It was as he reached the point in his cigar where a good smoker permits himself the first breaking of the ash that J. B. Hoke became aware that his privacy had once more been invaded. Standing beside his table was the young man who had been lunching with Berry Conway. This young man was eyeing him meaningly.
It disturbed Mr Hoke.
Mentally, at this moment, J. B. Hoke was a little below par. His nervous system had lost tone. He was in the state where men start at sudden noises and read into other people's glances a sinister significance which at a happier time they would not attribute to them. And, as he met the Biscuit's eye, there came to him abruptly the recollection that this was the man who, according to young Conway, had shown such an interest in the Dream Come True.
'Well?' said Mr Hoke belligerently. He found the other's scrutiny irritating. 'Well?'
The young man's gaze narrowed.
'Hoke,' he said in a low, steady voice, 'I know your secret!'
CHAPTER 11
I
Prone on the sofa in his palatial apartment on the second floor of Grosvenor House, T. Paterson Frisby lay and stared at the ceiling. It seemed to him that they had been painting it yellow. The walls were yellow, too: and some minutes previously, when he had risen with the idea of easing his agony by pacing the floor, he had noticed this same gamboge motif in the sky. The fact is, extraordinary things were happening inside Mr Frisby. He had been eating roast duck again.
There was once a devout and pious man who, irresistibly impelled by his carnal appetites, sat down in the middle of Lent to a mutton chop. Hardly had he taken his first mouthful when there was a roll of thunder and the heavens were rent by a great flash of lightning. He paled, and pushed his plate away. But, though alarmed, he was peevish.
'What a fuss,' he said, 'about a mutton chop!'
Mr Frisby might have echoed his cry, substituting for chop the words roast duck. It seemed to Mr Frisby that his punishment was out of all proportion to his crime. Just one brief period of self-indulgence, and here he was, derelict.
What was going on in T. Paterson's interior resembled in some degree a stormy Shareholders' Meeting. Nasty questions were being asked. Voices were being raised. At times it seemed as though actual violence had broken out. And the pepsine tablets which he kept swallowing so hopefully were accomplishing nothing more than might on such an occasion the bleating 'Gentlemen, please!' of an inefficient Chairman.
'Ouch!' said Mr Frisby, as a new spasm racked him.
He had but one consolation. In all the dark cloud-rack there was only one small patch of blue sky. At any moment now his secretary would be arriving with the mail, and he looked forward with something approaching contentment to the thought of working off some of his venom on him. Minus roast duck, he was not an unkindly man: but under its influence his whole nature changed, and he became one of those employers who regard a private secretary as a spiritual punching-bag.
It was in this unpromising frame of mind that Berry found him.
Berry was feeling a little disturbed himself. The pleasure of the Biscuit's society had caused him to prolong his luncheon beyond its customary limits: and on his return to the office there had been a succession of visitors, anxious to see Mr Frisby. These he had had to deal with, and it had taken time. There was only another fifteen minutes before the hour of his tryst with Ann at the Hyde Park Tea House. As he entered the room, he was looking fussily at his watch.
'Well. . . .' began Mr Frisby, half rising from his bed of pain.
It had been his intention to continue the speech at some length. What it was in his mind to say was that when he telephoned to the office for his mail to be brought to Grosvenor House after lunch, he meant after lunch and not five minutes before dinner-time. He would have gone on to inquire of Berry if he had lost his way, or if he had been entertaining himself between Pudding Lane and Grosvenor House by rolling a peanut along the sidewalk with a tooth-pick. To this he would have added that if Berry supposed that he paid him a weekly salary simply because he admired his looks and liked having something ornamental about the office, he, Berry, was gravely mistaken.
For Mr Frisby, as we have seen, could, when moved, be terribly sarcastic.
All these things the stricken financier would have said, and many more: and the saying of them would undoubtedly have brought him much relief. But even as he uttered that 'Well. . . .' his visitor spoke.
'I can only give you a minute,' he said.
