CHAPTER VIII
SOME nine years after the events detailed in the last chapter, a fairly clever young actress who had drifted into the cinematograph business, faced one of the many disappointments which had made up her life. In many ways the disappointment was more bitter than any she had previously experienced, because she had banked so heavily upon success.
If there was any satisfaction to be had out of the new tragedy it was to be found in the fact that the fault was not entirely hers. An impartial critic might, indeed, absolve her from all responsibility.
In this particular instance she regarded herself in the light of a martyr to indifferent literature—not without reason.
When the Westminster Art Film Company was tottering on its last legs, Mr. Willie Ellsberger, chairman and chief victim, decided on one big throw for fortune. The play decided upon does not matter, because it was written by Willie himself, with the assistance of his advertising man, but it contained all the stunts that had ever got by in all the photo plays that had ever been produced, and in and out of every breathless situation flashed Sadie O’Grady, the most amazing, the most charming, the most romantic, the highest salaried artiste that filmland had ever known.
Sadie O’Grady had come to London from Honolulu, after she had inherited her father’s considerable fortune. She came, a curious visitor, to the studios, merely as a spectator, and had laughingly refused Mr. Ellsberger’s first offer, that gentleman having been attracted by her perfect face and the grace of her movements; but at last, after extraordinary persuasion, she had agreed to star in that stupendous production, “The Soul of Babylon,” for a fee of £25,000, which was to be distributed amongst certain Honolulu charities in which she was interested.
“No,” she told a newspaper man, “this is to be my first and my last film. I enjoy the work very much, but naturally it takes up a great deal of my time.”
“Are you returning to Honolulu?” asked our representative.
“No,” replied Miss O’Grady, “I am going on to Paris. My agent has bought me the Duc de Montpelier’s house in the Avenue d’Etoile.”
A week after the picture was finished, Miss Sadie O’Grady waited on the chairman by appointment.
“Well, Sadie,” said that gentleman, leaning back in his chair, and smiling unhappily, “it’s a flivver!”
“You don’t say!” said Sadie aghast.
“We ran it off for the big renter from the North, and he says it is about as bad as it can be, and that all the good in it is so obviously stolen, that he dare not risk the injunction which would follow the first exhibition. Did Simmonds pay you your last week’s salary?”
“No, Mr. Ellsberger,” said the girl.
Ellsberger shrugged.
“That sets me back another twenty pounds,” he said and reached for his cheque-book. “It is tough on you, Sadie, but it’s tougher on us. I’m not so sure that it is so tough on you, though. I spent a fortune advertising you. There isn’t anybody in this country who hasn’t heard of Sadie O’Grady, and,” he added grimly, “you’ve more publicity than I hope I shall get when this business goes into the hands of the Official Receiver.”
“So there’s no more work?” asked the girl after a pause.
Mr. Ellsberger’s hands said: “What can I do?”
“You ought not to have any difficulty in getting a shop,” he said, “with your figure.”
“Especially when the figure’s twenty pounds a week,” she said unsmilingly. “I was a fool ever to leave Paris. I was doing well there and I wish I’d never heard of the cinema business.”
Still young and pretty and slim, with a straight nose and a straighter mouth, she had no appeal for Mr. Ellsberger, who in matters of business had an unsympathetic nature.
“Why don’t you go back to Paris?” he said, speaking very deliberately and looking out of the window. “Perhaps that affair has blown over by now.”
“What affair?” she asked sharply. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve friends in Paris,” said the chairman, “good, bright boys who go around a lot, and they know most of what’s going on in town.”
She looked at him, biting her lips thoughtfully.
“Reggie van Rhyn—that’s the trouble you heard about?”
Mr. Ellsberger nodded.
“I didn’t know what happened, and I’ll never believe in a thousand years that I stabbed him,” she said vigorously. “I’ve always been too much of a lady for that sort of thing—I was educated at a convent.”
Mr. Ellsberger yawned.
“Take that to Curtis, will you,” he said. “If he can get any free publicity for you, why, I’ll be glad. Now take my advice—stay on. I’ve put Sadie O’Grady way up amongst the well-known products of Movieland, and you’ll be a fool if you quit just when the public is getting interested in you. I’m in bad, but that doesn’t affect you, Sadie, and there ain’t a producer in England who wouldn’t jump at you and give you twice the salary I’m paying.”
She stood up, undecided. Ellsberger was growing weary of the interview. He made a great show of pulling out notepaper and rang the bell for his stenographer.
“The publicity’s fine,” she admitted, “and I’ve felt good about the work. Why the letters that I’ve had from people asking for my autograph and pictures of my Honolulu estate”—she smiled a little frostily—“people in society, too. Why, a titled man who wrote to me from Bournemouth, Sir John Maxell——”
“Sir John Maxell!”
Mr. Ellsberger was interested, indeed, he was fascinated. He waved away his stenographer.
“Sit down, Sadie,” he said. “You’re sure it was Maxell? Sir John Maxell?”
She nodded.
“That’s him,” she said. “There’s class there.”
