Part 6

Evie lay awake for a long time that night. Christina was certainly a strange girl--and when she said she did not love Sault, she was not speaking the truth. That was just how she had felt, when Christina had hinted that Ronnie was not sincere. Only she had been too much of a a lady to lose her temper. About old Sault, too! What did he do for a living? She must ask Christina.

XII

Mr. Jan Steppe sat astride of a chair, his elbows on the back-rest, his saturnine face clouded with doubt.

"It certainly looks like a very ordinary safe to me, Sault. Do you mean to say that an expert could not get inside without disturbing the apparatus, huh?"

"Impossible," replied Sault. "I have filled the top chamber with water and I have tried at least a thousand combinations and every time I put the combination wrong, the safe has been flooded."

He twisted the dials on the face of the unpretentious repository, until he brought five letters, one under the other, in line with an arrow engraved on the safe door. He was a long time doing this and Steppe and the Greek watched hm.

"Now!" said Sault.

He turned the handle and the door swung open. The contents were two or three old newspapers and they were intact.

"What is the code word?" Steppe peered forward. "Huh--why did you choose that word, Sault?"

"It is one of the very few words I can spell. Besides which, each letter is different."

"It is not an inappropriate word," said Moropulos amused, "and one easy to remember. I intend pasting a notice on the safe, Steppe, explaining frankly that unless the code word is used, and if any other combination of letters is tried, indeed, if the handle is turned, whilst the dial is set at any other word than the code word, the contents of the safe are destroyed. This may act as a deterrent to promiscuous burglars."

Steppe fingered his stubbly beard. "That will be telling people that we have something in the safe that we want to keep hidden, huh?" he said dubiously, "a fool idea!"

"Everybody has something in his safe that he wants to keep hidden," said the other coolly.

"Now let me try--shut the door, Sault, that is right." Steppe got out of the chair to spin the dials. "Now we will suppose that I am some unauthorized person trying to find a way of opening the safe. So!"

He turned the handle.

"Open it."

Sault worked at the dials and presently the door swung open. The newspapers were saturated and an inch of water at the bottom of the safe splashed out and into a bath-tub that Sault had put ready.

"How about cutting into the safe? Suppose I am a burglar, huh? I burn out the lock or the side, and don't touch the combination?"

"I have left a hole in one side of the safe," said Sault, and pointed to a rubber plug that had been rammed into a small aperture.

With a pair of pincers he pulled this out and a stream of water spurted forth and was mostly caught in the can he held.

"That has the same effect," he explained. "The water is pumped at a pressure into the hollow walls of the safe. The door is also hollow. When the water runs out, a float drops and releases the contents of the upper chamber. In the case of the door, the float operates the same spring that floods the safe when the handle is turned."

Steppe scratched his head. "Perfect," he said. "You have experimented with the acid?"

Sault nodded. "Both with sulphuric and hydrochloric," he said. "I think hydrochloric is the better."

Steppe turned to the Greek. "You had better keep it here," he said, and then: "Will it be ready today? I want to get those Brakpan letters out of the way. I needn't tell you, Sault, that the code word must be known only to us three, huh? I don't mind your knowing--but, you, Moropulos! You have got to cut out absinthe--d'ye hear? Cut it out--right out!" His growl became a roar that shook the room and Moropulos quailed.

"It is cut out," he said sulkily. "I am confining my boozing to the 'Parthenon'. I've got to have some amusement."

"You have it, if all I hear is true," said Steppe grimly. "Give Sault a hundred, Moropulos. It is worth it. What do you do with your money, Sault? You don't spend it on fine clothes, huh?"

"He goes about doing good," said Moropulos, with a good-natured sneer. "I met him in Kensington Gardens the other day, wheeling an interesting invalid. Who was she, Sault?"

"My landlady's daughter," replied the other shortly.

"No business of yours, anyhow," growled Steppe. "You've met Miss Merville, huh? Nice lady?"

"Yes, a very nice lady," said Sault steadily. He pushed back his long gray hair from his forehead.

"Pretty, huh?"

Sault nodded and was glad when his employer had departed.

