble to take her address,” said Diana. “Why—did you want her?”
“You sent her away?”
Diana nodded.
“Yes; her industry was appalling.” And then, as a thought occurred: “Was the jumper foryou?”
“You sent a—er—um—person I engaged away from my house?” sternly. “Really, Diana! This is a little too much! Let’s have this out, my dear.”
Diana changed the record.
“Tea will be served in ten minutes,” she said. “And Gordon, my dear, your shoes are muddy. Run up and change them.”
Revolt flew red signals on his cheeks.
“I will do nothing of the kind!” he said sharply. “I will not be ordered about in my own house. Diana, you have gone too far! This intolerable situation must end here and now.”
He brought his hand slapping down on the back of the easy chair. He was determined.
“Either you or I leave this house to-night,” he said. “I have had enough! Already the servants are talking. I saw a particularly sinister smile on Trenter’s face when you came down to breakfast in your negligee this morning. I have a position, a reputation, a name in the City of London—I must guard my interests against the thoughtless, selfish folly of reckless adolescence!”
“What a name to call a lady!” she said reproachfully.
“I will not temporise; I will not allow a very serious situation to be turned into a jest. Either you leave Cheynel Gardens or I.”
She thought a moment, then walked out of theroom. Gordon heard her at the telephone in the hall and smiled. A little firmness was all that was required.
“Is that theMorning Telegram? This is Miss Diana Ford speaking. Will you send a reporter to 61 Cheynel Gardens——”
In two seconds he was in the hall and had covered the transmitter with a frantic hand.
“What are you going to do?” he asked frenziedly.
She shrugged a shoulder.
“Life without you is insupportable, Gordon,” she said brokenly. “You are the only relation I have in the world, and if you turn me out what is there left but the river?”
“You’re mad,” he wailed.
“The coroner will take that charitable view, I hope—don’t interrupt me, Gordon. They want to speak to me.”
By sheer force he lifted her away from the instrument and took the receiver in his own hand.
“Don’t bother to send anybody ... she is quite well ... alive. I mean, there’s no suicide ...”
Out of breath, he strode back to The Study.
“Your conduct is abominable! You are shameless! I can well understand why your wretched Dempsi ran away, preferring to die in the bush than be any longer associated with such an infernal little termagant!”
The Selsburys were a courtly people, but there was a limit to their patience. He was savage, cruel, and knew he was behaving unpardonably before the words were out of his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered.
Her face was set, a mask that showed nothing of her thoughts.
“I’m extremely sorry. I shouldn’t have said that—please forgive me.”
Still she did not speak. Her eyes were tragic in their steadfast, unwinking gaze. He stole quietly from the room, and then she spoke her thoughts aloud.
“How absurd not to have the telephone connected with the study! I’ll write to the Post Office this very night.”
A very silent dinner. Gordon was going out and was resplendent in his raiment.
“I am taking a friend to a theatre to-night,” he said.
“I haven’t seen a show for years,” she sighed.
“This would not interest you. It is a Russian play dealing with social unrest.”
She sighed again.
“I love Russian plays. All the characters die so nicely and you know where you are. In a musical comedy you can never be sure who anybody is.”
Gordon shuddered.
“This is not a play for a young girl,” he said gently.
She was unconvinced.
“If you very much wanted me to come, I could dress in five minutes,” she suggested. “I hardly know what I shall do with myself to-night.”
“Think out to-morrow’s breakfast,” he said bitterly.
Alone, she gave her mind alternately to serious thought and the new gramophone. She did think of Dempsi sometimes, and a little uneasily. Not that she had loved that strange progeny of Michael Dempsi and Marie Stezzaganni. Dempsi came into her life as an earthquake intrudes upon the domesticity of a Californian farmer. He shifted the angle of things and had been a great disturbance. She never really remembered Dempsi, except that he was very slight and very wiry and very voluble. She remembered that he had thrown himself at her feet, had threatened to shoot her, had told her he adored her and was ready to forsake his career in the church. Finally, on a hot February morning (she remembered that the roses were thick in the big garden) he had flung his worldly possessions at her feet, taken an intense and tearful farewell, and had dashed madly into the bush, never to return.
In point of fact, the nearest bush country was a hundred miles away, but he had said that he was going to the bush “to end a life already prolonged beyond the limits of human endurance and find forgetfulness in oblivion,” and he had probably kept his word. So far as the “bush” part of the contract was concerned. She did not mourn him. If she wondered at all, it was as to the circumstances in which he would reappear and claim some eight thousand pounds neatly tied in one package that it might be the more effectively and dramatically thrown at her feet, and which in truth missed her feet by a wide margin and struck the station cat, who, being newly maternal, flew at Dempsi and accelerated his wild flight.She did not tell her aunt about the eight thousand; Mrs. Tetherby being, as she had been described, “inert,” had an objection to fuss of any kind. More than this, she possessed one curious weakness—a horror of debt. The knowledge that she was under monetary obligation kept her awake. An overlooked garage account once reduced her to a state of nervous prostration. Other people’s money she would not touch, and, on an occasion when, having paid her shearers, she was requested by the men to keep the money from Saturday to Monday, she paced the verandah for two nights, a shot gun under her arm.
