(The Tale is told by Reginald Townsend, Esq.)
I had not a notion that it would be Louise, that evening at the club--not the very faintest! How could I have? I did not know that the lot would fall to me. I was the first to draw. When I saw that the card which I had drawn was black, and that on it were inscribed, in gleaming crimson letters, the words, "The Honour of the Club," it gave me quite a start. Of course I knew that the odds were equal. But, somehow or other, I had never expected to draw the thing. I held it up in front of me.
"Gentlemen, the Honour of the Club is mine."
Pendarvon, in the chair, stood up. The others all rose with him.
"Gentlemen of the Murder Club, charge your glasses to the brim." They filled them with neat brandy. Pendarvon turned to me, holding his tumbler above his head.
"Mr. Townsend, we offer you our most sincere congratulations."
The others all chimed in--
"We do!"
They emptied their glasses, with inclinations of their heads towards me. I don't fancy that, ordinarily, they would all of them have been quite equal to drinking half a pint of brandy at one swallow, neat. Some of them did not like it even then. As young Rasper-Stenning, who was in front of me, put down his glass, he pulled a face, and caught at the table. I thought he was going to be ill.
Pendarvon went on--
"The Honour of the Club, Mr. Townsend, rests with you. We do not doubt that, this day month, you will return it to us, as untarnished as when it came into your keeping." They sat down. I rose.
"Gentlemen, I thank you. I give you my word that, with me, the Honour of the Club is safe. I will wear it next my heart. At our next meeting I will return it to you with its crimson of a still more vivid hue. I will show you that it is possible to paint even scarlet red."
I put the Honour of the Club into my pocket-book. I went away with Archie Beaupré. He wanted to know if I had any one in my mind's eye.
"Not any one--unless it's you."
He was lighting a cigarette. He laughed.
"It's against the rules to kill each other. Have a light?"
I had one.
"I'll kill some one, never you fear. What is likely to afflict me is not a poverty of choice, but an embarrassment of riches. The difficulty will be to know, not whom to kill, but whom to leave alive. Think of one's creditors. How they cry out for slaughter."
But Louise O'Donnel never occurred to me. I was too fond of her. The little witch had twined herself about my heart. When I thought of her, I thought of nothing else but kisses. I don't know how many women I have loved in my time--I hope that, as becomes a gentleman, I have loved them all! I never loved one better than, at that period of my career, I loved Louise.
True enough, later on my love grew fainter. The fault was hers. My experience, a tolerably wide one, teaches me that, when a man's love does grow less, almost invariably the woman is at fault. The days went by. The Honour of the Club remained in my pocket. I could not make up my mind whom to choose. When it came to the scratch, I found the task harder than I supposed. I thought of my scamp of a brother. Goodness knows he would be all the better for killing. I might have pitched upon him had not another choice been positively thrust upon me. None of one's other relatives seemed worthy serious attention. The Depehurst people are a nuisance. But one scarcely felt justified in killing one of them, just by way of a joke, except it was Harold, who, what with his temperance fad, and his anti-gambling fad, and his social purity fad, and all the rest of his fads, is one of the most obnoxious prigs I know. On the other hand, if one commenced killing men simply because they were prigs, slaughter would know no ending.
Then Louise began to worry me. The usual story--her character at stake. As though it mattered! But, try as I would, I could not induce her to take my point of view. Never was a girl more unreasonable. I had always foreseen that she was the sort with whom one might have trouble. But then I had always supposed that she loved me. I made at least a dozen suggestions--delicately, and almost inferentially, as it were, because she was in a state of mind in which a slip on my part might have made her dangerous. Nothing would do for her except that I should marry her, which, of course, was absurd.
Then it happened. Up to the very last moment I was undecided. The fault was hers all through.
