“DEVIL TAKE THE HINDMOST”
Wingrave and Aynesworth were alone in a private room of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The table at which the former was seated was covered with letters and papers. A New York directory and an atlas were at his elbow.
“I propose,” Wingrave said, leaning back in his chair, “to give you some idea of the nature of my business in this country. You will be able then, I trust, to carry out my instructions more intelligibly.”
Aynesworth nodded.
“I thought,” he said, “that you came here simply to remain in seclusion for a time.”
“That is one of my reasons,” Wingrave admitted, “but I had a special purpose in coming to America. During my—enforced seclusion—I made the acquaintance of a man called Hardwell. He was an Englishman, but he had lived in America for some years, and had got into trouble over some company business. We had some conversation, and it is upon his information that I am now going to act.”
“He is trustworthy?” Aynesworth asked.
“I take the risk,” Wingrave answered coolly. “There is a small copper mine in Utah called the Royal Hardwell Copper Mine. The shares are hundred dollar ones, and there are ten thousand of them. They are scarcely quoted now, as the mine has become utterly discredited. Hardwell managed this himself with a false report. He meant to have the company go into liquidation, and then buy it for a very small amount. As a matter of fact, the mine is good, and could be worked at a large profit.”
“You have Hardwell’s word for that,” Aynesworth remarked.
“Exactly!” Wingrave remarked. “I am proceeding on the assumption that he told me the truth. I wish to buy, if possible, the whole of the shares, and as many more as I can get brokers to sell. The price of the shares today is two dollars!”
“I presume you will send out an expert to the mine first?” Aynesworth said.
“I shall do nothing of the sort,” Wingrave answered. “The fact that I was buying upon information would send the shares up at once. I mean to buy first, and then go out to the mine. If I have made a mistake, I shall not be ruined. If Hardwell’s story is true, there will be millions in it.”
Aynesworth said nothing, but his face expressed a good deal.
“Here are the names of seven respectable brokers,” Wingrave continued, passing a sheet of paper towards him. “I want you to buy five hundred shares from each of them. The price may vary a few points. Whatever it is, pay it. Here are seven signed checks. I shall buy myself as many as I can without spoiling the market. You had better start out in about a quarter of an hour and see to this. You have my private ledger?”
“Yes.”
“Open an account to Hardwell in it; a quarter of all the shares I buy are to be in his name, and a quarter of all the profits I make in dealing in the shares is to be credited to him.”
“A fairly generous arrangement for Mr. Hardwell,” Aynesworth remarked.
“There is nothing generous about it,” Wingrave answered coldly. “It is the arrangement I made with him, and to which I propose to adhere. You understand what I want you to do?”
“Perfectly,” Aynesworth answered; “I still think, however, that much the wiser course would be to send an expert to the mine first.”
“Indeed!” Wingrave remarked politely. “That is all, I think. I shall expect to see you at luncheon time. If you are asked questions as to why you are dealing in these shares to such an extent, you can say that the friend for whom you are acting desires to boom copper, and is going on the low price of the metal at the moment. They will think you a fool, and perhaps may not trouble to conceal their opinion after they have finished the business. You must endeavor to support the character. I have no doubt but that you will be successful.”
Aynesworth moved towards the door.
Once more Wingrave called him back. He was leaning a little forward across the table. His face was very set and cold.
“There is a question which I wish to ask you, Aynesworth,” he said. “It concerns another matter altogether. Do you know who sent the Marconigram to Dr. Travers, which brought him to New York to meet his wife?”
“I do not,” Aynesworth answered.
“It was sent by someone on board the ship,” Wingrave continued. “You have no suspicion as to whom it could have been?”
“None!” Aynesworth answered firmly. “At the same time, I do not mind telling you this. If I had thought of it, I would have sent it myself.”
Wingrave shrugged his shoulders.
“It is perhaps fortunate for the continuation of our mutual relations that you did not think of it,” he remarked quietly. “I accept your denial. I shall expect you back at one o’clock.”
At a few minutes after that hour the two men sat down to luncheon. Wingrave at that time was the possessor of six thousand shares in the Royal Hardwell Copper Mine, which had cost him, on an average, two dollars twenty-five. The news of the dealing, however, had got about, and although derision was the chief sentiment amongst the brokers, the price steadily mounted. A dozen telegrams were sent out to the mine, and on receipt of the replies, the dealing became the joke of the day. The mine was still deserted, and no fresh inspection had been made. The price dropped a little. Then Wingrave bought a thousand more by telephone, and it rose again to four. A few minutes before closing time, he threw every share of which he was possessed upon the market, and the next morning Royal Hardwells stood at one dollar seventy-five.