“And there’s money, too,” said the practical Ellsberger. “Why don’t you get in touch with him, Sadie? A fellow like that would think nothing of putting ten thousand into a picture if he was interested in a girl. If you happen to be the girl, Sadie, there’ll be a thousand pound contract for you right away.”
Her straight lips were a trifle hard.
“What you want is an angel, and the Judge is the best kind of angel you could wish for.”
“Has he got money?” she asked.
“Money!” said the hands of Ellsberger. “What a ridiculous question to ask!”
“Money!” he scoffed. “Money to burn. Do you mean to say you’ve never heard of Sir John Maxell, never heard of the man who sent his best friend to gaol for twenty years? Why, it was the biggest sensation of the year!”
Sadie was not very interested in history, but momentarily, by virtue of the very warm and well punctuated letter which reposed in her bag, she was interested in Sir John.
“Is he married?” asked the girl naturally.
“He is not married,” said Ellsberger emphatically.
“Any children?”
“There are no children, but he has a niece—he’s got some legal responsibility as regards her; I remember seeing it in the newspapers, he’s her guardian or something.”
Mr. Ellsberger looked at the girl with a speculative eye.
“Have you his letter?”
She nodded and produced the epistle.
It was polite but warm. It had some reference to her “gracious talent,” to her “unexampled beauty” which had “brought pleasure to one who was no longer influenced by the commonplace,” and it finished up by expressing the hope that they two would meet in the early future, and that before leaving for Paris she would honour him by being his guest for a few days.
Ellsberger handed the letter back.
“Write him,” he said, “and, Sadie, consider yourself engaged for another week—write to him in my time. He’s fallen for all that Press stuff, and maybe, if he’s got that passionate admiration for your genius he’ll—say, you don’t want to stay in the picture business and finish by marrying that kind of trouble, do you?”
He pointed through the wide windows to a youth who was coming across from the studio to the office, swinging a cane vigorously.
“Observe the lavender socks and the wrist watch,” he chuckled. “But don’t make any mistake about Timothy Anderson. He’s the toughest amateur at his weight in this or any other state and a good boy, but he’s the kind of fellow that women like you marry—get acquainted with the Judge.”
With only a preliminary knock, which he did not wait to hear answered, the young man had swung through the door, hat in hand.
“How do, Miss O’Grady?” he said. “I saw your picture—fine! Good acting, but a perfectly rotten play. I suppose you wrote it, Ellsberger?”
“I wrote it,” admitted that gentleman gloomily.
“It bears the impression of your genius, old bird.”
Timothy Anderson shook his head reproachfully.
“It only wanted you as the leading man, and it would have been dead before we put the titles in,” said Ellsberger with a grin.
“I’m out of the movies for good,” said Timothy Anderson, sitting himself on a table. “It is a demoralising occupation—which reminds me.”
He slipped from the table, thrust his hand into his pocket, and producing a roll of notes:
“I owe you twenty-five pounds, Ellsberger,” he said. “Thank you very much. You saved me from ruin and starvation.”
He counted the money across, and Mr. Ellsberger was undoubtedly surprised and made no attempt to conceal the fact. So surprised was he that he could be jocose.
“Fixed a big contract with Mary Pickford?” he asked.
“N-no,” said Timothy, “but I struck a roulette game—and took a chance.”
“Took a chance again, eh?” said Ellsberger. “One of these days you’ll take a chance and never get better of it.”
“Pooh!” said the other in derision. “Do you think that’s any new experience for me? Not on your life. I went into this game with just twelve pounds and my hotel bill three weeks in arrears. I was down to my last half-crown, but I played it and came out with three hundred pounds.”
“Whose game was it?” asked Mr. Ellsberger curiously.
“Tony Smail,” and Mr. Ellsberger whistled.
“Why, that’s one of the toughest places in town,” he said. “It is a wonder you came away with the money—and your life.”
“I took a chance,” said the other carelessly, and swung his legs once more over the edge of the desk. “There was some slight trouble when I came out of Smail’s,” he shrugged his shoulders, “just a little horseplay.”
The girl had followed the conversation keenly. Any talk which circled about finance had the effect of concentrating her attention.
“Do you always take a chance?” she asked.
“Always,” said the other promptly.
This woman did not appeal to him. Timothy possessed a seventh sense which he called his “Sorter,” and Miss Sadie O’Grady was already sorted into the heap of folks who, had life been a veritable voyage, would have been labelled “Not Wanted.”
He held out his hand to Ellsberger.
“I’m going by the next boat to New York,” he said, “then I’ll go to California. Maybe I’ll take in Kempton on my way, for a fellow I met at the hotel has a horse running which can catch pigeons. Good-bye, Miss O’Grady. I wish you every kind of luck.”
She watched him disappear, sensing his antagonism and responding thereto. If he could judge women by intuition, she judged him by reason, and she knew that here was a man whose mental attitude was one of dormant hostility.
It would be unfair to her to say that it was because she recognised the clean mind and the healthy outlook and the high principles of this young man that she disliked him. She was not wholly bad, because she had been the victim of circumstances and had lately lived a two-thousand pound life on a one-hundred pound capacity. She looked after him, biting her lips as though she were solving a great problem.