"Steppe is gone on that girl," said Moropulos. "He'd have brained you, if you had said she wasn't pretty!"

"He wouldn't have brained me," said Sault quietly.

"I suppose he wouldn't. Even Steppe would have thought twice about lifting his hand to you. He's a brute though, I saw him smash a man in the face once for calling him a liar--at a directors' meeting. It was an hour before the poor devil knew what had happened. Yes, she is pretty. I see her riding some mornings, a young Diana--delicious. I'd give a lot to be in Steppe's shoes."

"Why?"

Moropulos rolled a cigarette with extraordinary rapidity and lit it. "Why? Well, if he wants her, he'll have her. Steppe is that kind. I don't suppose the doctor would have much to say in the matter. Or she, either."

Sault picked up an iron bar from the table. It was one of four that he had brought for the purpose of strengthening the safe, and it was nearly an inch in diameter.

"I think she would have something to say," he said, weighing the bar on the palms of his hands.

And then, to the Greek's amazement, he bent the steel into a V. He used no apparent effort; the bar just changed its shape in his hands as though it had been made of lead.

"Why did you do that?" he gasped.

"I don't know," said Ambrose Sault, and with a jerk brought the steel almost straight.

"Phew!"

Moropulos took the bar from his hand.

"I shouldn't like to annoy you seriously," he said. He did not speak of Beryl again.

XIII

Evie Colebrook had found a note awaiting her at the store on the morning of the day she came home early. It consisted of a few words scrawled on a plain card, and had neither address nor signature:

"_Dearest girl_: I shall not be able to see you tonight. I have a long article to write and shall probably be working through the night, when your dear and precious eyes are closed in sleep. _Your lover_."

She had the card under her pillow when she slept.

"Are you sure you aren't too busy," said Beryl when she came down, a radiant figure, to the waiting Ronnie. "Now that you have taken up a literary career, I picture you as being rushed every hour of the day."

"Sarcasm is wasted on me," Ronnie displayed his beautiful teeth. "Unflattering though it be, I admit to a slump in my literary stock. I have had no commissions for a week."

"And I'm not taking you away from any of those beautiful friends of yours?"

"Beryl!" he murmured reproachfully. "You know that I have no friends--if by friends you mean girl friends."

"It is my mad jealousy which makes me ask these questions," she said quizzically, "come along, Ronnie, we will be late."

What the play was about, Beryl never quite remembered. Ronnie, sitting in the shade of the curtains, was more interested in his companion. It was strange that he had known her ever since she was a child and he a schoolboy, and yet had never received a true impression of her beauty. He watched her through the first act, the tilt of her chin, the quick smile.

"Beryl, you ought to be painted," he said in the first interval. "I mean by a portrait painter. You look so perfectly splendid that I couldn't take my eyes off you."

The color came slowly and, in the dim light of the box, a man who had not been looking for this evidence of her pleasure, would have seen nothing.

"That is a little less subtle than the usual brand of flattery you practice, isn't it, Ronnie? Or is your artlessness really an art that conceals art?"

"I'm not flattering you--I simply speak as I feel. I never realized your loveliness until tonight." She straightened up and laughed.

"You think I'm crude--I suppose I am. You do not say that I am keeping my hand in, though you probably think so. I admit I have had all sorts of flirtations, in fact, I have been rather a blackguard in that way, and of course I've said nice things to girls--buttered them and played to their vanity. But if I were trying to make love to you, I should be a little more subtle, as you say. I should imply my compliments. It is just because my--my spasm is unpremeditated that I find myself at a loss for words. There is no sense in my making love to you, anyway, supposing that you would allow me. I can't marry--I simply won't marry until I have enough money and I haven't nearly enough. If in four years' time the money doesn't come--well then, I'll risk being a pauper, but the girl will have to know."

She said nothing. Here was an unexpected side to his character. He had some plan of life and a code of sorts. If she had been better acquainted with that life of his, which she so far suspected, she would have grown alert when Ronnie unmasked his way of retreat. She was surprised at his virtuous reluctance to make a woman share his comparative poverty--she should have been suspicious when he fixed a time limit to his bachelorhood. It was not like Ronnie to plan so far in advance, that she knew; it might have occurred to her that he was definitely excusing the postponement of marriage. As it was, she was seeing him in a more favorable light. Ronnie desired that she should. His instinct in these matters was uncannily accurate.

