Part 7

"But he sort of hinted," suggested Christina.

"You are uncharitable, Christina! Nothing Ronnie does is right in your eyes. Of course he didn't hint. It is the way he looks, when I speak about her. I know that he doesn't like her very much. He admitted it, because, just after we had been talking about her, he said that I was the only girl he had ever met who did not bore him--unutterably. His very words!"

"That was certainly convincing evidence," said Christina, and her sister arrested the motion of her hair brush to look suspiciously in her direction. You could never be sure whether Christina was being nice or unpleasant.

II

Ronald Morelle had once been the victim of a demoralizing experience. He had awakened in time to hear the church clock strike nine, and for the space of a few seconds, he had suffered the tortures of hell. Why, he never discovered. He had heard the clock strike nine since then, in truth he had been specially wakened by François the very next morning, in the expectation that the tolling of the bell would recall to his mind the cause of his abject fear. But not again did the chimes affect him. He had made a very thorough examination of his mind in the Freudian method, but could trace no connection between his moments of terror and the sound of a bell. "A nightmare, as an unpleasant dream is called, may be intensively vivid, yet from the second of waking leaves no definite memory behind it," said a lesser authority.

He had to rest content with that. He had other matters to think about. Steppe, an unusual visitor, came to his flat one morning. Ronnie was in his dressing-gown, reading the morning newspapers, and he leaped up with a curious sense of guilt when the big man was announced.

"You dabble in press work, Morelle, don't you?" Ronnie acknowledged his hobby.

"Do you know anybody in Fleet Street--editors and such like?"

"I know a few--why, Mr. Steppe?"

Steppe lit a cigar and strolling across the room looked out of the window. He carried the air of a patron to such an extent that Ronnie felt an interloper, an uncomfortable feeling to a man still in pajamas.

"Because we've got to beat up a few friendly press criticisms," said Steppe at last. "The financial papers are raising merry hell about the Klein River diamond flotation and we have to get our story in somehow or other. You don't want to be called a swindling company promoter, huh? Wouldn't look good, huh?"

"I don't see how I come into it," said Ronnie.

"You don't, huh? Of course you don't! Have you ever seen anything but a shop girl's ankles? You--don't see! You're a director, so is Merville. You've drawn directors' fees. I'm not a director--it doesn't matter a damn to me what they say."

The name of Jan Steppe seldom appeared amongst the officers or directors of a company. He had his nominees who voted according to the orders they received.

"What makes it so almighty bad is that I was floating the Midwell Traction Corporation next week. We'll have to put that back now, but it will keep. What are you going to do?"

"I don't know exactly what to do," said Ronnie. It was the first time he had ever been called upon to justify his directors' fees. "I know a few men--but I doubt if I can do anything. Fleet Street is a little rigid in these things."

"Get an article in somewhere," ordered Steppe peremptorily. "Take this line: That we bought the Klein River Mine on the report of the best engineer in South Africa. We did. There's no lie about that. Mackenzie--he's in a lunatic asylum now. And the report was in his own handwriting, so there won't be a copy. And you needn't mention that he is in a lunatic asylum, most people think he is dead."

"Didn't he write to us complaining that we only put an extract from his report into the prospectus?"

"Never mind about that!" snarled Steppe. "I didn't come here for a conversation. He did write; said that we'd published a sentence away from the context. He didn't think I was going to put the worst into the prospectus, did he? What he said was, that the Klein River Mine would be one of the richest in South Africa if we could get over difficulties of working, which he said were insuperable. He was right. They are. The only way to work that mine is with deep sea divers! Now, have this right, Morelle, and try to forget Flossie's blue eyes and Winnie's golden hair. This is business. Your business. You've got to take that report (Moropulos will give it to you, but you mustn't take it from the office) and extract all that is good in it. At the general meeting you have to produce your copy and read it. If anybody wants to see the original, refer 'em to Mackenzie. You've got to make Klein River look alive and you haven't to defend it, d'ye hear me? You've got to handle that mine as though you wished it was yours, huh? No defence! The hundred-pound shares are at twelve; you've got to make 'em look worth two hundred. And it is dead easy if you go the right way about it. Ask any pickpocket. The easiest way to steal a pocketbook is to go after the man that's just lost his watch. Make 'em think that the best thing they can do is to buy more Klein Rivers and hold them, huh? You've got to think it, or you won't say it. Get this meeting through without a fuss, and there's a thousand for you."