It was largely due to this weakness that all money affairs were in Diana’s hands from the age of fifteen. Diana put the eight thousand to her own account and spent an interesting three months planning and drawing expensive memorials to the departed Dempsi. In the back pages of a dictionary, under the heading “Foreign words and phrases,” she discovered an appropriate epitaph.
SATIS ELOQUENTIÆ SAPIENTIÆ PARUM
SATIS ELOQUENTIÆ SAPIENTIÆ PARUM
SATIS ELOQUENTIÆ SAPIENTIÆ PARUM
“He had great eloquence but little sense.”
As the years passed, and her uneasiness increased, she made half-hearted attempts to discover his relatives, though she knew that he was without so much as a known cousin. And then, gradually, Dempsi had receded into the background. She was beloved of a romantic squatter. This affair ended abruptly when the romantic squatter’s unromantic wife arrived in a high-powered car and bore him off to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Diana gave exactly five minutes of her thoughts to Dempsi. For the remainder of the evening she practised a new waltz step which had surprisingly found its way into jazz.
“What I can’t understand,” said Trenter, “is why the boss allows this sort of thing to go on. It’s downright improper, a young woman living in a bachelor’s house. It reminds me of a case old Superbus once told me about—he’s a court bailiff and naturally he sees the seamy side of life——”
“I wouldn’t have a bailiff for a friend if you paid me a million,” said Eleanor, who had been brought up in an atmosphere of financial embarrassment. “I’d sooner have a burglar. Don’t you worry about our young Di, Arthur. She’s all there! Personally speaking, I’m glad she’s arrived. What about me—haven’t I any morals?Hasn’t me and cook—cook and I, that is to say—lived in the same house with a bachelor for a year?”
“You’re different,” said Trenter.
“Guess again,” said Eleanor.
“The house hasn’t been what it was.” A touch of sadness in Trenter’s voice had its origin in obscure sources.
Methodical as Gordon was, he never counted his cigars. Diana, on the other hand, had an eye for quantity. It was she who asked delicately whether he thought there were mice in the house, and, if so, did he think that they preferred Coronas to cheese.
“There’s a big change coming—a terrific change. I feel it in my bones,” he said. “And I know! I’ve always had second sight even as a boy.”
“You should wear glasses,” said Eleanor.
Onan afternoon in late summer Heloise van Oynne looked across the darkening river, seemed for a moment absorbed in the gay lighting of one of the moored house-boats, and then:
“Tell me some more about Diana, please. She must be fas-cinating!” she pleaded.
Her companion shifted a little uncomfortably. He had already said more about Diana than he wished or intended saying.
“Well ... you know all about Diana. I hope you will meet her ... some day.”
There was just that little pause before the last word that meant so much to a woman with an acute sense of tone, and Heloise was supersensitive because it was her business to be. To-day she seemed unusually ethereal.
She was pretty, slim (Diana would have called her “skinny”), spirituelle. In the deep, dark eyes was mystery ... elusiveness; something that occasionally made his flesh creep pleasantly.
Gordon Selsbury was not in love. He wasnot the easily loving kind. It pleased him to know that he had a mystery of his own—he had once been described as “sphinx-like.”
If Diana had been older and were not his cousin, and had not in her masterful way installed herself in his house, defiant of the conventions, and were not so infernally sarcastic and self-sufficient—well, he might feel nicer toward her.
Talking of Diana....
He looked at the watch on his wrist. He had told her he would be in for dinner. Heloise saw the movement and smiled inwardly.
“Was it serious, that affair of hers?” she asked gently.
Gordon coughed. Heloise never met him but she talked of Diana’s affair. It was a curious piece of femininity that he did not expect to find in a woman. Not his kind of woman.
He was relieved of the necessity for answering.
“Who is that man, Gordon?”
The skiff had passed twice under the hotel terrace where they sat at tea that afternoon, and twice the big, red-faced man had peered up at the two people.
“I don’t know. Shouldn’t we be going?”
She made no attempt to rise.
“When do I see you again, Gordon? Life is so blank and miserable without you. Does Diana monopolise you so entirely? People wouldn’t understand, would they? I don’t love you and you do not love me. If you thought I loved you, you would never see me again.” She laughed quietly. “It is just your soul and mind”—her voice was very low—“just the clear channel of understanding that makes our minds as one. Love doesn’t bring that, or marriage.”
“It is rather wonderful.” He nodded many times. “Extraordinary—people would never understand.”
She thought they wouldn’t.
“I’m just aching for The Day to come,” she said, staring across the river. “I don’t think it ever will come: not The Day of my dreams.”
Gordon Selsbury had this premonition too; had been waiting all afternoon to translate his doubt into words.
“I’ve been thinking the matter over, Heloise—that trip to Ostend. Of course, it would be lovely seeing one another every day and all day, and living, if not under the same roof, at least in the same environment. The uninterrupted contact of mind—that is beautifully appealing.But do you think it wise? I am speaking, of course, from your point of view. Scandal doesn’t touch a man grossly.”
She turned her glorious eyes to his.
“‘They say: what say they? Let them say,’”she quoted contemptuously.
He shook his head.