Presently she turned to Ellsberger.
“I’ll write to Sir John,” she said.
By a curious coincidence Timothy Anderson had the idea of approaching Sir John Maxell also, though nearly a year passed before he carried his idea into execution.
CHAPTER IX
THE initials “T. A. C.” before young Mr. Anderson’s name stood for Timothy Alfred Cartwright, his pious but practical parent having, by this combination, made a bid for the protection of the saints and the patronage of Cousin Al Cartwright, reputedly a millionaire and a bachelor. It was hoped in this manner that his position on earth and in heaven would be equally secure.
What Timothy’s chances are in the hereafter the reader must decide; but we do know that Cousin Al Cartwright proved both a weak reed and a whited sepulchre. Timothy’s parents had departed this life two years after Alfred Cartwright had disappeared from public view, leaving behind him two years’ work for a committee of Investigating Accounts.
When his surviving parent died, the boy was at school, and if he was not a prodigy of learning he was at least brilliant in parts.
Though it was with no great regret that he left school, he was old enough and shrewd enough to realise that a bowing acquaintance with the differential calculus, and the ability to conjugate the verb “avoir” did not constitute an equipment, sufficiently comprehensive (if you will forgive these long words), to meet and defeat such enemies to human progress as he was likely to meet in this cruel and unsympathetic world.
He had a small income bequeathed by his mother in a will which was almost apologetic because she left so little, and he settled himself down as a boarder in the house of a schoolmaster, and took up those branches of study which interested him, and set himself to forget other branches of education which interested him not at all.
Because of his ineradicable passion for challenging fate it was only natural that “T. A. C.” should bear a new significance, and since some genius had christened him “Take A Chance” Anderson the name stuck. And he took chances. From every throw with fate he learnt something. He had acquired some knowledge of boxing at school, and had learnt enough of the art to enable him to head the school. Such was his faith in himself and his persuasive eloquence that he induced Sam Murphy, ex-middle-weight and proprietor of the Stag’s Head, Dorking, to nominate and support him for a ten-rounds contest with that redoubtable feather-weight, Bill Schenk.
“Take A Chance” Anderson took his chance. He also took the count in the first round, and, returning to consciousness, vowed a vow—not that he would never again enter the ring, but that he would learn something more of the game before he did. Of course, it was very disgraceful that a man of his antecedents should become a professional boxer—for professional he became in the very act of failure—but that worried him not at all.
It is a matter of history that Bill Schenk was knocked out by Kid Muldoon, and that twelve months after his initiation into the prize ring “T. Anderson” fought twenty rounds with the Kid and got the decision on points. Thereafter, the ring knew “Take A Chance” Anderson no more.
He took a chance on race-courses, backing horses that opened at tens and closed at twenties. He backed horses that had never won before on the assumption that they must win some time. He had sufficient money left after this adventure to buy a book of form. He devoted his undoubted talent to the study of other games of chance. He played cards for matches with a broker’s clerk, who harboured secret ambitions of going to Monte Carlo with a system; he purchased on the hire system wonderfully cheap properties on the Isle of Thanet—and he worked.
For all his fooling and experimenting, for all his gambling and his chancing, Timothy never let a job of work get past him, if he could do it, and when he wasn’t working for sordid lucre he was working for the good of his soul. He went to the races with a volume of Molière’s plays under his arm, and between events he read, hereby acquiring the respect of the racing fraternity as an earnest student of form.
So he came by violent, yet to him easy, stages to Movieland—that Mecca which attracts all that is enterprising and romantic and restless. He took a chance in a juvenile lead, but his method and his style of actions were original. Producers are for ever on the look out for novelty, but they put the bar up against novel styles of acting and expression. Ellsberger had tried him out because he had known his father, but more because he had won money over him when he had beaten Kid Muldoon; but even Ellsberger was compelled to suggest that Timothy put in two long years “atmosphering” before he essayed an individual rôle on the screen.
Timothy was not certain whether his train left at ten minutes to seven or at ten minutes past seven, so he arrived in time for the ten minutes to seven, which was characteristic of him, because he never took a chance against the inflexible systems.
He reached New York without misadventure, but on his way westward he stayed over at Nevada. He intended spending a night, but met a man with a scheme for running a mail-order business on entirely new lines, invested his money, and by some miracle managed to make it last a year. At the end of that time the police were after his partner, and Timothy was travelling eastward by easy stages.
He came back to New York with fifty-five dollars which he had won from a Westerner on the last stage of the journey. The track ran for about twenty miles along the side of the road, the wager between them was a very simple one; it was whether they would pass more men than women on the road. The Westerner chose men and Timothy chose women. For every man they saw Timothy paid a dollar, for every woman he received a dollar. In the agreed hour they passed fifty-five more women than they passed men and Timothy was that many dollars richer. There were never so many women abroad as there were that bright afternoon, and the Westerner couldn’t understand it until he realised that it was Sunday—a fact which Timothy had grasped before he had made his wager.
