Page:Weird Tales volume 02 number 03.djvu/61

 

AUL" said Lord Oakby deliberately, "I really believe I am the happiest fellow alive!"

Paul Pry smiled.

"That is a very comfortable frame of mind," he answered, in his quiet way.

"Confound you!" cried Oakby, laughing. "You’re a jolly old cynic at forty—is it forty, by the way? I never know whether you’re thirty or fifty, Paul. I don’t believe you’ve ever been in love."

Cracking a walnut as he spoke, he did not observe the sudden cloud that darkened the pleasant face opposite him. It vanished as quickly as it had come, and Paul spoke cheerfully:

"Well, well," he said, "I am not too cynical to enjoy your happiness, my dear fellow; and I do not wonder at it. You are young, fit and engaged to be married to a very charming girl. Here’s to her!"

He sipped his port, and his friend drained his glass.

"By Jove, that’s a stunning port!" cried Oakby. "It’s—it’s worthy of her," he added.

"It has been paid many compliments," Paul answered, "but that is the greatest of them all. But come," he added, "it’s time we were going. The rest of the show is nothing to you, but I confess I rather like the Nadia’s dancing—though of course she’s not to be compared to Carol."

"Of course not," replied Lord Oakby naively, and again Paul chuckled as he rang for the car.

As they drove to the theater Mr. Paul Pry, that singular mixture of cynicism and good nature, reflected with satisfaction on the part he had played in Oakby’s romance. Millionaire and amateur criminologist, Paul was a mystery; even the name by which he was so well known in half a dozen countries was an obvious pseudonym.

As Oakby’s father, the Earl of Glenash, once said of him: "He goes everywhere and knows everybody, but nobody knows him"; nevertheless, the noble Earl was quite content to accept this state of affairs, for—like many others—he had his private reasons for entertaining for Paul a regard which was not free from gratitude.

When young Lord Oakby, the Earl’s heir, cast his title at the pretty feet of Miss Carol Spring, the dancer who was filling the Quality Theater night after night, the old nobleman was at first furious, but Paul, like a god out of the car, appeared in his unexpected way and applied balm to the Earl’s wound. Carol Spring, it appeared, was in no way unworthy of the coronet proposed for her. Her father, a gallant officer who had served with distinction in the Great War,