It affords a striking proof of the superiority of mind over matter that at these words Mr Frisby completely forgot that he was a sick man. A sudden lull fell on that Shareholders' Meeting inside him. So great was his emotion that he sprang from the sofa like a jumping bean.
Mr Frisby had once had a secretary who had startled him by coming into the office one afternoon in a state of smiling intoxication and falling over a chair and trying to take dictation with his head in a wastepaper basket. And until this moment this had always seemed to him to constitute what might be called the Furthest North of secretarial eccentricity.
But now that episode paled into insignificance. Between a pie-eyed secretary who fell over chairs and a curtly impatient secretary who looked at his watch and said he could only give him a minute there was no comparison whatever.
'I'm sorry,' said Berry, 'but I've promised to go and feed the ducks on the Serpentine.'
It was undoubtedly that fatal word 'ducks' that struck Mr Frisby dumb. Nothing else could have withheld him from the most eloquent address that had ever scorched a private secretary's ears. But at the sound of that word, as once had happened in a palace in Fairyland at the sound of a kiss dropped on the brow of Sleeping Beauty, everything inside him seemed suddenly to come alive again. The Shareholders' Meeting was on once more in all its pristine violence.
Mr Frisby sank back on to the sofa, and reached feebly for the pepsine bottle.
'As a matter of fact,' proceeded Berry, 'I only looked in to tell you that I was resigning my position. But you will be all right,' he added kindly. 'You can 'phone to an agency to send you up a stenographer to attend to these letters, and you can always get another secretary in half an hour. And now,' he said, 'I'm afraid I really must rush. I've got to be at the Tea House in the Park in five minutes.'
He hurried out, feeling that he had conducted the delicate business of resignation in a tactful and considerate manner. In a way, he was fond of Mr Frisby, and wished that he had had more time to spare him: but the necessity of being punctual at the tryst was imperative. He raced for the door of the suite, and reached it just as it was being opened by Mr Frisby's man for the admittance of a new visitor.
The new arrival was no stranger to him, though he supposed he was to her. It was Lady Vera Mace. Berry was never quite sure how he stood with Lady Vera in the matter of bowing or smiling or other form of intimacy. Eleven years ago she had visited her nephew, Lord Biskerton, at school, and he, Berry, as the Biscuit's best friend, had been included in the subsequent festivities: but, though in his own memory this affair still remained green, the party of the second part had evidently forgotten it entirely. On the one occasion when they had met since that distant date, in Mr Frisby's outer office when she had called to discuss the chaperoning of Ann, she had given no sign of recognition.
So now he claimed no acquaintance. He did not bow, but stood to one side in a courtly manner, to allow her to pass. And as she passed her eyes fell on him and he was surprised to see them light up suddenly, as if in recognition. And what surprised him more was that the light in those eyes was not merely that of recognition but of fear and dislike. Why, if Lady Vera remembered him at all, she should remember him as something obnoxious, Berry could not understand. At the age of fifteen he had probably not been exactly fascinating, but he was astonished to find that he had been so repulsive as to cause this woman, eleven years later, to shudder at the sight of him.
It was rather maddening, in a way. But he had no time to worry himself about it now. Lady Vera had passed
on and was entering the room where Mr Frisby and his interior organism were conducting their silent battle. Berry dismissed the matter from his mind, and ran down the corridor to the stairs. All he was thinking of now was that in another five minutes he would be meeting Ann again. A man with a thing like that before him had no time to worry about his unpopularity with the sisters of earls.
Lady Vera Mace was a dignified woman: and, like all women who are careful of their dignity, she seldom hurried. But such was the emotion with which the sight of Berry had filled her that, as she crossed the threshold of Mr Frisby's sitting-room, she was positively running. The desire to receive some explanation of the presence in the financier's suite of one whom she had come to look upon as London's leading adventurer accelerated her movements to an extraordinary degree. Daughter of a hundred earls though she was, she charged in like a greyhound on the track of an electric hare. She trembled with curiosity and with that horror which good women feel when they have just met members of the Underworld face to face in a narrow passage. And she was just about to pour forth a rain of questions when she perceived that her host was sitting doubled up in a chair, uttering sounds as of one in pain.
