Part 10

"Yes, Moropulos--good morning--lunch? Well, I was going out to lunch with some people."

Moropulos said that his business was important.

"All right--oh, anywhere--one of those little places in Soho." He slammed down the instrument viciously. But this was a time to consolidate his friends and their interests. Not that Moropulos was a friend, but he was useful and might be more so.

The Greek arrived at the restaurant to the minute and was looking more spruce than usual.

"Have you seen Steppe?" was his first question.

"I understood he was on his way to see you--he seemed angry," said Ronnie.

"Our dear Steppe is always angry," answered the Greek coolly. "This time, however, he has no cause. If he has gone to my house, he will not see me."

"What is the trouble?"

Moropulos shrugged. "He has been informed by evil-minded people that during his absence I was--well, not to put too fine a point on it, very drunk."

"And were you?"

"On the contrary, at the very hour, when his spies informed him I was dancing on a table in a low part of the east end, and shouting that the Mackenzie report was a forgery--"

Ronnie went pale. "Good God! You never said that?" he gasped.

"Of course not. If I had, it would be a serious thing for me. I, Paul Moropulos, tell you, Ronald Morelle, that it would be a disastrous thing for me. Just now my relations with dear Jan are--er--strained. I do not wish a breach."

"But surely if Steppe's men say--"

"'Let them say,'" quoted Moropulos, "it is what I say, and you say, and somebody else says, that counts, for at the very moment I was supposed to be misbehaving," he emphasized his words, "I was dining with you and the lovely Miss Merville in your flat."

"What! Why, that is a lie!"

"What is one lie worse than another? Observe I give you the date; it was one day before the charming Miss Merville spent the night with you alone in your very beautiful flat." Had the floor collapsed, Ronald Morelle could not have received a worse shock.

"I recognize your embarrassment and sympathize with you," said Moropulos, "but it is essential for my happiness and ultimate prosperity, that both you and Miss Merville should testify that I dined with you on the previous night."

Ronnie had nothing to say. He had not yet realized the tremendous import of the man's threat.

"I will save you a lot of trouble by telling you that I followed you from the Pavilion to Knightsbridge. I spent the whole of the night outside, wondering when she would come out, and I photographed her as she got into the cab. The photograph, an excellent one, is now in a secret place. Steppe, I hope, will never see it," he added, looking at his _vis-à-vis_ from under his eyelids. "Steppe is angry with me; how unjust! It was impossible that I could have been making a fool of myself, at the very hour we three together were talking of--what were we talking of?--Greece, let us say, the academies. Steppe would not believe you, of course, but he would believe Miss Merville and a great unpleasantness would be avoided. I am sorry to make this demand upon you, but you see how I am situated? I swear to you that I had no intention of using my knowledge. It was an amusing little secret of my own."

Ronald found his voice. "Am I to tell--Miss Merville that you know? That you have a photograph?"

Moropulos spread his hands. "Why should she know? It is not necessary."

Ronnie was relieved. It was something to be spared the scene which would follow the disclosure that a third person was in their secret. He asked for no proofs that Moropulos knew, and any thought of the girl and what this meant to her, never entered his head. If Steppe knew! He grew cold at the thought. Steppe would kill him, pull his life out of him. Ronald Morelle was prepared to go a long way to keep his master in ignorance.

"I will see Miss Merville," he said, and then feeling that a protest was called for: "You have behaved disgracefully, Moropulos--to blackmail me. That is what it amounts to!"

"Not at all. It was a simple matter to tell Steppe that on the night in question I was waiting soberly outside your flat, watching his interests. He is immensely partial to Beryl Merville. A confusion of dates would not have been remarked; he would be so mad that the lesser would be absorbed in the greater injury. He, he would forgive--you--"

Ronald shuddered.

In the afternoon he made his call. "It is lucky finding you alone, dear," he began, awkwardly for him, "you'll never guess what I've been through during the past few days--"

She was very calm and self-possessed. A shade paler, perhaps, but she was of a type that pallor suited. And she met his eyes without embarrassment. That made matters more difficult for Ronald. He plunged straight away into the object of his visit.