Two months later he was back in London. How he got back he never explained. He stayed in London only long enough to fit himself up with a new kit before he presented himself at a solid mansion in Branksome Park, Bournemouth. Years and years before, Sir John Maxell had written to him, asking him to call upon him for any help he might require, and promising to assist him in whatever difficulties he might find himself. Timothy associated the offer with the death of his father—maybe they were friends.
He was shown into the sunny drawing-room bright with flowers, and he looked round approvingly. He had lived in other people’s houses all his life—schools, boarding-houses, hotels and the like—and an atmosphere of home came to him like the forgotten fragrance of a garden he had known.
The servant came back.
“Sir John will see you in ten minutes, sir, but you must not keep him long, because he has to go out to meet Lady Maxell.”
“Lady Maxell?” asked Timothy in surprise, “I didn’t know he was married.”
The servant smiled and said:
“The Judge married a year ago, sir. It was in all the newspapers.”
“I don’t read all the newspapers,” said Timothy. “I haven’t sufficient time. Who was the lady?”
The man looked round, as if fearing to be overheard.
“Sir John married the cinema lady, Miss Sadie O’Grady,” he said, and the hostility in his tone was unmistakable.
Timothy gasped.
“You don’t say!” he said. “Well, that beats the band! Why, I knew that da——, that lady in London!”
The servant inclined his head sideways.
“Indeed, sir,” he said, and it was evident that he did not regard Timothy as being any fitter for human association by reason of his confession.
A distant bell buzzed.
“Sir John is ready, sir,” he said. “I hope you will not mention the fact that I spoke of madam?”
Timothy winked, and was readmitted to the confidence of the democracy.
Sir John Maxell was standing up behind his writing table, a fine, big man with his grey hair neatly brushed back from his forehead and his blue eyes magnified behind rimless glasses.
“T. A. C. Anderson,” he said, coming round the table with slow steps. “Surely this is not the little Timothy I heard so much about years and years ago!”
“That is I, sir,” said Timothy.
“Well, well,” said Maxell, “I should never have known you. Sit down, my boy. You smoke, of course—everybody smokes nowadays, but it seems strange that a boy I knew in short breeches should have acquired the habit. I’ve heard about you,” he said, as Timothy lit his cigar.
“Nothing to my discredit, I hope, sir?”
Maxell shook his head.
“I have heard about you,” he repeated diplomatically, “let it go at that. Now I suppose you’ve come here because, five years ago, on the twenty-third of December to be correct, I wrote to you, offering to give you any help that lay in my power.”
“I won’t swear to the date,” said Tim.
“But I will,” smiled the other. “I never forget a date, I never forget a letter, I never forget the exact wording of that letter. My memory is an amazing gift. Now just tell me what I can do for you.”
Timothy hesitated.
“Sir John,” he said, “I have had a pretty bad time in America. I’ve been running in a team with a crook and I’ve had to pay out every cent I had in the world.”
Sir John nodded slowly.
“Then it is money you want,” he said, without enthusiasm.
“Not exactly money, sir, but I’m going to try to start in London and I thought, maybe, you might give me a letter of introduction to somebody.”
“Ah, well,” said Maxell, brightening up, “I think I can do that for you. What did you think of doing in London?”
“I thought of getting some sort of secretarial job,” he said. “Not that I know much about it!”
Sir John pinched his lower lip.
“I know a man who may help you,” he said. “We were in the House of Commons together and he would give you a place in one of his offices, but unfortunately for you he has made a great deal of money and spends most of his time at Newmarket.”
“Newmarket sounds good to me,” said Timothy “Why, I’d take a chance there. Perhaps he’d try me out in that office?”
The Judge permitted himself to smile.
“In Newmarket,” he said, “our friend does very little more, I fear, than waste his time and money on the race-course. He has half a dozen horses—I had a letter from him this morning.”
He walked back to his table, searched in the litter, and presently amongst the papers pulled out a letter.
“As a matter of fact, I had some business with him and I wrote to him for information. The only thing he tells me is”—this with a gesture of despair—“that Skyball and Polly Chaw—those are the names of race-horses, I presume—will win the two big handicaps next week and that he has a flyer named Swift Kate that can beat anything—I am quoting his words—on legs over six furlongs.”
He looked up over his glasses at Timothy, and on that young man’s face was a seraphic smile.
“Newmarket sounds real nice to me,” glowed Timothy.
Remembering the injunctions of the servant, he was taking his adieu, when his host asked, in a lower voice than that in which the conversation had been carried on:
“I suppose you have not heard from your cousin?”
Timothy looked at him in astonishment. Had Sir John asked after the Grand Llama of Tibet he would have been as well prepared to answer.
“Why, no, sir—no—er—is he alive?”
Sir John Maxell looked at him sharply.
“Alive? Of course. I thought you might have heard from him.”
Timothy shook his head.
“No, sir,” he said, “he disappeared. I only met him once when I was a kid. Was he a friend—er—an acquaintance of yours?”
Sir John was drumming his fingers on the desk and his mind was far away.
“Yes and no,” he said shortly. “I knew him, and at one time I was friendly with him.”
Suddenly he glanced at his watch, and a look of consternation came to his face.
