“Quite so,” his companion agreed. “I know your type, Gant, — in fact, I chose you because of it. You like, as you say, to do your job and finish with it, — and you have finished.”
The doctor turned for a moment deliberately round and looked at his companion. He was a heavy-browed, unimaginative, quiet-living man. The things which passed before his eyes counted with him, and little else. The thousand pounds which he was taking home was more than he had been able to save throughout his life. To him it represented immense things. He would probably not spend a dollar more, or indulge in a single luxury, yet the money was there in the background, a warm, comforting thing.
“You have still,” he said, “a desperate part to play. Can you tell me honestly that you enjoy it, that you have no fear?”
Jocelyn Thew repeated the word almost wonderingly.
“Fear! Do you really know me so little, my friend of few perceptions? Listen and I will confess something. I have fought for my life at least a dozen times, fought against odds which seemed almost hopeless. I have seen death with hungry, outstretched arms, within a few seconds’ reach of me, but I have never felt fear. I do not know what it is. The length of one’s life is purely a relative thing. It will come in ten or twenty years, if not to-morrow. Why not to-morrow?”
“If you put it like that,” Gant grunted, “why not to-day?”
“Or at any moment, if you will. I am quite ready, as ready as I ever shall be. If I fail to bring off what I desire within the next few days, there will be an end of me. Do I look as though I were worrying about that?”
“You don’t indeed,” the doctor agreed. “You ought to have been in my profession. You might have become the greatest surgeon in the world.”
Jocelyn Thew shrugged his shoulders.
“Even that is possible,” he admitted. “Unfortunately, there was a cloud over my early days, a cloud heavy enough even to prevent my offering my services to the world through the medium of any of the recognized professions. So you see, Gant, I had to invent one of my own. What would you call it, I wonder? — Buccaneer? Adventurer? Explorer? Perhaps my enemies would find a more unkind word. — Now you had better step in and take your seat. Behold the creatures of our friend Brightman and the satellites of the aristocratic Crawshay close in upon us! They listen for farewell words. Is this your carriage? Very well. Here comes your porter, hungry for remuneration. Shall I give them a hint, Gant?”
There flashed in the hunted man’s eyes for a moment a gleam of almost demoniacal humour.
Gant glowered at him. “You are mad!” he exclaimed.
“Not I, my dear friend,” Jocelyn Thew assured him, as he gripped his hand in a farewell salute. “Believe me, it is not I who am mad. It is these stupid people who search for what they can never find. They lift up the Stars and Stripes and find nothing. They lift up the Union Jack; again nothing. They try the Tricolour; rien de tout. But if they have the sense to try the Crescent — eh, Gant? — Well, a safe voyage to you, man. Sleep in your waistcoat, and remember me to every one in New York. I can’t promise when I shall be back. I have taken a fancy to England. Still, one never knows. — Good-by.”
Thew watched the long train crawl out of the station, waved his hand in farewell, forced a greeting upon the reluctant Brightman, whom he passed examining the magazines upon a bookstall, and, summoning a taxi, was duly deposited at the Alhambra Theatre. He made his way to the box office.
“I have called,” he explained to the young man, “to see you about Box A on Monday night. I understand that there is a benefit performance.”
“Quite so, sir,” the young man replied, “and I ought to have explained the matter to you at the time, when you engaged the box. If you will remember, although you took it for a week, you only paid for five nights. I omitted to tell you that for Monday night the box is not ours to dispose of.”
“It isn’t yet sold, I hope?”
“Not yet, sir. The boxes will be disposed of by auction to-morrow afternoon at the Theatrical Garden Party. Mr. Bobby is going to act as auctioneer.”
“I see,” Jocelyn Thew said thoughtfully. “The performance is, I believe, on behalf of the Red Cross?”
“That is so.”
“In that case, supposing I offer you now one hundred guineas for the box?”
“Very generous indeed, sir,” the young man admitted, “but we are pledged to allow all the boxes to be sold by Mr. Bobby. I think that if you are prepared to go to that sum, you will have no difficulty in securing it.”
Jocelyn Thew frowned slightly.
“I wasn’t thinking of going to the Theatrical Garden Party,” he remarked.
“You could perhaps get a friend to bid for you, sir,” the young man suggested. “We hope to get fifty guineas for the large boxes, but I should think an offer such as yours would secure any one of them.”
“I rather dislike the publicity of an auction,” Jocelyn Thew observed, as he turned to take his leave. “However, if charity demands it, I suppose one must waive one’s prejudices.”
He strolled out and hesitated for a moment on the pavement. A curious change had taken place in what a few hours ago had seemed to be a perfect summer day. The clouds were thick in the sky, a few drops of rain were already falling, and a cold wind, like the presage of a storm, was bending the trees in the square. For a single moment he was conscious of an unsuspected weakness. A wave of depression swept in upon him. An unreasoning premonition of failure laid a cold hand upon his heart. He met the careless gaze of an apparent loiterer who was studying the placards without derision, almost with apprehension. Then he ground his heel into the pavement and re-entered his taxicab.
“Savoy,” he directed.
.
CHAPTER XXIV
Captain Richard Beverley, on his way through the hotel smoking room to the Savoy bar, stopped short. He looked at the girl who had half risen from her seat on the couch with a sudden impulse of half startled recognition. Her little smile of welcome was entirely convincing.
“Why, it’s Nora Sharey!” he exclaimed. “Nora!”
“Well, I am glad you’ve recognised me at last,” she said, laughing. “I tried to make you see me last night in the restaurant, but you wouldn’t look.”
He seemed a little dazed, even after he had saluted mechanically, held her hand for a moment and sank into the place by her side.
“Nora Sharey!” he repeated. “Why, it was really you, then, dining last night with that fellow Crawshay?”
“Of course it was,” she replied, “and I recognised you at once, even in your uniform.”
“You know that Jocelyn Thew is here? You saw him with us last night?”
“Yes, I know.”
“Stop a moment,” Richard Beverley went on. “Let me think, Nora. Jocelyn Thew must have seen you dining with Crawshay. How does that work out?”
“He doesn’t mind,” she replied. “Let that stuff alone for a time. I want to look at you. You’re fine, Dick, but what does it all mean?”
“I couldn’t stick the ranch after the war broke out,” he confessed. “I moved up into Canada and took on flying.”
“You are fighting out there in France?”
“Have been for six months. Some sport, I can tell you, Nora. I’ve got a little machine gun that’s a perfect daisy. Gee! I’ve got to pull up. The hardest work we fellows have sometimes is to remember that we mustn’t talk about our job. They used to call me undisciplined. I’m getting it into my bones now, though. — Why, Nora, this is queer! I guess we’re going to have a cocktail together, aren’t we?”
She nodded. He called to a waiter and gave an order. Then he turned and looked at her appreciatively.