"It was worth coming out with you, if only to hear your views on matrimony," was all the comment she made.

"I don't know--" he looked gloomily into the auditorium, "in many ways I have been regretting it. That doesn't sound gallant, but I am not in a mood for nice speeches--you think I am? I did not mean to be nice when I said that you were lovely, any more than I wish to be nice to Titian when I praise his pictures. Beryl, I've been fond of you for years. I suppose I've been in love with you, though I've never wanted to be. That is the truth. I've recognized just how unfair it would be, to chain a woman like you to a rake--I'm not sparing myself--like me. God knows whether I could be constant. In my heart I know that if I had you, there could be no other woman in the world for me--an intimate knowledge of my own character makes me skeptical."

Beryl was spared the necessity for replying. The curtain went up on the second act just then. She knew he was looking at her, and turned in her chair to hide her face. Her heart was beating tumultuously. She was trembling. She was a fool--a fool. He meant nothing--he was a liar; lied as readily as other men spoke the truth. That frankness of his was assumed--he was acting. Versed in the weaknesses of women, he had chosen the only approach that would storm her citadel. She told herself these truths, her reason battling in a last desperate stand against his attack. And yet--why should he not be sincere? For the first time he had admitted the unpleasant charges which hitherto he had denied. He surely could not expect to make her love him more by the confession of his infidelities?

If he had followed up his talk, had made any attempt to carry on the conversation from the point where he left it, she would have been invincible. But he did not. When the curtain went down again, he was more cheerful and was seemingly interested only in the people he recognized in the stalls. He asked her if she would mind if he left her. He wanted to smoke and to meet some men he knew.

She assented and was disappointed. They had a long wait between these two acts, and as he had returned to the box after a shorter interval than she had expected, there was plenty of time, had he so wished, to have resumed his conversation. He showed no such desire, and it was she who began it.

"You puzzle me, Ronnie. I can't see--if you loved me, how you could do some of the things you have done. You won't be so commonplace as to tell me that you wanted to keep me out of your mind and that that form of amusement helped you to forget me."

"No," he admitted, "but, Beryl dear, need we discuss it? I don't know why I spoke to you as I did. I felt like it."

"But I am going to discuss it," she insisted. "I want my mind set in order. It is overthrown for the moment. What prevented you from keeping me as a friend all this time--a real close friend, if you loved me? Oh, Ronnie, I do want to be fair to you even at the risk of being shameless, as I am now. Why could you not have asked me? Even if it meant waiting?"

He looked down at the floor. "I have some sense of decency left," he said in a low voice. And then the curtain went up.

Beryl looked at her program. The play had four acts; there was another interval. He did not leave her this time; nor did he wait for her to begin.

"I'm going to be straight with you, Beryl," he said, "I want you--I adore you. But I cannot commit you to an engagement which may adversely affect your father and incidentally myself. I am being brutally selfish and mercenary, but I am going to say what I think. You'll be amused and perhaps horrified when I tell you that Steppe is very keen on you."

She was neither amused nor horrified; but on the other hand, if Ronnie Morelle realized that in his invention he had accidentally hit upon the truth, he would not have been amused and most certainly terror would have struck him dumb. If Beryl had only said what she was of a mind to say, that she had learned from her father that Steppe was in love with her, she might have silenced him. But she said nothing. Ronnie's explanation seemed natural--knowing Ronnie.

"I'd sooner see you dead than married to him," he said vehemently, "but none of us can say that now. We are in a very tight place. Steppe could ruin your father with a gesture--he could very seriously inconvenience me." Here he was much in earnest, and the girl, with a cold feeling at her heart, knew he spoke the truth.

"But that time will pass. We shall weather the storm which is shrieking round our ears--you don't read the financial papers--you're wise. You see what might happen, Beryl?"

Beryl nodded. She was ridiculously happy.

