Big Money Page 6

  'You're welcome.'

  'You really think he will give me five hundred pounds?'

  'I know he will. Well, that's all. 'Morning,' said Mr Frisby and took his departure. It was as if both Cheeryble Brothers had left the office arm in arm.

  For some moments after he had gone, Berry remained motionless. Motionless, that is to say, as far as his limbs were concerned. His brain was racing tempestuously.

  Five hundred pounds! It was the key to life and freedom. Attwater's loan – he could repay that. The Old Retainer – he could fix her up so that she would be all right. And, when these honourable duties were performed, he would still have something in pocket to start him off on the path of Adventure.

  He drew a deep breath. In body he was still in his employer's office, but in spirit he was making his way through the streets of a little sun-baked town that lay in the shadow of towering mountains. And as he passed along the natives nudged one another, awed.

  'There he goes,' they were saying. 'See that man? Hard-Case Conway! They don't come any tougher.'

  It was getting on for lunch-time when Berry, having completed the purchase of the theatre-tickets, sauntered from the emporium of the Messrs Mellon and Pirbright into the rattle and glitter of Bond Street once more.

  The day seemed now to have touched new heights of brilliance. There was sunshine above, and sunshine in his heart. A magic ecstasy thrilled the air. He gazed upon Bond Street, fascinated.

  To the blasé man about town and the jaded boulevardier, Bond Street at one o'clock in the afternoon at the height of the London Season is just Bond Street. But to a young man with romance in his soul, an unexpected holiday on his hands, and the prospect of freedom and adventure gleaming before him, it is Main Street, Baghdad. The feeling of being in the centre of things intoxicated Berry.

  It was his practice, when walking in London, to look hopefully about him on the chance of exciting things happening. Nothing of the slightest interest had ever happened yet, and he had sometimes felt discouraged. But Bond Street restored his optimism. This, he felt, was a spot where anything might occur at any moment.

  Here if anywhere, he said to himself, might beautiful women in slinky clothes sidle up to a man and slip into his hand the long envelope containing the Naval Treaty stolen that morning from a worried Foreign Office, mistaking him – on the strength of the carnation in his buttonhole – for Flash Alec, their accomplice. Whereas in Threadneedle Street or Valley Fields you might hang about all your life without drawing so much as a picture postcard.

  Up and down the narrow street expensive automobiles were rolling, and the pavements were full of expensive-looking pedestrians. One of these had just elbowed Berry towards the gutter, when he became aware that a two-seater had stopped beside him. The next moment its occupant was addressing him in a strong foreign accent.

  'Pardon me, but is it that you could dee-reck-ut me to Less-ess-ter Skervare?'

  Berry looked up. It was not an exotically perfumed woman. It was a rather shocking-looking bounder with prominent eyebrows and a black beard of Imperial cut.

  'Leicester Square?' he said. 'You turn to the left and go across Piccadilly Circus.'

  'I tank you, sare.'

  Berry stood staring after the car. The man had excited him. True, he had said nothing to suggest that he was not a perfectly respectable citizen, but there was something about him that gave one the idea that his pockets were simply bulging with stolen treaties. So Berry stood, gaping, and might have stood indefinitely, had not a hungry pedestrian, hurrying to his lunch, butted him in the small of the back.

  Jerked into the world of practical things again by this shock, he made his way to the Berkeley to order Mr Frisby's supper table.

  Mr Frisby was evidently a popular customer at the Berkeley. The mention of his name aroused interest and respect. A headwaiter who looked like an Italian poet assured Berry that all would be as desired. A table for two, not too near the band. Correct.

  He then inquired with a charming deference if Berry proposed to take luncheon at the restaurant, indicated temptingly a small table at his side. And Berry was about to reply that such luxuries were not for him, when, turning to look wistfully at the table, he saw a sight that struck the words from his lips.

  The bearded bounder was sitting not six feet away, tucking into smoked salmon.

  Only for an instant did Berry hesitate. For a man of his straitened means, lunch at a place like this would be a bold, one might almost say, a reckless and devil-may-care adventure. It would hit the privy purse one of the nastiest wallops it had received for many a long day. But Fate had gone out of its way to send him this Man of Mystery, and it would be making a churlish return for Fate's amiability if he were to reject him on the pusillanimous grounds of economy.