“Your name is very precious to me,” he said, not without a hint of emotion, “very precious, Heloise. I feel that, although the Ostend season is past and most of the hotels are closed and visitors have dispersed, as I understand they do disperse from fashionable seaside resorts, there is a possibility, a bare possibility, that we should see somebody there who knew me—us, I mean—and who would put the worst possible construction upon what—er—would be the most innocent intellectual recreation. It is extremely dangerous.”
She was laughing hardly as she rose.
“I see,” she said. “You are really conventional underneath, Gordon. It was a mad idea—don’t let us talk any more about it. It hurts me a little.”
In silence he paid the bill, in silence followed her into his car. He was hurt too. Nobody hadever called him conventional. Half way across Richmond Park he said:
“We will go: let us say no more. I will meet you as we arranged.”
The only answer she made was to squeeze his arm until they were flying down Roehampton Lane, and then, dreamily:
“There is something Infinite in friendship like ours, Man. It is all too wonderful....”
Diana was reading a magazine in The Study when Gordon came in. She threw down the magazine and jumped up from the chair (she sat at his desk when she read, with the exasperating result that the writing surface, which he left neat and ordered on his going out, was generally in a state of chaos on his coming in).
“Dinner,” she said tersely. “You’re late, Gord, devilishly late.”
Mr. Selsbury’s expression was pained.
“I wish you would not call me ‘Gord,’ Diana,” he complained gently. “It sounds—well, blasphemous.”
“But oh, it fits,” she said, shaking her head. “You don’t know how it fits!”
Gordon shrugged his shoulders.
“At any rate, ‘devilish’ is not ladylike.”
“Where have you been?” she asked with that disconcerting brusqueness of hers.
“I have been detained——”
“Not at your office,” said Diana promptly, as she sat down at the table and pointed an accusing finger. “You haven’t been back since luncheon.”
Mr. Selsbury cast a resigned look at the ceiling.
“I have been detained on a purely private business matter,” he said stiffly.
“Dear, dear!” said Diana, unimpressed.
Nothing really impressed Diana. She had, she boasted, passed the impressionable age.
Gordon had come to admit to himself that she was pretty; in a way she was beautiful. She had blue eyes, willow pattern blue, and a skin like satin. He admitted that her figure was rather lovely. If she had been older or younger, if her hair had not been bobbed—if she had a little more respect for wisdom, an appreciation of thought, a little something of hero-worship!
He strolled gloomily to the window and stared blankly into the dusk. Diana was an insoluble problem.
Trenter came in at that moment.
“Trenter.”
“Yes, sir.” The butler crossed to his employer.
“Do you see that man on the other side of the road—that red-faced man?”
It was the stranger of the skiff. Gordon recognised him at once.
“I’ve seen him before to-day ... rather a coincidence.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Trenter. “That’s Mr. Julius Superbus.”
Gordon gaped at him.
“Julius Superbus—what the devil do you mean?”
“Language!” murmured a voice in the background. How like Diana.
“What on earth do you mean? That is a Roman name.”
Trenter smirked.
“Yes, sir. Mr. Superbus is a Roman, the last Roman left in England. He comes from Cæsar Magnus—it’s a little village near Cambridge. I used to be in service there, that’s how I come to know him.”
Gordon frowned heavily. By what strange chance had he come to see this oddly named creature twice in one day—at Hampton, rowing a boat with some labour; in Cheynel Gardens, apparently absorbed in the study of a near-by lamp-post?
“What is he—by profession?”
“A detective, sir,” said Trenter.
Gordon went suddenly pale.
Sometimes, mostly all the time, Gordon forgot that before the name of Heloise van Oynne was that magical prefix “Mrs.” Too nice-minded to discover, even by an indirect method, the extent of her indiscretion, Gordon had conceived in his mind a marriage between two persons diametrically unsuited one to the other. He fashioned Mr. van Oynne in the image of a gross, unimaginative business man, without soul, and saw dimly a struggle between opposing ideals; sullen fury or blank indifference on the man’s part, and, in the case of Heloise, a refined suffering and an infinite restlessness in her, until there came into her life the other half of her intellectual being. Which was Gordon.
He looked out of the window again.
Mr. Julius Superbus was deliberately charging a black pipe from a sealskin tobacco pouch. He seemed the kind of man who would stoop to the meanest methods to gain his ends. And a prurient brute who would think nothing of writingreports highly disparaging to a slim, aesthetic girl. A detective! In desperation he turned to Diana.
“Diana, do you mind if I have The Study for a little while? I want to see a man.”
She waved a cheery farewell as she disappeared through the door at the far end of the room.
“Bring him in.”
“Bring him in, sir?” Trenter was intrigued.
Gordon repeated the order.
“He’s not a gentleman, sir,” warned Trenter, desiring exculpation in advance.
This was in case Mr. Superbus was even less of a gentleman than he thought him to be. Gordon has never any illusions on the subject. He said as much tersely, and Trenter went forth in a spirit of joyful anticipation, knowing that the nature of this interview would be repeated to him when next he met his friend.
A wait, and then:
“Mr. Superbus, sir,” said Trenter correctly. He bowed the visitor into the study, and withdrew.