"A great play, don't you think so, Miss Merville?" It was Sir John Maxton who had pushed through the crowd in the vestibule.

"Splendid," she said.

"Ronnie, did you like it?"

"I never heard a word," said Ronnie, and somehow that statement was so consonant with his new honesty that it confirmed her in a faith which was as novel.

The car carried them through the crowded circus and into the quietude of Piccadilly.

"Oh, Ronnie--I am so happy--"

His arm slipped round her and his lips pressed fiercely against her red mouth.

* * * * *

"Why can't you sleep?" asked the drowsy Christina, as the girl lit her candle for the second time.

"I don't know--I'm having such beastly dreams," said Evie fretfully.

_BOOK THE SECOND_

I

The step of Ambrose Sault was light and there was a buoyancy in his mien when he came into Mrs. Colebrook's kitchen, surprising that good lady with so unusual an appearance at an hour of the day when she was taking her afternoon siesta.

"Lord, how you startled me!" she said, "the ostymopat came this morning. A stout gentleman with whiskers. Very nice, too, and American. But bless you, Mr. Sault, he'll never do any good to Christina, though I wish he could, for I'm up and down those blessed stairs from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed. He'll never cure her. She's had ten doctors and four specialists, and she's been three times to St. Mary's hospital; to say nothing of the Evelyna when she was a child and fell out of the perambulator that did it. Ten doctors and four specialists--they're doctors, too, in a manner of speaking, so you might say fourteen."

Sault never interrupted his landlady, although his forbearance meant, very often, a long period of waiting.

"Can I see Christina, Mrs. Colebrook?" he begged.

"Certainly you can, you needn't ask me. She'll be glad to see you," said Mrs. Colebrook conventionally. "I thought of going up myself, but she has always got those books. Do you think so much reading is good for her--?"

"I'm sure it is."

"But--well, I don't know. I've never read anything but the Sunday papers, and they've got enough horrors in 'em--but they actually happened. It isn't guesswork like it is in books. I never read a book through in my life. My husband--! Why, when he passed away, there was enough books in the house to fill a room. He'd sooner read than work at any time. He was a bit aristocratic in his way."

Sault had come to understand that "aristocratic" did not stand, as Mrs. Colebrook applied the word, for gentleness of birth, but for a loftiness of demeanor in relation to labor.

He made his escape up the stairs. Christina was not reading. She lay on her back, her hands lightly folded, and she was inspecting the end bed-rail with a fixity of gaze that indicated to Ambrose how far she was from Walter Street and the loud little boys who played beneath her window.

"I have nothing for you today--I haven't been baking."

She patted the bed and he sat down.

"The osteopath has been, I suppose mother told you? She has the queerest word for him, 'ostymopat'. Yes, he came and saw, or rather, he prodded in a gentle, harmless kind of way, but I fancy that my spine has conquered. He didn't say very much, but seemed to be more interested in the bones of my neck and shoulders than he was in the place where it hurts. He wouldn't tell me anything, I suppose he didn't want to make me feel miserable. Poor, kind soul--after all the uncomplimentary things that have been said about my spinal column!"

"He told me," said Ambrose, and something in his face made her open her eyes wide.

"What did he say--please tell me--was it good?"

He nodded and a beatific smile lightened his face.

"You can be cured; completely cured. You will walk in a year or maybe less. He thinks it will take six months to manipulate the bones into their place; he talked about 'breaking down' something, but he didn't mean that he would hurt you. He just meant that he would have to remove--I don't know what it is, but it would be a gradual process and you would feel nothing. He wants your mother to put you into a sort of thin overall before he comes."

He lugged a parcel from his pocket. "I bought one--a smock of thick silk. I thought you had better have silk. He works at you through it, and it makes his work easier for him and for you if--anyhow, I got silk, Christina."

Her eyes were shining, but she did not look at him. "It doesn't seem possible," she said softly, "and it is going to cost a lot of money--cost you. The silk overall is lovely, but I wouldn't mind if I wore sackcloth. You great soul!"

She caught his hand in both of hers and gripped it with a strength that surprised him.