  The man intrigued him. Obviously, he was a suspicious character. Nobody who wasn't would parade London in a beard like that. Moreover, after being definitely instructed to turn to the left and go across Piccadilly Circus, he had turned to the right and gone to the Berkeley. If that wasn't sinister, what was?

  Berry sat down, and a subordinate waiter swooped on him with the bill-of-fare.

  The bearded man was now eating some sort of fish with sauce on it. And Berry, watching him intently, became gripped by a suspicion that grew stronger each moment. That beard, he could swear, was a false one. It was so evidently hampering its proprietor. He was pushing bits of fish through it in the cautious manner of an explorer blazing a trail through a strong forest. In short, instead of being a man afflicted by nature with a beard, and as such more to be pitied than censured, he was a deliberate putter-on of beards, a self-bearder, a fellow who, for who knew what dark reasons, carried his own private jungle around with him, so that any moment he could dive into it and defy pursuit. It was childish to suppose that such a man could be up to any good.

  And then, as if to confirm this verdict, there suddenly occurred a scene so suggestive that Berry quivered as he watched it.

  Into the restaurant there had just strolled a distinguished-looking man of about fifty, stroking a becoming grey moustache. He spoke to the head-waiter, evidently ordering a table. Then, as he turned to go back to the anteroom where hosts at the Berkeley await their guests, his eye fell on the bearded man. He started violently, stared as if he had seen some horrible sight, as indeed he had, and crossed to where the other sat. A short conversation ensued, during which he appeared to be expostulating. Then, plainly shaken, he tottered out.

  Berry leaned forward in his seat, thrilled. He had placed the bearded man now. He saw all. Quite obviously this must be The Sniffer, the mysterious head of the great Cocaine Ring which was causing Scotland Yard so much concern. As for the grey-moustached one, he would be an accomplice in high places, a Baronet of good standing, or perhaps a well-thought-of Duke, on whose reputation no suspicion of wrongdoing had ever rested. And his unmistakable agitation must have been caused by the shock of meeting The Sniffer in a place like this, where his beard might come unstuck at any moment and betray him.

  'Go back to the underground cellar in Limehouse, where you are known and respected,' he had probably whispered feverishly. And The Sniffer, jeering – Berry had distinctly seen him jeer – had replied that he had already started his lunch and so would have to pay for it, anyway, and, risk or no risk, he was dashed if he intended to leave before he had had his eight bobs' worth.

  Upon which, the other, well knowing his chief 's stubbornness, had given up the argument and gone out, practically palsied.

  The daydream was shaping well, and, had nothing occurred to interrupt it, would probably have continued to shape well. But a moment later all thoughts of The Sniffer had been driven from Berry's mind. The grey-moustached man had re-entered the room, and this time he was not alone.

  Walking before him, like a princess making her way through a mob of the proletariat, came a girl. And at the sight of her, Berry's eyes swelled slowly to the size of golf-balls. His jaw dropped, his heart raced madly, a
nd a potato fell from his trembling fork.

  For it was the girl he had been looking for all his life – the girl he had dreamed of on summer evenings when the Western sky was ablaze with the glory of the sunset, or on spring mornings when birds sang their anthems on dewy lawns. He recognized her immediately. For a long time now he had given up all hope of ever meeting her, and here she was, exactly as he had always pictured her on moon-light nights when fiddles played soft music in the distance.

  He sat staring: and when the waiter broke in upon this holy moment to ask him if he would like a little cheese to follow, he found some difficulty in maintaining the Conways' high standard for courtesy.

  II

  In staring at Ann Margaret, only child of Mr and Mrs Thomas L. Moon of New York City, Berry Conway had no doubt been guilty of a breach of decorum. But it was a breach of which many, many young men in restaurants had been guilty before him. Ann Moon was the sort of girl at whom young men in restaurants have to summon all their iron will to keep from staring.