She was staying in lodgings at Brighton--really at my expense. I had enough expenses of that kind upon my hands just then! Her tenancy was up on the Monday. I told her to leave instead on the Sunday. She was to meet me at East Grinstead. She might have been under the impression that, having met me, she was to stay with me--if so, again the fault was hers. Leaving town early, I met her at East Grinstead Station. We lunched at a tavern near the station. After lunch we walked over to Turner's Hill. At the inn we had a hybrid sort of meal. Afterwards we started, as she supposed, to walk back to East Grinstead Station.
In so supposing, she was wrong.
She had been affectionate all day--too affectionate--with a sort of affection which suggested what a good wife she would be to her husband. When we left the inn, instead of going in the direction she supposed, I turned towards Paddockhurst, intending to walk through Tilgate Forest to Three Bridges Station, distant some four or five miles. She was a stranger in that country. I knew every inch of it--a lonely one it is at night. I made up my mind to put the issue plainly to her on the road. And that then, if she did not promise to be reasonable, I would do something for the Honour of the Club. The month allowed by the rules was up on the Thursday following. At the meeting I should be called to account.
Louise continued to be as unreasonable as ever--if anything, she was more so. She talked about my promises--as if they were anything! She cried, making quite a scene--or rather, a succession of scenes. She kept stopping, as we were going down Whitely Hill, accusing me of all sorts of things. I fancy she was rather taken aback when I turned into Tilgate Forest. It was pitch dark, and the walking was not too smooth. The game seemed wide awake. We could hear the rustling of unseen feet, the hurtling of unseen wings. Once we flushed a pheasant right from beneath our feet. A startled cock-pheasant is not the quietest of birds, but I don't think I ever heard one make such a noise as that bird did then. It startled even me. Louise was frightened out of her wits. I felt her trembling as she clung to my arm.
All the way along I kept saying to myself, "Now! now!" And I should have done it in the forest, only just as I was bringing myself to the sticking point, my eyes were saluted by a crimson glare. I thought for a moment we had gone further than I supposed, and had reached Wrench's farm. Then I thought of the charcoal-burners. You will find them somewhere in Tilgate Forest all the year round. Sure enough it was them. Their furnace was glowing blood-red--they had built it close to the path. They had raised a barricade of faggots to screen it from the wind. Louise wanted to stop and look at it, I believe, because she wanted the encouragement of its companionship. But I would not agree; I hurried her on. I had no desire to be seen just then, even by a charcoal-burner. As I was congratulating myself that we should get past unnoticed, a short, stunted figure, starting out from behind the barricade, glared at us through the gloom.
Little was said by either of us, as, leaving the forest, we went across the fields. Reaching the railway, we passed under the arch. I helped Louise over the stile. We paused by the gate. About half a mile off were the village and the station. I resolved I would give her another chance; then if she was obstinate, I would do it.
She was obstinate, even, as it seemed to me, in a positively ascending scale.
"You promised to marry me. I have your letter. I trusted you. If you are going to leave me to face my shame alone, there is nothing for me but death."
That saying of hers finished it; there was nothing for her but death. Only it came a little sooner than she quite bargained for. Just at that moment a train went thundering over the bridge towards town. As it went a cloud must have parted, because, suddenly, the moon came out. It shone upon us two. Louise looked up at me through the moonbeams. Although she had been crying--and I never knew a woman's face which was improved by tears--her prettiness, revealed, all at once, by the moonlight, particularly struck me. She looked prettier even than when I first saw her at the Coliseum. Her beauty went to my heart. She put her hand upon my arm--a tiny hand it was.
"Reggie, has your love for me all gone? Don't you love me still?"
"Oh, yes," I said; "I love you still."
Then, putting my hands round her neck, I began to choke her. Hers was a slender neck, so that I was able to put my hands right round and get a good, firm grip. I don't think that at first she realised what I was up to. She was thinking more of love than of death. At any rate she did not attempt to scream. She looked to me as if she was startled. She looked more startled as I increased the pressure. Appetite came with eating. I had not altogether relished the business until I tackled it. But, as I got a tighter and tighter hold, and felt her convulsive writhings and her life slipping through my fingers, I began to feel the joy of killing, for the killing's sake. I began to be filled with a sort of ecstasy of passion--the sort of sensation which I had been in search of when I joined the club. After all, it was worth feeling. Lifting her up, I bent her backwards over the gate. She took longer to die than I should have supposed. When she had ceased to move, and went all limp in my grasp, I dropped her. My fingers were rigid with cramp. For some seconds I could not move them. When I could, the pain was excruciating. I found, too, that I was not only breathless, I was damp with perspiration.
