He looked at the girls and signalled them out of the room. When the door had closed on Letty:
“Joan, I am going to be very frank with you,” he said.
It was not the first time he had been frank, and she could guess what was coming. She once had a brother, a wild, irresponsible youth, who had been employed by Narth Brothers, and had left hurriedly, carrying with him the cash contents of the safe—a few hundreds of pounds. He had expiated the crime with his life—for he was found on a Kentish road dead by the wreckage of the car in which he was making his way to a Channel port. And there was an invalid mother of Joan Bray’s whose last years of life had been supported on Mr Narth’s bounty. (“We can’t let her go to the workhouse, father,” Mabel had said; “if it gets into the newspapers there will be an awful scandal”—Mabel was Mabel even at the tender age of sixteen.)
“It is not for me to remind you of what I have done for your family,” began Stephen—and proceeded to remind her. “I have given you a home and a social life which ordinarily would not have been yours. You have now a chance of repaying me for my generosity; I particularly wish that you marry this man.”
She licked her dry lips, but did not raise her eyes from the carpet on which they were fixed.
“Do you hear me?”
She nodded and rose slowly.
“You really want me to marry him?”
“I want you to be a rich woman,” he said emphatically. “I am not asking you to make any sacrifice. I am putting in your way an opportunity that nine girls out of ten would jump at.”
There was a tap at the door: it was the butler and he bore on a silver salver a brown envelope. Mr Narth took the telegram, opened it, read, and gasped.
“He’s dead,” he said in a hushed voice. “Old Joe Bray!”
Swiftly he made a mental calculation. It was the first day of June. If he could get her married within a month he could stave off the ruin that threatened Narth Brothers. Their eyes met: hers calm, steady, questioning, his speculative and remorseless.
“You will marry him?”
She nodded.
“Yes, I suppose so,” she said quietly, and his sigh of relief brought the first twinge of bitterness that her heart had known.
“You are a very sensible girl, and you’ll not regret it,” he said eagerly, as he came round and took her cold hands in his. “I can assure you, Joan–-“
He turned his head at the knock. It was the butler.
“There is a gentleman to see you, sir.”
He got so far, when the visitor pushed past him and walked into the room. He was a tall man, dressed in a stained, ill-fitting suit of rough homespun. His shoes were of undressed leather and apparently home-made. He was collarless. A soft shirt, opened at the throat, a battered hat in his hand almost completed the picture. But it was at his face that the girl was gazing.
Joan could only stare in amazement, for never had she seen his like before. His hair was long and brown and wavy. He wore a long, straggly beard that came down to his breast.
“Who the devil–-” began the astonished Mr Stephen Narth.
“My name is Clifford Lynne,” said the apparition. “I understand I’ve got to marry somebody. Who is it?”
They stared at the uncouth man, and then Letty, who had followed him in, began to laugh hysterically.
“Mr Lynne–-” stammered Stephen Narth.
Before the man could reply, came a dramatic interruption. There was a whispered colloquy between the butler and somebody in the hall outside. Looking past them, Mr Narth saw a maid holding a square box.
“What is it?” he asked sharply.
The butler reached out of the door and came back with the box in his hands. It was a new box with a sliding lid, about a foot square.
“Mr Lynne?” he said awkwardly, like one who found himself in a situation which he did not fit.
“Yes?”
The bearded man spun round. All his movements, Joan noted unconsciously, had a certain abruptness.
“For me?”
He put the box on the table and frowned at it. Painted neatly on the top in red letters were the words:
CLIFFORD LYNNE, ESQ. (to await arrival)
As his hand went out to slip back the lid, a cold shiver ran down the girl’s spine. She had an unaccountable premonition of some terrible danger, she knew not what.
“What the devil is this?” demanded the amazing stranger.
The lid was off; there was nothing to be seen but a mass of fleecy cottonwool…but it was moving in weird undulations.
Then suddenly from the white fleece poked up a spade-shaped head and two black bead-like eyes that glittered malignantly.
In a fraction of a second the head was followed by a long, sinuous body that swayed for a moment, then, whipping back, darted the ugly head forward.
The snake had misjudged the distance—and missed! It lay across the table, its head dangling, the tail still concealed in the cottonwool. Only for an infinitesimal space of time it sprawled thus.
Whilst the terrified company stood paralysed to silence by the horror of it, the black thing slid greasily to the floor. Up went the head again, swayed for a while and then again was flung back to strike…
The explosion deafened them—through a haze of blue smoke Joan saw the headless thing coil and uncoil in death agony…
“Hell’s bells!” said Mr Clifford Lynne in wonder. “Who threw that brick?”
CHAPTER FIVE
“A Chinaman brought it, sir,” stammered the butler.
“Chinaman!”
The servant pointed feebly through the French window that led to the lawn. For a second he stood, this ludicrous figure with his ragged beard and his fantastically ill-fitting clothes, and then with a leap he was through the open window and flying across the strip of grass like the wind. In two seconds he had vanished over the high hazel hedge—this he took in his stride in some miraculous fashion.
With his disappearance the spell was broken. Joan found a half-fainting girl on her hands, sobbing and laughing, hands clenched and feet inclined to tap the carpet in a way that was neither modern nor pretty. Under the table wriggled the dying snake—the room was hazy with smoke that smelt pungently.
At the sound of the shot, Mabel came running in. She saw the snake on the floor, stared from his sister to Joan, from Joan to her white-faced father.
“That horrible man—he tried to kill Letty!” She was shrill in her misdirected fury.
“Shut up!”
When Stephen Narth snarled that way there was an end to hysteria. He became the dominant giver of household laws.
“Shut up, all of you—damn you!…none of you has the sense of Joan. Get up!”
Letty rose untidily, staggered, her eyes pleading for sympathy.
“It was a snake.” He stared down at the writhing thing with ludicrous solemnity. “Ugh! Throw that beast out of the room—use the tongs. Did he shoot it, Joan? I didn’t see him use a pistol.”
She shook her head.
“Nor I—I just heard the shot and that was all.”
Mr Narth pointed to the snake; the butler, tongs in hand, was snapping the ends tremblingly.
“He said ‘Hell’s bells,’” nodded Joan gravely.
The girls looked at their father.
“Who was he—a tramp, daddy?” asked Letty.
Mr Narth shook his head.
“Clifford Lynne,” he said, and they gasped in unison. That scarecrow! Letty’s proper indignation overcame her more feminine emotions.
“That…! Was he the man you wanted me…us…?”
He glanced significantly at Joan. She was at the open window, her eyes shaded by a white hand from the glare of the afternoon sun. At the moment the butler was staggering to the lawn, a rope-like object gripped at the end of the tongs, Clifford Lynne came over the hedge, one leg after another in a flying leap, his absurd whiskers flowing all ways. He stopped at the sight of the snake.