There was nothing in the appearance of Mr. Superbus that was suggestive of Roman culture at its zenith. He was very short, and waddledrather than walked. He was fat so that, if he were standing on two square feet of his own property, his waistcoat might have been arrested for trespass on neighbouring land. His face was very red and broad; he had a stubbly black moustache, which was obviously dyed; on his otherwise bald head, twenty-seven hairs were parted, thirteen on one side and fourteen on the other. He had often counted them.
He stood, breathing audibly and twisting his hat in his blue hands.
“Sit down, Mr. Superbus,” said Gordon awkwardly. “Trenter was telling me that you are—in fact, you have the distinction of being a Roman?”
Mr. Superbus bent forward before he sat, as though to assure himself that his feet were all present and correct.
“Yes, sir,” he said, in a rich, deep voice. “I believe I am. Us Superbusses”—he gave the word a pronunciation which suggested that he had been named after a public vehicle of unusual size—“have come down for generations. There’s only four of us now—there’s me, my brother Augustus, who’s married to a young woman in Coventry; there’s Agrippa, who’s doing very wellwith her third husband—this one doesn’t drink, I’m happy to say—and there’s Scipius: he’s on the stage.”
“Really!” said Gordon, dazzled for the moment.
“Yes, he’s on the stage,” said Mr. Superbus with great satisfaction, “and doing very well. They say he’s the best carpenter they’ve ever had at the Gaiety. Yes, we’re an ancient family. I’ve never got the rights of it, but an old gentleman who lives at Cambridge told me that, if everybody had his due, I ought to be a member of the Roman Royal Family, being the eldest.”
Near Cæsar Magnus is the University of Cambridge, and there have been soured antiquarians who have suggested that the illustrious family of Superbus owed its origin to the freakish whim of certain freshmen whose gowns rustled in Petty Cury a hundred years ago. That these same students, in their humour, had adopted the family of an indigent carter, one Sooper, and had christened the family afresh. Mr. Superbus had heard these rumours and had treated them with contempt.
“How we came to start I don’t know,” he said, on his favourite topic; “but you know what women are when Romans are about!”
Gordon did not even trouble to guess.
“Now, Mr. Superbus, you have—er—a very important position. You’re a detective, I understand?”
Mr. Superbus nodded soberly.
“It must be an interesting life, watching people,” he suggested, “going into court and li—testifying to their various misdoings?”
“I never go into court,” said Mr. Superbus. And here, apparently, he had a grievance. “My work, so to speak, is commercial. Not that I shan’t go into court if a certain coop comes off.”
“Coop?” Gordon was puzzled.
“Coop,” repeated Mr. Superbus emphatically.
“What do you mean—coop? Are you looking for people who steal chickens?” asked Gordon, at sea.
“By ‘coop’ I mean—well, you know what I mean, sir. Suppose I bring off a big bit of business—”
“Oh, coup!” said Gordon, enlightened. “I see. You have a coup?”
“I always called it coop myself,” said Mr. Superbus graciously, and leaving Gordon with the impression that he was being humoured. “Yes, I’ve got a coop up my sleeve.” He lowered hisvoice and stretched himself to as near Gordon as his body could reach. “I’m after Double Dan,” he whispered hoarsely.
A heavy burden rolled from Gordon’s heart. So the “Mrs.” had nothing to do with the matter at all! Nor the gross husband, who thought more of his dogs and his horses than of the flaming intellect of his beautiful wife. (Gordon was thorough: the gross husband must have his pets.)
“I seem to remember the name,” he said slowly. “Double Dan? Isn’t that the man who impersonates people?”
“You’ve got it, sir,” said Mr. Superbus. “He don’t impersonate them, heisthem! Take Mr. Mendlesohn——”
Now Gordon remembered.
“You’d never think anybody could impersonate him, though, with his white whiskers and him not being married, it wasn’t so hard. He got away with eight thousand pounds, did Dan. Got Mr. Mendlesohn out of the way, walked into his private office and sent a new clerk out with a cheque. That’s why Mr. Mendlesohn’s gone into the country. He daren’t hold up his head.”
“Oh, I see,” said Gordon slowly. “You’re acting on behalf of——?”
“The Brokers’ Association—he goes after brokers.”
Gordon seldom laughed, but he was laughing softly now.
“And you have been following me round to protect me, eh?”
“Not exactly that, sir,” said Mr. Superbus with professional reserve. “What I was trying to do was to get to know you, so that I’d make no mistake if Dan tried to ‘double’ you.”
“Have a cigar?” said Gordon.
Mr. Superbus said he didn’t mind if he did; that he would take it home, and smoke it in the seclusion of his own house.
“My good lady likes the smell of a cigar,” he said. “It keeps away the moths. I’ve been married now for three and twenty years, and there isn’t a better woman on the face of the earth than my good lady.”
“A Roman?” asked Gordon.
“No, sir,” replied Mr. Superbus gravely. “Devonshire.”
Diana, coming into the room half an hour later, saw Gordon standing with his back to the fireplace, his hands clasped behind him, his head slightly bent, a picture of practical thought.
“Who was that funny little man I saw go out of the house?” she asked.
“He is a man named Superbus,” said Gordon, roused from his reverie with a start, “who has been making certain enquiries. He’s been trying to trace somebody who has robbed a man of eight thousand pounds.”