Lady Vera stopped, concerned. Accustomed to making up her mind quickly, at a very early date in their acquaintance she had decided quite definitely that later on she would marry T. Paterson Frisby. At their very first meeting she had recognized him as one who needed a woman to look after him and when, in the course of their conversations she had discovered that the post was vacant, she had determined to fill it.
So now she gazed upon him with something stronger than the detached womanly pity which she would have bestowed on a mere stranger whom she had found tying himself into knots.
'Whatever is the matter?' she asked.
'Ouch!' said Mr Frisby.
Lady Vera had that splendid faculty which only great women possess of going instantly to the heart of a problem. At their first encounter this man had been in very much the same condition, and he had confided to her then his hidden secret.
'Have you been eating duck again?' she asked keenly.
She saw him writhe, and knew that her diagnosis had been correct.
'Wait!' she said.
A woman of acute perception, she realized that this was no time for advising the patient to think beautiful thoughts, to recommend him to fancy himself a bird upon a tree and to seek relief in song. The thing had gone too far for that. Cruder and swifter remedies were indicated.
She went to the telephone and was almost immediately in communication with the druggist on the main floor of the building. She spoke authoritatively and as one having knowledge: and presently there was a ring at the bell and a small boy appeared, bearing a brimming glass full of some greyish liquid.
'Drink this,' said Lady Vera.
Mr Frisby drank, and instantly it was as if some strong man had risen in the Meeting of Shareholders, dominating all. The shouts died to whispers, the whispers to silence. Peace reigned. And T. Paterson Frisby, licking his lips, spoke in a low, awed voice.
'What was it?'
'It is something my husband used to recommend. He suffered as you do. But after lobster. He said it was infallible.'
'It is,' said Mr Frisby. 'Have you ever tried it on a corpse? I should say it would work.'
A great surge of emotion had risen within him. He looked at Lady Vera Mace with glowing eyes, and a voice seemed to whisper to him that now was the moment for which he had been waiting so long. On a score of previous occasions T. Paterson Frisby had contemplated the idea of laying his widowed heart at the feet of this woman, of putting his fortune to the test, to win or lose it all: but always he had refrained. He had lacked the necessary courage. She had seemed so aloof, so statuesque. Now, as she stood there radiating gentle sympathy, she became approachable: and that inner voice seemed to say to him 'Go to it!'
He cleared his throat. What there had been in that stuff which he had just swallowed, he could not say: but its effect had been to bring him to the top of his form. He felt confident. And he would undoubtedly have expressed himself in a series of telling phrases, calculated to win the heart of any woman, had not Lady Vera abruptly remembered that ten minutes ago she had hurried into this room in a spirit of research and inquiry. Even as Mr Frisby was shaping his opening sentence, she shattered his whole scheme of thought with an agitated exclamation.
'That man!' she cried.
'Eh?' said Mr Frisby.
'What was that man doing here?'
Regretfully, T. Paterson Frisby recognized that the golden moment had passed. The subject had been definitely changed. He saw now that his visitor's mind was not in a condition to be receptive to the voice of Love. She seemed to want to know something about some man, and it was plain that no other topic would interest her. He swallowed his emotion, therefore, and sought enlightenment.
'Man?' he said. 'What man?'
'The man I met as I came in. What was he doing here?'
Mr Frisby was puzzled. She seemed to be referring to his late secretary.
'He came to bring me my mail,' he said.
'Your mail?' Lady Vera's eyes widened. 'Do you know him?'
A warm gleam came into Mr Frisby's eye. Subsequent occurrences had dimmed the memory of that remarkable interview with Berry Conway, but now it came back to him. He quivered a little.
'I thought I did,' he said. 'Yes, sir! But he certainly surprised me just now. The young hound! "I can only give you a minute!" He said that. To me! And off he went to feed ducks!'