"Where were you on Tuesday night, Beryl?"

She was puzzled. "Tuesday--? I forget, why?"

"Try to think, dear," he urged.

"I was dining at home. Father was out, I think. I'm not sure. I went to a concert after with the Paynters. Yes, that was it--why?"

"You were dining with Moropulos and I."

She stared at him. "I don't understand."

"Moropulos is in trouble with Steppe. He has been drinking and some of Steppe's watchers have reported that he made an ass of himself, gave away some business secrets, and that sort of thing. Steppe is naturally furious and Moropulos wants to prove an alibi."

"That he was dining with us, how absurd! Where?"

"In my flat."

She surveyed him steadily. He was unusually excited. She had never seen Ronnie like that before. Nothing ever ruffled him.

"Of course, I can't tell such a lie, even to save your friend," she said. "I was dining at home, although father has such a wretched memory that he won't be sure whether I was here or not."

"Where did you meet the Paynters, did they call for you?" he asked eagerly and she shook her head.

"No, I met them at Queens Hall. I was late and they had gone into the hall. But that is beside the point. I am not helping you in this matter."

"But you must, you must," he was frenzied. "Moropulos knows--he saw you come into the flat--and come out."

There was a dead silence.

"When--on that night?"

She walked across the room, her hands clasped behind her. Ronnie had expected hysteria--he marveled at her calm.

"Very well," she said at last. "I dined with you and Moropulos. You had better invent another lady. Let us be decent, even in our inventions. And Mr. Moropulos entertained us with talk about--what?"

"Anything," nervously, "I know that you think I'm a brute--I can't tell you what I think about myself."

"I can save you the trouble. You think you are in danger and you are hating me because I am the cause."

"Beryl!"

She smiled. "Perhaps I am being uncharitable. The complex of this situation doesn't allow for very clear thinking. I may take another view next week. Will you post this letter for me as you go out?"

He went down the stairs dumbfounded. Her quietness, the unshaken poise of her, staggered him. "Will you post this letter!"--as if his visit had been an ordinary call. He glanced at the envelope. It was addressed to a Bond Street milliner, and on the back flap was scribbled: "Send the blue toque also."

"H'm," said Ronnie as he dropped the letter into the post box. He felt in some indefinable way that he was being slighted.

XII

Mrs. Colebrook acclaimed it as a miracle and discovered in the amazing circumstance the result of her industrious praying.

"Every night I've said: 'Please God, make Christina well, amen.'"

The osteopath, a short, bearded man, who perspired with great freedom, grunted his grudging satisfaction.

Christina was not well by any means, but for the first time in her life she stood upon her own two feet. Only for a few seconds, with Mrs. Colebrook supporting her on the one side and the bone doctor on the other, but she stood.

"Yes--not bad after a month's work," said the osteopath. "You must have massage for those back muscles, they are like wool. If you don't mind a man doing it, you couldn't do better than persuade Mr. Sault. He is an excellent masseur--I found this out by accident. The evening he came to engage me, I'd been dining out and sprained my ankle getting out of a cab--young lady, I observe your suspicion. I am an abstainer and have not touched strong wines for twenty years. I came in feeling bad and I was not inclined to discuss spines with him or anybody. But he insisted on massaging the limb--said he had learned the art in a hospital somewhere--yes, ask him. Otherwise it will cost you half a guinea a day."

Evie heard all this early in the afternoon. It was early closing day and she came home to lunch. She flew up the stairs and literally flung herself upon Christina.

"You darling. Isn't it wonderful! Mother says you stood up by yourself. Oh, Chris, didn't it feel splendid!"

"Mother is a romancer," smiled Christina. "I certainly did stand on my feet, with considerable assistance, and it felt like hell!--pardon the language--physically. Spiritually and intellectually it was a golden moment of life. Oh, Evie, I'm gurgling with joy inside and the prospect of Ambrose rubbing my back fills me with bliss."

"Ambrose--Mr. Sault?"

Christina inclined her head gravely.

"But not your _bare_ back?"

"I fear so," said Christina. "I knew this would be a shock to you."