  We have seen what the knowledgeable editor of the Mangusset Courier-Intelligencer thought of Ann, and it may be stated now officially that his description erred, if at all, on the side of restraint and understatement. Possibly through pressure of space, he had omitted one or two points on which he might well have touched and on which, to present the perfect portrait, he should have touched. The dimple in her chin, for instance, and the funny way in which that chin wiggled when she laughed. Still, in the matter of the wondrous fascination and the remarkable attractiveness and the disposition as sweet as the odour of flowers, he was absolutely right. Berry had noticed these at once.

  Lord Hoddesdon had noticed them, too, and once again there crossed his mind a feeling of dazed astonishment that a girl like this, even under the influence of Edgeling Court in the gloaming, could ever have accepted that son of his who was now sitting two tables away crouched behind his zareba of beard.

  However, the main thing on which he was concentrating his mind at the moment was the problem of how to keep Ann's share of the luncheon down to a reasonable sum. If he could only head her off any girlish excesses in the way of drinks and coffee the exchequer, as he figured it out, would just run to a cigar and a liqueur, for both of which he had a strong man's silent yearning.

  'Something to drink, my dear?' he said, as the waiter approached and hovered.

  Ann withdrew her gaze from the middle distance.

  'No, thanks. Nothing.'

  'Nothing,' said Lord Hoddesdon to the waiter, trying not to sing the word.

  'Vichy?' said the waiter.

  'Nothing, nothing.'

  'St Galmier? Tonic Water? Evian?'

  'No, thank you. Nothing.'

  'Lemonade?' said the waiter, who was one of those men who never know when to stop.

  'Yes, I think I would like a lemonade,' said Ann.

  'I wouldn't,' advised Lord Hoddesdon earnestly. 'I wouldn't, honestly. Bad stuff. Full of acidity.'

  'All right,' said Ann. 'Just some plain water, then.'

  'Just,' said Lord Hoddesdon, looking the waiter dangerously in the eye, 'some plain water.'

  He bestowed upon his future daughter-in-law the affectionate smile of a man who is two shillings ahead of the game. Charming, he felt, to find a girl nowadays who did not ruin her complexion and digestion with cocktails and wines and what not.

  The smile was wasted on Ann. She did not observe it. She was looking out across the room again. The noise of music and chattering came to her as from a distance. Her father-in-law-to-be on the other side of the table seemed very far away. Once more she had become occupied with the train of thought which this discussion of beverages had interrupted. Ever since she had read in her paper that morning the plain, blunt statement that she was engaged to be married, she had been feeling oddly pensive.

  There is about the printed word a peculiar quality which often causes it to exercise a rather disquieting effect on the human mind. It chills. It was only after seeing that announcement set forth in cold type that Ann had come to a full realization of the extreme importance of the step she was about to take and the extreme slightness of her acquaintance with the man with whom she was going to take it.

  A sudden thirst for information seized her. She leaned towards her host.

  'Tell me about Godfrey,' she said abruptly.

  'Eh?' said Lord Hoddesdon, blinking. He, too, had been busy with his thoughts. He had been speculating as to the odds on and against the girl wanting coffee and wondering how a well-judged word about it being bad for the nerves would go. 'What about him?'

  It was a question which Ann found difficult to answer. 'What sort of man is he?' she would have liked to say. But when you have agreed to marry a man, it seems silly to ask what sort of a man he is.

  'Well, what was he like as a little boy?' she said, feeling that that was safe. Indeed, the words had a rather pleasantly naïve and fiancée-like ring.

  Lord Hoddesdon endeavoured to waft his memory over scenes which he had always preferred to forget.

  'Oh, the usual grubby little brute,' he said. 'I mean of course,' he added hastily, 'very charming, and lively and – er – boyish.'

  He perceived that he had been within an ace of allowing his heart to rule his head, of permitting candour to overcome diplomacy. Greatly as he would have liked to pour a trenchant character-sketch of the young Biskerton into a sympathetic ear, he saw how madly rash such a course would be. Old grievances about jam on the chairs would have to remain unventilated. As his sister had pointed out, this girl and Biskerton were not married yet. It would be insanity to say anything to put her off. Knowing Biskerton as he did, it seemed to him that what she must be needing was encouragement.

