The Project Gutenberg eBook ofMadame Gilbert's CannibalThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Madame Gilbert's CannibalAuthor: Bennet CopplestoneRelease date: June 7, 2017 [eBook #54865]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by deaurider, Martin Pettit, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by the Google Books Library Project (https://books.google.com)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADAME GILBERT'S CANNIBAL ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Madame Gilbert's CannibalAuthor: Bennet CopplestoneRelease date: June 7, 2017 [eBook #54865]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by deaurider, Martin Pettit, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by the Google Books Library Project (https://books.google.com)
Title: Madame Gilbert's Cannibal
Author: Bennet Copplestone
Author: Bennet Copplestone
Release date: June 7, 2017 [eBook #54865]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Credits: E-text prepared by deaurider, Martin Pettit, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by the Google Books Library Project (https://books.google.com)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADAME GILBERT'S CANNIBAL ***
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Madame Gilbert's Cannibal, by Bennet Copplestone
MADAME GILBERT'SCANNIBAL
By BENNET COPPLESTONETHE LOST NAVAL PAPERSTHE LAST OF THE GRENVILLESJITNY AND THE BOYSTHE SILENT WATCHERSE. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
THE LOST NAVAL PAPERSTHE LAST OF THE GRENVILLESJITNY AND THE BOYSTHE SILENT WATCHERS
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
BY
BENNET COPPLESTONE
Author of "The Lost Naval Papers," etc.
logo
NEW YORKE. P. DUTTON & COMPANY681 Fifth Avenue
Copyright, 1920By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY——All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
MADAME GILBERT'SCANNIBAL
MADAME GILBERT'S CANNIBAL
Madame Gilbert's war service ended when Austria fell out. She had been in Italy busied with those obscure intrigues for the confounding of an enemy which are excused, and dignified, as patriotic propaganda. She is satisfied that on the Italian Front she, and those who worked with her, really won the war.
The war satisfactorily won, Madame Gilbert sped home to revel in the first holiday which she had known since August, 1914. She always seems to travel with fewer restrictions and at greater speed than any except Prime Ministers and commanding Generals. In Italy she is an Italian and in France a Frenchwoman—a dazzling Italian and a very winning Frenchwoman. The police of both countries make smooth her path with their humble bodies upon which Madame is graciously pleased to trample. "I never trouble much about passports or credentials," says she, "though I carry them just as I do my .25 automatic pistol; in practice I find that I need draw my papers as rarely as Idraw my gun. Most of the police and officials who have seen me once know me when I come again, and rush to my assistance." She is never grateful for service. I do not believe she knows the sentiment of gratitude. A poor man renders her aid in defiance of regulations, and maybe at the risk of his neck; she smiles upon him, and the debt is instantly discharged. He is dismissed until perchance Madame may again have occasion for his devotion. Then she reveals the royal accomplishment of never forgetting a face. Imagine a harassed, wearychef du train, before whose official unseeing eyes travellers flit like figures on a cinema screen, imagine such a one addressed by name and rank by the most beautiful and gracious of mortal women, by a woman who remembers all those little family confidences which he had poured into her sympathetic ears some twelve months before, by a woman who enquires sweetly after his good wife—using her pet name—laments that the brave son—also accurately named—is still missing beyond those impenetrable Boche lines. Will not thechef du train, cooed over thus and softly patted as one pats butter, break every French rule the most iron-bound to speed Madame upon her way? Of course he will. In war time, as in peace time, that is the royal manner of Madame Gilbert. She does not travel; she makes a progress.
Madame came home after the armistice with Austria, and, being discharged of liability to the propagandist headquarters, found herself a free and idle woman. The first time for more than four years.
She had a little money from her late husband(the real one), and had been lavishly paid for her services during the war. War prices in London seemed quite moderate to her after the extortions of France and Italy. She re-occupied her old rooms near Shaftesbury Avenue—and incidentally made homeless a pair of exiled Belgians—and fed after the fashion that she loved in the restaurants of Soho. Madame enjoyed her food. She always scoffed at Beauty Specialists. "Look at me," she would say. "Look closely at my skin, at my hair, at my teeth if you like. What you see is God's gift improved by exact care for my health. I do physical exercises for twenty minutes every night and morning. I plunge all over into cold water whenever I can get together enough to cover me, and I eat and drink whatever I like. I shall go on living for just as long as I am beautiful and healthy. When I have to think of my digestion or of the colour of my skin, I shall say Good-bye and go West in a dream of morphia." Superficially, Madame is a Roman Catholic; at heart she is a Greek Pagan.
It was at La Grande Patisserie Belge that Madame stumbled across the lawyer who was fated to introduce her to the Cannibal of whom she told me in Whitehall.
It was a melancholy afternoon in January, peace had not brought plenty—especially of coal—and Madame was fortifying herself against the damp chills of London by long draughts of the hottest coffee and the sweetest and stickiest confectionery which even she could relish. About six feet distant, on what one may describe as her port quarter, sat a middle-aged Englishman whose baggingclothes showed that war rations had dealt sorely with his once ample person. Madame, who without turning her head examined him in critical detail, judged that his loss in weight was three stone. He had the clean, shaven face and alert aspect of a lawyer or doctor. In fancied security a little to the left and rear of Madame Gilbert the stranger stared openly at her cheek and ear and the coils of bright copper hair. Madame knew that he was watching her, and rather liked the scrutiny. She had recognized him at once, and would have been slightly humiliated if he had failed to be interested in her. It is true that she had met him but once before in her life, and that some four years since, but as Madame had condescended to recollect him—I have said that her memory for faces was royal—a failure on his part to remember her would have been an offence unpardonable.
Madame continued to munch sweet stuff, and the man, his tea completed, rose, paid his bill, and then passed slowly in front of her. He needed encouragement before he would speak. So Madame gave it, a quick look and a smile of invitation. He bowed.
"Have I not the honour to meet again the Signora Guilberti?" said he.
"The Signora Guilberti," assented Madame, "or Madame Guilbert, or Madame Gilbert, as rendered by the rough English tongue. I have stooped to anglicise my name," she went on, "though I hate the clipped English version." She indicated a chair, and the lawyer—he was a lawyer—sat down.
"Is it possible that Madame honours me with remembrance?"
"Let me place you," said she, happy in the display of her accomplishments, "and don't seek to guide my memory. It was in the Spring of 1915, at a reception in the garden of Devonshire House. You were in attendance upon Her Majesty the Queen-Mother of Portugal. There were present representatives of the Italian Red Cross, for Italy, the land of my late husband, had ranged herself with the Allies. You are a lawyer of thehaute noblesse. Your clients are peers and princes, of old princes in exile and of new peers in possession. I recall you most distinctly, though at that time, my poor friend, you were not a little portly, and now you are a man shrunken."