“Oh!” said Diana, and sat down quickly. The ghost of the late Mr. Dempsi was very active at that moment.
Dianaliked Bobbie Selsbury the moment she saw him. He was a smaller edition of his brother, a brusque, cynical young man, with a passion for revue and the more clingy variations of modern dancing. Also he was engaged to a girl in Canada, and had no intense interest in any other woman. She liked him most because he was entirely without that brand of soul which wriggled so frequently under the scalpel of his brother.
He came to dinner twice, and on the second occasion Gordon thought his relative was on sufficiently good terms with his unwanted guest, to discuss openly the impropriety of her continued stay.
“Bobbie is what is known as a man of the world,” said Gordon. When Gordon introduced the virtues of his friends, he did so in the manner of a chairman at a public meeting bringing an unknown speaker to the notice of an audience. “He has a keener concept of relative social valuesthan either I, who am a little old-fashioned, or you, my child, who have led a cloistered life. I think we can safely leave the issue in Bobbie’s hands. Now, Bobbie, I’m going to put the matter to you without prejudice. Is it right that Diana should be staying in the same house as I, without a chaperone?”
“I don’t see why she should want a chaperone with a dry old stick like you,” said Bobbie instantly. “Besides, you’re cousins. She has certainly made Cheynel Gardens a place worth visiting, which it never was before.”
“But the world—” protested Gordon.
“The other day you were telling me how superior you were to the world and its opinions,” said the traitor Bobbie. “You told me that the views of the hoi polloi passed you by without making the least impression. You said that a man should rise superior to the test of public approval. You said——”
“What I said,” snapped Gordon testily, “had a general application to certain schools of philosophical thought. It did not apply, and never will apply, to questions of behaviour and propriety.”
“Diana is here, and you’re a lucky devil to havesomebody to darn your socks. Does he pay you anything, Diana?”
She shook her head.
“I am living on my little capital,” she said plaintively, and Gordon felt a brute, but it was not until the next morning that he raised the subject again.
“I’m afraid I’ve been rather thoughtless, Diana,” he said. “Will you please buy anything you want and give me a note of any money you require?”
She leant back in her chair, laughing softly.
“You dear goop!” she said. “Of course I don’t want money! I am rolling in riches.”
“Then why did you tell Bobbie——”
“I like sympathy,” she said calmly. “And nobody gives me sympathy except Eleanor. She’s rather a pretty girl, isn’t she?”
“I haven’t noticed,” said Gordon.
“I knew you hadn’t,” she said, “when I discovered that you’d never kissed her.”
Gordon’s mouth was occupied with bacon at the moment, but he stood up and made an unearthly noise of protest.
“No, I don’t ask servants such questions,” said Diana primly, “but a woman has instincts, andthere’s always a way of finding these things out. Gordon, you are exonerated,” she added with a generous gesture.
“Your philosophy of life is amazing,” he said, after he had recovered some of his calm. “Whatever made you think I should kiss her?”
“Because she’s pretty,” said Diana. “All men want to kiss pretty girls if they’re normal. Lots of people have wanted to kiss me.”
Gordon raised his eyebrows without looking up. He was not revolted; he was simply resigned.
“You haven’t asked me whether I let them,” she said after waiting.
“I’m not interested,” said Gordon coldly.
“Not a teeny weeny bit?”
Anxiety was in her voice, but he was not deceived. He had learnt by hard experience that when Diana was most wistful, she was usually gurgling with internal laughter. A terrible girl.
“I’ve only had two affairs,” she went on, regardless of his distaste. “There was Dempsi and there was Dingo.”
“Who was Dingo?” he was trapped into asking.
“His name wasn’t really Dingo, it was Mr.Theophilus Shawn. He was a married man with five children.”
“Good God!” Gordon dropped his knife and fork on the plate helplessly.
“He never kissed me,” she said. “His wife came and took him away just as I was getting to like the smell of cloves—he used to eat cloves. He said it made his hair grow. Whenever he ran short of cloves he got into his car and drove to the hotel to get some. He’d go a dozen times a day. He was staying with Auntie; she met him at a lecture on sunspots, but she didn’t know anything about his wife until she came for him. She was an awfully nice woman, and thanked me for looking after her husband. She said she hadn’t seen him sober before—she was awfully interested in him. I think wives should get to know their husbands before they’re married, don’t you?”
Mr. Selsbury sighed.
“I think you’re talking a lot of abject nonsense,” he said, “and I wish to heaven you’d get to know your husband!”
She smiled, but did not reply. She felt that he had been shocked enough for one day.
He was making as if to get up from the breakfast table when she remembered a question she wanted to ask him.
“Gordon, that man who came yesterday, the man with the Hebrew name——”
“Roman. You mean Superbus?”
She nodded.
“Whom did he want?” she asked, playing with her serviette ring.
“He was looking for a robber, a man named”—he cast up his eyes, trying to recall the title—“Double Dan, a swindler.”
“Is that so?” drawled Diana, her eyes on the tablecloth. “Are you going, Gordon? What time will you be home?”
