Well, I sat down and waited for him to begin. He’d got his glasses off, and I think he was polishing them-out of sheer habit, I suppose, for the place was nearly as dark as a shut room. I could just see the spokes of the wheel and his hands fidgeting to and fro, and once or twice his pince-nez caught the very little faint light there was. He finished polishing them and put them on. He was sitting well into his own corner facing me.
“So you want to throw up your job, Mr. Fairfax?” he began.
I said, “I can’t throw up what I haven’t got. If you give me a job, I’ll do it; but I can’t go on taking money which I’m not doing anything to earn.”
“And yet,” he said, “jobs aren’t so easy to get. You’ve had some experience of that, I think.”
I said, “Yes.” I tried not to sound as depressed as I felt. I’d been too near the gutter to feel cheerful about giving up the best part of a hundred and fifty pounds and the promise of more to come.
“Well, perhaps you’ll change your mind,” he said. “We can talk first, and you can make your decision afterwards. Perhaps when you’ve heard what I’ve got to say-”
I wanted him to get on and say it, but he’d got his own elderly, fussy way of doing business. It was one of the things that made him seem so respectable. I couldn’t help thinking that a sharp crook would have come to the point long ago-but perhaps that’s what he wanted me to think. This sort of business makes one most frightfully suspicious. I was determined not to speak first. In the end he said about the last thing in the world that I could have expected:
“I believe you have an uncle, Mr. Fairfax.”
It made me jump, because, naturally, I hadn’t been thinking about my uncle. I expect he thought me facetious because I came out with,
“Most people have.”
He clicked with his tongue against his teeth in a reproving sort of way.
“Your uncle is Mr. John Carthew of Linwood?”
I made amends by saying “Yes,” as soberly as I could.
“Now, Mr. Fairfax-why has your uncle not come to your assistance in the straits to which you have from time to time been reduced?”
“That,” I said, “is his affair.”
“Well-it might be said to concern you-yes, it might be said to concern you rather intimately. If Mr. Carthew did not assist you, it was not from lack of means to do so. He is, I believe, a man of large property and ample means.”
“I believe so.”
“What, in fact, would be correctly described as a wealthy man.”
“I suppose so.”
“Mr. Carthew is not married?”
“He is a widower.”
“A childless widower?”
“Yes.”
He moved slightly. I thought he leaned a little forward.
“You were, naturally, brought up to consider yourself his heir?”
I took a moment to think about this. It’s very difficult to be sure just what one had thought about a thing like that.
I said, “I don’t know-I don’t think I thought about it very much-I don’t really think that I thought about it at all-not before the smash anyhow.”
“And after the smash?” he said.
“Well, then I knew for a dead cert that I was right off the map.”
“Your uncle gave you to understand that he wouldn’t do anything for you?”
I wondered what on earth he was driving at. It seemed to me that we were working round to the Anna Lang business again. I couldn’t see what it had got to do with him anyhow.
“My uncle and I had a quarrel,” I said-“and that was the end of any prospects I might have had. I’ve never seen him nor heard from him since.”
Mr. Smith leaned forward again. I could see his hand move on the wheel.
“Exactly. And you very naturally experienced some resentment?”
I didn’t see what it had got to do with him if I had.
“That’s my affair,” I said.
“You’re very cautious, Mr. Fairfax, But you can speak freely. Any young man of spirit must have felt resentment at being treated in the way that you were treated. I really think”-he leaned back again-“I really think that we may take your indignation and resentment for granted, and that being the case, we may proceed to my next point.”
I nearly said, “Get on, you old stick-in-the-mud!” but his frightfully respectable manner kept me just politely attentive.
“Feelings of anger and resentment,” he went on, “are, of themselves, of no practical use; but if you were accorded an opportunity of translating these very natural feelings into action, what, I wonder, would be your attitude?”
This was coming to the point with a vengeance. In his long-winded and respectable manner, Z.10 appeared to be “offering me the opportunity” of knocking my uncle on the head, or tipping him into a pond, or perhaps merely picking his pocket or what not. There was a beautiful rolling vagueness about “translating my very natural feelings of anger and resentment into action.” I would have liked to draw him, but I didn’t think it was decent. I wasn’t going to discuss my uncle with him, and I was feeling a bit hot about his butting in on my family affairs, so I said pretty stiffly,
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He moved again.
“Don’t you, Mr. Fairfax? Come, come-I think you do. I think you have had a pretty bad time of it during the last three years, and I think you must feel that you owe your uncle something of a grudge. Suppose you were offered an opportunity of getting some of your own back-would you not be inclined to entertain it?”
I thought this was pretty stiff. I wondered what he would go on to propose, and who was behind it. That is what I wondered most, so, by way of finding out, I asked him what he meant.
“You go too fast,” he said. “We have, at present, your grudge against your uncle, and my proposal that you should be afforded an opportunity of realizing this grudge. Before we go any farther I should want a specific declaration of your willingness to proceed upon these lines.”
I wanted to pick him up and throw him through the windscreen, the little rat; but I controlled myself.
I said bluntly, “Do you mean murder?” and I saw him jump.
“And if I did?” he said, breathing a bit quicker.
I had startled him out of some of his propriety anyhow. I couldn’t hold on any longer.
“Why, you infernal little scallywag!” I roared, and before I’d got farther than that he had opened the door on the far side and slipped out.
I made after him, but it was too dark. His being so nippy took me by surprise. I called into the dark,
“Here you-Z.10! Where are you?”
I thought I heard something move. A moment later he called out,
“Here!”
The voice came from about twenty yards back. I made a dash for the place, but as I got there, I heard behind me the sound of the engine. Some one had started the car. I stopped and turned. The tail light was on, and the engine running. I began to run back, but as I came level with the rear wheels, the door slammed on the far side. The car was already moving, and whilst I was trying to make up my mind whether to have a shot at boarding it or just to let him go, it drew away and was out of reach.
I stood and watched it go. It was no good running. It was no good looking either, for the matter of that, for the number plate had a bit of paper or something hanging down over it.
I saw the last of the tail light as the car turned into Churt Row.
XXVIII
I was wild with myself for having missed such a good opportunity. I ought to have grabbed the little squirt and shaken the truth out of him. As it was, I’d about as much chance of finding him as one would have of picking a special drop of water out of the Thames. London is stiff with Smiths, and stiff with little men who wear pince-nez. Probably his real name was something quite different, and I hadn’t one earthly chance of ever coming across him again. After what had just passed, he wasn’t very likely to want to find me.