  'Boyish and vivacious,' he proceeded. 'Full of spirits. But always,' he said impressively, 'good.'

  'Good?' said Ann with a slight shiver.

  'Always the soul of honour,' said Lord Hoddesdon solemnly.

  Ann shivered again. Clarence Dumphry had been the soul of honour. She had often caught him at it.

  'Neither during his boyhood nor since,' went on Lord Hoddesdon, warming to his work and finding the going less sticky as he got into his stride, 'has he ever given me a moment's anxiety.' He glanced over his shoulder with a sudden nervous movement, as if expecting to see the Recording Angel standing there with pen and note-book. Relieved at discovering only a waiter, he resumed. 'He was never one of those young men who go about dancing half the night with chorus girls and so forth,' he said. 'I don't think he ever gambled, either.'

  'You don't know that,' said Ann, refusing to abandon hope.

  'Yes, I do,' replied Lord Hoddesdon glibly. 'Now I come to think of it, I asked him once, and he told me he didn't. If he had been in the habit of gambling, he would have said, "Yes, dad." That has always been his way – frank and manly. Whatever I asked him, it would be "Yes, dad" or "No, dad," looking me straight in the face. I remember once,' said Lord Hoddesdon, going off the rails a little, 'he smeared jam all over my chair in the library.'

  'He did?' said Ann, brightening.

  'Yes,' said Lord Hoddesdon. 'But,' he went on, recovering himself, 'he came straight to me and looked me in the face and said, "Dad, it was I who put that jam on your chair in the library. I'm sorry. I felt I had to tell you because otherwise somebody else might have been suspected." '

  'How old was he then?'

  'About ten.'

  'And he really said that?'

  'He really did.'

  'And he's like that now?'

  'Just like that,' said Lord Hoddesdon doggedly. 'A real, true-blue English gentleman, honourable to the core.'

  Ann winced slightly, and returned to her reflections. She was thinking now about Edgeling Court, and not too cordially.

  In attributing to the glamour of the family's ancestral seat his fiancée's acceptance of his proposal of marriage, Lord Biskerton had shown penetration. Edgeling Court had had quite a good deal to do with it. Its old-world charm, Ann was t
hinking, had undoubtedly weakened that cool, clear judgment on which she had always prided herself – that Heaven-sent gift of level-headed criticism which enables girls to pass unscathed among the Clarence Dumphrys of this world. Those bees and doves and rooks, she realized, had conspired together to sap her defences, and here she was, engaged to be married to a true-blue English gentleman.

  Ann pulled herself together. She told herself that she must not believe everything she heard. Quite likely Lord Biskerton had never really been a true-blue English gentleman. She had only his father's word for it. And, if he had been, it was quite possible that he had got over it. She liked him, she assured herself. He amused her. He made her laugh. They would be very happy together – very, very, very happy.

  All the same, she wished that he was not quite such a total stranger. And, while it would be too much to say that she actually regretted the step she had taken, she could not help the thought that a girl who had become engaged so recently as she had done, ought to be feeling a little more comfortable in her mind. There was no denying that she was not conscious of that complete happiness and content which would have been fitting. She felt doubtful and disturbed – rather like a young author who has just put his signature to a theatrical manager's contract, and is wondering if all is quite well concerning that clause about the motion-picture rights.

  'You're very quiet, my dear,' said Lord Hoddesdon.

  Ann started.

  'I'm so sorry. I was thinking.'

  Lord Hoddesdon wavered on the brink of something about lovers' reveries, but decided not to risk it.

  'This chicken's good,' he said, choosing a safer subject.

  'Yes,' said Ann.

  'A few more potatoes?'

  'No, thank you.'

  'You will have a sweet after this?'

  'Yes, please.'

  'And about coffee,' said Lord Hoddesdon. A grave look came into his clean-cut face. 'I don't know how you feel about coffee, but I always maintain that, containing, as it does, an appreciable quantity of the drug caffeine, it is a thing best avoided. Bad for the nerves. All the doctors say so.'