“Mr. Pike!” said Letty. “Did you overhear the end of that talk between my father and Sir Cheville? Did you hear my father say that, after all, he’d have to take Sir Cheville into his confidence?”
“I heard that,” replied Pike.
“Have you any idea what he meant?” asked Letty.
“Not the least idea,” affirmed Pike. “But I can tell you this. In the old part of the mill your father has a room into which nobody’s ever admitted. They’d have a job to get in! About two years ago he’d a special door made for that room. It’s sheeted with iron; it’s sound-proof; it’s got a patent double lock. And when your father took Sir Cheville out of the office this afternoon, they went In the direction of that room.”
“But — but what does my father want with such a room?” exclaimed Letty. “It sounds like a secret—”
“There is a secret,” said Pike. “He spends most of his time in that room. What doing, I don’t know. But then, I don’t know everything. I never go into those parts of the place — my work’s in the office. All I know is that money’s going somewhere as it oughtn’t to. Piles of money, Miss Letty! And it isn’t paid by cheque, either. Your father keeps drawing big sums in cash — and what he does with it, Heaven knows, I don’t! Just now, for instance—”
“Well?” demanded Letty, as Pike paused, evidently uncertain whether he ought to say more. “What? As you’ve said so much, you may as well say everything.”
“Well, he’d be glad of ready money at the moment,” continued Pike. “I know that! The business is all right, or would be if it weren’t for this drain on it. However, after all, it’s not my concern, and I daresay I oughtn’t to have said as much as I have said just now. Still, you asked me. And of course, you’re bothered. And so am I. You see, I’ve had ideas, notions — you might call them dreams, Miss Letty.”
The punctured tube was mended by this time, and Pike’s lithe fingers were adjusting it to the wheel. There was something almost fascinating in the strength of those apparently fragile fingers, and Letty could not keep her eyes off them as they went about their work.
“Yes — dream!” said Pike, with a final pressure of the slim finger-tips.
“What sort of dreams?” asked Letty, curious to know what he meant, and contrasting his somewhat odd face and figure with his soft, suave voice. “I shouldn’t have fancied you were a dreamer, Mr. Pike.”
“You can’t always tell by appearances,” said Pike. He leaned his tall figure towards her, resting his hands on the bars of his bicycle, and Letty noticed for the first time that he had curiously green eyes which scintillated in a strange manner. “Most people who know me, Miss Letty,” he went on, “think I’m a money-grubber. I don’t drink — never tasted even a glass of ale in my life! — and I don’t smoke — even cheap cigarettes — and I save every penny I can. But — all for a purpose. I want to be somebody — I mean to be somebody! And of late years, I have thought — I won’t deny it — that I might be somebody in a certain direction.”
“Oh!” said Letty. The conversation was becoming personal in a way for which she had no taste, but it was difficult to break it off. “What direction? I hope you’ll succeed, I’m sure, Mr. Pike.”
“Do you, Miss Letty?” he exclaimed eagerly. “Do you indeed! Ah, I’m sure that’s very kind of you. And I wonder if I might dare to tell you in which direction my thoughts, ambitions, hopes, and all that, have tended of late? Do you know, I’ve even dared to hope that, perhaps, your father would take me into partnership? Etherton & Pike, eh, Miss Letty! It — it wouldn’t sound or look so bad, would it, now?”
“Oh, well, that’s a question for my father, Mr. Pike,” answered Letty. “That’s business.”
“But you?” said Pike. “You now? — you wouldn’t object? You see, your father has no son. Ah, Miss Letty, I would be a good son to him — if I were allowed to be! Eh?”
Letty moved her bicycle a yard or two away and gathered her skirts together preparatory to mounting it. There was something in Pike’s green eyes which she did not like, something extraordinary in the queer curve of his thin lips which she could not understand, and she wanted to leave him.
“All business that, Mr. Pike,” she said with an attempt at nonchalance. “You must talk to my father about it — I don’t know anything.”
“Not just yet,” remarked Pike softly.
“But the time may come, Miss Letty!”
“Well?” asked Letty with one foot on the pedal and without turning her head. “What is it?”
Pike edged his machine a little nearer, and in spite of the solitude in which they stood, lowered his voice to a whisper.
“Would you like me to find out what this secret is that your father’s got?” he asked. “You know it’s troubling you. I can! There’s little that I can’t do in that way, if I set myself to it.”
“No, certainly not!” answered Letty coldly. “My father’s secrets are his own, Mr. Pike. No!”
“You mean — were his own, Miss Letty,” said Pike, with a meaning smile. “He was going to give them — or it — away this afternoon to old Sir Cheville, because he owes him five thousand pounds. Yet — only a few minutes before, too! — he’d just declared he wouldn’t tell him if he owed him fifty thousand!”
“It is my father’s concern entirely,” declared Letty. She got into her saddle and moved off. “Good-night, Mr. Pike,” she said, over her shoulder.
“One moment,” said Pike. He stretched out one of his long arms and laid a detaining hand on the bars of her bicycle. “You’re going to Mr. Getherfield’s, Miss Letty?” he continued, with his face in closer proximity to her own than she liked. “Aren’t you?”
“What if I am?” she demanded half-angrily.
“Just so — but you are,” said Pike, “and if I were you, I shouldn’t say a word to Mr. Getherfield about what you heard this afternoon, or about what we’ve spoken of this evening. You know what Mr. Etherton said to Sir Cheville? — if Birch, the solicitor, heard, it would upset all his plans. Mr. Etherton doesn’t want anybody to know. Let you and I keep to ourselves — what we know. It’s safe with me.”
He lifted his hand as he spoke, and Letty took advantage of the movement to push off her machine.
“Good-night, Mr. Pike,” she repeated.
Pike made no answer beyond raising his cap, and Letty rode rapidly away along the lonely road. Somehow, she was now far more upset than when she had first set out.
Chapter IV
Foxden Manor
Another mile of lonely, widening road had slipped away beneath her wheels before Letty suddenly realised the true significance of what Bradwell Pike had called his dreams. Pike had adopted this method of letting her know that he was in love with her! A curious, indefinable feeling of aversion came over her, and was as suddenly swept away by an equally curious and vague sense of fear. What a pity, what a thousand pities, she thought, that the clerk knew so much of his master’s business! It gave him a hold which Letty, knowing what she did, had no wish he should have. Pike, the quiet, reserved clerk, suddenly became to her a watchful schemer, and the only relief from this deduction was that he had in some degree shown her his hand.