“Great heavens!” he cried. “I promised to meet my wife a quarter of an hour ago. Good-bye! Good-bye!”
He hand-shook Timothy from the room and the young man had to find his way downstairs without guidance, because the manservant was at that moment heavily engaged.
From the floor below came a shrill, unpleasant sound, and Timothy descended to find himself in the midst of a domestic crisis. There were two ladies in the hall—one a mere silent, contained spectator, the other the principal actress. He recognised her at once, but she did not see him, because her attention was directed to the red-faced servant.
“When I ring you on the ’phone, I expect to be answered,” she was saying. “You’ve nothing to do except to sit round and keep your ears open, you big, lazy devil!”
“But, my lady, I——”
“Don’t answer me,” she stormed. “If you think I’ve nothing better to do than to sit at a ’phone waiting till you wake up, why, you’re mistaken—that’s all. And if Sir John doesn’t fire you——”
“Don’t worry about Sir John firing me,” said the man with a sudden change of manner. “I’ve just had about as much of you as I can stand. You keep your bossing for the movies, Lady Maxell. You’re not going to try any of that stuff with me!”
She was incapable of further speech, nor was there any necessity for it since the man turned on his heels and disappeared into that mysterious region which lies at the back of every entrance hall. Then for the first time she saw Timothy.
“How do you do, Lady Maxell?”
She glared round at the interrupter, and for a moment he thought she intended venting her anger on him. She was still frowning when he took her limp hand.
“You’re the Anderson boy, aren’t you?” she asked a little ungraciously.
The old sense of antagonism was revived and intensified in him at the touch of her hand. She was unchanged, looking, if anything, more pretty than when he had seen her last, but the hardness at her mouth was accentuated, and she had taken on an indefinable air of superiority which differed very little from sheer insolence.
A gold-rimmed lorgnette came up to survey him, and he was nettled—only women had the power to annoy him.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” he bantered. “I’m sorry your eyesight is not so good as it was. Studio life is pretty tough on the eyes, isn’t it?”
She closed her lorgnette with a snap, and turned to the girl.
“You’d better see what Sir John is doing,” she said. “Ask him what he thinks I am, that I should wait in the hall like a tramp.”
It was then that the girl came out of the shadow and Timothy saw her.
“This is the ward or niece,” he said to himself, and sighed, for never had he seen a human creature who so satisfied his eye. There is a beauty which is neither statuesque nor cold, nor to be confounded with prettiness. It is a beauty which depends upon no regularity of feature or of colour, but which has its reason in its contradictions.
The smiling Madonna whom Leonardo drew had such contradictory quality as this girl possessed. For she was ninety per cent. child, and carried in her face all the bubbling joy of youth. Yet she impressed Timothy as being strange and unnatural. Her meekness, her ready obedience to carry out the woman’s instruction, the very dignity of her departure—these things did not fit with the character he read in her face. Had she turned curtly to this insolent woman and told her to carry her message herself, or had she flown up the stairs calling for Sir John as she went, these things would have been natural.
Lady Maxell turned upon him.
“And see here, Mr. What’s-your-name, if you’re a friend of Sir John, you’ll forget that I was ever in a studio. There are enough stories about me in Bournemouth without your adding to the collection.”
“Mother’s little thoroughbred!” said Timothy admiringly; “spoken like a true little lady.”
In some respects he was wholly undisciplined, and had never learnt the necessity of refraining from answering back. And the woman irritated him, and irritation was a novel sensation.
Her face was dark with rage, but it was upon Sir John, descending in haste to meet his offended wife, that she turned the full batteries of her anger.
“You didn’t know the time, of course. Your watch has stopped. It is hard enough for me to keep my end up without you helping to make me look foolish!”
“My dear,” protested Maxell in a flurry, “I assure you——”
“You can spend your time with this sort of trash,” she indicated Timothy, and Timothy bowed, “but you keep me waiting like a tailor’s model at Sotheby’s, of all people in the world, when you know well enough——”
“My dear,” pleaded the lawyer wearily, “my watch has certainly stopped——”
“Ah! You make me tired. What are you doing with this fellow? Do you think I want reminding of movie days? Everybody knows this fellow—a cheap gambler, who’s been fired out of every studio in England. You allow your servants to insult me—and now I suppose you’ve brought this prize-fighter to keep me in my place,” and she pointed scornfully at the amused Timothy.
Half-way downstairs the girl stood watching the scene in silence, and it was only when he became conscious of her presence that Timothy began to feel a little uncomfortable.
“Well, good-bye, Sir John,” he said. “I’m sorry I intruded.”
“Wait,” said the woman. “John, this man has insulted me! I don’t know what he’s come for, but I suppose he wants something. He’s one of those shifty fellows that hang around studios begging for money to bet with. If you raise a hand to help him, why, I’m finished with you.”
“I assure you,” said Sir John in his most pompous manner, “that this young man has asked for nothing more than a letter of introduction. I have a duty——”
“Stop!” said the woman. “You’ve a duty to me, too. Hold fast to your money. Likely as not, you’ll do neither with ‘Take A Chance’ Anderson floating around.”