For a week Wingrave pursued the same tactics, and at the end of that time he had made twenty thousand dollars. The brokers, however, now understood, or thought they understood, the situation. No one bought for the rise; they were all sellers. Wingrave at once changed his tactics. He bought five thousand shares in one block, and sold none. Even then, the market was only mildly amused. In a fortnight he was the nominal owner of sixteen thousand shares in a company of which only ten thousand actually existed. Then he sat still, and the panic began. The shares in a company which everyone believed to be worthless stood at thirty dollars, and not a share was offered.
A small pandemonium reigned in Wingrave’s sitting room. The telephone rang all the time; the place was besieged with brokers. Then Wingrave showed his hand. He had bought these shares to hold; he did not intend to sell one. As to the six thousand owed to him beyond the number issued, he was prepared to consider offers. One broker left him a check for twenty thousand dollars, another for nearly forty thousand. Wingrave had no pity. He had gambled and won. He would accept nothing less than par price. The air in his sitting room grew thick with curses and tobacco smoke.
Aynesworth began by hating the whole business, but insensibly the fascination of it crept over him. He grew used to hearing the various forms of protest, of argument and abuse, which one and all left Wingrave so unmoved. Sphinx-like he lounged in his chair, and listened to all. He never condescended to justify his position, he never met argument by argument. He had the air of being thoroughly bored by the whole proceedings. But he exacted always his pound of flesh.
On the third afternoon, Aynesworth met on the stairs a young broker, whom he had come across once or twice during his earlier dealings in the shares. They had had lunch together, and Aynesworth had taken a fancy to the boy—he was little more—fresh from Harvard and full of enthusiasm. He scarcely recognized him for a moment. The fresh color had gone from his cheeks, his eyes were set in a fixed, wild stare; he seemed suddenly aged. Aynesworth stopped him.
“Hullo, Nesbitt!” he exclaimed. “What’s wrong?”
The young man would have passed on with a muttered greeting, but Aynesworth turned round with him, and led the way into one of the smaller smoking rooms. He called for drinks and repeated his question.
“Your governor has me six hundred Hardwells short,” Nesbitt answered curtly.
“Six hundred! What does it mean?” Aynesworth asked.
“Sixty thousand dollars, or thereabouts,” the young man answered despairingly. “His brokers won’t listen to me, and your governor—well, I’ve just been to see him. I won’t call him names! And we thought that some fool of an Englishman was burning his fingers with those shares. I’m not the only one caught, but the others can stand it. I can’t, worse luck!”
“I’m beastly sorry,” Aynesworth said truthfully. “I wish I could help you.”
Nesbitt raised his head. A sudden light flashed in his eyes; he spoke quickly, almost feverishly.
“Say, Aynesworth,” he exclaimed, “do you think you could do anything with your governor for me? You see—it’s ruin if I have to pay up. I wouldn’t mind—for myself, but I was married four months ago, and I can’t bear the thought of going home—and telling her. All the money we have between us is in my business, and we’ve got no rich friends or anything of that sort. I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to be hammered. I’ve been so careful, too! I didn’t want to take this on, but it seemed such a soft thing! If I could get off with twenty thousand, I’d keep my head up. I hate to talk like this. I’d go down like a man if I were alone, but—but—oh! Confound it all—!” he exclaimed with an ominous break in his tone.
Aynesworth laid his hand upon the boy’s arm.
“Look here,” he said, “I’ll try what I can do with Mr. Wingrave. Wait here!”
Aynesworth found his employer alone with his broker, who was just hastening off to keep an appointment. He plunged at once into his appeal.
“Mr. Wingrave,” he said, “you have just had a young broker named Nesbitt on.”
Wingrave glanced at a paper by his side.
“Yes,” he said. “Six hundred short! I wish they wouldn’t come to me.”
“I’ve been talking to him downstairs,” Aynesworth said. “This will break him.”
“Then I ought not to have done business with him at all,” Wingrave said coolly. “If he cannot find sixty thousand dollars, he has no right to be in Wall street. I daresay he’ll pay, though! They all plead poverty—curs!”
“I think Nesbitt’s case is a little different from the others,” Aynesworth continued. “He is quite young, little more than a boy, and he has only just started in business. To be hammered would be absolute ruin for him. He seems such a decent young fellow, and he’s only just married. He’s in an awful state downstairs. I wish you’d have another talk with him. I think you’d feel inclined to let him down easy.”
Wingrave smiled coldly.
“My dear Aynesworth,” he said, “you astonish me. I am not interested in this young man’s future or in his matrimonial arrangements. He has gambled with me and lost. I presume that he would have taken my money if I had been the fool they all thought me. As it is, I mean to have his—down to the last cent!”
“He isn’t like the others,” Aynesworth protested doggedly. “He’s only a boy—and it seems such jolly hard luck, doesn’t it, only four months married! New York hasn’t much pity for paupers. He looks mad enough to blow his brains out. Have him up, sir, and see if you can’t compromise!”