"I'll try," said Ronnie.

Yet, it was in no confident mood that he faced a hall-full of enraged stockholders a week later. The meeting was described as "noisy"; it ended in the passing of a vote of confidence in the directors. Ronnie was elated; no other man but Steppe could have induced him to present a forged document to a meeting of critical stockholders, and when Klein Rivers rose the next day to seventeen, he was not as enthusiastic as Dr. Merville, who 'phoned his congratulations on what was undoubtedly a remarkable achievement.

He spoke of nothing else that day, and Beryl basked in reflected approval. Her father knew nothing. He wondered why Ronnie, whom he did not like overmuch, called with greater frequency. He had too large an experience of life to harbor any misconception as to his second cousin's private character, although he would, in other circumstances, have passively accepted him as a son-in-law. Men take a very tolerant view of other men's weaknesses. The theory that the world holds a patch of arable land reserved for young men to put under wild oats, and that without exciting the honest farmers whose lands adjoin, is a theory that dies hard as the cultivated fields increase in number.

He did not regard Ronnie as a marrying man, and with the exception of a few moments of uneasiness he had had when he noted Beryl's preference for his associate's society, he found nothing objectionable in the new interest which Ronnie had found. But he wished he wouldn't call so often.

Dr. Merville might, and did, dismiss Ronnie's errant adventures with a philosophical _sua cuique voluptas_--he found himself taking a more and more lenient view of Ronald Morelle's character. A man is never himself until he is idle. Successions of nurses, schoolmasters and professors shepherd him into the service of his fellows, and the conventions of his profession, no less than a natural desire to stand well with the friends and clients he has acquired in his progress, assist him in maintaining something of the appearance and mental attitude which his tutors have formed in him. Many a man has gone through life being some other man who has impressed him, or some great teacher who has imparted his personality into his plastic pupil.

The first instinct of a man lost in the desert is to discard his clothes. The doctor, wandering in this financial waste, began to discard his principles. He was unconscious of the sacrifice. If, in the course of his professional life he had made a mistaken diagnosis, or blundered in an operation, he would have known. If at school he had committed some error, he would have been corrected. Now, though this he did not realize, he was, for the first time in his life, free from any other authority than his own will and conscience. He fell into a common error when he believed, as he did, that standards of honor and behavior are peculiar to the trades in which they are exercised and that right and wrong are adaptable to circumstances.

"Ronnie is coming to dinner tonight, isn't he? You know I shall not be here, my dear? I promised Steppe I would spend the evening with him. I wish you would tell Ronnie how pleased we all are at his very fine speech. I never dreamed that he had it in him--Steppe talks of making him chairman of the company."

"I thought he was that."

"No--er--no. The chairman is a man named Howitt--a very troublesome fellow. Steppe bought him out before the meeting. Ronnie was only acting chairman."

"I thought you were a director, daddy?" She was curious on this point and had waited an opportunity of asking him why he had not been present at the meeting.

"I am--in a sense--but my nerves are in such a state just now, that I simply couldn't bear the strain of listening to a crowd of noisy louts jabbering stupid criticism. The company is in a perfectly sound position. You can see that from the way the stock has jumped up in the past few days. These city people aren't fools, you know."

She wondered if it was the "city people" who were buying the stock or were responsible for the encouraging rise in Klein River Diamonds. More likely, she thought, the buyers were the people who knew very little about stock exchange transactions.