“When my business permits me to return,” he said in his stateliest fashion. “Do you realise, Diana, that nobody has ever asked me that question in my life?”
“Why, I ask you every day,” she said in wonder.
“I mean, nobody except you. My comings and goings have never been questioned, and for the life of me I don’t see why they should be questioned now.”
“I’m not questioning you, I’m merely askingyou,” said Diana, aggrieved. “I only want to know because of dinner.”
“I may not be home to dinner,” said Gordon shortly, and went forth to an actuarial orgy, for business had improved at an enormous rate recently, and he was engaged in organising a new form of insurance.
He had at least the will power to put out of his head a problem which rippled the smooth current of his thoughts. Only in the luncheon hour did he return to grapple with the projected soul tour. He wished that Heloise had chosen some other venue than Ostend. Ostend in itself was improper, and associated in all respectable minds with licence and luxury. He felt that he might have been a little more firm about Diana staying on at Cheynel Gardens if he himself had not outraged, or contemplated the outrage of convention.... Convention was an ugly word, a bourgeois word.... What he really meant was ... he thought in vain for a synonym. The Ostend idea was a mad idea, and he wondered who had thought of it. At the same time, there was no reason why he should be recognised if he kept away from the quay, where the incoming Continental boats pull in; and, if necessary, he couldalter his appearance slightly ... he went hot and cold at the thought. There was something furtive and underhand about the very notion. Diana had made mock of those little smears of sidewhiskers, and he never went to the barber but that individual made some reference to the appendages. He had seriously considered their removal. Especially since Heloise had wondered why he wore them. She thought they made him look rather older than he was. It would be in the nature of a subtle compliment to her if he appeared on The Day clean-shaven. As to the other matter, one did not go to Ostend in a morning coat and top hat. He might wear his sports suit or—but he had a tailor with views, and to this merchant of habit he appealed on his way home. The tailor listened alertly.
“If you are going abroad, I should advise a couple of tweed suits. Grey checks are being worn by everybody—a check with a little red in it. No, sir, oh dear, no! Lord Furnisham had a suit of that character only last month, and he, as you know, is a man of taste and refinement.Andone of the leading men at the Convocation of Laymen—a dear friend of the Archbishop’s.”
Gordon saw the patterns, was panic-stricken bytheir joviality. And yet.... Who would recognise Gordon Selsbury in a fashionable grey check with a little red in it?
“Rather noisy, don’t you think?” he wavered.
The tailor smiled tolerantly at a bolt of blue serge.
“My clients do not think so,” he said. He was so great a tailor that he had clients.
“Very well.”
Gordon gave the order. He told himself that he was not committed to the trip. But if he did go, he possessed an outfit. That was a comfort.
Heloise was staying at the Majestic (if it was still open). Gordon would arrange for rooms at the Splendid—with the same contingency. They were to meet after breakfast every morning and lunch together at a little café on Place des Armes. On one day they would go to Bruges together and see the pictures. A tour of the Littoral was a possibility. Between whiles there were books to be discussed, the lectures of a brand-new exponent of a brand-new philosophy to be attended. He held what may be described as an ethical clinic at Mariakirk and was the original excuse for the trip. A party of Thinkers was projected to sit at the feet of De Waal (that was his name) andlearn laboriously the difference between right and wrong, right being what had hitherto appeared to be wrong, and wrong being proved, by the new school of thought and its principal exegete, to be so absurdly right that the wonder was that nobody had seen it all along. The party had fallen through. The new Master had been discredited by a newer, a German who demonstrated that there was neither right nor wrong in any kind of question whatsoever.
Gordon’s dilemma was born of this projected Pilgrimage of Reason, and one aspect of the holiday worried him: the possibility of something happening which would make it imperative that he should be communicated with.
In reality this was the strongest argument against the trip. Only by taking somebody into his confidence could such an adventure be undertaken. Diana was, of course, impossible. Gordon pinched his lip and rehearsed the terms in which he would convey to his agent the exact character of his journey. His attempt to put into words so remarkable and so unbelievable a project left him with a cold sense of dismay. Of all the people he thought likely he started with Bobbie; he also ended with Bobbie.
Robert G. Selsbury had an office on Mark Lane, where, from ten o’clock in the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon, he bought and sold tea, coffee and sugar to his own considerable profit. Gordon had only been to the office once. He thought it was rather stuffy and rather redolent of the two principal commodities in which Bobbie dealt. His own office in Queen Victoria Street was both rich and chaste and odourless, except for the faint fragrance of lavender—Gordon was strong for germicides, and that mostly employed to destroy the ravaging microbe had that suggestion of the lavender fields. Bobbie never came to see his brother without the sense that he ought to be wearing a boudoir cap and bedroom slippers.
The principal stockholder of R. G. Selsbury Ltd. was examining a sample of china tea when his brother was announced.
“Mr. Gordon?” asked Bobbie incredulously, and when the girl confirmed the tidings: “Push him in,” he said, and Gordon, who would have resented even the gentlest of pushes, entered unaided.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bobbie.
Gordon seated himself very carefully, put downhis glossy silk hat on the table and slowly stripped his gloves.
“Robert, I’m rather in a tangle and I want you to help me out.”
“It can’t be money—it must be love. Who is she?”