It was not her words, neither the contempt in her voice nor the insult which stung him. The man who went twenty rounds with Kid Muldoon had learnt to control his temper, but there was a new factor present—a factor who wore a plain grey dress, and had two big, black eyes which were now solemnly surveying him.
“Lady Maxell,” he said, “it is pretty difficult to give the lie to any woman, but I tell you that what you say now is utterly false. I had no intention when I came to Bournemouth of asking for anything that would cost Sir John a penny. As to my past, I suppose it has been a little eccentric, but it is clean, Lady Maxell.”
He meant no more than he said. He had no knowledge of Sadie O’Grady’s antecedents, or he might not have emphasised the purity of his own. But the woman went back as though she had been whipped, and Timothy had a momentary vision of a charging fury, before she flung herself upon him, tearing at his face, shrieking aloud in her rage. . .
“Phew!” said Timothy.
He took off his hat and fanned himself. It was the first time he had ever run away from trouble, but now he had almost flown. Those favoured people who were in sight of Sir John Maxell’s handsome villa, saw the door swung open and a young man taking the front path in four strides and the gate in another before he sped like the wind along the street.
“Phew!” said Timothy again.
He went the longest way back to his hotel, to find that a telephone message had been received from Sir John. It was short and to the point.
“Please don’t come again.”
Timothy read the slip and chuckled.
“Is it likely?” he asked the page who brought the message.
Then he remembered the girl in grey, with the dark eyes, and he fingered his smooth chin thoughtfully.
“I wonder if it is worth while taking a chance,” he said to himself, and decided that, for the moment, it was not.
CHAPTER X
LADY MAXELL yawned and put down the magazine she was reading. She looked at her watch. It was ten o’clock. At such an hour Paris would be beginning to wake up. The best people would still be in the midst of their dinner, and Marie de Montdidier (born Hopkins) would be putting the final dabs of powder on her nose in her dressing-room at the Folies Bergères before making her first and her final appearance.
The boulevards would be bright with light, and there would be lines of twinkling autos in the Bois for the late diners at the Aromonville. She looked across at the girl sitting under a big lamp in a window recess, a book on her knees, but her mind and eyes elsewhere.
“Mary,” she said, and the girl, with a start, woke from her reverie.
“Do you want me, Lady Maxell?”
“What is the matter with Sir John? You know him better than I do.”
The girl shook her head.
“I hardly know, Lady Maxell——”
“For heaven’s sake don’t call me ‘Lady Maxell,’ ” said the other irritably. “I’ve told you to call me Sadie if you want to.” There was a silence. “Evidently you don’t want,” snapped the woman. “You’re what I call a fine, sociable family. You seem to get your manners from your new friend.”
The girl went red.
“My new friend?” she asked, and Lady Maxell turned her back to her with some resolution and resumed for a moment the reading of her magazine.
“I don’t mind if you find any pleasure in talking to that kind of insect,” she said, putting the periodical down again. “Why, the world’s full of those do-nothing boys. I suppose he knows there’s money coming to you.”
The girl smiled.
“Very little, Lady Maxell,” she said.
“A little’s a lot to a man like that,” said the other. “You mustn’t think I am prejudiced because I was—er—annoyed the other day. That is temperament.”
Again the girl smiled, but it was a different kind of smile, and Lady Maxell observed it.
“You can marry him as far as I am concerned,” she said. “These sneaking meetings are not exactly complimentary to Sir John, that’s all.”
The girl closed her book, walked across to the shelf and put it away before she spoke.
“I suppose you’re speaking of Mr. Anderson,” she said. “Yes, I have met him, but there has been nothing furtive in the meetings. He stopped me in the park and apologised for having been responsible for the scene—for your temperament, you know.”
Lady Maxell looked up sharply, but the girl met her eyes without wavering.
“I hope you aren’t trying to be sarcastic,” complained the older woman. “One never knows how deep you are. But I can tell you this, that sarcasm is wasted on me.”
“I’m sure of that,” said the girl.
Lady Maxell looked again, but apparently the girl was innocent of offensive design.
“I say I met Mr. Anderson. He was very polite and very nice. Then I met him again—in fact, I have met him several times,” she said thoughtfully. “So far from his being a do-nothing, Lady Maxell, I think you are doing him an injustice. He is working at the Parade Drug Store.”
“He will make a fine match for you,” said the woman. “Sir John will just love having a shop-walker in the family!”
That ended the conversation for both of them, and they sat reading for a quarter of an hour before Lady Maxell threw her magazine on the floor and got up.
“Sir John had a telegram yesterday that worried him,” she said. “Do you know what it was about?”
“Honestly I do not know, Lady Maxell,” said the girl. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
“Because he would tell me a lie,” said the woman coolly, and the girl winced.
“He brought all his money and securities from the Dawlish and County Bank to-day and put them in his safe and he had the chief constable with him for half an hour this morning.”
This was news to the girl, and she was interested in spite of herself.