“Fetch him,” Wingrave said curtly.
Aynesworth hurried downstairs. The boy was walking restlessly up and down the room. The look he turned upon Aynesworth was almost pitiful.
“He’ll see you again,” Aynesworth said hurriedly. “Come along.”
The boy wrung his hand.
“You’re a brick!” he declared.
THE HIDDEN HAND
Wingrave glanced up as they entered. He motioned Nesbitt to a chair by his side, but the young man remained standing.
“My secretary tells me,” Wingrave said curtly, “that you cannot pay me what you owe.”
“It’s more than I possess in the world, sir,” Nesbitt answered.
“It is not a large amount,” Wingrave said. “I do not see how you can carry on business unless you can command such a sum as this.”
Nesbitt moistened his dry lips with his tongue.
“I have only been doing a very small business, sir,” he answered, “but quite enough to make a living. I don’t speculate as a rule. Hardwells seemed perfectly safe, or I wouldn’t have touched them. I sold at four. They are not worth one. I could have bought thousands last week for two dollars.”
“That is beside the question,” Wingrave answered. “If you do not pay this, you have cheated me out of my profits for I should have placed the commission with brokers who could. Why did you wish to see me again?”
“I thought that you might give me time,” Nesbitt answered, raising his head and looking Wingrave straight in the face. “It seems rather a low down thing to come begging. I’d rather cut my right hand off than do it for myself, but I’ve—someone else to think about, and if I’m hammered, I’m done for. Give me a chance, Mr. Wingrave! I’ll pay you in time.”
“What do you ask for?” Wingrave said.
“I thought that you might give me time,” Nesbitt said, “and I’ll pay you the rest off with the whole of my profits every year.”
“A most absurd proposal,” Wingrave said coolly. “I will instruct my brokers to take twenty thousand dollars down, and wait one week for the balance. That is the best offer I can make you. Good day!”
The young man stood as though he were stunned.
“I—I can’t find it,” he faltered. “I can’t indeed.”
“Your resources are not my affair,” Wingrave said. “I shall instruct my broker to do as I have said. If the money is not forthcoming, you know the alternative.”
“You mean to ruin me, then?” Nesbitt said slowly.
“I mean to exact the payment of what is due to me,” Wingrave said curtly. “If you cannot pay, it seems to me that I am the person to be pitied—not you. Show Mr. Nesbitt out, Aynesworth.”
Nesbitt turned towards the door. He was very pale, but he walked steadily. He did not speak another word to Wingrave.
“I’m beastly sorry,” Aynesworth said to him on the stairs. “I wish I could help you!”
“Thank you,” Nesbitt answered. “No one can help me. I’m through.”
Aynesworth returned to the sitting room. Wingrave had lit a cigarette and watched him as he arranged some papers.
“Quite a comedy, isn’t it?” he remarked grimly.
“It doesn’t present itself in that light to me,” Aynesworth answered.
Wingrave blew the smoke away from in front of his face. “Ah!” he said, “I forgot that you were a sentimentalist. I look upon these things from my own point of view. From yours, I suppose I must seem a very disagreeable person. I admit frankly that the sufferings of other people do not affect me in the slightest.”
“I am sorry for you,” Aynesworth said shortly. “If there is going to be much of this sort of thing, though, I must ask you to relieve me of my post. I can’t stand it.”
“Whenever you like, my dear fellow,” Wingrave answered. “I think that you would be very foolish to leave me, though. I must be a most interesting study.”
“You are—what the devil made you!” Aynesworth muttered.
Wingrave laid down his cigarette.
“I am what my fellows have made me,” he said slowly. “I tasted hell for a good many years. It has left me, I suppose, with a depraved taste. Ring up my brokers, Aynesworth! I want to speak to Malcolmson. He had better come round here.”
The day dragged on. Aynesworth hated it all, and was weary long before it was half over. Everyone who came was angry, and a good many came whom Wingrave refused to see. Just before five o’clock, young Nesbitt entered the room unannounced. Aynesworth started towards him with a little exclamation. The young man’s evident excitement terrified him, and he feared a tragedy. Malcolmson, too, half rose to his feet. Wingrave alone remained unmoved.
Nesbitt walked straight up to the table at which Malcolmson and Wingrave were sitting. He halted in front of the latter.
“Mr. Wingrave,” he said, “you will give me my receipt for those shares for fifty-seven thousand six hundred dollars.”
Wingrave turned to a paper by his side, and ran his forefinger down the list of names.
“Mr. Nesbitt,” he said. “Yes! sixty thousand dollars.”
The young man laid a slip of paper upon the table.
“That is a certified check for the amount,” he said. “Mr. Malcolmson, please give me my receipt.”
“Ah!” Mr. Wingrave remarked. “I thought that you would find the money.”
