CHAPTER XI.
"WHAT'S YOUR LITTLE GAME?"
Thenshe recognised me. Except for the fact that her face suddenly flamed and then as suddenly hardened, her breeding stood her in good stead, and with cold, clear eyes, which looked as indifferently into mine as if I had been a stranger calling to solicit a subscription to some charity, she pointed me to a chair.
"You bring me news of my father?" she inquired, with a composure which was possibly assumed for my benefit, or, rather, for my discomfiture.
"That is why I am here," I answered, bowing gravely, and in my turn assuming an indifference which I strove to make as studied as her own.
"He is safe and well," I went on. "Of that let me assure you positively. He is detained only upon a matter of business, and but for the fact that other people, as well as himself, are concerned in it, he could return, if he chose, this very night."
This much I said to allay her anxiety. That it was a diplomatic rather than an exact statement of the facts, I do not deny, but though I would unhesitatingly have told a lie to spare her, I was at least within the truth in saying that the moment of Mr. Carleton's return lay entirely within his own choice, since, once he had consented to pay the ransom demanded by the Dumpling—and the money, as well as the safety of his kidnappers, was secured—Mr. Carleton would in all probability be set at liberty, and could then return, as I had said. Into the question whether he would or would not consent thus to be bled of a large sum of money, I had no intention of entering. The business before me was to break the bad news as gently and as gradually as possible; and in breaking bad news it does not always do to blurt out the undiluted truth.
"Thank you," she said stiffly. "I wonder, in that case, that my father did not communicate with me himself. Am I to understand that you are his messenger? And am I to content myself with the bare knowledge, and only on your assurance, that my father is detained onbusiness, and may or may not return to-night?"
"That's as you choose, Miss Carleton," I made answer, somewhat foolishly.
"You have the advantage of me, sir," she replied icily, "for, to the best of my belief, you and I have never met before. Is that not so?"
It is a woman's prerogative to forget or to remember, as her instinct or her inclinations dictates, and, in view of the somewhat unusual and unconventional circumstances of our first meeting, I was by no means sure that I did not like and admire her the more, rather than the less, for the way in which she had met the situation. Unhesitatingly I fathered the lie, and with similar hardihood.
"That is so," I replied coldly.
Rightly or wrongly, I fancied that she softened slightly, so feeling that I should do myself more justice if I told my story while her manner was less freezing, I came to the point at once.
"May I tell you what I know, and how I came to know, of the business which has detained your father?" I inquired. "I shall not keep you many minutes."
"I shall be curious to hear it," sheanswered, speaking more graciously than hitherto, and, seating herself in a dark corner where I could not see her face, she prepared to listen.
I told the thing well, better—though, of course, much more briefly—than I have told it in these pages, for the excitement with which she listened, suppressed and controlled though it was, seemed to communicate itself to me. The only moment when she bristled, if I may use so inapplicable a word about so lovely a woman, was at the start.
"All that I have to tell has happened within the last twenty-four hours," I began, "for only yesterday I was taking a country holiday, and, I fear, kicking up my heels like a mischievous colt who has broken out of bounds, and is sadly in need of a sound whipping to teach him to behave himself. But," I made haste to get on, for the air around me seemed suddenly to turn chilly, "since then, short time ago as it is, I have had a 'breaking in,' and been made to answer to lash and spur, and to look death in the face, and to fight for my life, in so extraordinary a way, that my only fear is you'll not believe my story when you hear it."
Then I told of my recall to town, of my commission to visit the opium den, and of the subsequent happenings up to the moment when I had stepped out of the cab and into her house. As I brought my recital to a close, the door opened, and a lumpy-figured, masculine-looking woman, hard-faced, large-featured, entered the room. Her skin was rough, red and grained like brick-dust, and on either cheek was a patch of darker red—almost of purple—which might have been put on by means of a stencil plate, so hard, so abrupt, and so definite were the lines where it began or ended. An incipient moustache and a deep voice seemed to enter a protest, less against the petticoats she was wearing than against her small and well-formed hands and feet.
"Clara!" she exclaimed menacingly, "who is this?"
Knowing that Miss Carleton's name was Kate, I was somewhat astonished to hear her thus addressed, for it was not until later that I learned the facts. The elder lady, who was Miss Carleton's only aunt, had felt not a little aggrieved that her niece had not been called after herself. So, by way of entering a protest against the omissionof the compliment which she felt ought to have been paid to her, and notwithstanding Mr. Carleton's annoyance, and the fact that everybody else called the girl Kate, the elder lady insisted upon addressing her niece as Clara, as though the girl were actually her namesake.
"Clara!" she repeated. "Who is this?"
The rising remonstrant inflexion which she placed upon her niece's name, and the way in which she said "Who is this?" her deep voice booming like a three-peal bell, sounding first a high, then a low, and then a deep bass growling note, took me so by surprise that I stared at her open-mouthed.
"This gentleman has brought me news of my father, aunt," replied Kate tremulously. "He's afraid, I'm afraid, that father has been made a prisoner by blackmailers, and that he won't be released until money has been paid for ransom."
"How absurd!" said the other lady, and in spite of the seriousness of the situation, it was as much as I could do to refrain from laughing, so irresistibly, so ludicrously, did her voice remind me of Mr. Penley inCharley's Aunt.
Then, like a bell which pauses for a moment between its chimes, she boomed again, "How very absurd!"
Miss Carleton turned appealingly to me. "Will you please tell my aunt what you have just told me?" she said.
Haltingly and half-heartedly I repeated my story, the elder lady pursing up her fleshy lips, rolling her eyes, and indulging in long-drawn sniffs, so plainly indicating an incredulity which was lost in admiration and wonder at its own magnificent power of control, that I bungled the thing sadly, and was not surprised when, at the end of the narrative, she rose majestically from her chair, and rang a rich peal of warning and command.
"Clara, leave the room. I will join you, shortly."
She spoke as before, on one note, until she came to the last few words, when her voice suddenly dropped an entire octave, and then sank in rumbling silence, by falling, first one, and then another, note. This, I found, was her invariable way of speaking. In effect, it reminded me of a person walking with even step along a corridor, until he reaches a flight of stairs, down eight ofwhich he suddenly falls, at one flight, recovering himself sufficiently, at the ninth, to rise and stalk majestically down the last two or three.
If, in the course of my story, I do not again allude to this peculiarity, it will not be because she ever lost the mannerism in question, but because, the mannerism having already been fully described, a repeated description of it in detail would, I fear, soon become wearisome. It is so much easier, so much cheaper, if I may use the word, to caricature a mannerism than to indicate character—to describe a personal eccentricity than to indicate a type—that I am not a little shamefaced at having written at such length regarding this peculiarity of one of my characters. So marked a feature could not, however, be passed over in silence, for I do not recall one solitary occasion when she failed to drop her voice in the way I have described when coming to the end of what she had to say.
Miss Carleton gone, her aunt, regarding me majestically, rang the bell. When the man-servant appeared, she pointed at me.
"I wish to confer with my niece, Metcalfe. Meanwhile, that person must not leavethe house or this room. If he attempts to do so, call up the other men-servants, and secure him."
With a warning glance at Metcalfe, and a glare at me, the good lady left the room.
She was away about twenty minutes. On returning she dismissed the servant, and seating herself, wheeled round in her chair, to turn all her batteries upon my unhappy self. Her voice was, I fancied, a shade less stately, a shade sharper, a shade brisker, and more business-like:
"What's your little game?"