"And my name?" he asked, flattered that a beautiful woman should recall him so distinctly.
"It is a strange name—Gatepath. An old English name redolent of the soil. Roger Gatepath. Your firm bears no prefix of initials and no suffix of company. You call yourselves Gatepaths. Just Gatepaths, as though your status were territorial."
He crowed with pleasure. By an exercise in memory, Madame Gilbert had tied him to her chariot wheels.
"Right!" cried he. "Right in every particular. You are the most wonderful of women. For two minutes I spoke with you, and that was nearly four years ago. I was one of a large party, an insignificant lawyer lost in a dazzling company of titles. Yet you have remembered."
Madame left the sense of flattery to soak in. She did not spoil the impression that she had made by explaining that she would have remembered a lackey with just the same accuracy.
"And you, Madame?" he asked. "Have you been all these years doing war work with the Italian Red Cross? The years have passed and left no mark upon your face and figure. I, who comfortably filled out my clothes, am shrunken, yet time and sorrow have spared you."
"Nevertheless, I have been pretty hard at work," said Madame briskly. "I was present at that party ostensibly as an official of the Italian Red Cross. In fact I was there to see that no harm befell the Royal Personages who were in my charge. While we moved about those pleasant grounds, chatting and sipping tea, I was watching, watching. And my hand was never far from the butt of the Webley automatic which, slung from my waist, was hidden in a bag of silk."
"Heavens!" he cried out. "You are...."
"Hush," interposed Madame. "A lawyer and a Gatepath should be more discreet. The war is over, and I can tell you now that I fought every minute of it in the Secret Service, the Civil branch. I was the head woman, the bright particular star, in Dawson's Secret Corps."
"Is it discreet to tell me this?" he asked, countering her reproof of a moment earlier.
She smiled rather wickedly. "Are you not a lawyer and a Gatepath? And can one not tell anything to a lawyer and a Gatepath? Besides, I have sent in my resignation, and am now a free woman. It has been a good time, a very good time. I have fought devils and mastered devils in England and France and Italy for four long years, and now I would rest. You say that time and sorrowhave spared me. Yet I have known both time and sorrow. Have I not lost...."
He broke into a babble of apologies. "I did not know.... I did not realise...."
She waved a hand, and he fell silent. "I do not wear the trappings of woe, for though I am eternally widowed, I glory in my loss. It was in the rearguard at Caporetto, when all less gallant souls had fled, that my Guilberti fell."
Of course from that moment Gatepath was her slave. She had flattered him and humbugged him as she flattered and humbugged all of us. Madame had no designs against Gatepath, yet she could not forbear to triumph over him. "One never knows," she said, "when one may need a devoted friend, and need him badly. I always look forward."
Two or three weeks later Madame found a letter at her club signed "Gatepaths." It was the club in Dover Street with those steep steps down which the members tumble helplessly in frosty weather. Madame calls it "The Club of Falling Women."
It appears that Gatepath, hunting for an adviser of ripe wisdom, had sought out the Chief of Dawson and lately of Madame, and laid bare his pressing troubles. The Chief is one of those rare men to whom all his friends, and they are as the stars in number, go seeking counsel in their crimes and follies. Nothing shocks him, nothing surprises him. And from the depths of his wise, humorous, sympathetic mind, he will almost always draw waters of comfort. Suppose, for example, one had slain a man and urgently sought to dispose of the corpse—a not uncommon problem in crowded cities—to whom could one more profitably turn than tothe Chief of His Majesty's Detective Service? Or if, in a passing fit of absence of mind, one had wedded three wives, and the junior in rank began to suspect the existence of one or more seniors; do we not all suffer from lapses of memory? One does not put these problems before the Chief as one's own—there is a decent convention in these matters—but, of course, he knows. To know all is to pardon all, and there is very little that the Chief does not know about you or me.
The family solicitor of peers and princes poured into the Chief's ear the fantastic cause of his present distresses. He delivered himself of the story in all seriousness, for it was dreadfully serious to him. Never in all his experience, and in that of his century-old firm, had anything so dreadfully serious occurred. The Chief controlled himself until the end was reached, and then exploded in a yell of laughter.
"It is nothing to laugh at," grumbled Gatepath.
"Not for you, perhaps. But to my mind the situation is gorgeous. Has this man the legal right of succession?"
"Beyond a doubt," groaned Gatepath. "His father saw to that."
"Then why not leave matters to take their legal course?" asked the Chief, still laughing. "The House of Lords will be the better for a shock. They are a dull lot. And your lively friend will administer the shock all right."
Roger Gatepath spread out his hands in agony. "But it is one of the oldest peerages in the country, as old almost as the Barony of Arundel. Can'tyou see how frightful it will be for the family if this—this person—is allowed to succeed?"
"There is no question of allowing him. If he is the legal heir he must succeed. The family must just put him in their pipe and smoke him. What else can they do?"
"I thought that you, with all your experience of the South, might suggest something. Would it not be possible to buy the man off—or might he not——"
"How can you buy him off when he is the heir? You people are nothing but trustees, who must account to him for every penny. If he claims the peerage and estates, you must accept him. You admit that legally he is the heir. I can see what is in your mind, but it won't do, Gatepath, it won't do. If you try any hanky-panky, that pretty neck of yours will find itself in a hempen collar. Now if it was only a case for judicious kidnapping——"
Gatepath looked around anxiously. The men were alone in a recess of the club smoking-room. "Yes," he whispered eagerly. "Yes, go on."
"I shall not do anything of the sort. You are a nice sort of family solicitor, Gatepath. Apart from the personal danger of playing tricks, can't you see that your interest lies with the bouncing heir, not with the snuffy old family? Don't be an ass. Bring him home, give the House of Lords the sensation of their placid lives, and let the good old British public enjoy a week of laughter. How they will bellow with joy. And the newspapers! I can see, Gatepath, that your agreeable young heir is going to be the Success of the Season."
"You are not very helpful," groaned Gatepath."There must be a solution; there must be some way of shielding the Family from this frightful humiliation."
The interview with the Chief was a complete failure, and Gatepath parted from his old friend both hurt and angry. He had not expected ribald laughter in so grave a social crisis. The Chief must be a Radical, a Socialist, even a Bolshevik, one empty of all decent political principles.