“It is neither money nor love,” retorted Gordon with some asperity. “It is ... well, a delicate matter.”
Bobbie whistled, and a whistle can be very offensive.
“I’m going to tell you the facts.” Gordon had to struggle with himself; he was on the point of inventing an excuse for calling and making a hasty retreat.
“Is it about Diana?”
“No, itisn’tabout Diana,” snapped the elder. “Diana has nothing whatever to do with it. It is like this—old man....”
The “old man” sobered Bobbie. It showed that his brother was not his normal self. So he listened without interruption to the lamest story he had ever heard; to the most transparent invention that had yet been displayed for the scorn of sceptic.
“Who is Mrs. van Oynne?” he asked at last.
“She’s ... well, I don’t want to discuss her. I met her at a conversazione of the Theosophical Society. She’s rather ... wonderful.”
“I should say so,” said Bobbie drily. “Of course you won’t go?”
It needed but this piece of assurance to decide Gordon.
“Of course Ishallgo,” he said firmly. “I need the change; I need the intellectual recreation.”
“But why go to Ostend to discuss souls? What’s the matter with Battersea Park?” insisted Bobbie. “It’s the most lunatic idea I have heard! And of course, if you’re spotted in Ostend your name for henceforth and everlasting will be Waste Product Esquire. I suppose you’re telling the truth. From any other man I wouldn’t think twice about it; I’d know that it was a clumsy lie. Have you thought of Diana?”
A staggering question: Gordon was taken aback.
“I don’t see how this affects Diana. What the dickens has she got to do with it?”
“She’s an inmate of your house,” said Bobbie, in a serious mood. “Any reflection upon your good name is a reflection upon hers.”
“She can leave—I wish to heaven she wouldleave!” retorted Gordon viciously. “You don’t imagine that I intend allowing the possibility of Diana knowing to stand in my way? She is an interloper—in a way I despise her. She’s hateful to me sometimes. Are you going to help me or aren’t you?”
He flung the ultimatum across the table. Bobbie elected for peace.
“I don’t suppose I shall have to wire to you much,” he said. “Nothing is likely to turn up in your absence. What are you going to tell Diana?”
Mr. Selsbury closed his eyes wearily.
“Does it matter what I tell Diana?”
A brave question. In his heart he knew that a story must be invented, and a very plausible story.
“I’m not a particularly nimble liar,” he said. “Think out something for me.”
Bobbie sniffed.
“I am on my knees to you for the compliment,” he said, but irony was wasted on Gordon. “Why not tell her you are going north for the shooting?”
“I dislike subterfuge,” Gordon deprecated with a wry face. “Why should I tell her anything? When does shooting start?”
“It has started. Go to Scotland: it is remote. You’re not likely to meet anybody you know because you won’t be there.”
Gordon thought the flippancy in bad taste.
“It is repugnant to me—this necessity for invention,” he said. “Why must I give an account of my comings and goings? It is preposterous! I had better make my objective Aberdeen, I suppose?”
Diana! Of all the absurd arguments that had been raised against the Ostend trip, this was the most futile. The very mention of her name was a spur. By the time he had reached Cheynel Gardens the trip was definitely and irrevocably settled.
He found a cable waiting for him at home. It was from his New York agent, advising him that Mr. Tilmet would call upon him on the Friday, and he realised with a shock that the to be, or not to be, of Ostend had put out of his mind an important business deal. His agent had purchased on his behalf the business of Tilmet and Voight, a none too prosperous firm of marine insurance brokers, operating in one of those queerly ancient offices on the Water Front. Mr. Tilmet had expressed a desire to be paid the money, fifty thousand dollars, in London, which he would visiten routeto the Continent. The documents had arrived by an earlier mail, and Gordon had been advised that, the hour of Mr. Tilmet’s arrival being uncertain, and his immediate departure for the more attractive countries of Europe being very likely, Mr. Tilmet would call at Cheynel Gardens to settle the deal. He glanced at theTimesshipping list, noted that theMauretaniahad been signalled five hundred miles west of the Lizard at twelve o’clock on the previous day, and made a mental calculation. He must have the money in the house to-morrow, though he objected emphatically to doing business except at his office. Still, the circumstances were unusual and the bargain excellent. He was not prepared to develop a grievance.
Making a note on his memorandum pad, and a second note on the cover of his cheque-book, he went up to dress. He was dining with Heloise, and was carrying to her the news that he had made a decision in the matter which she had thought, and which she had had every right to think, had been settled beyond doubt.
Coming down, he saw Diana on the stairs below. She also was in evening dress, a wonderfulcreamy white. There were two ropes of pearls about her neck; she wore no other jewellery. He followed her into The Study, and, as she turned, stared. It was a transfigured Diana, something ethereal, unearthly in her loveliness.
“Why, Diana, you look awfully pretty,” he said.
The generosity of his race compelled the statement.
“Thank you,” she said indifferently. “I always look well in this colour. You are dining out too, I see? Where are you going?”
He hesitated.
“I’m dining at the Ritz,” he said. “And you?”
“I’m going to the Embassy. Mr. Collings is over here on business; he called this afternoon. He’s my lawyer and a darling.”
