The Just Men of Cordova/Chapter 5

was amused. He was annoyed, too, and the two expressions resulted in a renewed irritation.

His present annoyance rose from another cause. A mysterious tribunal, which had examined his papers, had appeared from and disappeared to nowhere, had annoyed him—had frightened him, if the truth be told; but courage is largely a matter of light with certain temperaments, and strong in the security of the morning sunshine and with the satisfaction that there was nothing tangible for the four men to discover, he was bold enough.

He was sitting in his dressing-gown at breakfast, and his companion was Sir Isaac Tramber. Colonel Black loved the good things of life, good food and the comforts of civilization. His breakfast was a very ample one. Sir Isaac’s diet was more simple: a brandy and water and an apple comprised the menu. “What’s up?” he growled. He had had a late night and was not in the best of tempers.

Black tossed a letter across to him. “What do you think of that?” he asked. “Here’s a demand from Tangye’s, the brokers, for ten thousand pounds, and a hint that failing its arrival I shall be posted as a defaulter.”

“Pay it,” suggested Sir Isaac languidly, and the other laughed.

“Don’t talk rot,” he said, with offensive good humour. “Where am I going to get ten thousand pounds? I’m nearly broke; you know that, Tramber; we’re both in the same boat. I’ve got two millions on paper, but I don’t think we could raise a couple of hundred ready between us if we tried.”

The baronet pushed back his plate. “I say,” he said abruptly, “you don’t mean what you said?”

“About the money?”

“About the money—yes. You nearly gave me an attack of heart disease. My dear chap, we should be pretty awkwardly fixed if money dried up just now.”

Colonel Black smiled. “That’s just what has happened,” he said. “Fix or no fix, we’re in it. I’m overdrawn in the bank; I’ve got about a hundred pounds in the house, and I suppose you’ve got another hundred.”

“I haven’t a hundred farthings,” said the other.

“Expenses are very heavy,” Black went on; “you know how these things turn up. There are one or two in view, but beyond that we have nothing. If we could bring about the amalgamation of those Northern Foundries we might both sign cheques for a hundred thousand.”

“What about the City?”

The Colonel sliced off the top of his egg without replying. Tramber knew the position in the City as well as he did.

“H’m,” said Sir Isaac, “we’ve got to get money from somewhere, Black.”

“What about your friend?” asked Colonel Black. He spoke carelessly, but the question was a well-considered one.

“Which friend?” asked Sir Isaac, with a hoarse laugh. “Not that I have so many that you need particularize any. Do you mean Verlond?” Black nodded. “Verlond, my dear chap,” said the baronet, “is the one man I must not go to in this world for money.”

“He is a very rich man,” mused Black.

“He is a very rich man,” said the other grimly, “and he may have to leave his money to me.”

“Isn’t there an heir?” asked the colonel, interested.

“There was,” said the baronet with a grin, “a high-spirited nephew, who ran away from home, and is believed to have been killed on a cattle-ranch in Texas. At any rate, Lord Verlond intends applying to the court to presume his death.”

“That was a blow for the old man,” said Black.

This statement seemed to amuse Sir Isaac. He leant back in his chair and laughed loud and long.

“A blow!” he said. “My dear fellow, he hated the boy worse than poison. You see, the Verlond stock—he’s a member of the cadet branch of the family. The boy was a real Verlond. That’s why the old man hated him. I believe he made his life a little hell. He used to have him up for week-ends to bully him, until at last the kid got desperate, collected all his pocket-money and ran away.

“Some friends of the family traced him; the old man didn’t move a step to search for him. They found work for him for a few months in a printer’s shop in London. Then he went abroad—sailed to America on an emigrant’s ticket.

“Some interested people took the trouble to follow his movements. He went out to Texas and got on to a pretty bad ranch. Later, a man after his description was shot in a street fight; it was one of those little ranching towns that you see so graphically portrayed in cinema palaces.”

“Who is the heir?” asked Black.

“To the title, nobody. To the money, the boy’s sister. She is quite a nice girl.” Black was looking at him through half-closed eyes. The baronet curled his moustache thoughtfully and repeated, as if to himself, “Quite a nice girl.”

“Then you have—er—prospects?” asked Black slowly.

“What the devil do you mean, Black?” asked Sir Isaac, sitting up stiffly.

“Just what I say,” said the other. “The man who marries the lady gets a pretty large share of the swag. That’s the position, isn’t it?”

“Something like that,” said Sir Isaac sullenly.

The colonel got up and folded his napkin carefully. Colonel Black needed ready money so badly that it mattered very little what the City said. If Sandford objected that would be another matter, but Sandford was a good sportsman, though somewhat difficult to manage. He stood for a moment looking down on the baronet thoughtfully.