It was on his way home that Gatepath bethought him of Madame Gilbert. She, that beautiful, loyal-hearted woman, would not laugh. He remembered the glitter of unshed tears in the violet eyes when she had bade him farewell. It was his tactless hand upon the open wound of Caporetto which had aroused those tears. He remembered also that Madame was free, and that she had been trained to do the ruthless, unscrupulous work of the Secret Service. She did not look either ruthless or unscrupulous, and it was in a strictly professional sense that Gatepath connected her with these unfeminine attributes. In his troubles Gatepath needed advice and sympathy, and Madame Gilbert, to his mind, filled the double bill. I do not know how far Gatepath seriously expected Madame to resolve his appalling difficulties. I suspect that he, a young bachelor of fifty or so, was glad of any excuse to persuade Madame to sit beside him and hold his hand. At any rate he did not know, now that the Chief had failed him, any man or any woman who was more likely than Madame to be sweetly helpful.
When Madame read the formal typewritten communication signed "Gatepaths" she grinned. Itdid not surprise her that a recent victim should seek the excuse of urgent business to gain access to her presence. The letter asked for an appointment at a time and place agreeable to her convenience. It jumped with her bizarre humour to suggest Charing Cross Station at two o'clock in the morning, but ultimately she rang up Roger on the telephone, and fixed an hour in the forenoon at his own office in Lincoln's Inn Fields. To Charing Cross Station at two o'clock in the morning she would have gleefully gone in the long black cloak and velvet mask of a conspirator, but for the interview in Lincoln's Inn Fields she was pleased to cast herself in the part of a woman of business, severe, solemn business. Gatepath's welcome was nervous; he scarcely recognised in the solemnly severe woman of business the bereaved widow of La Grande Patisserie Beige. Madame seated herself, spread out her wide sombre skirts, and prepared to listen to the urgencies which had impelled the adviser of peers and princes to seek her cooperation.
Gatepath got to work at once. He saw that Madame expected value for her complaisance, and he gave it in full measure.
"You will have heard, Madame, of the family of Toppys, pronounced Tops. Like other famous families of Devon when the Conqueror came they were at home. In the twelfth century they were the recognised holders of the Barony of Topsham, a village and manor on the River Exe. Topsham means the Home of Toppys, pronounced Tops. The title fell into abeyance for a couple of centuries, and the Manor of Topsham has long since passed to theCourtenays. But her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth revived the ancient barony. Ever since then, for three hundred and fifty years, the Head of the Family of Toppys has been Baron of Topsham. We"—Gatepath, in his excited interest, identified himself with the famous family of Toppys, pronounced Tops—"we are allowed to date the peerage from the original writ of summons, and the Lord Topsham whose lamented death occurred last year was the Twenty-Seventh Baron. I wish you to appreciate the almost unapproachable lineage of this family upon whom has fallen a disaster without parallel in history. The Twenty-Seventh Baron is dead; his successor will be the twenty-eighth. Have you got that?"
"I have," said Madame sweetly. She longed to add "Audited and found correct." It would sound splendidly businesslike, but might give offence as frivolous.
"Some twenty years ago one of the brothers of the late Lord Topsham left this country, and settled on an island in the Torres Straits. It was an extraordinary thing to do for one who was neither a wastrel nor a criminal. The Hon. William Toppys was neither. My father, who knew him well, has told me that he was only mad. To be mad is a misadventure which may overtake the most cautious of us—ancient Houses are prone to develop a reputable and characteristic species of insanity—but to indulge an individual madness to the disgrace of one's Family is a crime. In the legal and conventional sense the Hon. William Toppys was not a criminal, yet he committed the worst of crimes against his ancient and glorious lineage."The body of Roger Gatepath swelled with wrath until it almost filled his pre-war clothes.
Madame longed to say "Good old Bill," but again refrained. The story was beginning to amuse her.
"The Hon. William Toppys settled upon an island in the Torres Straits, and became what is called locally a beachcomber. This degradation was not forced upon him by poverty. He was not wealthy, but from his late mother he derived a competence—some few hundreds of pounds a year. We acted for his trustees, and regularly remitted his dividends to a bank in Thursday Island. Perhaps, Madame, it will assist you if I ring for an atlas."
"Do not trouble," said Madame sweetly. "I have a rough working acquaintance with geography. Thursday Island is a little to the north of Queensland. It is a centre for pearl fishing. That is why I remember the place."
"The Hon. William Toppys built himself a hut on a small islet in the Straits—and married a native woman. A Melanesian woman."
"Married?" enquired Madame. "How? Native fashion,sans ceremonie?"
"Unhappily, no. His marriage was celebrated and registered at the Melanesian Mission's station on Thursday Island. It was—I repeat unhappily—as legal a contract as your own marriage."
"You shock me," said Madame primly, though she struggled against laughter. "Would you have had the Hon. William Toppys live—in sin—with a native woman?"
"I would," shouted Gatepath.
Madame covered her face with her hands andher silks—her businesslike silks—rustled with emotion.
"It pains me to express sentiments which you must regard as immoral"—the silks went on rustling—"but I must look at that fatal marriage from the point of view, the just point of view, of the ancient family of Toppys."
"Pronounced Tops," whispered Madame, as she came up to breathe.
"The Hon. William Toppys sent us word of his marriage. That was nearly twenty years ago. He also, with unparalleled effrontery, communicated to his brother, the late Lord Topsham, the dates of birth of his son and his two daughters. Those births were all registered in due form at Thursday Island. If the Hon. William Toppys had designed to humiliate, to outrage, the most ancient and honourable Family in Devon—save only that of the Courtenays—he could not have gone about the business more thoroughly or systematically. He is dead. He died in 1912. But I cannot speak good of the dead. He committed a crime, a series of crimes. He lawfully married a Melanesian woman and he lawfully begat a son and heir!"
"What about the two daughters?" whispered Madame in throes of suffocation.
"The daughters don't matter," said Gatepath. "He could have had a dozen if he pleased. The Barony of Topsham descends to heirs male, not to heirs general."
At this point Madame fell from grace. It had become obvious to one less alert than she that the lawfully begotten son of the Hon. William Toppys (pronounced Tops), and the Melanesian wife,was the half-caste Twenty-Eighth Baron of Topsham, and that the ancient Family of Toppys was wild about it. So was Gatepath—wild, furious. He gesticulated, his cheeks puffed out. In him was embodied, for Madame to see and laugh over, all the fury of all the Toppyses, male and female. She could not help but laugh—in peals, till the tears came.
Roger Gatepath groaned. "I did think that you, Madame, would refrain from ribaldry. Consider the position of my clients. This horror that is come upon them is not an occasion for laughter."