She lay in an ugly heap on the ground. I arranged her draperies and straightened her. In her pocket was a purse--one which I had given her, so I was only regaining my own--some letters in an envelope, which, I guessed, were also mine, and a handkerchief. I knew that she was in the habit of wearing a portrait of mine, which I had been ass enough to give her, in a locket round her neck. Opening her dress at the bosom--which I had a job in doing--I found the locket tied to a piece of ribbon. Tearing it off, I put it, with the other things, into the inside pocket of my overcoat. Not wishing to leave the body lying there for the first passer-by to find in the morning, picking it up I carried it a few feet along the hedge which bordered the railway embankment. On the other side of this hedge shrubs were growing on the sloping banks. Raising the body above my head, I threw it, as far as I could, among these shrubs. I distinctly heard it fall. Then, immediately after, I heard a sort of rustling--exactly the sort of rustling which the body might have made had it been alive and was rising to its feet. I knew well enough that it was not alive; I had taken care of that. But the sound was, in one sense, so apposite, and, in another sense, so very much the other way, that it filled me with an unreasoning panic terror. I started off running across the open meadow as if I had been running for my life.
I had meant to keep along the Brighton line to Three Bridges Station. It was only when I struck the stile which leads to the footpath across the Horsham line that I realised what an idiot I was. Then I pulled up, and only then. I was in a muck of sweat. Sitting on the stile, I began to mop myself with my pocket-handkerchief. I was exhausted--all of a quiver. Something of my absurd attack of terror was with me still. I actually thought that I had seen a face rise up from among the bushes and stare at me--white in the moonlight. As I recalled my folly--even though I was conscious it was folly--I shut my eyes and shivered.
As soon as I felt myself presentable and in a condition to move, I went along the Horsham line into the station. I gained the platform unobserved. I made at once for a refreshment-room. I was aware that it was not the part of wisdom to expose myself too much, but I felt that I must have a drink, even though directly after I was hanged. There being two refreshment-rooms on the up platform, I had two drinks at each of them.
The return half of my East Grinstead ticket was available to town from there; so I had no concern on that account. As I came out of the second refreshment-room, feeling that the stuff which they had sold me for brandy had done me good, I tackled a porter about a train. The next, and last, to London was at 10.20. Glancing at my watch, I found that it was just past the hour.
A woman, coming up to me as I moved from the porter, asked me the question which I had just been asking him. I noticed what a pleasant voice she had--few things in a woman appeal to me so much as that. Something in her bearing suggested that she might not resent a desire on my part for sociability. I gave her the information she required, with additions of my own, thrown out by way of feeler. She responded; we began to talk. The long and short of it was that I travelled with her in the same compartment to town.
Possibly I had at the moment an unconscious craving for congenial society--I am a gregarious animal. Certainly, she did appeal to what I take to be my instincts in an unusual degree. She was not in her first youth, but she was still good-looking, and she was not made up. I hate a woman who paints and powders; after all my experience I have never got over a feeling that a woman who does that sort of thing can't be clean. She was good style; if she was not exactly a woman of our world, then she was either very clever or very near it. She had seen the world, and it had not spoilt her. She was well dressed, and by the right people. I would not have minded doing a turn in the Park with her any day of the week.
She was frankness itself--it was that which made me shy a little. With strangers our women are not so frank, though that I have a sympathetic, not to say fascinating, way about me, I make no doubt. It is not a question of conceit; I know it. I ought to, considering it is the leading article of my stock-in-trade.