Nesbitt bit his lip, but he said nothing till he had the receipt and had fastened it up in his pocket. Then he turned suddenly round upon Wingrave.
“Look here!” he said. “You’ve got your money. I don’t owe you a cent. Now I’m going to tell you what I think of you.”
Wingrave rose slowly to his feet. He was as tall as the boy, long, lean, and hard. His face expressed neither anger nor excitement, but there was a slight, dangerous glitter in his deep-set eyes.
“If you mean,” he said, “that you are going to be impertinent, I would recommend you to change your mind.”
Nesbitt for a moment hesitated. There was something ominous in the cool courage of the older man. And before he could collect himself, Wingrave continued:—
“I presume,” he said, “that you chose your own profession. You knew quite well there was no place in it for men with a sense of the higher morality. It is a profession of gamblers and thieves. If you’d won, you’d have thought yourself a smart fellow and pocketed your winnings fast enough. Now that you’ve lost—don’t whine. You sat down willingly enough to play the game with me. Don’t call me names because you lost. This is no place for children. Pocket your defeat, and be more careful next time.”
Nesbitt was silent for a moment. Wingrave, cool and immovable, dominated him. He gave a little laugh, and turned towards the door.
“Guess you’re right,” he declared; “we’ll let it go at that.”
Aynesworth followed him from the room.
“I’m awfully glad you’re out of the scrape,” he said.
Nesbitt caught him by the arm.
“Come right along,” he said. “I haven’t had a drink in the daytime for a year, but we’re going to have a big one now. I say, do you know how I got that money?”
Aynesworth shook his head.
“On easy terms, I hope.”
They sat down in the American Bar, and a colored waiter in a white linen suit brought them whisky and Apollinaris in tall tumblers.
“Listen,” Nesbitt said. “My brain is on the reel still. I went back to my office, and if it hadn’t been for the little girl, I should have brought a revolver by the way. Old Johnny there waiting to see me, no end of a swell, Phillson, the uptown lawyer. He went straight for me.
“‘Been dealing in Hardwells?’ he asked.
“I nodded.
“‘Short, eh?’
“‘Six hundred shares,’ I answered. There was no harm in telling him for the Street knew well enough.
“‘Bad job,’ he said. ‘How much does Wingrave want?’
“‘Shares at par,’ I answered. ‘It comes to close on fifty-seven thousand six hundred dollars.’
“‘I’m going to find you the money,’ he said.
“Then I can tell you the things in my office began to swim. I’d an idea somehow that he was there as a friend, but nothing like this. I couldn’t answer him.
“‘It’s a delicate piece of business,’ he went on. ‘In fact, the fewer questions you ask the better. All I can say is there’s a chap in Wall Street got his eye on you. Your old dad once helped him over a much worse place than this. Anyhow, I’ve a check here for sixty thousand dollars, and no conditions, only that you don’t talk.’
“‘But when am I to pay it back?’ I gasped.
“‘If my client ever needs it, and you can afford it, he will ask for it.’ Phillson answered. ‘That’s all.’
“And before I could say another darned word, he was gone, and the check was there on my desk.”
Aynesworth sipped his whisky and Apollinaris, and lit a cigarette.
“And they say,” he murmured, “that romance does not exist in Wall Street. You’re a lucky chap, Nesbitt.”
“Lucky! Do you think I don’t realize it? Of course, I know the old governor had lots of friends on the Street, but he was never in a big way, and he got hit awfully hard himself before he died. I can’t understand it anyway.”
“I wouldn’t try,” Aynesworth remarked, laughing. “By the bye, your friend, whoever he was, must have got to know pretty quickly.”
Nesbitt nodded.
“I thought of that,” he said. “Of course, Phillsons are lawyers for Malcolmson, Wingrave’s broker, so I daresay it came from him. Say, Aynesworth, you don’t mind if I ask you something?”
“Not at all,” Aynesworth answered. “What is it?”
“Why the devil do you stop with a man like Wingrave? He doesn’t seem your sort at all.”
Aynesworth hesitated.
“Wingrave interests me,” he answered. “He has had a curious life, and he is a man with very strange ideas.”
Nesbitt finished his drink, and rose up.
“Well,” he said, “he’s not a man I should care to be associated with. Not but what I daresay he was right upstairs. He’s strong, too, and he must have a nerve. But he’s a brute for all that!”
Nesbitt went his way, and Aynesworth returned upstairs. Wingrave was alone.
“Have we finished this miserable business?” Aynesworth asked.
“For the present,” Wingrave answered. “Mr. Malcolmson will supply you with a copy of the accounts. See that Hardwell is credited with a quarter share of the profits. Our dealings are over for the present. Be prepared to start on Saturday for the West. We are going to look for those bears.”
“But the mine?” Aynesworth exclaimed. “It belongs to you now. Aren’t you going out to examine it?”