"I am really awfully sorry," gasped Madame, wiping her eyes. "It must be dreadful for you all. But to a stranger like me, it is frightfully funny."
"You won't think it funny when you hear the rest of my story," growled Gatepath. "But perhaps I had better stop."
"Oh! please don't. I am immensely interested, and thrilled. I want to hear every word. You tell the story so splendidly, Mr. Gatepath, that I should be wild if you stopped now."
Gatepath continued. The sacred fire of vicarious family indignation had been somewhat abated by Madame's laughter, but he warmed up as he proceeded. He was convinced that the gracious Madame Gilbert would share his horror when the tale reached its tragic close. "You may ask how, after 350 years of direct succession, the ancient and honourable Family of Toppys should have failed of heirs—except this half-caste spawn of a Melanesian savage. It is the war that has brought this disaster upon us. The only son of the late Lord Topsham was killed at Ypres early in the war. Thetwo sons of the second brother were in the Flying Corps, and fell with so many other honourable gentlemen in the spring of 1918. Both were killed within a week. Their death was a blow from which Lord Topsham never recovered. His own brothers had both gone before, and the casualties of war had transferred the succession to that coffee-coloured monster in the Torres Straits. Lord Topsham just withered away. I ventured to urge a second marriage, but his lordship had no heart to struggle. Rather than give heirship to the beachcomber's brat I would have married a housemaid by special licence and begat a son though I never lived to see him born."
"It might have been a useless daughter," murmured Madame unkindly.
Gatepath growled.
Madame Gilbert now pulled herself together. Her ribald laughter had sorely weakened her influence over the solicitor of peers and princes, and she felt impelled to regain it. It was now her role to become sympathetically helpful.
"Are you sure, Mr. Gatepath, that you do not make this grievous affair worse by exaggerating it? The Hon. William Toppys was an English gentleman. He went in for the simple life as a beachcomber with a Melanesian wife, but he must have remained a gentleman by instinct. His son may not be so very brown—some half-castes are almost white—and has probably, almost surely, been brought up as a gentleman. Why not make the best of the situation, bring him home, and let me take the boy in hand? I will make of him a cavalieralmost worthy to belong to the ancient House of Toppys."
"It is impossible," said Gatepath, and his air was that of Sir Henry Irving inMacbeth. "I have seen the Twenty-Eighth Baron of Topsham with my own eyes."
"That was very sporting of you," cried Madame in admiration. "Did you go out all alone to the Torres Straits and beard the lion in his den?"
"I went, and I went alone. It was a fearful journey. The war was still raging, and it strained all the influence of Gatepaths to secure me a passage to America in a returning troopship. Thence I travelled to San Francisco, got a Japanese steamer to Yokohama, another Japanese steamer to Singapore, and yet another—a small one which rolled abominably—to Thursday Island. I cannot tell you, without reference to my diary, how many weeks and months I was tossed about the loathsome deep. The schooner from Thursday Island to the haunt of the late Hon. William Toppys was the worst of my tortures. It was crammed with nude men and women of all colours from pale olive to dark walnut, and it smelt—like a hogshead of rancid fat. The South Sea Islands are a romantic fraud, Madame. They reek to Heaven, and brew so many different brands of stinks that one can never get acclimated. Can you wonder that I, who once was well favoured in person, am now an old man, shrunken, wizened into premature senility before my time? I arrived at my journey's end, and there, Madame, I saw the young man whom you so very kindly propose to take in hand andmake a cavalier almost worthy of the House of Toppys. I saw his lordship with my own eyes."
"And was he so very impossible?" asked Madame, for the solicitor of the Toppyses had stopped, struck dumb by his emotion.
"Impossible!" he shrieked. "His lordship, the Twenty-Eighth Baron of Topsham, is a naked Cannibal running about the beach with a spear."
It is fortunate that Madame Gilbert had already indulged her indecent sense of humour. Had she exploded at this tragic moment I should have been robbed of my story. I am sure from what I know of Roger Gatepath that he would have thrust her shrieking from his room, and written her off for ever as unworthy to be associated with the ancient and still exalted House of Toppys. She shook, gurgled desperately for an instant, and then composed her features to a becoming gravity. It was a masterly effort for one with her vivid imagination. She has told me that before her, plain to see, she visualised the heir of the Barony of Topsham, a broad, grinning, coffee-coloured face rising above the crimson and ermine robes of a peer of England. In one hand he held the patent of his barony, in the other a stabbing spear. It was a vision gorgeous.... Yet with this figure of fun before her inward eyes she choked down her laughter. It was an heroic effort.
Roger Gatepath lay back in his chair, rent and exhausted by professional suffering. Madame whipped out her case and offered one of those favourite Russian cigarettes from which even the Bolshevists could not bereave her. Gatepath grabbed and smoked. He would have grabbed andsmoked opium, hashish, anything which could for an instant unravel the tangled skein of care.
"You are a great woman, Madame," he murmured; "not even your cigarettes are in the least like anyone else's. Please give me another."
"Now," said Madame briskly, when the calm of deep narcotic satisfaction had smoothed out the lawyer's face, "I want to hear lots more. I am intrigued, and your story has got no farther than a thunderous beginning."
"It has gone no farther, as yet," said he, "and can go no farther until the half-caste savage of the Torres Straits learns of his monstrous heirship."
"So you travelled fifteen thousand miles in the crisis of war, when all men and women within reach of a newspaper thrilled with alternate hope and fear, just to look once at the Twenty-Eighth Baron Topsham and then to return. Months of hardship going out, and months more of hardship coming back. Just to look once without speaking. You are a remarkable man, Mr. Gatepath. I should, at least, have made his intimate acquaintance. He may be less of a savage Cannibal than he looks."
"I went to the hut of the Hon. Mrs. William Toppys," explained the lawyer. "It is, I am informed, a high-class hut, thatched on walls and roof with leaves of sago palm. No aristocrat of the South Seas had ever a finer or more luxurious residence. Yet it is a hut of one room in which the Hon. Mrs. William Toppys, her two daughters, and her son—known to the world of his little island as 'Willatopy'—live, eat, and sleep, the four of them indifferent to the most primitive dictates ofdecency. At the back is constructed a cookhouse. Neither edifice boasts a chimney. The Family have resided for years in this loathsome hovel unattended by the humblest of menials. The Right Honourable Lord Topsham"—driven by his legal conscience, Gatepath never withheld from the Heir his lawful title—"The Right Honourable Lord Topsham has not even a black footboy."
Madame gurgled. "He has small occasion for a valet, I expect."
Gatepath groaned. "A bootlace about his middle, and a few feathers stuck in his frizzy hair, seemed to constitute his entire toilet."