Ronnie arrived as the doctor was going out, and they met in the street before the door. "It was nothing," said Ronnie modestly, "they were rather rowdy at first, but after I had had a little talk with them--you know how sheep-like these fellows are. I discovered from Steppe who was likely to be the leader of the opposition, and I saw him before the meeting. Of course, he was difficult and full of threats about appointing a committee of investigation. However--"

"Yes, yes, you did splendidly--you'll find Beryl waiting for you. Er--Ronnie."

"Yes?"

"Don't unsettle her--she is in an enquiring mood just now, especially about the companies and things. I shouldn't talk too much about Klein Rivers. She is a very shrewd girl. Not that there is anything about Klein Rivers that is discreditable."

"I never talk business to Beryl," said Ronnie. Which was nearly true.

He found her in the drawing-room and took her into his arms. She was so dear and fragrant. So malleable in his skilled hands now that the barrier of her suspicion had been broken down.

III

In the middle of the night, Ambrose Sault turned in his narrow bed and woke. He was a light sleeper and the party walls of the tiny house were thin.

He got out of bed, switched on the light of a portable electric lamp which stood within reach of his hand and, thrusting his feet into slippers, opened the door. The house was silent, but a crack of light showed under Christina's door.

"Are you awake, Christina?" he asked softly. "Is anything wrong?"

"Nothing, Mr. Sault."

It was not Christina. There was no hint of tears in her voice. Ambrose went back to his bed, and to sleep. He knew that he had not been mistaken either as to the sound that had awakened him or the direction from whence it came. For one terrific moment he had thought it was Christina and that the new treatment which had already commenced was responsible for the loud sobs which had disturbed his sleep. He was sorry for Evie. He was easily sorry. A cat writhing in the middle of the street, where a too swift motor-car had passed, wrung his heart. A child crying in pain made him sweat. When he saw a man and a woman quarrelling in this vile neighborhood, he rushed from the scene lest the woman be struck.

"What did he get--up for," whispered Evie, "he is always--interfering."

"The wonder to me is that the whole street isn't up," said Christina. "What is the matter, Evie?"

"I don't know--I'm miserable." Evie flounced over in her bed. "I just had to cry. I'm sorry."

Christina was very serious; she too had been awakened by the hysterical outburst. It carried a meaning to her that she had the courage to face.

"There is nothing wrong, is there, Evie?" No answer.

"I can't be all the help to you that I should like, darling, and I am a pig to you at times. But I get tetchy myself, and it is a bore lying here day after day. You would tell me if there was anything wrong, wouldn't you?"

"Yes," whispered the girl.

"I mean, really wrong. If it was anything that--affected your health. Nothing would make you wrong in my eyes. I should just love you and help you all I could. You know that. It isn't wise to keep some secrets, Evie, not if you know that there is somebody who loves you well enough to take half your burden from you."

"I don't know what you're driving at," said Evie in a fret, "you don't mean--? I'm a virgin, if that is what you mean," she said crudely.

Christina snorted. "Then what in hell are you snivelling about?" she demanded savagely. She was not unreasonably irritated.

"I haven't--seen--Ronnie--for a week!" sobbed the girl.

"I wish to God you'd never seen him," snapped Christina and wished she hadn't, for the next minute Evie was in bed with her, in her arms.

"I'm so unhappy--I wish I hadn't met him, too--I know that it isn't right, Chris--I know it isn't--I know I shall never be happy. He is so much above me--and I'm so ignorant--such--a--such a shop girl."

Christina cuddled the slim figure and kissed her damp face. "You'll get over that, Evie," she said soothingly.

"But I love him so!"

"You don't really--you are too young, Evie--you can't test your feelings. I was reading today about some people who live in Australia, natives, who think that a sort of sour apple is the most lovely fruit in the world. But it is only because they haven't any other kind of fruit. If you go to a poor sort of store to buy a dress, you get to think the best they have in stock is the best you can buy anywhere. It takes a lot of courage to walk out of that shop and find another. After a while you are sure and certain that the dress they show you is lovely. It is only when you put it against the clothes that other women have bought from the better shops, that you see how old-fashioned and tawdry and what an ugly color it is." She waited for an answer, but Evie was asleep.