Wingrave shook his head.
“No,” he said, “I know nothing about mines. My visit could not teach me anything one way or the other. I have sent a commission of experts. I am tired of cities and money-making. I want a change.”
Aynesworth looked at him suddenly. The weariness was there indeed—was it his fancy, or was it something more than weariness which shone out of the dark, tired eyes?
BOOK II
“MR. WINGRAVE FROM AMERICA”
“Four years ago tonight,” Aynesworth said, looking round the club smoking room thoughtfully, “we bade you farewell in this same room!”
Lovell, wan and hollow-eyed, his arm in a sling, his once burly frame gaunt and attenuated with disease, nodded.
“And I told you the story,” he remarked, “of—the man who had been my friend.”
“Don’t let us talk of Wingrave tonight!” Aynesworth exclaimed with sudden emphasis.
“Why not?” Lovell knocked the ashes from his pipe, and commenced leisurely to refill it. “Why not, indeed? I mean to go and see him as soon as I can get about a little better.”
“If your description of him,” Aynesworth said, “was a faithful one, you will find him changed.”
Lovell laughed a little bitterly.
“The years leave their mark,” he said, “upon us all—upon all of us, that is, who step out into the open where the winds of life are blowing. Look at me! I weighed eighteen stone when I left England. I had the muscles of a prize fighter and nerves of steel. Today I turn the scale at ten stone and am afraid to be alone in the dark.”
“You will be yourself again in no time,” Aynesworth declared cheerfully.
“I shall be better than I am now, I hope,” Lovell answered, “but I shall never be the man I was. I have seen—God grant that I may some day forget what I have seen! No wonder that my nerves have gone! I saw a Russian correspondent, a strong brutal-looking man, go off into hysterics; I saw another run amuck through the camp, shooting right and left, and, finally, blow his own brains out. Many a night I sobbed myself to sleep. The men who live through tragedies, Aynesworth, age fast. I expect that I shall find Wingrave changed.”
“I would give a good deal,” Aynesworth declared, “to have known him when you did.”
Lovell nodded.
“You should be able to judge of the past,” he said, “by the present. Four years of—intimate companionship with any man should be enough!”
“Perhaps!” Aynesworth declared. “And yet I can assure you that I know no more of Wingrave today than when I was first attracted to him by your story and became his secretary. It is a humiliating confession, but it is the truth.”
“That is why you remain with him,” Lovell remarked.
“I suppose so! I have often meant to leave, but somehow, when the time comes, I stay on. His life seems to be made up of brutalities, small and large. He ruins a man with as little compunction as one could fancy him, in his younger days, pulling the legs from a fly. I have never seen him do a kindly action. And yet, all the time I find myself watching for it. A situation arises, and I say to myself: ‘Now I am going to see something different.’ I never do, and yet I always expect it. Am I boring you, Lovell?”
“Not in the least! Go on! Anything concerning Wingrave interests me.”
“It is four years ago, you know, since I went to him. My first glimpse of his character was the cold brutality with which he treated Lady Ruth when she went to see him. Then we went down to his country place in Cornwall. There was a small child there, whose father had been the organist of the village, and who had died penniless. There was no one to look after her, no one to save her from the charity schools and domestic service afterwards. The church was on Wingrave’s estate, it should have been his duty to augment the ridiculous salary the dead man had received. Would you believe it, Wingrave refused to do a single thing for that child! He went down there like a vandal to sell the heirlooms and pictures which had belonged to his family for generations. He had no time, he told me coldly, for sentiment.”
“It sounds brutal enough,” Lovell admitted. “What became of the child?”
“One of her father’s relations turned up after all and took care of her,” Aynesworth said. “Wingrave knew nothing about that, though. Then on the voyage across the Atlantic, there was a silly, pretty little woman on board who was piqued by Wingrave’s indifference and tried to flirt with him. In a few days she was his slave. She was going home to her husband, and you would have thought that any decent fellow would have told her that she was a little fool, and let her go. But not Wingrave! She was landing with him at New York, but someone amongst the passengers, who guessed what was up, sent a Marconigram to her husband, and he met us at the landing stage.”
“Nothing came of that, then?”
“No, but it wasn’t Wingrave’s fault. Then he began dealing with some shares in a mine—THE mine, you know. They were supposed to be worthless, and one boy, who was a little young to the game, sold him too many. Wingrave was bleeding these brokers for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the boy came and asked to be let off by paying his whole fortune to escape being hammered. Wingrave refused. I believe if the boy hadn’t just been married, he’d have blown his brains out!”
Lovell laughed.
“I don’t envy you your job,” he remarked. “Is there nothing to set down on the credit side of the ledger?”