“Ikey,” he said, “I have noticed in you of late a disposition to look upon our mutual interests as something of which a man might be ashamed—I have struck an unexpected streak of virtue in you, and I confess that I am a little distressed.”

His keen eyes were fixed on the other steadily.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” said the baronet uneasily, “but the fact is, I’ve got to keep my end up in society.”

“You owe me a little,” began Black.

“Four thousand,” said the other promptly, “and it is secured by a £50,000 policy on my life.”

“The premiums of which I pay,” snarled the colonel grimly; “but I wasn’t thinking of money.”

His absorbed gaze took in the baronet from head to foot.

“Fifty thousand pounds!” he said facetiously. “My dear Ikey, you’re worth much more murdered than alive.”

The baronet shivered. “Don’t make those rotten jokes,” he said, and finished his brandy at a gulp.

The other nodded. “I’ll leave you to your letters.” he said.

Colonel Black was a remarkably methodical and neat personage. Wrapped in his elaborate dressing-gown, he made his way through the flat and, reaching his study alone, he closed the door behind him and let it click.

He was disturbed in his mind at this sudden assumption of virtue on the part of his confederate; it was more than disconcerting, it was alarming. Black had no illusions. He did not trust Sir Isaac Tramber any more than he did other men.

It was Black’s money that had, to some extent, rehabilitated the baronet in society; it was Black’s money that had purchased racehorses and paid training bills. Here again, the man was actuated by no altruistic desire to serve one against whom the doors of society were shut and the hands of decent men were turned.

An outcast, Sir Isaac Tramber was of no value to the colonel: he had even, on one occasion, summarized his relationship with the baronet in a memorable and epigrammatic sentence: “He was the most dilapidated property I have ever handled; but I refurnished him, redecorated him, and today, even if he is not beautiful, he is very letable.”

And very serviceable Sir Isaac had proved—well worth the money spent on him, well worth the share he received from the proceeds of that business he professed to despise.

Sir Isaac Tramber feared Black. That was half the secret of the power which the stronger man wielded over him. When at times he sought to escape from the tyranny his partner had established, there were sleepless nights. During the past few weeks something had happened which made it imperative that he should dissociate himself from the confederacy; that “something” had to do with the brightening of his prospects.

Lady Mary Cassilirs was more of a reality now than she had ever been. With Lady Mary went that which Black in his vulgar way described as “swag.”

The old earl had given him to understand that his addresses would not be unwelcome. Lady Mary was his ward, and perhaps it was because she refused to be terrorized by the wayward old man and his fits of savage moroseness, and because she treated his terrible storms of anger as though they did not exist and never had existed, that in the grim old man’s hard and apparently wicked heart there had kindled a flame of respect for her.

Sir Isaac went back to his own chambers in a thoughtful frame of mind. He would have to cut Black, and his conscience had advanced so few demands on his actions that he felt justified in making an exception in this case.

He felt almost virtuous as he emerged again, dressed for the park, and he was in his brightest mood when he met Lord Verlond and his beautiful ward.

There were rude people who never referred to the Earl of Verlond and his niece except as “Beauty and the Beast.” She was a tall girl and typically English—straight of back, clear of skin, and bright of eye. A great mass of chestnut hair, two arched eyebrows, and a resolute little chin made up a face of special attractiveness. She stood almost head and shoulders above the old man at her side. Verlond had never been a beauty. Age had made his harsh lines still harsher; there was not a line in his face which did not seem as though it had been carved from solid granite, so fixed, so immovable and cold it was.

His lower jaw protruded, his eyes were deep set. He gave you the uncanny impression when you first met him that you had been longer acquainted with his jaw than with his eyes.

He snapped a greeting to Sir Isaac. “Sit down, Ikey,” he smiled. The girl had given the baronet the slightest of nods, and immediately turned her attention to the passing throng.

“Not riding to-day?” asked Sir Isaac.

“Yes,” said the peer, “I am at this moment mounted on a grey charger, leading a brigade of cavalry.”

His humour took this one form, and supplied answers to unnecessary questions. Then suddenly his face went sour, and after a glance round to see whether the girl’s attention had been attracted elsewhere, he leant over towards Sir Isaac and, dropping his voice, said, “Ikey, you’re going to have some difficulty with her.”

“I am used to difficulties,” said Sir Isaac airily.

“Not difficulties like this,” said the earl. “Don’t be a fool, Ikey, don’t pretend you’re clever. I know—the difficulties—I have to live in the same house with her. She’s an obstinate devil—there’s no other word for it.”

Sir Isaac looked round cautiously. “Is there anybody else?” he asked.