"Evie is quite sure that I am in love with you, Ambrose--I lied to her when I said I never called you Ambrose. And, of course, we are in love with one another, but in a way that poor Evie doesn't understand. If I was normal, I suppose I'd love you in her way--poor Ambrose, you would be so embarrassed."

She laughed quietly.

"Love is a great disturbance," said Ambrose, "I think Evie means that kind."

"Were you ever in love that way? I have never been. I think I love you as I should love my child, if I had one. If you say that you love me as a mother, I shall be offended, Ambrose. Do you think it will really happen--will it cost very much?"

"A pound a visit, and he is coming every day except Sunday."

Christina made a calculation and the immensity of the sum left her horror-stricken.

"A hundred and fifty pounds!" she cried. "Oh, Ambrose--how can you? I won't have the treatment. It is certain to fail--I won't, Ambrose!"

"I've paid a hundred on account. He didn't want to take it, but I said I would only let him come on those terms. I wasn't speaking the truth--I'd have let him come on any terms. So you see, Christina, I've paid, and you must be treated!"

"Hold my hand, Ambrose--and don't speak a word. I'm going for a long walk--I haven't dared walk before."

She resumed her gaze upon the bed-rail and he sat in silence whilst she dreamed.

Evie returned at ten o'clock that night and heard Christina singing as she mounted the stairs. "Enter, sister, has mother told you that I am practically a well woman?"

"Don't put too high hopes--"

"Shut up! I'm a well woman I tell you. In a year I shall walk into your medicine shop and sneer at you as I pass. Have you brought home any candy? 'Sweets' is hopelessly vulgar, and I like the American word better. And you look bright and sonsy. Did you see the god?"

"I wish you wouldn't use religious words, Christina, just when we are going to bed, too. I wonder you're not afraid. Yes, I saw my boy."

"Have you a boy?" in simulated surprise. "Evie, you are a surprising child. Whom does he take after?"

"Really, I think you are indecent," said her sister, shocked. "You know perfectly well I mean--Ronnie."

"Oh, is he the 'boy'? To you girls everything that raises a hat or smokes a cheap cigar is strangely boyish. Well, is he nearly dead from his midnight labors?"

"I'd like to see you write a long article for the newspapers," said Evie witheringly.

"I wish you could. You may even see that. Tell me about him, Evie. What is he like--what sort of a house has he?" She waited.

"He lives in a flat, and, of course, I've never seen it. You don't imagine that I would go into a man's flat alone, do you?'"

Christina sighed. "There are points about the bourgeoisie mind which are admirable," she said. "What does 'bourgeoisie' mean? The bourgeoisie are the people who have names instead of numbers to their houses; they catch the nine twenty-five to town and go home by the five seventeen. They go to church at least once on Sunday and their wives wear fascinators and patronize the dress circle."

"You talk such rubbish, Christina. I can't make head or tail of it half the time. I don't see what it has got to do with my not going in to Ronnie's flat. It wouldn't be respectable."

"Why didn't I think of that word?" wailed Christina. "Evie."

"Huh?" said Evie, her mouth full of pins and in an unconscious imitation of one who, did she but know it, held her soul in the hollow of his hands.

"Where do you meet your lad--I simply can't say 'boy'?"

"Oh, anywhere," said Evie vaguely. "We used to meet a lot in the park. As a matter of fact, that is where I first saw him, but now he doesn't go to the park. He says the crowd is vulgar and it is you know, Christina; why I've heard men addressing meetings and saying that there wasn't a God! And talking about the king most familiarly. It made my blood boil!"

"I don't suppose the king minds, and I'm sure God only laughed."

"Christina!"

"Well, why not? What's the use of being God if He hasn't a sense of humor? He has everything He wants, and that is one of the first blessings He would give Himself. Where do you meet Ronnie, Evie?"

"Sometimes I have dinner with him, and sometimes we just meet at the tube station and go to the pictures." Christina pinched her chin in thought.

"He knows that girl who came to see you, Miss Merville. I told him about her visit, and he asked me if she knew that I was a friend of his, and whether she had seen me. She rather runs after him, I think. He doesn't say so, he is too much a gentleman. I can't imagine Ronnie saying anything unkind."