“Not much,” Aynesworth answered. “He is a fine sportsman, and he saved my life in the Rockies, which makes me feel a bit uncomfortable sometimes. He has a sense of justice, for he heard of this mine from a man in prison, and he has kept accounts showing the fellow’s share down to the last halfpenny. But I have never yet known him to speak a kindly word or do a kindly deed. He seems intent upon carrying out to the letter his own principles—to make as many people as possible suffer for his own broken life. Now he is back here, a millionaire, with immense power for good or for evil, I am almost afraid of him. I wouldn’t be Lady Ruth or her husband for something.”
Lovell smoked thoughtfully for a time.
“Wingrave was always a little odd,” he remarked, “but I never thought that he was a bad chap.”
“Go and see him now!” Aynesworth said. “Tell me if you think he wears a mask or whether he is indeed what he seems.”
The hall porter entered the room and addressed Aynesworth.
“Gentleman called for you, sir,” he announced.
“It is Wingrave,” Aynesworth declared. “Come and speak to him!”
They descended the stairs together. Outside, Wingrave was leaning back in the corner of an electric brougham, reading the paper. Aynesworth put his head in at the window.
“You remember Lovell, Mr. Wingrave?” he said. “We were just talking when your message came up. I’ve brought him down to shake hands with you.”
Wingrave folded his paper down at the precise place where he had been reading and extended a very limp hand. His manner betrayed not the slightest interest or pleasure.
“How are you, Lovell?” he asked. “Some time since we met!”
“A good many years,” Lovell answered.
“Finished your campaigning?” Wingrave inquired. “Knocked you about a bit, haven’t they?”
“They very nearly finished me,” Lovell admitted. “I shall pick up all right over here, though.”
There was a moment’s silence. Lovell’s thoughts had flashed backwards through the years, back to the time when he had sat within a few feet of this man in the crowded court of justice and listened through the painful stillness of that heavy atmosphere, charged with tragedy, to the slow unfolding of the drama of his life. There had been passion enough then in his voice and blazing in his eyes, emotion enough in his twitching features and restless gestures to speak of the fire below. And now, pale and cold, the man who had gripped his fingers then and held on to them like a vise, seemed to find nothing except a slight boredom in this unexpected meeting.
“I shall see you again, I hope,” Wingrave remarked at last. “By the bye, if we do meet, I should be glad if you would forget our past acquaintance. Sir Wingrave Seton does not exist any longer. I prefer to be known only as Mr. Wingrave from America.”
Lovell nodded.
“As you wish, of course,” he answered. “I do not think,” he added, “that you need fear recognition. I myself should have passed you in the street.”
Wingrave leaned back in the carriage.
“Aynesworth,” he said, “if you are ready, will you get in and tell the man to drive to Cadogan Square? Good night, Mr. Lovell!”
Lovell re-entered the club with a queer little smile at his lips. The brougham glided up into the Strand, and turned westwards.
“We are going straight to the Barringtons’?” Aynesworth asked.
“Yes,” Wingrave answered. “While I think of it, Aynesworth, I wish you to remember this. Both Lady Ruth and her husband seem to think it part of the game to try and make a cat’s paw of you. I am not suggesting that they are likely to succeed, but I do think it possible that one of them may ask you questions concerning certain investments in which I am interested. I rely upon you to give them no information.”
“I know very little about your investments—outside the mine,” Aynesworth answered. “They couldn’t very well approach a more ignorant person. Are you going to help Barrington to make a fortune?”
Wingrave turned his head. There was a slight contraction of the forehead, an ominous glitter in his steel grey eyes.
“I think,” he said, “you know that I am not likely to do that.”
The two men did not meet again till late in the evening. Lady Ruth’s rooms were crowded for it was the beginning of the political season, and her parties were always popular. Nevertheless, she found time to beckon Wingrave to her before they had been in the room many minutes.
“I want to talk to you,” she said a little abruptly. “You might have come this afternoon as you promised.”
Lady Ruth was a wonderful woman. A well-known statesman had just asked a friend her age.
“I don’t know,” was the answer, “but whatever it is, she doesn’t look it.”
Tonight she was almost girlish. Her complexion was delicate and perfectly natural, the graceful lines of her figure suggested more the immaturity of youth than any undue slimness. She wore a wonderful collar of pearls around her long, shapely neck, but very little other jewelry. The touch of her fingers upon Wingrave’s coat sleeve was a carefully calculated thing. If he had thought of it, he could have felt the slight appealing pressure with which she led him towards one of the smaller rooms.
“There are two chairs there,” she said. “Come and sit down. I have something to say to you.”
THE SHADOW OF A FEAR
For several minutes Lady Ruth said nothing. She was leaning back in the farthest corner of her chair, her head resting slightly upon her fingers, her eyes studying with a curious intentness the outline of Wingrave’s pale, hard face. He himself, either unconscious of, or indifferent to her close scrutiny, had simply the air of a man possessed of an inexhaustible fund of patience.