"It is evident," observed Madame, "that the late beachcomber, the Hon. William Toppys, was a very thorough artist. Having determined upon the simple life, he never looked back. His wife remained a native, his son and daughters were brought up in exact accordance with native model. We can dismiss the one living and sleeping room and the absence of menials as in no sense derogatory to the dignity of Toppys. Have you no worse to tell of the Family than that?"
Gatepath wriggled uneasily. "His Lordship," muttered he, after a blushing pause—Madame was privileged to see a lawyer blush—"did me the honour to prod me with his spear, in the middle of my back."
"Wherefor this outrage?"
"I ventured to inform his honourable mother, who stood outside the hut, that the day was fine."
"And he misdoubted your intentions?" Madame let herself go for a moment and laughed, that rippling laugh which plays on the hearts of hervictims like flame on wax. "A widow, I have heard, is in little respect in the South Seas, and the Heir of Toppys drew cold iron in defence of his mother, so scandalously accosted by a forward stranger. Come, come, Mr. Gatepath, this incident suggests no savagery. It may indicate that the heart of the boy is white after all."
"He prodded me in the back, he pursued me to my boat, and would doubtless have killed and eaten my body had I not fled with incredible speed. I have never run so fast since I won the hundred yards sprint for Cambridge at the Queen's Club."
"You and the Hon. Mrs. William Toppys must have been deeply absorbed in the beauties of the weather when the Cannibal with his spear broke in upon the pretty conversation."
"On my honour I did but speak with her for a minute. She is light of colour and of a countenance not disagreeable. Her English is not fluent, yet she speaks it with intelligence and has the language of social courtesy. Her accent too is not unpleasant, she softens the hard English consonants, and gives full tone value to the rich English vowels."
"It seems to have been a very fine day, and taken a lot of talking about," said Madame drily.
"I wanted to discover why the Hon. William Toppys had married the woman, and why he made so certain of the proofs of his marriage."
"Quite so. And while engaged upon your researches, discovered that the Hon. William Toppys was not so very mad after all?"
"No," declared the lawyer stoutly. "He was a mad and wicked criminal to marry her. But Icould realise that some twenty years earlier, in the first bloom of her pale brown beauty, the Hon. Mrs. William Toppys was worth the sacrifice of any man's moral scruples. I could, as a youngster, have loved her myself. But then I should never have made the hideous, the ghastly blunder of marrying her—except in native fashion."
"We progress," said Madame, laughing again. "The mother of the Cannibal has found favour in your sight, and the Cannibal ran you down to the boat lest you should find favour in hers. And how long, pray, was this island idyll in the playing?"
"I was less than half-an-hour on the island."
"So you came, saw, and conquered all within half-an-hour. And then there broke in the heir of Toppys with his most intrusive spear. It was exceedingly tactless of him. A widow, especially a South Sea widow, would not have tarried long in the wooing. I can understand now that your feelings towards the heir must be tempestuous. A journey of fifteen thousand miles, a talk for less than half-an-hour with a pale brown widow of fascinating accent and aspect. Then the crushing arrival of the too jealous son, the rending asunder of scarce joined hearts, the flight to the boat without a moment of farewell, and—fifteen thousand weary miles of return. In your place, Mr. Gatepath, I should whole-heartedly loathe that doubly inconvenient son."
"You are pleased to be witty at my expense, Madame Gilbert," grumbled Gatepath. "And we wander sadly from the purpose of the interview with which you have honoured me this morning.That was to talk about the Cannibal, and not about the Cannibal's mother."
"Proceed," said Madame, lying back in her chair, and lighting yet another cigarette. "I am dying to make his further acquaintance."
"You are an astute woman, Madame Gilbert, and will already have grasped that the Trustees of the settled estates of the Barony of Topsham—of whom I am the legal adviser—are in a position profoundly embarrassing. They don't know what the devil to do, and I don't know what the devil of advice to give. Our strictly legal duty is beyond doubt. We should notify the heir of his succession, and take the necessary steps to have him seised of his ancestral lands and revenues. They are not great although they represent a fair competence, even in these days of exorbitant estate duties. There are wealthy members of the Family of Toppys engaged in business pursuits, but they, though deeply interested, are not at present in the direct line of succession. Some eight months have passed since Lord Topsham died, and no steps have been taken to acquaint the Twenty-Eighth Baron of his—of his damnable ill-fortune. We ought to have moved long since, we must move soon, yet how, and in what direction, can we move? I went to the Torres Straits to spy out the land and to consider a course of action. I have returned baffled. The Trustees are baffled. The Family of Toppys is baffled. We cannot delay much longer. The Family of Toppys is of the highest distinction, the Barony of Topsham is a part of the National history. A failure on the part of the Trustees to produce an heir cannot pass unnoticed. There are in myprofession many unscrupulous practitioners, hedge lawyers, who would greedily wallow in the chance of hunting up an heir and securing his interest and business for themselves. The Trustees cannot permit this; Gatepaths cannot permit this. It were better that my firm should act for a cannibal lordship than that he should be the helpless prey of a legal pirate. And yet if Gatepaths did what is their undoubted duty—namely, notified the heir and represented him—they would infallibly lose the valuable, the very valuable, connections of all the other members of the family. We are in a horrid quandary. We cannot let slip from among our clients the Baron of Topsham, and we cannot let slip the other members, some of them very wealthy, of the House of Toppys. But how to keep both passes understanding. I have mentioned the risk, and it is no small risk, lest some hedge lawyer should get his nose upon the trail of His Cannibal Lordship of the Torres Straits. There is another risk which will become more insistent with every month of delay. The Twenty-Eighth Baron is nineteen years old, an age of full virile maturity in the South Sea. He may marry any day some native woman, and raise, with the utmost celerity, a crop of savage heirs to his body. If, at the instigation of his mother, he follows the detestable practice of his late father, the marriage will be legal by our law, and the spawn of it legitimate. Should this further disaster have time to mature—and nothing is more certain of consummation in a minimum of time—the coffee-coloured Cannibal line of Toppys will be impregnably entrenched. Nothing but a special Act of Parliament could bomb it out, andin these days of revolutionary socialism, the House of Commons would never pass a Disabling Act. The ribald cynicism of many Members would lead them to enjoy the gross humiliation of the Upper Chamber. We can look for no help from Parliament; we must look to our own brains and hands. I have gone to the Torres Straits and failed. It does not follow that Madame Gilbert would also fail."