"Don't be silly, Chris--it is all right I suppose," and then with a happy laugh, "of course it is all right. I'm wrong. I think I must have an unpleasant mind. You've always said I had--well, you've hinted. I'd even let him rub my back if it would do you good."

"You Lady Godiva," murmured Christina admiringly, "quo vadis?"

"That means where am I going? I always mix it up with that other one, 'the sign of the cross.' I am going to a matinee with a girl from the shop. She had tickets sent to her by a gentleman who knows the manager. It will be a bad play; you can't get tickets for a success. How is your Ambrose? I haven't seen him for weeks. Ronnie says that there has been an awful lot of trouble at the office--"

"Oh! Has he an office?"

"I don't know--some office Ronnie is connected with. He's a director, my dear. I saw his name in the paper--Ronnie, I mean."

"Has Ambrose been in trouble?"

"No, some other man, I forget his name. It is foreign and he drinks. But it has all blown over now."

Christina sighed. "I don't see how Ambrose came into it, even after your lucid explanation."

"Ambrose, that is to say Mr. Sault, is supposed to look after--whatever his name is. It sounds like the name of a cigarette. He is supposed to stop him drinking. And he found this--Moropulos, that's the name, in a bar and hauled him out and Moropulos fought him. I don't know the whole story but I do know that there was a row."

"Is the cigarette person still able to walk about?" asked Christina incredulously.

"Yes, but they are very bad friends. Moropulos says he'll get even with Sault."

"Unhappy man," said Christina, "Ronnie is getting quite communicative, isn't he?"

"We're real friends," answered the girl enthusiastically, "we're just pals! I sometimes feel--I don't know whether I ought to tell you this. But I will. I sometimes feel that I really don't want to marry Ronnie at all. I feel that I could be perfectly happy, married to somebody else, if I had him for a friend. Isn't that queer?"

Christina thought it was queer and wondered if this attitude of mind was Evie's very own or whether it had grown by suggestion. But she had evidently done Ronnie an injustice in this instance.

"I've never told Ronnie this," said Evie. "I don't fancy that he would understand, but I did ask him whether he thought that he could be friends with Beryl Merville if she married somebody else. I only asked him for fun, just to hear what he would say. My dear, how he loathes that girl! I could tell he was sincere. He was so furious! He said that if she married, he would never visit her house and he wished he had never seen her."

Christina made no response. It was on the tip of her tongue to say that Beryl Merville must know the man very well to have excited such hatred, but she observed the truce.

When Ambrose put in an appearance late in the evening she learned that he had heard from the osteopath. His large smile told her that even before he spoke.

"Now, Ambrose, did he say anything about massage?"

Ambrose nodded. "I'll do it if you'll let me," he said simply. "My hands aren't as awkward as they look."

Later her mother, who had been an interested spectator of the treatment, spoke a great truth. "It seems natural for Mr. Sault to be rubbing your back, Christina. He's just like a--a soul with hands--sounds ridiculous I know, but that is what I felt. He wasn't a man and he wasn't a woman. It seemed natural, somehow--how did you feel about it?"

"Mother, I begin to feel that I got my genius from you," said Christina, patting a rumpled sheet into place, "I couldn't have bettered that; 'a soul with hands'!"

Mrs. Colebrook blinked complacently. "I've always been a bit clever in describing people," she said. "Do you remember how I used to call Evie 'spitfire'?"

"Don't spoil my illusions mother--'a soul with hands' entitles you to my everlasting respect. And don't tell Evie, or she'll talk about his feet. He has big feet, I admit, though he makes less noise than Evie. And he snores, I heard him last night."

XIII

There came a day when Christina put her feet to the grimy pavement of the street and walked slowly but without assistance to Dr. Merville's car, borrowed through Beryl, for the afternoon.

It was a cold, clear day in January, the wind was in the east and the gutters of Walter Street were covered with a thin film of ice.

A momentous occasion, for in addition to other wonders, Christina was wearing her first hat! Evie had chosen and bought it. The woolen costume was one from Mrs. Colebrook's wash-tub. Ambrose had provided a gray squirrel coat. It had appeared at the last moment. But the hat was a joy. Christina had worn it in bed all the morning, sitting up with pillows behind her and a mirror in her hand.