“Wingrave,” she said quietly, “I think that the time has gone by when I was afraid of you.”
He turned slightly towards her, but he did not speak.
“I am possessed,” she continued, “at present, of a more womanly sentiment. I am curious.”
“Ah!” he murmured, “you were always a little inclined that way.”
“I am curious about you,” she continued. “You are, comparatively speaking, young, well-looking enough, and strong. Your hand is firmly planted upon the lever which moves the world. What are you going to do?”
“That,” he said, “depends upon many things.”
“You may be ambitious,” she remarked. “If so, you conceal it admirably. You may be devoting your powers to the consummation of vengeance against those who have treated you ill. There are no signs of that, either, at present.”
“We have excellent authority,” he remarked, “for the statement that a considerable amount of satisfaction is derivable from the exercise of that sentiment.”
“Perhaps,” she answered, “but the pursuit of vengeance for wrongs of the past is the task of a fool. Now, you are not a fool. You carry your life locked up within you as a strong man should. But there are always some who may look in through the windows. I should like to be one.”
“An empty cupboard,” he declared. “A cupboard swept bare by time and necessity.”
She shook her head.
“Your life,” she said, “is molded towards a purpose. What is it?”
“I must ask myself the question,” he declared, “before I can tell you the answer!”
“No,” she said, “the necessity does not exist. Your reckless pursuit of wealth, your return here, the use you are making of my husband and me, are all means towards some end. Why not tell me?”
“Your imagination,” he declared, “is running away with you.”
“Are you our enemy?” she asked. “Is this seeming friendship of yours a cloak to hide some scheme of yours to make us suffer? Or—” She drew a little closer to him, and her eyes drooped.
“Or what?” he repeated.
“Is there a little left,” she whispered, “of the old folly?”
“Why not?” he answered quietly. “I was very much in love with you.”
“It is dead,” she murmured. “I believe that you hate me now!”
Her voice was almost a caress. She was leaning a little towards him; her eyes were seeking to draw his.
“Hate you! How impossible!” he said calmly. “You are still a beautiful woman, you know, Ruth.”
He turned and studied her critically. Lady Ruth raised her eyes once, but dropped them at once. She felt herself growing paler. A spasm of the old fear was upon her.
“Yes,” he continued, “age has not touched you. You can still pour, if you will, the magic drug into the wine of fools. By the bye, I must not be selfish. Aren’t you rather neglecting your guests?”
“Never mind my guests,” she answered. “I have been wanting to talk to you alone for days. Why have you done this? Why are you here? What is it that you are seeking for in life?”
“A little amusement only,” he declared. “I cannot find it except amongst my own kind.”
“You have not the appearance of a pleasure seeker,” she answered.
“Mine is a passive search,” he said. “I have some years to live—and of solitude, well, I have tasted at once the joys and the depths.”
“You are not in love with me any longer, are you?” she asked.
“I am not bold enough to deny it,” he answered, “but do not be afraid that I shall embarrass you with a declaration. To tell you the truth, I have not much feeling left of any sort.”
“You mean to keep your own counsel, then?” she asked.
“It is so little to keep,” he murmured, “and I have parted with so much!”
She measured the emotion of his tone, the curious yet perfectly natural indifference of his manner, and she shivered a little. Always she feared what she could not understand.
“I had hoped,” she said sadly, “that we might at least have been friends.”
He shook his head.
“I have no fancy,” he declared, “for the cemeteries of affection. You must remember that I am beginning life anew. I do not know myself yet, or you! Let us drift into the knowledge of one another, and perhaps—”
“Well! Perhaps?”
“There may be no question of friendship!”
Lady Ruth went back to her guests, and with the effortless ease of long training, she became once more the gracious and tactful hostess. But in her heart, the fear had grown a little stronger, and a specter walked by her side. Once during the evening, her husband looked at her questioningly, and she breathed a few words to him. He laughed reassuringly.
“Oh! Wingrave’s all right, I believe,” he said, “it’s only his manner that puts you off a bit. He’s just the same with everyone! I don’t think he means anything by it!”
Lady Ruth shivered, but she said nothing. Just then Aynesworth came up, and with a motion of her fan she called him to her.
“Please take me into the other room,” she said “I want a glass of champagne, and on the way you can tell me all about America.”
“One is always making epigrams about America,” he protested, smiling. “Won’t you spare me?”
“Tell me, then, how you progress with your great character study!”
“Ah!” he remarked quietly, “you come now to a more interesting subject.”
“Yes?”
“Frankly, I do not progress at all.”
“So far as you have gone?”
“If,” he said, “I were to take pen and paper and write down, at this moment, my conclusions so far as I have been able to form any, I fancy that they would make evil reading. Permit me!”