Mr Frisby paused, wrestling with a strong emotion.
'But who is he?'
'He is – was – my secretary.'
'Your secretary?'
'That's right. His name's Conway. And until today I'd always found him an ordinary, respectful . . .'
Lady Vera uttered an exclamation. She saw all.
'So that's how he came to know Ann!'
Mr Frisby found himself puzzled again.
'Ann? My niece Ann? He doesn't know Ann.'
Lady Vera hesitated. It seemed cruel to let the thing descend on this man suddenly, like an avalanche.
'He does,' she said.
'I don't think so,' said Mr Frisby.
'I saw them dining together last night. Mr Frisby,' said Lady Vera, unequal to the task of breaking the news gently. 'I have had a talk with Ann. An awful thing has happened. She has broken off her engagement with my nephew, and says she is resolved to marry this man Conway. That is why I came here this afternoon to see you. We must decide what to do about it.'
Mr Frisby uttered an exclamation. He, too, saw all.
'So that's why he was so fresh!'
There was something not unlike satisfaction in his voice. All he could think of for the moment was that a mystery had been solved which might have vexed him to his dying day. Then, like an icy finger on his spine, came the realization of what this meant.
'Marry him?' he gasped. 'Did you say marry him?'
'She said she intended to marry him.'
'But she can't!' wailed Mr Frisby. 'My sister Josephine would never give me a second's peace for the rest of my life.'
He stared at his visitor, appalled, and was stunned to perceive a soft smile upon her face. What anyone could find to smile at in a world where his sister Josephine's daughter was going about marrying penniless ex-secretaries was more than Mr Frisby could understand.
'Why, of course!' said Lady Vera. 'How foolish of me not to have seen it directly you told me.'
'Eh?'
'Everything is going to be quite simple,' said Lady Vera. 'If this man Conway is really your secretary, the problem solves itself.'
'Eh?' said Mr Frisby again.
'But I didn't tell you, did I? You see, Mr Frisby, what has happened is this. This man, as far as I can gather from her story, seems to have swept Ann off her feet by telling her a lot of romantic stories about himself. Well, surely, when she finds that he has been lying to her and is nothing but a miserable
secretary, she will realize the sort of man he is and will give him up of her own accord.'
Mr Frisby looked doubtful.
'Told her romantic stories, did he?'
'He said he was a Secret Service man. You can imagine the effect that that would have on an impressionable girl like Ann. But when she finds out . . .'
Mr Frisby shook his head.
'A bird as smooth as that,' he said, 'is going to be smooth enough to jolly her along even when she does find out.'
'Then what you must do,' said Lady Vera with decision, 'is simply to send your lawyer down to his house to offer him money to give Ann up.'
'But would he give her up?' Mr Frisby drooped despondently. He could see the flaw in the idea. 'Why would he take money to give her up, when he could get more money by standing pat?'
Lady Vera over-ruled the objection.
'When your lawyer explains to him that Ann will be sent back to America immediately, out of his reach, if he refuses to come to terms, I am sure that he will be only too glad to take whatever you offer.'
The gloom passed from Mr Frisby's face, he gazed reverently at this woman of infinite sagacity.
'You're dead right,' he said. 'I never thought of that. I'll get on to Robbins on the 'phone right away.'
'Yes, do.'
'I'll tell him to start the bidding at a thousand pounds.'
'Or two?'
'Yes, two. You're right again. He'll drop sure for two thousand. Two thousand is big money.'
'What I would have done without you,' said Lady Vera, 'I don't know. Some men in your position would have ruined everything by being niggardly.'
Mr Frisby glowed and expanded beneath her approbation. Once more that voice seemed to be whispering in his ear that it would be well to go to it. He simply needed an opening. The emotion was there, all ready to be poured out. All he required was a cue.
'Nothing niggardly about me,' he said, with modest pride.
'No.'
'I'm fond of money – I don't deny it – but . . .'
'Isn't everybody?'
'What?'
'Fond of money.'