"Lend me that powder-puff of yours, Evie," she said recklessly, "My skin is perfect. I admit it. But I can't appear before the curious eyes of the world wearing my own complexion. It wouldn't be decent."

"If you take my advice," suggested the wise Evie, "you'll put a dab of rouge on your cheeks. Nobody will know."

"I am no painted woman," said Christina, "I am poor but I am respectable. Ambrose would think I had a fever and send for the osteopath. No, a little powder. My eyes are sufficiently languorous without eyeblack, I think. It must be powder or nothing."

Ambrose did not accompany them, and Evie and Mrs. Colebrook were her attendants in the drive to Hampstead.

Beryl saw them; she had arranged with Ambrose and the chauffeur that the car should go past the house and she watched from behind a curtained window.

So that was Evie; it was the first time she had seen her--no, not the first time. She was the girl to whom Ronnie had been speaking that holiday morning when she had passed them in the park. She was very pretty and petite--the kind Ronnie liked. She lingered at the window long after they had passed, loath to face an unpleasant interview.

She knew it would be unpleasant; her father had been so anxious to please her at lunch; his nervousness was symptomatic. He wanted to have a little talk with her that afternoon, he said; she guessed the subject set for discussion.

Sitting before the drawing-room fire she was reading when he came in rubbing his hands, and wearing a cheerful smile which was wholly simulated.

"Ah, there you are, Beryl. Now we can have a chat. I get very little time nowadays."

He poked the fire vigorously and sat down. "Beryl--" he seemed at some loss for an opening, "I had a talk with Steppe the other day--we were talking about you."

"Yes?"

"Steppe is very fond of you--loves you," Dr. Merville cleared his throat. "Yes, he loves you, Beryl. A fine man, a little rough, perhaps, but a fine man and a very rich man."

"Yes?" said Beryl again and he grew more agitated.

"I don't know why you say 'Yes, yes,'" he said irritably, "a young girl doesn't as a rule hear such things without displaying some--well, some emotion. How do you feel about the matter?"

"About marrying Mr. Steppe? I suppose you mean that? I can't marry him: I don't wish to."

"I'm sure you would learn to love him, Beryl."

She shook her head. "Impossible. I'm sorry, father, especially if you wished me to marry him. But it is impossible."

The doctor stared gloomily into the fire. "You must do as you wish. I cannot conscientiously urge you to make any sacrifice--he is a rough sort, and I'm afraid he will take your refusal badly. I don't mind what he does--really. I've made a hash of things--it was madness ever to invest a penny. I had a hundred and fifty thousand when I came into this house. And now--!"

She listened with a cold feeling in her heart. "Do you mean--that you depend upon the good will of Mr. Steppe--that if you were to break your connection with him and his companies, your position would be affected--?"

He nodded. "I am afraid that is how matters stand," he said, "but I forbid you to take that into consideration." Yet he looked at her so eagerly, so wistfully, that she knew his lofty statements to be so many words by which he expressed principles, long since dead. The form of his vanished code showed dimly through the emptiness of his speech.

"I am a modern father--I believe that a girl's heart should go where it will. Girls do not marry men to save their families, except in melodrama, and fathers do not ask such a ghastly sacrifice. I should have been glad if you had thought kindly of Steppe. It would have made my course so much more smooth. However--" He got up, stooped to poke the fire again, hung the poker tidily on the iron and straightened himself.

"Let me think it over," she said, not looking at him. Not until he was out of the room did he feel uncomfortable.

She had been prepared for this development. Steppe had been a constant visitor to the house and his rare flowers filled the vases of every room except hers. And her father had hinted and hinted. That Dr. Merville was heavily in the debt of her suitor she could guess. Steppe had told her months before that he had to come to the rescue of the doctor. Only she had hoped that so crude an alternative would not be placed before her, though she knew that such arrangements were not altogether confined to the realms of melodrama. At least two friends of hers had married for a similar reason. A knightly millionaire bootmaker had married Lady Sylvia Frascommon and had settled the Earl of Farileigh's bills at a moment when that noble earl was dodging writs in bankruptcy. She could look at the matter more calmly because she had come to a dead end. There was nothing ahead, nothing. She did not count Ambrose Sault's love amongst the tangibilities of life. That belonged to herself. Steppe would marry that possession. It was as much of her, as hands and lips, except that it was beyond his enjoyment. In the midst of her examination, her father came in.