They stood for a few minutes before the long sideboard. A footman had poured champagne into their glasses, and Lady Ruth talked easily enough the jargon of the moment. But when they turned away, she moved slowly, and her voice was almost a whisper.
“Tell me this,” she said, “is he really as hard and cold as he seems? You have lived with him now for four years. You should know that, at least.”
“I believe that he is,” Aynesworth answered. “I can tell you that much, at least, without breach of faith. So far as one who watches him can tell, he lives for his own gratification—and his indulgence in it does not, as a rule, make for the happiness of other people.”
“Then what does he want with us?” she asked almost sharply. “I ask myself that question until—I am terrified.”
Aynesworth hesitated.
“It is very possible,” he said, “that he is simply making use of you to re-enter the world. Curiously enough, he has never seemed to care for solitude. He makes numberless acquaintances. What pleasure he finds in it I do not know, but he seldom avoids people. He may be simply making use of you.”
“What do you think yourself?”
“I cannot tell,” Aynesworth answered. “Indeed I cannot tell.”
She left him a little impatiently, and Aynesworth joined the outside of the circle of men who had gathered round Wingrave. He was answering their questions readily enough, if a little laconically. He was quite aware that he occupied in society the one unique place to which princes might not even aspire—there was something of divinity about his millions, something of awe in the tone of the men with whom he talked. Women pretended to be interested in him because of the romance of his suddenly acquired wealth—the men did not trouble to deceive themselves or anyone else. A break up of the group came when a certain great and much-talked-about lady sent across an imperative message by her cavalier for the moment. She desired that Mr. Wingrave should be presented to her.
They passed down the room together a few moments later, the Marchioness wonderfully dressed in a gown of strange turquoise blue, looking up at her companion, and talking with somewhat unusual animation. Everyone made remarks, of course—exchanged significant glances and unlovely smiles. It was so like the Marchioness to claim, as a matter of course, the best of everything that was going. Lady Ruth watched them with a curious sense of irritation for which she could not altogether account. It was impossible that she should be jealous, and yet it was equally certain that she was annoyed. If Wingrave resisted his present fair captor, he would enjoy a notability equal to that which his wealth already conferred upon him. No man as yet had done it. Was it likely that Wingrave would wear two crowns? Lady Ruth beckoned Aynesworth to her.
“Tell me,” she said, “what is Mr. Wingrave’s general attitude towards my sex?”
“Absolute indifference,” he declared promptly, “unless—”
He stopped short.
“You must go on,” she told him.
“Unless he is possessed of the ability to make them suffer,” he answered after a moment’s hesitation.
“Then Emily will never attract him,” she declared almost triumphantly, “for she has no more heart that he has.”
“He has yet to discover it,” Aynesworth remarked. “When he does, I think you will find that he will shrug his shoulders—and say farewell.”
“All the same,” Lady Ruth murmured to herself, “Emily is a cat.”
Lady Ruth spoke to one more man that night of Wingrave—and that man was her husband. Their guests had departed, and Lady Ruth, in a marvelous white dressing gown, was lying upon the sofa in her room.
“How do you get on with Wingrave?” she asked. “What do you think of him?”
Barrington shrugged his shoulders.
“What can one think of a man,” he answered, “who goes about like an animated mummy? I have done my best; I talked to him for nearly half an hour at a stretch today when I took him to the club for lunch. He is the incarnation of indifference. He won’t listen to politics; women, or tales about them, at any rate, seem to bore him to extinction; he drinks only as a matter of form, and he won’t talk finance. By the bye, Ruth, I wish you could get him to give you a tip. I scarcely see how we are going to get through the season unless something turns up.”
“Is it as bad as that?” she asked.
“Worse!” her husband answered gloomily. “We’ve been living on our capital for years. Every acre of Queen’s Norton is mortgaged, and I’m shot if I can see how we’re going to pay the interest.”
She sighed a little wearily.
“Do you think that it would be wise?” she asked. “Let me tell you something, Lumley. I have only known what fear was once in my life. I am afraid now. I am afraid of Wingrave. I have a fancy that he does not mean any good to us.”
Barrington frowned and threw his cigarette into the fire with a little jerk.
“Nonsense!” he exclaimed. “The man’s not quite so bad as that. We’ve been useful to him. We’ve done exactly what he asked. The other matter’s dead and buried. We don’t want his money, but it is perfectly easy for him to help us make a little.”
She looked up at him quietly.
“I think, Lumley, that it is dangerous!” she said.
“Then you’re not the clever woman I take you for,” he answered, turning to leave the room. “Just as you please. Only it will be that or the bankruptcy court before long!”
Lady Ruth lay quite still, looking into the fire. When her maid came, she moved on tiptoe for it seemed to her that her mistress slept. But Lady Ruth was wide awake though the thoughts which were flitting through her brain had, perhaps, some kinship to the land of dreams.