Ambrose came home early the next day. Every other afternoon he took Christina to Kensington Gardens. He kept the long spinal carriage in a stable and spent at least half an hour in cleaning and polishing the wheels and lacquered panels of the "chariot".

"Shut the door, Ambrose." He obeyed.

"You heard Evie crying? It was nothing. She hasn't seen her man for a week and she was a little upset. I promised her to tell you that it was all your imagination, if you asked. Poor Evie doesn't know that you wouldn't ask anyhow."

"Is it Ronald Morelle, Christina?"

She nodded and, seeing his face lengthen, she asked: "Is he a good man, Ambrose? Do you think there is any danger to Evie?"

"I don't know him personally," Ambrose was speaking very slowly. "No, I don't know him. Once or twice I have seen him but I have never spoken. Moropulos says he is rotten. That was the word he used. There have been one or two nasty incidents. Moropulos likes talking about that sort of thing--what was that word you told me, Christina? It is not like me to forget? It describes a man with a bad curiosity.

"Prurient?"

"That is the word. Moropulos has that kind of mind. He has books--all about beastly subjects. And pictures. He says that Ronald Morelle is bad. The worst man he has ever met. He wasn't condemning him, you understand. In fact, he was admiring him. Moropulos would."

Christina was plucking at her underlip pensively.

"Poor Evie!" she said. "She thinks she is in love with him. He is a beautiful dream to her, naturally, because she has never met anybody like him. I wish he had made the mistake of thinking she was easy, the first time he met her. That would have ended it. What I am afraid of, is that he does understand her, and is wearing down her resistance gradually. What am I to do, Ambrose?"

Years before, when he was working in a penal settlement, Ambrose Sault had bruised and cut his chin. He had been working in tapioca fields, and the prison doctor had warned him not to touch the healing wound with his hand for fear of poisoning it. From this warning he had acquired a curious trick. In moments of doubt he rubbed his chin with the knuckle of a finger. Christina had often seen him do this and had found in the gesture sure evidence of his perplexity.

"You can't advise me?" she said, reading the sign, "I didn't think you would be able to."

"I can go to Morelle and warn him," suggested Sault, "but that means trouble--here. I don't want to make mischief."

She nodded. "Evie would never forgive us," she said with a sigh. "I'm ready, Ambrose."

He stooped and lifted her from the bed, as though, as she once described it, she were of no greater weight than a pillow.

* * * * *

Mr. Jan Steppe was dressing for dinner when Sault was announced. "Tell him to wait--no, send him up."

"Here, sir?" asked the valet.

"Where else, you fool, huh?"

Sault came into the dressing-room and waited until his employer had fixed a refractory collar.

"Don't wait, you." The valet retired discreetly.

"Well, Sault, what do you want?"

"The daughter of the woman I lodge with knows Morelle," said Ambrose Sault briefly. "She's a pretty child and I don't want anything to happen to her that will necessitate my taking Morelle and breaking his neck."

Steppe looked round with a scowl. "'Necessitate'? You talk like a damned professor. I'm not Morelle's keeper. It is enough trouble to keep him up to the scratch in other matters. As to breaking his neck, I've got something to say to that, Sault, huh?" He faced the visitor, a terrifying figure, his attitude a threat and a challenge.

"You might have to identify him," said Sault thoughtfully, "that is true."

Steppe's face went red. "Now see here, Sault. I've never had a fight with you and I don't want to, huh? You're the only one of the bunch that is worth ten cents as a man, but I'll allow nobody to dictate to me--nobody, whether he is a girl-chasing dude or an escaped convict. Get that right! I've smashed bigger men and stronger men than you, by God!"

"You'll not smash me," said Sault coolly, "and you needn't smash Morelle. I'm telling you that I won't have that girl hurt. A word from you will send Morelle crawling at her feet. I don't know him, but I know of him. He's that kind."

Steppe glared. "You're telling me, are you?" he breathed. "You think you've got me because you're indispensable now that you know about the safe. But I'll have another safe and another word. D'ye hear? I'll show you that no damned lag can bully me!"