Gordon murmured something agreeable. Diana, at any rate, was off his conscience for the night. And she certainly was lovely.
Receptive to his unspoken admiration, she purred a little to herself, then, to his wrath, undid the excellent impression that she had made by unlocking a drawer in his sacred table.
“I say, who gave you the key of that?” he asked indignantly.
“I found one that fitted,” she said, without embarrassment. “The drawer was empty except for a few queer German books, so I threw them out and had the lock changed. I must have some place to keep my things.”
He choked down his rising ire.
“What things have you got?” he asked.
“My jewel case.”
“That ought to be in the safe.”
“What is the combination?” she asked.
“Telma,” he said, before he knew what he was saying. And not another soul in the world knew that secret!
Before his exasperation could find adequate expression, she had taken from the drawer and laid on the desk a small black object, at the sight of which Gordon recoiled.
“You really ought not to keep firearms in the house, Diana,” he said nervously. “If you go fooling with a thing like that, you might do yourself an enormous amount of harm—in fact, kill yourself.”
“Fiddlesticks!” said Diana. “I know that gun inside out. I could hit that keyhole three times in the five”—she pointed to the door.
“Well, don’t,” said he loudly. “Is it loaded?”
“Naturally it’s loaded,” she replied, handling the weapon tenderly. “There’s nothing in the breach, but the magazine is full. Shall I show you how it works?”
“No, put the beastly thing away.”
Diana obeyed, locked the drawer and put the key in her handbag.
“Telma—I must remember that,” she mused.
“I’d like you to forget it. I really never intended telling you or anybody else the combination of my safe. It isn’t right that you should know. You might inadvertently——”
“I never do things inadvertently,” said Diana. “I do them maliciously, or sinfully, but I do them deliberately. You can drop me at the Embassy,” she said, as Eleanor helped her on with her cloak. “You’re so near to the Ritz that you could fall into the front porch. Unless you’re going to pick up somebody?” She looked round at him suspiciously.
As a matter of fact, Gordon did intend picking up somebody, and his immediate objective was Buckingham Gate, where, in consequence of his change of plans, he arrived five minutes late. The restraint which Mrs. van Oynne showed was heroic. He was apologetic; under the influenceof the bright restaurant and soft music, explanatory.
“Diana again!” she said petulantly. “I almost think I dislike that Jane.”
“Diana, you mean?”
“I meant Diana,” said Heloise hurriedly. “Gordon, you don’t know how I’m looking forward to Saturday.”
“It occurred to me,” said he, “that Saturday is rather a busy day, and the trains will be full with people going away for the week-end.”
She drew a long sigh.
“We need not be travelling together,” she said with resignation. “My, how scared you are!”
“I’m not scared,” protested the injured Gordon. “I’m scared for you—yes. That is the only thought I have. By the way, I told Robert.”
“That’s your brother? What did he say?”
She was curious.
“Well”—Gordon hesitated—“Robert is a man of affairs, with little or no imagination, and at first he thought ...” he shrugged his shoulders—“well, you know what a certain type of mind would think, my dear Heloise.”
“Couldn’t we go on Friday?”
“That’s impossible. I’ve got a man coming to see me on Friday.”
He explained at length Mr. Tilmet’s business, and the method he would follow to discharge the debt.
Throughout the meal she observed that he was a littledistrait, and explained his long silences by his dormant uneasiness about the forthcoming trip. In this surmise she was wrong. Gordon was thinking of Diana, and wondering how it was that he had never observed those factors of colouring and feature which had been so emphatic that night. In a way he had begun to tolerate Diana, and to find a grim amusement in his own discomfiture. She had proved a wonderful manager, had reduced expenses perceptibly; though her record of excellence as a housekeeper had been somewhat spoiled by an incident which came to Gordon in a roundabout way. She had entered the kitchen just after the butcher had left. One glance at the joint had been sufficient, and, as the butcher boy was gathering up his reins to drive off, a small shoulder of mutton came hurtling through the kitchen window. The elevation was excellent, the direction slightlyfaulty; the shoulder of mutton caught the butcher on the side of the head and almost knocked him off his perch. Then Diana appeared in the doorway.
“Cold storage,” she said laconically. “Bring home-killed meat, or never darken our doors again!”
The driver went off in a condition bordering upon hysteria. Thereafter, the meat supply showed a marked improvement.
At first Gordon had been serious when this matter was reported to him respectfully and inoffensively by Trenter, who drew a small commission on all tradesmen’s bills and took a charitable view of their shortcomings. But now, sitting vis-à-vis his pretty companion, the matter occurred to him in a fresh light.
“Why are you smiling?” asked Heloise.
“Was I?” he said apologetically. “I hadn’t the slightest idea. I was thinking of something—er—something that happened in my office.”
Not in his wildest mood had he ever dreamt that he would lie about Diana.
Mr. Collings, that eminent lawyer, had many friends in London, including important personages at Australia House. Diana went into theEmbassy expecting a tête-à-tête meal, and found herself greeted by stately and elderly men and their stately and middle-aged wives. She was introduced to an Under Secretary for the Colonies, and manœuvred herself to his side when she learnt that he was one of the coming men in the Government. Diana had suddenly decided that Gordon ought to have a title.