“Now, Mary,” said Lady Maxell, “I’m going to be frank with you—frankness pays sometimes. They called my marriage a romance of the screen. Every newspaper said as much and I suppose that is true. But the most romantic part of the marriage was my estate in Honolulu, my big house in Paris and my bank balance. Ellsberger’s publicity man put all that stuff about, and I’ve an idea that Sir John was highly disappointed when he found he’d married me for myself alone. That’s how it strikes me.”
Here was a marriage which had shocked Society and had upset the smooth current of the girl’s life, placed in an entirely new light.
“Aren’t you very rich?” she asked slowly, and Sadie laughed.
“Rich! There was a tram fare between me and the workhouse the day I married Sir John,” she said. “I don’t blame him for being disappointed. Lots of these cinema stars are worth millions—I wasn’t one of them. I married because I thought I was going to have a good time—lots of money and plenty of travel—and I chose with my eyes shut.”
The girl was silent. For once Sadie Maxell’s complaint had justification. Sir John Maxell was not a spending man. He lived well, but never outside the circle of necessity.
The girl was about to speak, when there came a dramatic interruption.
There was a “whang!” a splintering of glass and something thudded against the wall. Lady Maxell stood up as white as death.
“What was that?” she gasped.
The girl was pale, but she did not lose her nerve.
“Somebody fired a shot. Look!”
She pulled aside the curtain. “The bullet went through the window.”
“Keep away from the window, you fool!” screamed the woman. “Turn out the light! Ring the bell!”
Mary moved across the room and turned the switch. They waited in silence, but no other shot was fired. Perhaps it was an accident. Somebody had been firing at a target. . . .
“Go and tell my husband!” said Sadie. “Quickly!”
The girl passed through the lighted hall upstairs and knocked at Sir John’s door. There was no answer. She tried the door, but found it locked. This was not unusual. He had a separate entrance to his study, communicating by a balcony and a flight of stairs with the garden. A wild fear seized her. Possibly Sir John had been in the garden when the shot was fired; it may have been intended for him. She knocked again louder, and this time she heard his step and the door was opened.
“Did you knock before?” he asked. “I was writing——”
Then he saw her face.
“What has happened?” he demanded.
The girl told him, and he made his way downstairs slowly, as was his wont. He entered the drawing-room, switched on the lights, and without a glance at his wife walked to the window and examined the shattered pane.
“I imagined I heard a noise, but thought somebody had dropped something. When did this happen? Just before you came up?”
The girl nodded.
Maxell looked from one to the other. His wife was almost speechless with terror, and Mary Maxell alone was calm.
“It has come already,” he said musingly. “I did not think that this would happen so soon.”
He walked down to the hall where the telephone hung and rang through to the police station, and the girl heard all he said.
“Yes, it is Sir John Maxell speaking. A shot has just been fired through my window. No, not at me—I was in my study. Apparently a rifle shot. Yes, I was right——”
Presently he came back.
“The police will be here in a few moments to make a search of the grounds,” he said, “but I doubt whether they will catch the miscreant.”
“Is it possible that it was an accident?” asked the girl.
“Accident?” He smiled. “I think not,” he said dryly. “That kind of accident is liable to happen again. You had better come up to my study, both of you, till the police arrive,” he said and led the way up the stairs.
He did not attempt to support his wife, though her nerve was obviously shaken. Possibly he did not observe this fact until they were in the room, for after a glance at her face he pushed a chair forward.
“Sit down,” he said.
The study was the one room to which his wife was seldom admitted. Dominated as he was by her in other matters, he was firm on this point. It was perhaps something of a novelty for her—a novelty which will still the whimper of the crying child has something of the same effect upon a nervous woman.
The door of the safe was open and the big table was piled high with sealed packages. The only money she saw was a thick pad of bank-notes fastened about with a paper bandage, on which something was written. On this she fixed her eyes. She had never seen so much money in her life, and he must have noticed the attention this display of wealth had created, for he took up the money and slipped it into a large envelope.
“This is your money, Mary,” he beamed over his glasses at the girl.
She was feeling the reaction of her experience now and was trembling in every limb. Yet she thought she recognised in this diversion an attempt on his part to soothe her, and she smiled and tried hard to respond.
They had been daily companions since she was a mite of four, and between him and his dead brother’s child there was a whole lot of understanding and sympathy which other people never knew.
“My money, uncle?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I realised your investments last week,” he said. “I happened to know that the Corporation in which the money stood had incurred very heavy losses through some error in insurance. It isn’t a great deal, but I couldn’t afford to let you take any further risks.
“There was, of course, a possibility of this shot having been fired by accident,” he went on, reverting to the matter which would naturally be at the back of his mind. Then he fell into thought, pacing the room in silence.
“I thought you were out,” he said, stopping suddenly in front of the girl. “You told me you were going to a concert.”
Before she could explain why she changed her mind they heard the sound of voices in the hall.
“Stay here,” said Sir John. “It is the police. I will go down and tell them all there is to know.”
When her husband had gone, Lady Maxell rose from her chair. The table, with its sealed packages, drew her like a magnet. She fingered them one by one, and came at last to the envelope containing Mary’s patrimony. This she lifted in her hands, weighing it. Then, with a deep sigh, she replaced the package on the table.