The other smiled. "You know that the code is safe with me. That's my way. I would break Morelle or you for the matter of that--kill you with my hands before your servant could come--but the code would be with me. You know that, too." He met, had not feared to meet, the fury of Steppe's eyes and presently the big man turned away with a shrug.

"You might," he said, speaking more to himself than to Ambrose Sault. "One of these days I'll try you out. I'm not a weakling and I've beaten every man that stood up to me." He looked round at the visitor and the anger had gone from his face.

"I believe you about the safe. You're the first man or woman I've ever believed in my life. Sounds queer, huh? It is a fact. I'm not frightened of you--nobody knows that better than you." Sault nodded.

"About Morelle--I'll talk to him. What is this girl--you're not in love with her yourself, huh? Can't imagine that. All right, I'll speak to Morelle--a damned cur. Anything more?"

"Nothing," said Ambrose and went out.

Steppe stared at the closed door. "A man," he said and shivered. No other man breathing had caused Steppe to shiver.

He saw Ronnie at a club late that night. "Here, I want you," he jerked his head in the direction of a quiet corner of the smoking room, and Ronnie followed him, expecting compliments, for they had not met since the meeting.

"You've got a parcel of women in tow, huh?" said Steppe.

"I don't quite understand--" began Ronnie.

"You understand all right. One of them is a friend of Sault's--Colebrook, I think her name must be. Go steady. She is a friend of Sault's. He says he'll break your neck if you monkey around there, do you get that, huh? Sault says so. He'll do it."

Ronnie did not know Ambrose Sault any better than Ambrose knew him. The threat did not sound very dreadful and he smiled.

"You can grin; maybe I'll see the same grin when I come to look at you on the mortuary slab. Sault is a hell of a bad man to cross. He has had his kill once and that will make the second seem like blowing bubbles. That's all."

Ronnie was annoyed, but not greatly impressed. He only knew Sault as a sort of superior workman, who did the dirty work of the confederacy. Sometimes he used to wonder how Steppe employed him, but then he also speculated upon the exact standing of Moropulos whose name never appeared on a prospectus and who had, apparently, no particular duties.

Threats did not greatly distress Ronnie Morelle. He had been threatened so often; and it was his experience that the worst was over when the threat came. He was free of the park now. Walking down Regent Street, one Saturday afternoon, he had come face to face with The Girl Who Had Screamed. She was with a tall, broad-shouldered young man and she had recognized him. After he had passed them, Ronnie, from the tail of his eye, saw the couple stop and the girl point after him. The man looked as though he were going to follow, but The Girl Who Screamed caught his arm. And that was the end of it.

The man might hate him, but would not make a fuss. The offense was comparatively old, and men did not pursue other people's stale vendettas. The beginning and end of vengeance was a threatening gesture. He knew just what that broad-shouldered man was saying, and thinking. He was a scoundrel, he deserved flogging. If he had been on hand when the girl squealed, he would have torn the heart out of the offender. But he wasn't there; and the girl had shown both her purity and her intelligence by preferring his gentle courtship to the violent love-making of Ronnie Morelle. In a sense the incident was subtly flattering to the broad-shouldered young man.

Ronnie was not seeing Evie in these days, he was more pleasingly engaged. The new game was infinitely more intriguing, an opponent better armed for the fight and offering a more glorious triumph.

But Steppe's warning piqued him. Sault! His lips curled in derision. That nigger! That half-caste jail-bird!

He wrote to Evie that night making an appointment.

IV

"You don't know how happy I was when I found your letter at the store this morning. The manager doesn't like girls to get letters, he is an awful fossil, but he's rather keen on me. I told him your letters were from an uncle who isn't friends with mother."

"What a darling little liar you are!" said Ronnie amused. "My dear, I've missed you terribly. I shall have to give up my writing, if it is going to keep me from my girl."

She snuggled closer to his side as they walked slowly through the gloom to her favorite spot. She did not tell him how she had sat there every evening, braving the importunities of those less attractive ghouls who haunt the park in the hours of dusk.