He saw the earl’s brows tighten, his eyes were glaring past him, and, following their direction, Sir Isaac saw the figure of a young man coming towards them with a smile that illuminated the whole of his face.

That smile was directed neither to the earl nor to his companion; it was unmistakably intended for the girl, who, with parted lips and a new light in her eyes, beckoned the new-comer forward.

Sir Isaac scowled horribly. “The accursed cheek of the fellow,” he muttered angrily.

“Good morning,” said Horace Gresham to the earl; “taking the air?”

“No,” growled the old man, “I am bathing, I am deep-sea fishing, I am aeroplaning. Can’t you see what I am doing? I’m sitting here—at the mercy of every jackass that comes along to address his insane questions to me.”

Horace laughed. He was genuinely amused. There was just this touch of perverse humour in the old man which saved him from being absolutely repulsive. Without further ceremony he turned to the girl. “I expected to find you here,” he said.

“How is that great horse of yours?” she asked. He shot a smiling glance at Tramber.

“Oh, he’ll be fit enough on the day of the race,” he said. “We shall make Timbolino gallop.”

“Mine will beat yours, wherever they finish, for a thousand,” said Sir Isaac angrily.

“I should not like to take your money,” said the young man. “I feel that it would be unfair to you, and unfair to—your friend.”

The last words were said carelessly, but Sir Isaac Tramber recognized the undertone of hostility, and read in the little pause which preceded them the suggestion that this cheery young man knew much more about his affairs than he was prepared for the moment to divulge.

“I am not concerned about my friend,” said the baronet angrily. “I merely made a fair and square sporting offer. Of course, if you do not like to accept it—” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, I would accept it all right,” said the other. He turned deliberately to the girl.

“What’s Gresham getting at?” asked Verlond, with a grin at his friend’s discomfiture.

“I didn’t know he was a friend of yours,” said Sir Isaac; “where did you pick him up?”

Lord Verlond showed his yellow teeth in a grin. “Where one picks up most of one’s undesirable acquaintances,” he said, “in the members’ enclosure. But racing is getting so damned respectable, Ikey, that a real top-notch undesirable is hard to meet. The last race-meeting I went to, what do you think I found? The tea-room crammed, you couldn’t get in at the doors; the bar empty. Racing is going to the dogs, Ikey.”

He was on his favourite hobby now, and Sir Isaac shifted uneasily, for the old man was difficult to divert when in the mood for reminiscent chatter.

“You can’t bet nowadays like you used to bet,” the earl went on. “I once backed a horse for five thousand pounds at 20-1, without altering the price. Where could you do that nowadays?”

“Let us walk about a little,” said the girl.

Lord Verlond was so engrossed in his grievance against racing society that he did not observe the two young people rise and stroll away.

Sir Isaac saw them, and would have interrupted the other’s garrulity, but for the wholesome fear he had of the old man’s savage temper.

“I can’t understand,” said Horace, “how your uncle can stick that bounder.”

The girl smiled. “Oh, he can ‘stick’ him all right,” she said dryly. “Uncle’s patience with unpleasant people is proverbial.”

“He’s not very patient with me,” said Mr. Horace Gresham.

She laughed. “That is because you are not sufficiently unpleasant,” she said. “You have to be hateful to everybody else in the world before uncle likes you.”

“And I’m not that, am I?” he asked eagerly.

She flushed a little. “No, I wouldn’t say you were that,” she said, glancing at him from under her eyelashes. “I am sure you are a very nice and amiable young man. You must have lots of friends. Ikey, on the other hand, has such queer friends. We saw him at the Blitz the other day, lunching with a perfectly impossible man—do you know him?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know any perfectly impossible persons,” he said promptly.

“A Colonel Black?” she suggested.

He nodded. “I know of him,” he replied.

“Who is this Black?” she asked.

“He is a colonel.”

“In the army?”

“Not in our army,” said Horace with a smile. “He is what they call in America a ‘pipe colonel,’ and he’s—well, he’s a friend of Sir Isaac—” he began, and hesitated.

“That doesn’t tell me very much, except that he can’t be very nice,” she said.

He looked at her eagerly. “I’m so glad you said that,” he said. “I was afraid—” Again he stopped, and she threw a swift glance at him.

“You were afraid?” she repeated.

It was remarkable to see this self-possessed young man embarrassed, as he was now. “Well,” he went on, a little incoherently, “one hears things—rumours. I know what a scoundrel he is, and I know how sweet you are—the fact is, Mary, I love you better than anything in life.”

She went white and her hand trembled. She had never anticipated such a declaration in a crowd. The unexpectedness of it left her speechless. She looked at his face: he, too, was pale.

“You shouldn’t,” she murmured, “at this time in the morning.”