“As much as that?” she asked, in amazement.
For some reason he was astonished.
“I thought you were going to say ‘Is that all?’ It is really worth more than a million—or will be in time. The company is enormously rich.”
There followed a period when both were too immersed in their own thoughts to speak, and then:
“You managed—things for him, didn’t you, Mr Lynne?”
“My best friends call me Cliff,” he said, “but if you find that embarrassing you may call me Clifford. Yes, I managed things.”
He offered no further information, and the silence thereafter grew so oppressive that she was glad when the car stopped before the door of Sunni Lodge. Letty, who was on the lawn playing croquet, came across, mallet in hand, with uplifted eyebrows.
“I thought you were lunching in town, Joan?” she asked disapprovingly. “Really, it’s awfully awkward. We’ve got the Vaseys coming this afternoon, and I know you don’t like them.”
And then she saw for the first time the good-looking stranger and lowered her eyes and faltered, for Letty’s modesty and confusion in the presence of Man were notoriously part of her charm.
Joan made no attempt to introduce her companion. She said goodbye to her escort and watched the car glide down the drive.
“Really, Joan,” said Letty petulantly, “you’ve got the manners of a pig! Why on earth didn’t you introduce him?”
“I didn’t think you wanted an introduction; you’ve been so awfully unpleasant about him since he was here last,” said Joan, not without a little malice.
“But he’s never been here before!” protested the girl. “And it’s perfectly horrible of you to say that I’ve said anything unpleasant about anybody. Who is he?”
“Clifford Lynne,” said Joan, and added: “My fiancé!”
She left Letty open-mouthed and dumbfounded, and went up to her room. The rest of the afternoon she spent in some apprehension as to what Mr Narth would say on his return. When eventually he did come—it was just before dinner—he was surprisingly affable, even paternal, but she detected in his manner a nervousness that she had never noticed before, and wondered whether the cause was Clifford Lynne or the sinister Chinaman of whom she had such bad dreams that night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mr Clifford Lynne had rented a small furnished house in one of those streets in Mayfair which had the advantage, from his point of view, of a back entrance. There was a small garage behind the house, which opened on to a long and very tidy mews made up of other garages, each capped by a tiny flat, wherein the chauffeurs attached to his respectable neighbours had their dwelling.
Something was puzzling Clifford Lynne—and it was not Fing-Su, or Joan or Mr Narth. A doubt in his mind had blossomed into a suspicion, and was in a fair way to being a conviction.
All that afternoon he spent reading the China newspapers which had arrived by the mail that day. Just before seven o’clock he saw a paragraph in the North China Herald which brought him to his feet with an oath. It was too late to make inquiries, for, simultaneous with his discovery, the visitor was announced.
Mr Ferdinand Leggat, that amiable and affable man, had arrived via the garage in a closed cab, and had been admitted by Lynne’s chauffeur through the back door; there was excellent reason for this secrecy.
As he entered the little dining-room he half turned as though to shut the door behind him, but the butler who followed made this unnecessary. On Mr Leggat’s face there was something that was not exactly fear, and yet might not be diagnosed as comfort. He was unhappy.
“I wish you could have made it a little later, Mr Lynne,” he said, as his host motioned him to a seat.
“There’s nothing as innocent as daylight,” said Clifford quietly. “Besides, nobody suspects a taxi. You hailed it, I suppose, in the orthodox way? You mumbled a few instructions to the driver and he brought you here. If it had been a long, grey limousine that had picked you up in some dark street, you might have been under suspicion.”
“These cabmen talk,” said the other, fiddling with his knife and fork.
“Not this cabman; he is my own chauffeur, whom I have had for eight years. You’ll find all you want to eat and drink on the sideboard—help yourself.”
“Isn’t your servant coming in?” asked the other nervously.
“If he was, I shouldn’t ask you to help yourself,” said Clifford. “I want a little talk with you before you go—that is why I asked you to come so early. What happened today?”
He went to the buffet, helped himself to a small piece of chicken and salad, and brought it back to the table.
“What happened?” he asked again.
Mr Leggat had evidently no appetite, for he carried back to the table a whisky bottle and a large siphon.
“St Clay is furious. You want to be careful of that fellow, Lynne; he’s a dangerous man.”
Clifford Lynne smiled.
“Have I brought you all the way from your South Kensington home to learn that?” he said sardonically. “Of course he’s dangerous! What happened?”’
“I don’t exactly know. I saw Spedwell for a few minutes, and he told me that St Clay–-“
“Call him Fing-Su—that St Clay stuff gives me a headache.”
“He said that Fing-Su raised hell at first, and then insisted that Narth should treat the matter as a joke. If I were you, I’d watch that girl of yours.”
Clifford raised his eyes to the other.
“You mean Miss Bray—I’d rather you said ‘Miss Bray.’ ‘That girl of yours’ sounds just a little disrespectful,” he sai’d coldly. “Do you mind?”
Leggat forced a smile.
“I didn’t know you were so darned particular,” he grunted.
“I am—a little,” said the other. “Yes, Fing-Su is dangerous; I’ve no doubt about that. I wonder if you realize how deadly he is?”
“I?” asked Leggat, in surprise. “Why?”
The other looked at him strangely.
“I gather that you have joined his precious Joyful Hands and that you’ve taken some sort of mumbo-jumbo oath?”
Leggat moved uneasily in his chair.
“Oh, that! Well, I don’t take much notice of that sort of thing,” he said awkwardly. “Secret societies are all very well in their way, but they’re a game—playing at mystery and all that sort of thing. Besides, Fing-Su has a fine business in London; he wouldn’t try any monkey tricks. Why, he told me that in a year’s time he will have almost the whole of the South China trade in his hands, and they say he has trading stations up as far as the Tibetan frontier! The man must be making thousands a year profit! That secret society of his is a trading dodge. Spedwell told me that there are lodges in almost every big town in China. Naturally that’s good for business. He has made himself a small god amongst the natives. Look at the offices he is building at Tower Hill, and the factory out at Peckham.”
“The factory at Peckham I intend looking at tonight,” said Lynne, and the man’s face fell.
“What’s the sense of that?” he asked. “The place is swarming with Chinks. He’s got over two hundred and fifty working there. The Peckham people made a fuss about it when there were only fifty. That’s why he lodges them inside the factory. You couldn’t get into the works for love or money.”
Clifford Lynne smiled.
“I shall try neither,” he said. “All I want from you is the pass-key to the lodge gates.”
The big man went deathly white, and the hand that went to his lips trembled.
“You don’t mean that?” he asked in a hoarse whisper. “Good God, man, you wouldn’t go—I couldn’t take you—isn’t there another way? Couldn’t you tell the police or the Foreign Office?”