"Wait a bit," quoth Madame. "I must know a lot more and see a lot more before I take any hand in this business. I confess frankly that my sympathies lean towards the Cannibal. He, the undoubted heir of an ancient family, is without friends in a far island. He is the son of his father, and, despite his skin, must be half white in blood. He may be more than half white in heart and brain. What have you against him except the rich Melanesian infusion in his veins? Nothing except the exquisite simplicity of his dress—you said, I recall, that he wore a bootlace about his middle and adorned his frizzy hair with feathers. Your visit was on the edge of the Southern summer at a season when even you or I would gladly travel light in clothing. I feel that a feather headdress and a petticoat of stripped banana leaves would become me mightily. Our Mother Eve was red golden like me and must have shone gloriously in a fig-leaf apron. If the Twenty-Eighth Baron Topsham were really a savage cannibal, in fact as well as by birth, I might perhaps share your wrath and agitation. But at present I am frankly on his side. His appearance in the House of Lords would be startling, but the old dears would be the betterfor a shock. So would London society. I confess that I look forward to his succession with intense amusement. It would be perfectly lovely,une bizarrerie superbe."
"You will excuse my inability to appreciate your levity," growled Gatepath.
"That is why you are baffled by this little domestic problem," said Madame. "If you and the portentous Family of Toppys had enough of humour to take yourselves less seriously, you would perceive that all the world will laugh when the disclosure comes. It is more agreeable to laugh with the world than to be laughed at by it. You think that your retainers, male and female, discreetly solemn in your presence, are desolated by the misfortunes of the family. Believe me when I tell you that they are howling with derision. Your men-servants and your maid-servants within your gates are roaring together over the Family humiliation. Your ox and your ass, and your old family coach-horse are gaping at you. Your chauffeur, educated maybe in a modern Radical school of motoring, is inclined by your misfortunes towards belief in a righteous Providence. Even your Rolls-Royce forgets its aristocratic ghostly calm and gurgles. Make up your ancient Toppys' minds, Mr. Gatepath, that no man or woman in this modern world cares a depreciated tuppence for the woes of an historic peerage. You and your Family of Toppys suffer from distorted vision. Laugh, man, laugh, and recover some sense of perspective. Put yourself outside this museum of mouldy antiquities, of which you are the hereditary legal adviser, andregard them for a moment from a point of detachment. Have you got that? Now laugh."
But the gloom upon the countenance of Gatepath remained unbroken. It was less the embarrassments of Toppys that obsessed him than the predicament into which his firm had drifted. If he stood by the Heir he lost the business of Toppys; if he stood by the Family he resigned the Heir to some intrusive perspicuous supplanter. The firm would get left either way. It is not surprising that Roger Gatepath and humour had become strangers.
The conspirators sat speechless for the space of two minutes, which is a long, long time of silence between Western people. It was Madame, of course, who broke the pause of contemplation.
"Who will benefit?" asked she suddenly.
"I don't understand," muttered Gatepath.
"I am not good to play with," said Madame, rather sternly. "Not even Dawson, not even his great Chief, may play tricks with Madame Gilbert. And they know it. Come, Mr. Gatepath. You did not summon me here to tell a pleasing story of the embarrassments of the Toppys Family. At the back of your mind you had a plan. You purposed to ask me to pull chestnuts out of a fire which is too hot for the fingers of Trustees and Gatepaths. You are acting in the interests of someone who conceals himself. Who is it? Who will become the heir of Topsham should Madame Gilbert be persuaded to kidnap or assassinate the inconvenient Twenty-Eighth Baron? Who proposes to make himself the Twenty-Ninth in succession to that noble line?"
Gatepath shuddered at her plain speaking. But he had the sense to see that with Madame all cards must be placed upon the table. Already she knew enough to be dangerous. If she went forth in anger then there might be, there certainly would be, the very Devil to pay.
"The next heir," said he, shortly, "is Sir John Toppys, Baronet of Wigan."
"And who is Sir John Toppys who has chosen so very unattractive a spot as the seat of his baronetcy?"
"He is first cousin of the late Lord. Their common grandfather was the Twenty-Fifth Baron. Sir John will infallibly succeed if the senior line fails. I agree that Wigan is as lacking in residential amenities as Dundee or Motherwell, but it has been a very mine of golden wealth to the junior branch of Toppys. Coal and iron, Madame, are more productive than diamonds. Sir John Toppys was rich before the war; now he has advanced to wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. His great services to the State have been plenteously rewarded in spite of the exactions of the disgraceful excess profits duty. At his works, guns have been made in thousands, and shells in millions. He and those like him have as surely won the war as have our heroic soldiers and sailors—who, it must be confessed, have received less adequate rewards. The wealth and position of Sir John Toppys are such that he could command a peerage from any British Government. But to him, a true Toppys of the ancient line—though of a junior branch—a newly gilt title would have no value. Is he not at this moment heir presumptive of theTwenty-Eighth Baron—he of the Torres Straits—and can one feel surprise that he resents and detests the shameful marriage of the Hon. William Toppys, by means of which his branch of the Family has been supplanted? I am legal adviser to Sir John Toppys, and between these close walls, Madame, I may say that he would stick at nothing to secure—the removal—of the—obstruction."
"You and Sir John Toppys are a pretty pair," quoth Madame. "For sheer lawlessness, even in time of war, I have come upon nothing which can compare with you. You deliberately conspire to compass the—the removal—of the Heir of Topsham, and you do not apparently give heed to the risks which both of you are running. You think in your foolishness that if I were bribed by the gold of Wigan to carry through the enterprise, the pretty neck of Madame Gilbert would be alone imperilled. Permit me to scatter your illusions. Should Madame Gilbert hang for her mercenary zeal in the interests of a white succession Sir John Toppys and Roger Gatepath would stand beside her upon the drop. We should be an engaging party," murmured Madame, contemplating the vision with enjoyment. "Madame Gilbert in the centre by honour of her sex and her superior infamy, Roger to her left, John on her right. At the word 'Go'—or whatever is tastefully appropriate to the ceremony—the hangman would pull the lever, and the three culprits would disappear into what is termed prophetically The Pit. At the inquest—I always think that an inquest after a legal hanging is a superb touch of British humour—evidence would be given to prove that the tripleexecution had been well and truly carried out, and that death was instantaneous. We should all three be buried in quicklime within the precincts of the jail." Madame smacked her lips. "No, Mr. Gatepath, not even for this gratifying conclusion to our joint enterprise am I going to place Sir John Toppys—for a brief interval before his execution—in the seat of Willatopy."