She said she was a widow. We got so thick that she gave me her card--Mrs. Daniel J. Carruth, with an address at West Kensington. She herself was English, her husband was American, which explained the name. She had been out of England several years; had returned to find herself alone. She felt her loneliness she said. I had no reason to suppose she lied.
"Have you no children?"
"No. I have scarcely known whether to be glad or sorry. There is something to be said on either side of the question." Looking down she began pulling at the pile of her sealskin coat. "You must know that my husband was many years my senior." I nodded. "It would have made a difference if he had been young."
Though I did not quite see the sequence, I nodded again. She had given me permission to light a cigarette. I was at my ease. I was conscious of feeling a really curious interest in Mrs. Carruth.
She glanced up at me. Hers were fine eyes, though about them there were two peculiarities--they seemed to be looking, not at me, but at something far away, and they always smiled.
"It seems so odd. When I left England, though I was poor, I had troops of friends. Now I have come back I am rich, but all my friends seem to have vanished into air. I have not one."
"That is a state of things which is not likely to continue long."
"Perhaps not; I hope not--one does not like to be friendless. But it is all so different to what I had looked forward to. When one has been absent a long time from home, and is able to return at last, one dreams dreams. Only those who have experienced it can know how"--she hesitated, as if for a word--"strange it feels when one is forced to recognise that those dreams have been but dreams." She glanced down; then up again. "I have many acquaintances; they are not friends."
I agreed with her, asking myself at the same time what she might happen to mean. Was she dropping a hint to me? If so, I might be more than half disposed to take it. Mrs. Carruth appealed to me strangely, every moment more and more. The minutes sped; before I knew it we were in town.
I saw her into a hansom at Victoria. She asked me to call on her; to renew and improve the acquaintance made in the train. I said that I would. What is more, when she was gone, I told myself that I would keep my promise.
Her voice lingered in my ears.
There were several letters by the morning's post. One's creditors, at any rate, seemed to be in town. Do those sort of people ever go away? Lily Langdale wanted me to look her up. Confound little Lily Langdale! I had looked her up too much already. Chirpy Mason, writing from Monte Carlo, wanted to know if I could do him a hundred or two. Would I wire? No; I would neither do the one or the other. I knew Chirpy. He had probably made the same request to half a dozen more of us. There were only two letters among the heap worth looking at. One contained just two type-written words, "Buy Boomjopfs." No address, no signature, no nothing. I put that aside. It would entail my going into the City as soon as I could. The other letter was from Haselton Jardine:--
"Sloane Gardens.
"Dear Townsend,--If you are in town and this catches you, and you have nothing else to do, come round to-morrow (Monday) and dineen famille. Only Dora! I have something which I rather wish to say to you.
"Yours,
"H. J."
I was to go down to them at Cockington on Friday. What had he to say to me which would not keep till then, I wondered. But I had nothing else to do--and there was Dora! So, scribbling a line of acceptance, I told Burton to take it round. When I opened the paper I found that Sir Haselton was leading for the defendants in the great diamond earring libel case--Mrs. Potter Segundi against Lady Lucretia Jenkyns. I should not have minded being in court to see the fun. They say Mrs. P. S. has brass enough to start a foundry. I know, of my own knowledge, that Lady J. is fairly well equipped. When I am in Queer-street I hope that Sir Haselton will be briefed for me.
It was past one when I got out. I ought to have gone straight to the City. Instead, I dropped into the Climax, and had just one rubber. I cut Pendarvon against Graeme and Bicketts. Pendarvon and I had the luck of the devil: we scored a bumper. Altogether, with bets, I walked off with about a pony. When I reached the City it was not very far from four. I made for a broker in Austin Friars--a man named Tennant, Thomas Tennant--as steady a file as ever I saw. I have done a good deal of business through him at various times. I don't fancy that he has much nose of his own; but he keeps quiet, asks no questions, and follows instructions to the letter.
Tennant was out. He was not in the House. A clerk thought that he was at Danby's; he would go and see. I knew where Danby's was--it is one of those City restaurants where there is more drank than ate--so I saved that clerk his trouble, and went myself.
