“He can’t last much longer — he’s nearly at the end of his tether.”
“What makes you say that, Jim?”
“This morning’s happenings,” lowering his voice. “I’d dropped into Jerry Ammington’s flat — Jerry mentioned he was on a big deal with Horatio. Too good to miss, I thought — pinched a sheet of Jerry’s note paper — rung our friend up to come and lunch at the Ritz.
“When he turned up he received a note — I was there and saw it. It was as good as a play. Suspicion, fear, everything, as the boy comes up — you could see it! Then relief as he examined the envelope — I can forge Jerry’s hand wonderfully,” with a grin, “apart from the crest being outside. Then he opened it, and there’s the dear old number again! He couldn’t even scream, my dear. He just collapsed.”
“I wonder how long he’ll stand it?” mused the girl. “I should fancy, Jim, that he’s a lineal descendant of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. There’ll be plenty of ‘won’t let the people go,’ yet.”
“Maybe, darling, but I’ll take six to four all the same that he’s ringing you up for an appointment within twenty-four hours. Listen! Martin’s been to his house to-night — electric light man, or one of those things — and left a small box behind his dressing-table where it’s a hundred to one against its being found.”
“What’s in it?” queried Daphne.
“Something right off the ice. A clockwork contraption — set for two o’clock — Horatio gets heme early these days — finds it safer,” with a chuckle.
“At two o’clock the box opens with a bang, which is to wake him up and tell him the curtain’s going up. Then up jump all the dear old figures on the ends of wires and do a sort of fox-trot in the air — and a nice little portrait of Captain Marriner! And as they’re all done with luminous paint and our young friend’s been drinking a bit lately, I fancy he’ll have a sticky quarter of an hour.”
Daphne rippled with laughter as she got up from her chair and shook out her skirts daintily. Then, as she put her hand lightly on Lord Trewitter’s arm:
“Oh, Jimmy, if only I could hug you,” she whispered, “just to tell you what I think of you all!”
A couple approached them at that moment. Lord Trewitter’s face was devoid of expression.
“Not a bad idea at all,” he said languidly.
As they strolled on together, the girl who had passed turned to her companion.
“That’s Jimmy Trewitter, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied with a careless laugh. “He and Daphne Wrayne used to be a bit thick, but since the adjusters started, she’s got no time for him.”
VII
Carlton, the stalwart commissionaire, came into Daphne Wrayne’s room the next morning, closing the door quietly.
“Mr. Merryweather to see you, Miss — but I don’t like the look of him.”
A twinkle of merriment came into the girl’s eyes.
“Quite all right, Carlton — really.”
“Then you’ll see him, Miss?” still a little dubious.
“I’ve been expecting him every day, Carlton,” she said with a sweet smile.
A moment later the commissionaire showed him in.
“Mr. Merryweather, Miss.”
Daphne looked up a little languidly from her writing.
“Sit down, Mr. Merryweather,” she said.
But he made no move — just stood there watching her, his fury growing every minute. For though fear and desperation had brought him there, he was beginning once more to harden his heart.
It infuriated him beyond measure to think that he, Horatio Merryweather, should have to humble himself to this girl who was calmly writing while he stood waiting!
“I want to know when this infernal business is going to cease!” he barked out.
Daphne Wrayne laid down her pen and lifting her eyes surveyed him as a puppy surveys a beetle. Then she stretched out her hand, took a cigarette from the silver box on the table, lighted it and, leaning back in her chair, blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling.
“Mr. Merryweather,” she said and there was a dangerous glint in the eyes that she fixed on his, “I don’t particularly wish to see you, though it would seem that you wish to see me. But please understand once and for all that unless you behave yourself properly I shall order my commissionaire to remove you.”
This time he stared at her in sheer amazement. The girl who had come to his office had been a quiet, smiling, seemingly rather hesitating girl, who to all intents and purposes had been anxious to conciliate him. Now he was faced by a young woman who might almost have been a queen about to pass sentence on a rebel. Then, as he made no answer, she went on:
“What is it you want with me?”
His eyes blazed up anew at that. After all he had been through during the past week, and now to be asked by this slip of a girl—
“Oh, don’t come the innocent on me!” he retorted roughly, “because it won’t wash. What I want to know is—”
He stopped abruptly, for one slim hand shot out and was poised over the electric bell on her table.
“If I ring my bell,” she said, and her voice was like steel, “this interview comes to an end. And you will have no chance of another — for a month! Get that clearly into your head, Mr. Merryweather.”
He would have given half his fortune to defy her, but the finger that hung over the bell never trembled.
“I should like to discuss things with you,” he said sullenly.
She inclined her head ever so slightly, and motioned him to a chair.
“You... you... came to me a week ago,” he began, moistening his dry lips, “about — about a certain — Captain Marriner.”
“I did. And I offered you certain terms which you laughed at. If you are prepared to listen to them now—”
“But it’s perfectly preposterous,” angrily, “I’ll give you a check for five hundred pounds—”
“We’ll end this interview,” she said and reached out once more for the bell.
“Stop! I’ll write you a check in full. But it’s a swindle all the same.”
“I should be a little careful,” she answered, her eyes narrowing; “if I have any more of your impertinence you’ll be sorry for it.”
“Who shall I make the check out to?” sullenly.
“To Miss Daphne Wrayne.”
He wrote it out without another word, tore it out viciously with a rasping sound, flung it on the table. Yet even then the arrogance of him couldn’t resist one final attempt at bluff.
“I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you,” he snapped, “that if I chose to do so I could stop that check and run you in for blackmail?”
Daphne gazed at him — gazed at him with that faint smile of compassion with which one regards a puling infant. Then, with the smile deepening, she tilted back her chair and with studied carelessness crossed one slender silk-clad leg over the other — a perfect picture of lovely, insolent, contemptuous girlhood.
Then she held out the check to him.
“I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you,” she said, “that we haven’t really started on you yet? But if you want your check back, we’d love to show you—”
But Horatio Merryweather had grabbed his hat and fled.
Three Men in Gray
by H. W. Corley[2]
ON THE REAR FENCE WAS THE MARK OF A BLOODY HAND, AS IF THE PERPETRATOR OF THE DEED HAD LEANED BACK TO VIEW HIS WORK WITH SATISFACTION