More than once during this horrible deliverance Roger Gatepath had essayed to stop her, but Madame refused to be interrupted. It pleased her to describe vividly the last act in the lawless drama, and she indulged her whim. Madame loves talk almost as much as she loves action. But there is this difference. In action she is swift, precise, and shattering. In speech she is diffuse and interminable. Yet there are many less agreeable occupations than to sit opposite to that royal beauty and to listen respectfully to her babble.
"You entirely misread our intentions," said Gatepath severely, when Madame at last allowed him to get a word in. "Do you suppose that Gatepaths, do you suppose that Sir John Toppys, Baronet of—er—Wigan, do you suppose that the Trustees of the settled estates of Topsham, would countenance the assassination of the lawful heir to an English peerage?"
"I do," said Madame calmly. "What is more, I am quite sure of it."
Gatepath collapsed. A great many people in their day have tried to humbug Madame Gilbert. All have failed and collapsed as did Roger Gatepath.
Then in her masterful fashion, at the momentwhen vague talk must cease or anticipate vigorous action, Madame took charge of the destinies of Toppys.
"You went out to the Torres Straits, Mr. Gatepath, and not to waste time over polite verbiage, you made an ass of yourself. You philandered with the pretty pale-skinned Widow Toppys. She responded to your advances. It is of no use for you to shake your head. I know men, men of your susceptible age, and I know widows. I am one myself. Am I not always sweetly responsive to your fascinating middle-aged sex? You aroused the jealousy of Willatopy, and he, a wise and dutiful son—who also appears to understand, widows—put you to rout with his spear. Never again dare you appear on the Island of Willatopy. Your head would infallibly decorate his baronial residence, and your body would be served up in ceremonious cutlets. If Willatopy is a Cannibal—which I take leave at present to doubt—he will devour his enemies as part of a religious ritual; not for food. He would offer your head to his mistress as agage d'amour, for no man is of any account in the South Seas as a lover until he has at least one bleeding head to show for his affection. The Island of Willatopy is closed to you; no more will you exchange sweet nothings about the weather with the fair and frail Widow Toppys. But to me all is open. If you and your accomplice the Wigan Baronet are willing to pay my expenses on a scale adequate to a profiteer in war material, I will set sail for the island home of the Twenty-Eighth Baronet. If he is half white in sentiment, and not altogether a woolly savage, I will mould him with these subtlefingers. I will be his shelter from hedge lawyers bent upon thrusting him untimely into the dreary old House of Lords. If, as may happen, the Heir of Topsham is definitely and finally impossible I will do my best to move him—willing or unwilling—to some retreat where he may be less easy of discovery by your rival practitioners than in his present conspicuous residence. I gather that the missionary registers of Thursday Island blazon his address and telephone number. I will do nothing seriously unlawful, nothing, that is, which could be proved against me to my incarceration. A spice of adventurous illegality adds zest to an enterprise. But I won't go to the scaffold or the prison for all the mouldy Toppyses who were ever hatched through the centuries. And though I accept nothing but limited liability, I will make a much more fruitful job of my island voyage than you did of yours. The widow will have no attractions for me, and if the Baron of Topsham and Madame Gilbert should become—épris—so much the easier will my task be made. Many men," murmured Madame sadly, "have given me their honest (or dishonest) hearts, and most of them have paid heavily for my apparent acceptance of the gift. There, Mr. Gatepath, it is more than you or that bold bad Baronet of Wigan deserves; but I have made you a fair sporting offer. I will go to the Torres Straits, though how in the world I am to get a passage is for the moment beyond me. All steamers are packed; those voyagers only who have urgent business have a chance of a berth; an unemployed widow bound upon a delicate, undescribable mission would be a poor C 3 in the waiting list."
"Do not let that worry you," cried Gatepath. "I am beyond all things delighted by your offer. Sir John Toppys will be delighted. The Family of Toppys will be delighted. It is no small thing, Madame, to gain the regard and influence of the ancient and honourable House of Toppys. I accept your offer joyfully, and you need not calculate your expenses. The gold of Wigan will be poured into your lap. And as for the steamer passage, what care Gatepaths for passenger restrictions now that the Admiralty have released theHumming Top! She is refitting at this moment at Cowes. You shall sail at your ease in her."
"And what, please, is theHumming Top?" enquired Madame patiently.
"She is a turbine-engined yacht, built by Dennys of Dumbarton, and a perfect seaboat. A thousand tons, Madame, Thames measurement, and fitted like a summer palace. Not too small for comfort, and not too big for the coral reefs of Torres. She is a sea home worthy even of Madame Gilbert."
"That is the first really sensible speech that you have made to-day," said Madame.
"WhyHumming Top?" asked Madame Gilbert.
It was early in March, and the devastation wrought by the Admiralty in the yacht's graceful interior had been obliterated by the skilled hands of White of Cowes. Her upper and main decks had been entirely refashioned, and nothing remained of her armament except a brass signal gun forward. At the main mast head waved in the breeze the burgee of the Royal Thames Yacht Club, and from the inclined jackstaff at her stern hung the Blue Ensign which it is the privilege of that Club to wear. TheHumming Toplay in the Test above Southampton just where the magazines of Marchwood front the river. Madame Gilbert leaned upon the bridge rail, and beside her, as close beside her as Madame would permit, stood the Baronet of Wigan.
Sir John Toppys had been presented to Madame some weeks earlier, and between them a friendship had ripened. In due course, when theHumming Top, completed and ready for sea, had been towed to her moorings off Marchwood, Sir John had pressed Madame to honour the vessel with her presence. She, not unwilling to inspect the yacht in which she was to traverse the seas of the wide world, and not unwilling to double-lock her chainsupon the Baronet's proffered neck, had consented to travel in his company to Southampton on the visit of introduction. Together they had examined the sleeping quarters on the main deck allotted to Madame and her maid, and the lady had gratified her host by suggesting some small alterations. Notebook in hand he hung upon her lips.
"My room is splendid," said she, "and I am so glad that you have given me a proper spring bed instead of a snuffy bunk. If you will have a light fitted at the head of my bed, and a bell push so that I can switch off the light or summon my maid without moving more than my hand, the room will be just perfect."
"I will give orders at once," declared Sir John Toppys. "You are sure that there is no further way in which I may meet your wishes?"
"None at present," said Madame. "If I think of anything else, I will let you know. She is a lovely boat, but why do you call her theHumming Top?"
Sir John Toppys had not succumbed so far to the spells of Madame as to have wholly lost his earlier suspicion that the Toppys Family and fortunes were in her eyes objects of derision. She was so frank in her laughter at their ancestral pretensions, she proclaimed so openly that she embarked on her voyage to the South Seas as a glorious rag, that in time he had become disarmed. If she felt as she professed to feel, surely she would be less open in profession. Still now and then Madame would shoot out a question which did awaken in the baronet's mind a feeling that his leg was about to be pulled. Before, therefore, answering herinquiry he reflected for a moment upon her possible motive.