I spotted Tennant directly I got inside the place--a plump little fellow, with round, pasty face, and hair which always looked to me as if he soaped it. A mild, unassuming neat-as-ninepence sort of man. He had a table to himself. As a rule, in a mild sort of way, he is jolly as a sandboy. Just then it appeared to me that he seemed hipped. Taking a chair on the opposite side of the table, carelessly, thoughtlessly enough, I took hold of a scrap of paper on which he had been scribbling. When I glanced at it a thrill went down my back. It was a bolt out of the blue. I do not think that in all my life before I was ever so taken by surprise.
Tennant had been scribbling all over the sheet of paper a woman's name--"Louise O'Donnel." That my appearance on the scene at that particular moment was a pure coincidence, I had, of course, no doubt. It could not have been otherwise. But how came he to have been writing that name? I could scarcely believe my eyes. I stared at the paper, and then at him.
"What is the meaning of this?" I asked.
"The meaning of what?"
When I showed him what he had been writing on the piece of paper he seemed to be as much taken aback as I was. At first he wanted me to believe that he had been writing a name over and over again without having an idea of what it was that he was doing. I could not make him out at all. He made me feel uneasy.
So far as I was aware, I was the only person in England who had been acquainted with the girl's real name. She had always assured me that such was the case, and I had believed her. Everybody, except myself, knew her by her stage name--Milly Carroll. Her father was the only relative she had in the world, and he was in Colorado. Father and daughter had fallen out. Coming to England with a burlesque company from New York, she had left him on the other side of the world. If this story of hers was true--and I did not, and do not, believe she lied--she was not that sort of girl--how did Mr. Thomas Tennant come to be in possession of her name?
I put the question to him point blank.
"What do you know about Louise O'Donnel?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? Tennant, I say!"
"I heard it mentioned for the first time in my life last night."
"Last night?" The coincidence made me shiver again.
"As I was coming up from Brighton."
"Brighton?" I had to gasp for breath. "Did you come up last night from Brighton? By what train?"
"The 8.40."
I figured it out in my mind. I should not be surprised if that was the identical train which had rattled over the arch while Louise and I had been leaning against the gate, just before I did something for the Honour of the Club. And Tennant was in it. "Was the long arm of coincidence going to make things pleasant for me?"
"What did you hear about Louise O'Donnel as you were coming up from Brighton?"
"Nothing. The name was casually mentioned in my hearing, that was all. It seems to have stuck in my head."
It did seem to have stuck in his head--and it seemed to have crept unawares from the ends of his fingers. That something had been said or done to fix the name in his memory, I did not doubt. What had been said or done was another matter. Somehow I did not seem to care to question him too closely. Generally, in his own placid, fish-like fashion, Tennant is as cool as you please. Then he was as fidgety as if he had been sitting on hot bricks. He said he was ill, and he looked it--if his ailment was not more mental than physical I misjudged him.
I clean forgot all about the Boomjopf shares, which I had come up to instruct him to buy. I left Tennant in Danby's without having mentioned them to him from first to last. Indeed, I never thought of them till I pulled Groeden's tip out of my pocket when I got home to dress for dinner. Seeing the girl's name upon that sheet of paper made me all of a fluster.
Scarcely had I left Danby's when I all but cannoned into my scamp of a brother. He seemed as little pleased to see me as I was to see him, but as I had seen and heard nothing of him for the last two years, I thought that I might as well do the fraternal. He looked seedy enough, and cad enough to boot. The cad was in his face and bearing; the seediness was in his clothes. He had on what looked like, not a second, but a fourth-hand overcoat, trimmed with the usual imitation astrachan. If he had his way, I believe that he would be buried in imitation astrachan.
"Not in prison then?"
"No." He fidgeted inside his clothes. "I'm not in prison."
"Recently come out?"
"Nor have I recently come out."
"Or just going in?"
"Not unless, my dear Reginald, it is to visit you."
