CHAPTER XX--_A Dark Man of Foreign Appearance

Mr. Dawkins had guessed aright in supposing that George Early felt safe on the temperance question; his old confidence returned at once. He started to enjoy life in real earnest. When at business, he stuck fast to the firm's affairs, and when away, as was not infrequent now, he went everywhere and saw everything as people with health and money do.

Mrs. Early enjoyed herself immensely, and even Aunt Phoebe, who had once felt she could never forgive her nephew for his recklessness, began to assume a placid air, and agreed to prolong her visit to Brunswick Terrace.

Perhaps the alcohol restriction was a thorn in George Early's side; but if so, he grieved in secret, for in public you would never dream that he had a care.

The keen-eyed Mole and his watchful band doggedly followed their quarry, and used every artifice known to the modern detective to catch him napping; to all of which the legatee submitted patiently, and clung to the teetotal habit like a fanatic.

Having disposed of the truth-telling business, and being desirous of paying off old scores to the last fraction, George would often take customers in hand himself, and, followed by Gray with a note-book, tax his imagination to the utmost over such prosaic things as cooking-ranges, gulley-pipes, and girders. To all this fiction Gray would listen, conscious that much of the elaboration was at his expense.

At a time when the legacies were, so far as Gray and Co. were concerned, quite a thing of the past, a dark man of foreign appearance, with black hair and well-curled moustaches, made his appearance in the Fairbrother showrooms, and desired to see the principal. He was expensively dressed, and was accompanied by a friend, whose business it seemed to be to echo the abstract statements of the foreign man and agree with his conclusions.

George Early appeared, and learned that the foreign gentleman, whose name was Caroli, desired to choose many elaborate articles for an English mansion about to be built.

To so distinguished and wealthy a customer the pick of the Fairbrother goods were drawn forth, and ably eulogized by the chief himself.

"What can be said of a stove like that?" said Caroli, appealing to his friend, as a magnificent invention of burnished brass and copper scintillated before them.

"That is a stove to be considered," said Caroli's friend.

"It is magnificent!" said Caroli.

"Splendid!" said his friend.

"The pattern exactly," said George, solemnly, "as supplied to His Majesty. Chosen by the Queen herself from among fourteen hundred stoves."

They passed along in procession, followed by menials ready to drag forth hidden treasures, strip and lay bare their beauty to the eye of Caroli.

Cost was nothing to the wealthy foreigner. He wanted beauty, and looked at everything with an artist's eye. Doubtless an hereditary trait of his noble ancestors.

"Without beauty I could not live," cried Caroli.

"Beauty is the very heart of life," echoed his friend.

"Those leaves are not real, but the artist's soul is in them," cried Caroli.

"They are the perfection of art," said his friend.

The leaves, which happened to be on a wrought-iron gate, were, George informed his customers, designed from a pattern originally executed by the King's sister.

With exclamation and acclamation, volubility on Caroli's part, and parrot-like earnestness on that of his friend, ingenious fiction by George Early, patient scribbling by the order clerk, and continuous perspiring by the menials, the best part of two hours went by before George led his noble patron to the chief office.

There the principals sat and talked, while the paid hirelings drew up a clean account of the goods chosen and their cost.

Caroli glanced at it, and tossed it aside to continue an interesting account of something that happened to somebody at Monte Carlo, in which he had succeeded in getting the attention of George Early.

In his foreign way, Caroli gesticulated, and held George with his eyes through the most exciting part of the narrative. It was a long story, too, and if anybody else had been there, they would have noticed that George Early's glance had become a fixed stare, and that Caroli's gesticulations had developed mysteriously into the passes commonly used by music-hall mesmerists.

His speech had altered strangely, too, and had taken a more commanding tone. He told George that he (George) was Caroli's friend, that Caroli was his distinguished customer, and that they had spent a pleasant morning. He said also that to commemorate this auspicious occasion they would drink together.

Whereupon Caroli suddenly produced a flat bottle of spirits and a glass, drank himself, handed some to his friend, and then poured out a glassful for George.

What would happen? George was a teetotaler. Surely he would not do as this man suggested; and yet he appeared to offer no opposition. Did he realize what he was about to do--what serious issues were at stake?

To the amazement of Gray, who had silently entered the room, George Early lifted the glass at Caroli's command, and drank off the spirit.

* * * * *

The worst of this lapse on the part of George Early was that he knew nothing about it. He remembered some mesmeric influence, in which Caroli had been the agent, but knew nothing of the whisky until his customers had gone, when he recalled the taste and Gray described the scene.

In addition came the usual letter from the lawyers.

Who could be at the bottom of it? Mr. Dawkins strenuously and indignantly denied any complicity in the affair. Nobody else could be interested but the philanthropic institution to whom the property would go. But who dare accuse any of these pious gentlemen?

Gray knew. He had had the shrewdness to follow the great Caroli, and he discovered that some of the pious gentlemen were not so pious as they seemed. Having got that far, he was able to make a bargain with Caroli in order to keep the facts to himself.

Of course the magnificent array of goods for the country mansion went back to their shelves. Caroli did not appear again.

Although his great desire was to meet the foreign gentleman once more and settle accounts with him, George Early chose the wiser course of putting himself under the chaperonage of his wife or her aunt, when away from home, in order to combat any further attacks.

And Aunt Phoebe performed her duty nobly. So nobly that George Early's enemies would have to wait until her vigil was relaxed. They did wait--and when the time came, made the most of it.

One afternoon Aunt Phoebe entered her niece's room in a great state of vexation. Something alarming had occurred. You could tell that by the way she flounced in, jerking her head sharply, and giving little emphatic thumps at nothing with her clenched hands. George, who followed her, sat in a dazed way on the first chair he came to.

Mrs. Early feared the worst, and her fears were realized.

"Bless you, I can't say how it happened," said Aunt Phoebe, her indignation almost depriving her of speech. "We were coming home in a hansom cab, and drove Oxford Street way as I had to make a call about some gloves. I wasn't away a quarter of an hour, I should think, but when I came back he was gone. Gone--wafted away."

"Gone?" echoed her niece.

"Missing," said Aunt Phoebe, with a wave of her hand. "I found him standing on the pavement a little later trying to recollect who he was. All he seems to know of it is that a mysterious man told him I had been taken ill, and was carried into a wine-shop. A wine-shop, of all places! Instead of me he found there the foreign person. What happened, goodness only knows, except that he's been drinking!"

Mrs. Early clasped her hands and gazed tearfully at her husband, who sat looking in a forlorn way at the carpet.

"What's to be done?" asked Mrs. Early, in a loud whisper.

"To be done?" said Aunt Phoebe. "That's what's worrying me. Another turn like this, and the two of you are beggars. Think of it--beggars!"

"It's a shame!" cried Mrs. Early, indignantly.

"It's a conspiracy," said her aunt, darkly. "And I shall make it my business to find the conspirators. If that sharpshoes of a lawyer isn't at the bottom of it, then somebody else is. One thing's certain, there must be no more office work for the present. And before the day is out we must decide what is to be done. The first thing I should advise is your getting rid of those three men. They've certainly had a hand in this business."

Towards evening George Early regained his normal condition, and expressed himself very forcibly about the way in which he had been treated.

"I'm afraid it won't do you any good to stand there using language," said Aunt Phoebe, shortly. "It would be more interesting to know what you propose doing."

George had nothing to propose at the moment, but promised to try to think of something. Having taken the edge off his resentment, he said that, as matters stood, there was only one thing to be done, and he meant to do it. So the trio sat far into the night discussing the new proposals.