"There is one thing I forgot to say, dear--Ronnie, who is as fond of you as any of us, thinks that you ought to marry--he says he'll be glad to see you married to Steppe. I thought it was fine of Ronnie."

"Shut the door, father, please; there's a draught," said Beryl.

Dr. Merville returned to his study shaking his head. He couldn't understand Beryl.

So Ronnie approved! She sat, cheek in hand, elbow on knee, looking at the fire. Steppe did not seem so impossible after that. Ronnie! He would approve, of course. What terrors he must have endured when he discovered that Steppe was his rival! What mental agonies! An idea came to her.

She went down to the hall where the telephone was and gave his number.

"Hello--yes."

"Is that you, Ronnie?"

"Yes--is that you, Beryl?" his voice changed. She detected an anxious note. "How are you--I meant to come round yesterday. I haven't seen you for an age."

"Father says that you think I ought to marry Steppe."

There was an interval. "Did you hear what I said?" she asked.

"Yes--of course it is heartbreaking for me--I feel terrible about it all--but it is a good match, Beryl. He is one of the richest men in town--it is for your good, dear."

She nodded to the transmitter and her lips twitched. "I can't marry him without telling him, can I, Ronnie?" She heard his gasp.

"For God's sake, don't be so mad, Beryl! You're mad! What good would it do--it would break your father's heart--you don't want to do that, do you? It would be selfish and nothing good could come of it--"

She was smiling delightedly at her end of the wire, but this he could not know.

"I will think about it," she said.

"Beryl--Beryl--don't go away. You mustn't, you really mustn't--I'm not thinking about myself--it is you--your father. You won't do such a crazy thing, will you? Promise me you won't--I am entitled to some consideration."

"I'll think about it," she repeated and left him in a state of collapse.

XIV

It happened sometimes that Mr. Moropulos had extraordinary callers at his bleak house in Paddington. They came furtively, after dark, and were careful to note whether or not they were followed. Since few of these made appointments and were unexpected, it was essential that the Greek should be indoors up to ten o'clock. Therefore, he failed in his trust when his unquenchable thirst drew him away from business. He was maintained in comfort by Jan Steppe to receive these shy callers. Mr. Moropulos was not, as might be supposed, engaged in a career of crime, as we understand crime. The people who came and whom he interviewed briefly in his sitting-room, were respectable persons who followed various occupations in the city and would have swooned at the thought of stealing a watch or robbing a safe. But it was known in and about Threadneedle Street, Old Broad Street and in various quaint alleyways and passages where bareheaded clerks abound, that information worth money could be sold for money. A chance-heard remark, the fag-end of a conversation in a board room, heard between the opening and closing of a door; a peep at a letter, any of these scraps of gossip could be turned into solid cash by the bearded Greek.

It was surprising how quickly his address passed round and even more surprising how very quickly Moropulos had organized an intelligence service which was unique as it was pernicious. He paid well, or rather Steppe paid, and the returns were handsome. A clerk desiring to participate in a rise of value which he knew was coming, could buy a hundred shares through Moropulos and that, without the expenditure of a cent. Moropulos knew the secrets of a hundred offices; there were few business amalgamations that he did not hear about weeks in advance. When the Westfontein Gold Mines published a sensational report concerning their properties, a report which brought their stock from eight to nothing, few people knew that Moropulos had had the essential part of the report in his pocket the day after it arrived in London. It cost Steppe three thousand pounds, but was worth every penny. The amount of the sum paid was exaggerated, but it was also spread abroad. And in consequence, Mr. Moropulos was a very busy man.

He was in his sitting-room on that shivering winter night. A great fire roared in the chimney, a shaded lamp was so placed, that it fell upon the book and the occupant of the sofa could read in comfort. On a small eastern table was a large tumblerful of barley water. From time to time Mr. Moropulos sipped wryly.