Even to him the explanation was rather absurd. "The epithet 'humming' suggests the whirr of the turbines," muttered he. "There is no hammer, hammer, hammer, clank, clank, clank, about this yacht. She whirrs, hums, just like a top."
"Quite so," assented Madame drily. "Nevertheless, I do not think——"
"You are right," put in Toppys hastily—it was better to be frank in confession. "We should not have chosen this name had we not desired it to suggest a Family Possession."
"Toppys, pronounced Tops," whispered Madame wickedly. "Plural Tops, singular Top. Humming Top—the Top that Hums. What extraordinary worshippers of the Family gods you are. I fully expect to find that Willatopy is a faithful student of the Family Tree. He probably keeps it stuck up in his hut."
"God forbid!" cried the Baronet of Wigan.
He was not a Bad Baronet, and certainly not Bold in the presence of Madame. She, expecting to meet the typical fat-bellied profiteer of the popular cartoons, had at their first introduction been struck almost speechless with surprise. This the King of Coal and Iron, the Maker of Guns and Shells, the Wallower in unholy War Profits! She saw before her a small thin gentleman, whose careful dress and trimmed white moustache suggested a military club. When he spoke, Winchester and Oxford spoke. This a Baronet of Wigan! Madame rubbed her eyes. Further acquaintance revealed the explanation. John Toppys possessed the castemarks of his long line; he had been educated as the Toppyses—though in extremest poverty—had always been educated. He, almost alone in the records of his House, had taken to common business and shone in it. He was no higgler, he could not have run a draper's shop, but when representing a big firm doing big things in a big way he found that doors would open to the pukka sahib John Toppys which would remain obstinately closed to plebeian rivals. John Toppys had built his fortune on the secure basis of the essential snobbishness of the English people. To his firm he had been invaluable—for he knew how to use theentréewhich was his by right of blood—he had brought to them business of the best. And when later on he became the senior partner, and the chief partaker in the profits, the war cloud burst and wealth showered upon him. In his position it would have required extraordinarily perverse skill not to have made money in car loads. Successive Governments did their utmost to stuff him, and his like, full of wealth. Thus, Sir John Toppys became a War Profiteer—almost against his own will—but though a Profiteer on a superlative scale, he remained a pukka sahib. Madame liked him.
"Now that I have seen theHumming Top," said Madame, "I know that I am blessed among women. At no cost to myself—though at very much to you, Sir John Toppys—I am going to have the time of my life. From May to September in the Torres Straits the climate is divine. A day temperature between 75 and 85, no rain, a perpetual trade wind from the cool south-east, nights in which one may sleep comfortably and days in which one may revelin the tropical winter. It must be like Khartoum without the dust and with the sea thrown in. I shall swim in the sun and devour bananas in the shade. I shall hunt dugong and turtle, and fish in the tumbled waters of the Great Barrier. You will observe from my local colour that I have been studying the subject. I have. For me this preposterous enterprise will be full of joy; for you it will be full of expense and will end in exasperation. Why not back out while there is yet time? Surely you are not like that thick-headed Roger Gatepath. You do not suppose that anything, except a pleasant holiday for Madame Gilbert, will spring from this cruise of mine?"
"The expense to me is nothing," said the Baronet. "I am smothered in ill-gotten wealth. And if some of my money can give you pleasure, it is well spent, Madame. I would do more than write cheques to give you pleasure. And as for your enterprise, is it destined to be empty of result? I think more highly of your resource than that. Dawson says that there is nothing which you dare not do if your interest be stimulated." He saw the angry flush spring out on Madame's forehead. "You mistake my meaning, Madame. It was not the stimulus of money that I had in mind. It was the overwhelming impulse of your artistic genius. When you confront a problem, however bleakly impossible it may be, you never fail of solution. Dawson says so. You have not concerned yourself with our family affairs because of any interest in our troubles. You laugh at them. It is because no man or woman alive, except Madame Gilbert, could resolve a skein so hopelessly entangled."
"I see no solution. Sir John. And though I sail at your expense, I am not on your side. I am free to help or to hinder, at my pleasure."
"We are all at Madame Gilbert's pleasure," said Toppys, smiling. "We know, you and I, that Roger Gatepath is two parts flunkey, one quarter fool, and the other quarter unscrupulous lawyer. He cares for nothing except for the connections and profits of his firm. He would lick the new Lord Topsham's tawny feet if he did not fear to lose some handfuls from my golden pile. I do not value the Barony at a rush for myself, but there is in my blood a centuries-old reverence for my Family. Rather than that coloured brat yonder should be recognised as the Head of my House, I would strangle him with my own hands. If you can save us from that horror, Madame, there is nothing which is in my power to grant that I would not lay at your feet."
"Absurd as it may seem, Sir John, I have a conscience. Madame Gilbert is not for sale."
"No. I should not value you if you were. And believe me I rate you very highly. You will go out in this yacht to the Torres Straits, and you will follow your conscience. Maybe you will bring back the Twenty-Eighth Baron in your train and set him yourself upon his seat. There is no contract between us; you are free to do even this. Be just to me, Madame. I have offered you nothing except a free passage; I have never sought to bribe you. In my heart I knew that it would be useless. Whatever may be the end, Madame, I shall always cherish these weeks of our friendship."
"As a Toppys you are not a little ridiculous,"said Madame. "But as a man you are white all through."
She held out her hand to him there on the bridge of theHumming Top, and Toppys, stooping, kissed her fingers. "Thank you," said he, simply.
Although Madame had made a sketchy inspection of the yacht in the company of Sir John Toppys, she learned very little of its fascinating merits until she came aboard in act to sail. The crew were already at their quarters when Madame was ceremoniously received on board by Captain Ching the skipper, and the Chief Engineer, Ewing. She had already given orders—Sir John Toppys had assigned to her his full powers and prerogatives as owner—she had already given orders that the chief officers should mess with her in the pretty little saloon on the upper deck, aft of which was a snug "Owner's Room"—equipped with writing-table and bookcases—which she reserved for her own private occupation. Whenever their duties permitted of social relaxation, Madame had determined that the Captain and Chief Engineer should be her intimate companions. It was no new experience for Madame to be the one woman in a company of men—her maid did not count—and she who had the free outlook and high courage of a man, enjoyed the privileges of a double sex. In repose she was a woman; in action a man.