“What is this?” he asked sharply. “What the hell are you—”
He checked himself with a great effort and laughed, but the laugh was harsh and artificial.
“You’re a wonderful fellow, Steele,” he said with a return to his old air of insouciance. “Fancy bothering your head about things of that sort.”
He put the book back where he had found it, picked up another of the leases and appeared to be reading it intently, but Jim, watching him, saw that he was not reading, even though he turned page after page.
“That is all right,” he said at last, putting the lease down and taking up his top-hat. “Some day perhaps you will come and dine with us, Steele. I’ve had rather a stunning laboratory built at the back of our house in Grosvenor Square. Old Salter called me doctor!” He chuckled quietly as though at a big joke. “Well, if you come along, I will show you something that will at least justify the title.”
The dark brown eyes were fixed steadily upon Jim as he stood in the doorway, one yellow-gloved hand on the handle.
“And, by the way, Mr. Steele,” he drawled, “your studies are leading you into a danger zone for which even a second Victoria Cross could not adequately compensate you.”
He closed the door carefully behind him, and Jim Steele frowned after him.
“What the dickens does he mean?” he asked, and then remembered the exercise book through which Groat had glanced, and which had had so strange an effect upon him. He took the book down from the shelf and turning to the first page, read: “Some notes upon the Thirteen Gang.”
CHAPTER THREE
THAT afternoon Jim Steele went into Mr. Salter’s office. “I’m going to tea now, sir,” he said.
Mr. Salter glanced up at the solemn-faced clock that ticked audibly on the opposite wall.
“All right,” he grumbled; “but you’re a very punctual tea-drinker, Steele. What are you blushing about—is it a girl?”
“No, sir,” said Jim rather loudly. “I sometimes meet a lady at tea, but—”
“Off you go,” said the old man gruffly. “And give her my love.”
Jim was grinning, but he was very red, too, when he went down the stairs into Marlborough Street. He hurried his pace because he was a little late, and breathed a sigh of relief as he turned into the quiet tea-shop to find that his table was as yet unoccupied.
As his tall, athletic figure strode through the room to the little recess overlooking Regent Street, which was reserved for privileged customers, many heads were turned, for Jim Steele was a splendid figure of British manhood, and the grey laughing eyes had played havoc in many a tender heart.
But he was one of those men whose very idealism forbade trifling. He had gone straight from a public school into the tragic theatre of conflict, and at an age when most young men were dancing attendance upon women, his soul was being seared by the red-hot irons of war.
He sat down at the table and the beaming waitress came forward to attend to his needs.
“Your young lady hasn’t come yet, sir,” she said.
It was the first time she had made such a reference to Eunice Weldon, and Jim stiffened.
“The young lady who has tea with me is not my ‘young lady,’” he said a little coldly, and seeing that he had hurt the girl, he added with a gleam of mirth in those irresistible eyes, “she’s your young lady, really.”
“I’m sorry,” said the waitress, scribbling on her order pad to hide her confusion. “I suppose you’ll have the usual?”
“I’ll have the usual,” said Jim gravely, and then with a quick glance at the door he rose to meet the girl who had at that moment entered.
She was slim of build, straight as a plummet line from chin to toe; she carried herself with a dignity which was so natural that the men who haunt the pavement to leer and importune, stood on one side to let her pass, and then, after a glimpse of her face, cursed their own timidity. For it was a face Madonna-like in its purity. But a blue-eyed, cherry-lipped Madonna, vital and challenging. A bud of a girl breaking into the summer bloom of existence. In those sapphire eyes the beacon fires of life signalled her womanhood; they were at once a plea and a warning. Yet she carried the banners of childhood no less triumphantly. The sensitive mouth, the round, girlish chin, the satin white throat and clean, transparent skin, unmarked, unblemished, these were the gifts of youth which were carried forward to the account of her charm.
Her eyes met Jim’s and she came forward with outstretched hand.
“I’m late,” she said gaily. “We had a tiresome duchess at the studio who wanted to be taken in seventeen different poses—it is always the plain people who give the most trouble.”
She sat down and stripped her gloves, with a smile at the waitress.
“The only chance that plain people have of looking beautiful is to be photographed beautifully,” said Jim.
Eunice Weldon was working at a fashionable photographer’s in Regent Street. Jim’s meeting with her had been in the very room in which they were now sitting. The hangings at the window had accidentally caught fire, and Jim, in extinguishing them, had burnt his hand. It was Eunice Weldon who had dressed the injury.
A service rendered by a man to a woman may not lead very much farther to a better acquaintance. When a woman helps a man it is invariably the beginning of a friendship. Women are suspicious of the services which men give, and yet feel responsible for the man they have helped, even to the slightest extent.
Since then they had met almost daily and taken tea together. Once Jim had asked her to go to a theatre, an invitation which she had promptly but kindly declined. Thereafter he had made no further attempt to improve their acquaintance.
“And how have you got on with your search for the missing lady?” she asked, as she spread some jam on the thin bread-and-butter which the waitress had brought.
Jim’s nose wrinkled—a characteristic grimace of his.
“Mr. Salter made it clear to me to-day that even if I found the missing lady it wouldn’t greatly improve matters,” he said.
“It would be wonderful if the child had been saved after all,” she said. “Have you ever thought of that possibility?”
He nodded.
“There is no hope of that.” he said, shaking his head, “but it would be wonderful, as you say, and more wonderful,” he laughed, “if you were the missing heiress!”
“And there’s no hope of that either.” she said, shaking her head. “I’m the daughter of poor but honest parents, as the story-books say.”
“Your father was a South African, wasn’t he?”
She nodded.
“Poor daddy was a musician, and mother I can hardly remember, but she must have been a dear.”
“Where were you born?” asked Jim.
She did not answer immediately because she was busy with her jam sandwich.
“In Cape Town—Rondebosch, to be exact,” she said after a while. “Why are you so keen on finding your long-lost lady?”
“Because I am anxious that the most unmitigated cad in the world should not succeed to the Danton millions.”
She sat bolt upright.
“The Danton millions?” she repeated slowly. “Then who is your unmitigated cad? You have never yet mentioned the names of these people.”
This was perfectly true. Jim Steele had not even spoken of his search until a few days before.
“A man named Digby Groat.”
She stared at him aghast.
“Why, what’s the matter?” he asked in surprise.
“When you said ‘Danton’ I remembered Mr. Curley—that is our chief photographer—saying that Mrs. Groat was the sister of Jonathan Danton?” she said slowly.