"Not one millionth of an inch."
"But why? Why do you dislike me so much?"
"I don't know, Mr. Davis. Call it instinct."
Davis made a slight gesture which sent Jean back to the sofa.
Then Davis, settling the shoulders of his well-tailored blue suit, drew himself up. He smiled. He was Young America Succeeding in Business.
"I'm afraid, Mr. Manning," he said in a stern yet kindly voice, as though addressing a child, "you don't appreciate what a bad position you're in. And I'd better tell you: you may get into serious trouble. What do you say to that?"
Manning raised his eyes briefly.
"Only, young man, that your effrontery would stagger an Egyptian mummy."
Davis lifted his shoulders carelessly.
"Have it your own way, then," he smiled. "But of course... you haven't heard the rumours that are going around."
"What rumours?"
Davis chose to ignore this.
"Mind you," he warned darkly, "I didn't have to tell you this. Maybe I can't help you, even as it is; probably not But I did want you to know I was a friend of yours, no matter how bad a jam you might get into."
"What rumours?" Now was the moment
"Well, sir, I'd better be frank with you. They say this Frederick Manning Foundation of yours"— Davis glanced round the room—"is in pretty bad shape financially. And that there's going to be a crash. And that you're in it up to your neck."
There was a silence. Manning slowly rose to his feet behind the desk. A stray gleam from the sunblinds caught his silver grey hair.
"You impertinent young swine,"he said.
Though Manning did no speak loudly, the last word had the thud of a thrown knife. In that moment he seemed to tower over Davis, to extinguish Davis into trumpery tailoring and paling suntan.
"It isn't true, is it?" cried Jean. "It isn't true, Dad? About the—business troubles?"
"Certainly not," Manning replied with dignity. Then he turned to Davis. "Get out!" he shouted. Get...
And then there passed over Manning's face one of those instantaneous changes which, to anyone who did not know his heart and his curious sense of humour, would have been inexplicable at the time. The look he directed at Davis was almost cordial. His bass voice sank to purring smoothness.
"Tell me, Mr. Davis," he pursued, "have you any engagement for tonight?"
Davis, by this time thunderstruck, could only stare back at him.
"If you haven't," said Manning, "could you come out to Maralarch and join us for dinner?"
"You couldn't keep me away," Davis said curtly.
"This morning I told Jean, as well as my daughter Crystal and my son Bob, that I had something very important to tell them at dinner tonight" Manning looked at Davis. "My lawyer will be there; and you will make a sixth. I also hope to have a rather distinguished seventh guest."
"Seventh guest?" repeated Davis. He was watching Manning as warily as Manning watched him. "Mind telling us who it is?"
"An old friend of mine from England. His name is Merrivale, Sir Henry Merrivale."
Jean, who was now standing in the middle of the room, made a gesture of dispair.
"Yes," she said in that same despairing tone. "And that's all we need now, isn't it?"
Her father frowned. "I don't quite follow you, Jean."
Jean's blue eyes looked at him steadily.
"You're going to tell up something horrible tonight, aren't you? Please don't deny it! I know you are! Dad, what are you going to tell us?"
Manning hesitated, an impressive figure even in his loose white alpaca suit.
"That can wait." He hesitated again. "But if you were shocked at anything I said this afternoon, Jean, you will be far more shocked tonight."
"Sir Henry Merrivale!" wailed Jean.
"Really, my dear, I still don't understand why..."
"Crystal," explained Jean, "is positively in raptures. She looked him up in Debrett. He's got a lineage as long as your arm, and a string of degrees after his name too. On top of everything, don't we just need an English baronet who’ll be so frozen and refined that we'll all be scared to talk to him?"
"Ah, I see," her father murmured. Then he glanced at his wrist watch, and got a real start. "Good God, that liner was supposed to dock at two-thirty! And it's three-thirty now! Just one moment."
Sitting down behind the desk again, Manning clicked the switch of the talk-back connected with his secretary's office in the next room.
"Miss Engels!"
The voice which answered sounded rather flustered. "Yes, Mr. Manning?"
"Miss Engels, you did send off that radiogram to the Mauretania early this morning?" "Yes, Mr. Manning."
"I sent Parker down there to meet the ship, and drag old H.M. here if he had to kidnap him. What's the matter? Isn't the ship in?"
"Yes, Mr. Manning. The ship's in. Mr. Parker - well, he called up about five minutes ago. But I—I didn't want to disturb you. As for Sir Henry, Mr. Parker couldn't get near him."
"What do you mean, couldn't get near him?"
"Well, it seems Sir Henry left the ship with a lot of reporters. They climbed into cabs and went over and started a poker game in the back room of a bar on Eighth Avenue. The bartender wouldn't let Mr. Parker in."
"A poker game?" echoed Jean Manning.
Whatever she may have said before, Jean's sympathies were quickly roused. She was passionately loyal to a friend, or even the friend of a friend.
"That poor, innocent Englishman!" she cried. "They trapped him into it! They won't leave him a cent to his name!"
"Be quiet, Jean!—Yes, Miss Engels?"
The talk-back switch kept on clicking, not always accurately.
"Mr. Parker waited in a drugstore, sir. In about three quarters of an hour," answered Miss Engels, "Sir Henry came out of the bar stuffing wads of money in his pockets. He said he had to go to Washington. He jumped into a cab and yelled, 'Grand Central Station.'"
Huntington Davis, who had regained all his self-assurance, intervened here.
"But he can't get to Washington from Grand Central! He's got to go to Penn Station! Didn't they tell him that?"
"Goon, Miss Engels!"
The secretary's voice grew apologetic.
"Mr. Parker says he's sorry, sir, but he can't go on with a chase like that While he was in the drugstore, Mr. Parker phoned a friend of his"— here Miss Engels obviously consulted notes—"a Mr. Cy Norton."
"Good!" beamed Manning. "Excellent!"
"Who's Cy Norton?" asked Jean.
"For eighteen years," retorted her father, "Cy Norton was London correspondent of the Echo. He knows Sir Henry far better than I do. I hadn't even heard he was back in New York." Manning turned to the talk-back. "Has Mr. Norton picked up the trail already?"
"Yes, sir. Hell phone you as soon as there's news."
"Thank you, Miss Engels. That's all."
Manning, in a kind of anticipatory fever, rubbed his hands together.
"But Grand Central..." Davis burst out.
"I have no doubt," Manning observed calmly, "that Sir Henry knew he was going to the wrong station."
"Is he crazy, sir?"
"Far from it. The best term to describe him is the good old American word ornery. He is ornery."
"But..."
"He must not get to Washington," Manning said fiercely. "He must be at Maralarch tonight and especially tomorrow morning. I swear it! But I wonder what he's doing now?"
2
Voices of many loud-speakers, hollow yet rasping, spoke their ghost message through the vastness of Grand Central Station.
"Sir Henry Merrivale." Slight pause. "Sir Henry Merrivale.''Slight pause. "Please come to the station-master's office on the upper level near track thirty-six.''