Alexander was cheeky; he must be in funds, although he did not look it.
"May I ask, my dear Alexander, what means you are at present taking to increase your fortune?"
He blew his nose with an old silk handkerchief and a flourish. Did he ever do anything without a flourish--even pick a pocket?
"I don't know, my dear Reginald, that it much matters to you what I am doing, but I don't mind telling you, in confidence, that I am at present devoting my energies to the detection of crime."
"To what?"
The idea seemed too funny.
"To the detection of crime. In other words, I am a private detective, on, I think I may say, a considerable scale."
"The deuce you are! That is something new."
"And you--may I ask what you are doing?"
I stared at Alexander. He certainly was coming on.
"I'm talking to you."
"I trust that the occupation gives you satisfaction. I regret that I am compelled to cut it short. My time is valuable. In fact, at this moment I have a pressing appointment with a gentleman well known in City circles."
"A bailiff or a policeman, Alexander? They are both of them well known in City circles."
"Probably, my dear Reginald, they are better known to you than they are to me. Good-day."
"Good-day!"
He raised his hat about three feet; I raised mine about three inches. We parted, I do believe, for the first time in our lives, on the most affable of terms.
Sir Haselton Jardine was a man whom I had rather been in the habit of holding in awe. One never could be certain how much he knew. A man could scarcely rise to the forensic heights which he had reached without knowing something of almost every one. He was so quiet and so self-contained that it was impossible to gauge the extent of his knowledge until too late.
He was rather short, and he was very thin, and he stooped. He had colourless grey eyes, which you scarcely ever saw, though, if you had your wits about you, you felt that they all the time saw you. He had a peaked grey beard, too straggling to be Vandyke, and sandy hair, which he parted low down on the right-hand side. His voice was as soft and gentle as any girl's--when he was asking a jury to hang a man he was always the very pink of courtesy, and I wonder how many he had sent that way in his time. He had beautiful hands, and he either braced his trousers too high or else it was a principle of his to have them made too short. Jardine's trousers were a standing joke--he always looked as if he had got into his younger, and distinctly smaller, brother's. He was a widower, and Dora was his only child.
I always had had a tenderness towards Dora Jardine. I suspected that, under certain circumstances, she might not be ill-disposed towards me. It was Sir Haselton that I felt shy of. He had the reputation of being rich, apart from his practice at the bar, and that was supposed to be worth fifteen thousand a year. Dora was pretty; he might very well have eyes for an altogether bigger man than Reginald T. But somehow of late I had begun to fancy that he himself had a partiality for me. He had become quite fatherly. I was in a measure free of the house. On Friday I was to go down to his country place at Cockington to shoot; he had quite made a point of my making an indefinite stay.
Now there had been his note of the morning!
Sir Haselton was not visible when I arrived. I found Dora alone in the drawing-room. Very nice she looked. Not one of the new order of tall girls, but tall enough, and straight as a dart. Brown hair, which, in certain lights looked golden, and which had a natural crinkle. Pouting lips--very pretty ones--good nose and chin. Her eyes were her most remarkable feature, as was the case with her father. Blue eyes--laughing blue eyes I have heard them called--and innocent and girlish too. But to me they were something else besides. I never knew a man or a woman with eyes like that who was deficient in grit. I will go further. If the women who have gone to the devil, and smiled when they met him face to face, could be polled, I should be disposed to wager that the majority of them had eyes like Dora Jardine's. I am not insinuating anything against her--quite the other way. Only I am a student of women's eyes.
She was standing by the fire as I went in. She turned, holding out her hand.
"I am glad you have come," she said.
I felt as I took her hand in mine--and I felt it not for the first time--that she and I were kindred spirits, and that, girl though she was, she was stronger than I. I said something; I don't know what. Then I looked at the fire. I felt that her eyes were on my face.
"What a strange face you have, as though, in you, were the makings of a man."
I don't know how she was in the habit of talking to other men; she was always saying that sort of thing to me. I laughed. "What sort of man?"