“There’s money there,” she said, and Mary smiled.
“Not a great deal, I’m afraid. Father was comparatively poor when he died.”
“There’s money,” said Lady Maxell thoughtfully; “more than I have ever seen since I have been in this house, believe me.”
She returned, as though fascinated, and lifted the envelope again and peered inside.
“Poor, was he?” she said. “I think you people don’t know what poverty is. Do you know what all this means?”
She held the envelope up and there was a look in her face which the girl had never seen before.
“It means comfort, it means freedom from worry, it means that you don’t have to pretend and make love to men whom you loathe.”
The girl had risen and was staring at her.
“Lady Maxell!” she said in a shocked voice. “Why—why—I never think of money like that.”
“Why should you?” said the woman roughly, as she flung the package on the table. “I’ve been after money in quantities like that all my life. It has always been dangling in front of me and eluding me—eluding is the word, isn’t it?” she asked carelessly.
“What are all those pictures?” she changed the subject abruptly, pointing to the framed photographs which covered the walls. “They’re photographs of India, aren’t they?”
“Morocco,” said the girl. “Sir John was born in Morocco and lived there until he went to school. He speaks Arabic like a native. Did you know that?”
“Morocco,” said Lady Maxell. “That’s strange. Morocco!”
“Do you know it?” asked the girl.
“I’ve been there—once,” replied the other shortly. “Did Sir John go often?”
“Before he married, yes,” said Mary. “He had large interests there at one time, I think.”
Sir John came back at that moment, and Mary noticed that his first glance was at the table.
“Well, they’ve found nothing,” he said, “neither footprints nor the empty shell. They’re making a search of the grounds to-morrow. Lebbitter wanted to post a man to protect the house in view of the other matter.”
“What other matter?” asked his wife quickly.
“It is nothing,” he said, “nothing really which concerns you. Of course, I would not allow the police to do that. It would make the house more conspicuous than it is at present.”
He looked at the two.
“Now,” he said bluntly, “I think you had better go off to bed. I have still a lot of work to do.”
His wife obeyed without a word, and the girl was following her, when he called her back.
“Mary,” he said, laying his hand upon her shoulder, “I’m afraid I’m not the best man that ever lived, but I’ve tried to make you happy, my dear, in my own way. You’ve been as a daughter to me.”
She looked up at him with shining eyes. She could not trust herself to speak.
“Things haven’t gone as well as they might during the past year,” he said. “I made a colossal blunder, but I made it with my eyes open. It hasn’t been pleasant for either of us, but there’s no sense in regretting what you cannot mend. Mary, they tell me that you’ve been seeing a lot of this young man Anderson?”
She was annoyed to find herself going red when there was really no reason for it. She need not ask who “they” were, she could guess.
“I’ve been making inquiries about that boy,” said Sir John slowly, “and I can tell you this, he is straight. Perhaps he has led an unconventional life, but all that he told Sadie was true. He’s clean, and, Mary, that counts for something in this world.”
He seemed at a loss how to proceed.
“Anything might happen,” he went on. “Although I’m not an old man, I have enemies. . . .”
“You don’t mean——”
“I have many enemies,” he said. “Some of them are hateful, and I want to tell you this, that if trouble ever comes and that boy is within call—go to him. I know men, good, bad and indifferent; he’s neither bad nor indifferent. And now, good night!”
He kissed her on the forehead.
“You needn’t tell your aunt what I’ve been talking about,” he said at parting and led her to the door, closing and locking it behind her.
He sat down in his chair for a very long time before he made a move, then he began picking up the packages and carrying them to the safe. He stopped half-way through and resumed his seat in the chair, waiting for the hour to pass, by which time he judged the household would be asleep.
At midnight he took a pair of rubber boots from a locker, pulled them on, and went out through the door leading to the balcony, down the covered stairway to the garden. Unerringly he walked across the lawn to a corner of his grounds which his gardeners had never attempted to cultivate. He stopped once and groped about in the bushes for a spade which he had carefully planted there a few nights before. His hand touched the rotting wood of an older spade and he smiled. For six years the tool had remained where he had put it the last time he had visited this No-Man’s-Land.
Presently he came to a little hillock and began digging. The soil was soft, and he had not gone far before the spade struck wood. He cleared a space two feet square and drew from the earth a small crescent of wood. It was, in fact, a part of the wooden cover of a well which had long since gone dry but which had been covered up by its previous owner and again covered by Maxell.
Lying at full length on the ground, he reached down through the aperture, and his fingers found a big rusty nail on which was suspended a length of piano wire. At the end of the wire was attached a small leather bag and this he drew up and unfastened, and putting the bag on one side, let the free end of the wire fall into the well.
He replaced the wood, covered it again with earth, all the time exercising care, for, small as the aperture was, it was big enough for even a man of his size to slip through.
A cloaked figure which stood in the shadow of the bushes watching him, which had followed him as noiselessly across the lawn, saw him lift the bag and take it back to the house and disappear through the covered stairway. So still a night it was, that the watcher could hear the click of the lower door as Sir John locked it, and the soft pad of his feet as they mounted the stairs.