She did not answer my question. She ran her conversation on lines of her own.
"What have you been doing since I saw you last--killing time?"
"Unfortunately, Miss Jardine, I have nothing else to do."
"Would you like to have something?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"On the something."
"I see. I suppose that you will be doing something else on Saturday; you are going to kill papa's pheasants?"
"You speak as though that was an improper thing to do."
There was a slight movement of her shoulders.
"I suppose that some men kill pheasants, and that other men rule empires. I might like to do both things, but I confess that if I had to choose I should prefer the empires."
I looked at her. Quietly, and without any ostentation, she gave me back glance for glance. Something from her eyes seemed to get into my veins.
"Suppose it was not yours to choose?"
"It would be were I a man."
"It certainly has never yet been mine."
"Then you certainly are not a man."
Her high-faluting amused me. That the little, brown-haired, blue-eyed thing should talk in such an inflated strain! And yet I felt that if she had been a man she would have gone for the gloves--nay, that though she was a woman she might go for them still.
She went on--
"That is the very essence of being a man; that he can choose what he will be and do."
"You are on the wrong track. He might choose to win the Derby--plenty of them do--but the odds are he will fail."
"He might try."
"And come a cropper. Men of that sort get posted every settling day. If he is a cautious man he will limit his range of choice to things which are within his reach."
"Are you a cautious man?"
As I met her eyes I could not have told her. I seemed to see so clearly in them something which was not caution, something which thrilled and kept time with a pulse of mine. While I hesitated Sir Haselton appeared--his dress shoes making the shortness of his trousers still more conspicuous. Immediately after, dinner was announced.
They always feed you well at Jardine's, and it seems to me that lawyers generally do. And, though to look at him you might not think it, Jardine can drink with any man--perhaps to counterbalance the dryness of his profession. And he has some stuff worth drinking. His guests can do as they please; he himself is old-fashioned--he sticks to the cloth when the women are gone. That evening, bearing the hint in his note in my mind, I stuck to it with him.
I was curious to know what it was he wanted to say to me; it took me aback when it came.
I lit up when Dora had gone--Jardine does not smoke--post-prandial wine-drinkers seldom do. As he leaned back in his chair a lean, dried up, insignificant little chap he looked; but whoever, on that account, would have liked to have tried a fall with him would have done well to get up early. The fingers of his left hand grasped the stem of his wineglass, but, used though I was to his trick of peering through his half-shut eyes, I could not make out if he was looking at me or at the glass.
"Townsend, I want to say something to you in confidence."
I nodded; though I don't mind owning that I felt a bit uneasy. He might have wanted to say all sorts of things to me in what he called confidence--and he was the sort of man to say them too. His next words, however, reassured me.
"I am not a man of strong likes or dislikes"--I should rather say he wasn't, being about the most bloodless creature going!--"but I like you, if you will excuse me, Townsend."
"Excuse you, sir? You flatter me too much."
He smiled--if the wrinkling of his thin lips could be called a smile.
"Flatter you? I hardly think I flatter you. I will tell you why I like you, Townsend."
He paused. I waited. The old fox kept twisting the stem of his wineglass round and round between his thin white fingers.
"I like you, Townsend, because, although you are out of the common run, you are not sufficiently so to be unpleasantly conspicuous. You have what I lack, passion. You are as likely to ascend to the top of the tree as to the top of the gallows. I hardly think I flatter you."
"You at least credit me with having aspirations."
"I believe, Townsend, that your wealth scarcely exceeds the dreams of avarice--eh?" The remark had so little connection with anything that had gone before, that I think I stared. He favoured me with one of those lightning flashes which are among the tricks of his trade--then you can see what eyes he really has. "I said I wanted to speak to you in confidence."
"Precisely. You only flatter me too much."
Again that wrinkling of the lips which he, perhaps, intended for a smile. I wondered what the dickens he was at.
"You see, Townsend, things reach my ears which do not come to other men. May we take it, Townsend, that you are not a millionaire?"
"You may certainly take it, sir, at that."
"Pressed, now and then, for ready-money, perhaps."
What was he driving at? Was he going to develop into a sixty per cent. and offer me a loan?
"I believe that most men are."
"Yes--they are." It struck me that there was something about the pause he made which was anything but complimentary. I was beginning to feel like throwing something at him. "You have a brother, Townsend." How did he know that? "Have you seen him lately?"
"This afternoon."
"So recently? Is he doing well?"
"He said he was."
"There is nothing clogs a man so much as a brother of a certain kind."
"I take care that my brother does not clog me."
"I believe, Townsend, that you do." What did he mean by the inflection with which the words were uttered? "You are wondering why I talk to you like this. I will explain."
He took a sip from his glass. Then held it up in front of him, connoisseur fashion.
"I am something of a curiosity. I have lived my own life. In my way, I have enjoyed it. But I have one thing with which to reproach Providence. He has not bestowed on me a son." He emptied his glass. "Townsend, why don't you drink? I can recommend this port. Drink up, and let me fill the glasses." I let him. "That a son is not always an unmixed blessing I am aware. On the other hand, Dora has been a model child. Still, a daughter can hardly do for a father what a son can. So I still am hoping for a son."
What did the old beggar mean? He was still so long that I thought he had forgotten to go on. But I did not feel that it was my cue to break the silence. And at last he condescended to remember.
"You have in you the makings of the sort of son that I should like to have."
"I? Sir Haselton, did I not say you flattered me?"
"I hardly think I do. I think I know you pretty well. Dora seems to think she knows you even better." Now I began to see his drift.
"Townsend, what do you think of Dora?"
"I have sometimes feared, sir, that I have thought of her too much."
"Indeed." The word, as it came from between his lips, was a gently murmured sneer.
"I should not have imagined that you were that kind of man. Townsend, would you like to marry?"
"It has been my constant dream."
"Has it? And about Lily Langdale and others?"
What did he know about Lily, and the rest of them? I would have given something to have learned just how much the old sleuth-hound did know about everything or anything. I felt all the time that he had me at a strong advantage. When I am in his presence I always do feel like that.
"You yourself, sir, have been a bachelor."
"True--I have. I take it, Townsend, that when you marry you will cease to be a bachelor."
"Undoubtedly."
"What would you say to ten thousand pounds a-year?"
"Sir!"
"When Dora marries she will have that income to commence with. Should her marriage prove a happy one, it will be increased."
He paused, as if for me to speak. I deemed silence to be the better part of wisdom.
"The man who marries Dora will have to have a clean slate, if it has to be cleaned for the occasion. I shall require him to give me a correct statement of his position. I will see that his house is set in order. He will have to take my name; Dora shall always be a Jardine. He will have to enter public life."
"Public life?"
"Have you any objection?"
"It depends upon what you mean, sir, by public life; it is an elastic term."
"He will have to enter Parliament. Means will be furnished to enable him to do so. As a country gentleman he will have to take an interest in local and in county government. He will have to play a prominent part on the stage of national politics. He will have to aim at the top of the tree. Dora has ambitions; her husband must have them too."
When he paused I was silent again. There was a cut-and-dried way about his fashion of settling things which nettled me.
"Have you no ambitions, Townsend?"
"I have such ambitions as a poor man may have."
"A poor man is entitled to have the same ambitions as a rich one--if he is strong enough. I was poor once upon a time. I did not allow my poverty to hamper my ambition. What do you think of the programme which I have drawn up for Dora's husband?"
"I think it an alluring one."
"For a strong man it has possibilities. You may take it from me that, properly backed, you are strong enough to be able to say, with truth, that few things are beyond your reach."
"I think myself that, given the opportunity, I might find the man."
"I think so too. You shall have the opportunity. You have heard on what conditions. That is what I wanted to say to you. We shall see you at Cockington at the end of the week. Perhaps, before you leave us, you may have something to say to me."
"I trust, sir, that I may have something to say to you that will be pleasant to us both."