The Just Men of Cordova/Chapter 9

was an afternoon visitor at the Sandford establishment. He had come for many reasons, not the least of which nobody expected. He was a large shareholder in the Sandford Foundries, and with rumours of amalgamation in the air there was excuse enough for his visit. Doubly so, it seemed, when the first person he met was a large, yellow-faced man, confoundedly genial (in the worst sense of the word) and too ready to fraternize for the old man’s liking.

“I have heard of you, my lord,” said Colonel Black.

“For the love of Heaven, don’t call me ‘my lord’!” snapped the earl. “Man’ alive, you are asking me to be rude to you!”

But no man of Verlond’s standing could be rude to the colonel, with his mechanical smile and his beaming eye.

“I know a friend of yours, I think,” he said, in that soothing tone which in a certain type of mind passes for deference.

“You know Ikey Tramber, which is not the same thing,” said the earl.

Colonel Black made a noise indicating his amusement. “He always—” he began.

“He always speaks well of me and says what a fine fellow I am, and how the earth loses its savour if he passes a day without seeing me,” assisted Lord Verlond, his eyes alight with pleasant malice, “and he tells you what a good sportsman I am, and what a true and kindly heart beats behind my somewhat unprepossessing exterior, and how if people only knew me they would love me—he says all this, doesn’t he?”

Colonel Black bowed.

“I don’t think!” said Lord Verlond vulgarly. He looked at the other for a while. “You shall come to dinner with me to-night—you will meet a lot of people who will dislike you intensely.”

“I shall be delighted,” murmured the colonel.

He was hoping that in the conference which he guessed would be held between Sandford and his lordship he would be invited to participate. In this, however, he was disappointed. He might have taken his leave there and then, but he chose to stay and discuss art (which he imperfectly understood) with a young and distracted lady who was thinking about something else all the time.

She badly wanted to bring the conversation round to the Metropolitan police force, in the hope that a rising young constable might be mentioned. She would have asked after him, but her pride prevented her. Colonel Black himself did not broach the subject.

He was still discussing lost pictures when Lord Verlond emerged from the study with Sandford. “Let your daughter come” the earl was saying.

Sandford was undecided. “I’m greatly obliged—I should not like her to go alone.”

Something leapt inside Colonel Black’s bosom. A chance…!

“If you are talking of the dinner to-night,” he said with an assumption of carelessness, “I shall be happy to call in my car for you.”

Still Sandford was not easy in his mind. It was May who should make the decision.

“I think I’d like to, daddy,” she said.

She did not greatly enjoy the prospect of going anywhere with the colonel, but it would only be a short journey.

“If I could stand in loco parentis to the young lady,” said Black, nearly jocular, “I should esteem it an honour.”

He looked round and caught a curious glint in Lord Verlond’s eyes. The earl was watching him closely, eagerly, almost, and a sudden and unaccountable fear gripped the financier’s heart.

“Excellent, excellent!” murmured the old man, still watching him through lowered lids. “It isn’t far to go, and I think you’ll stand the journey well.”

The girl smiled, but the grim fixed look on the earl’s face did not relax.

“As you are an invalid, young lady,” he went on, despite May’s laughing protest—“as you’re an invalid, young lady, I will have Sir James Bower and Sir Thomas Bigland to meet you—you know those eminent physicians, colonel? Your Dr. Essley will, at any rate—experts both on the action of vegetable alkaloids.”

Great beads of sweat stood on Black’s face, but his features were under perfect control. Fear and rage glowed in his eyes, but he met the other’s gaze defiantly. He smiled even—a slow, laboured smile. “That puts an end to any objection,” he said almost gaily.

The old man took his leave and was grinning to himself all the way back to town.

The Earl of Verlond was a stickler for punctuality: a grim, bent old man, with a face that, so Society said, told eloquently the story of his life, his bitter tongue was sufficient to maintain for him the respect—or if not the respect, the fear that so ably substitutes respect—of his friends.

“Friends” is a word which you would never ordinarily apply to any of the earl’s acquaintances. He had apparently no friends save Sir Isaac Tramber. “I have people to dine with me,” he had said cynically when this question of friendship was once discussed by one who knew him sufficiently well to deal with so intimate a subject.

That night he was waiting in the big library of Carnarvon Place. The earl was one of those men who observed a rigid time-table every day of his life. He glanced at his watch; in two minutes he would be on his way to the drawing-room to receive his guests.

Horace Gresham was coming. A curious invitation, Sir Isaac Tramber had thought, and had ventured to remark as much, presuming his friendship.

“When I want your advice as to my invitation list, Ikey,” said the earl, “I will send you a prepaid telegram.”

“I thought you hated him,” grumbled Sir Isaac.

“Hate him! Of course I hate him. I hate everybody. I should hate you, but you are such an insignificant devil,” said the earl. “Have you made your peace with Mary?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘making my peace’,” said Sir Isaac complainingly. “I tried to be amiable to her, and I only seemed to succeed in making a fool of myself.”

“Ah!” said the nobleman with a little chuckle, “she would like you best natural.”

Sir Isaac shot a scowling glance at his patron. “I suppose you know,” he said, “that I want to marry Mary.”

“I know that you want some money without working for it,” said the earl. “You have told me about it twice. I am not likely to forget it. It is the sort of thing I think about at nights.”

“I wish you wouldn’t pull my leg,” growled the baronet. “Are you waiting for any other guests?”

“No,” snarled the earl, “I am sitting on the top of Mont Blanc eating rice pudding.” There was no retort to this. “I’ve invited quite an old friend of yours,” said the earl suddenly, “but it doesn’t look as if he was turning up.”

Ikey frowned. “Old friend?”

The other nodded. “Military gent,” he said laconically. “A colonel in the army, though nobody knows the army.”

Sir Isaac’s jaw dropped. “Not Black?”

Lord Verlond nodded. He nodded several times, like a gleeful child confessing a fault of which it was inordinately proud. “Black it is,” he said, but made no mention of the girl.

He looked at his watch again and pulled a little face. “Stay here,” he commanded. “I’m going to telephone.”

“Can I—”

“You can’t!” snapped the earl. He was gone some time, and when he returned to the library there was a smile on his face. “Your pal’s not coming,” he said, and offered no explanation either for the inexplicable behaviour of the colonel or for his amusement.

At dinner Horace Gresham found himself seated next to the most lovely woman in the world. She was also the kindest and the easiest to amuse. He was content to forget the world, and such of the world who were gathered about the earl, but Lord Verlond had other views.

“Met a friend of yours to-day,” he said abruptly and addressing Horace.

“Indeed, sir?” The young man was politely interested.

“Sandford—that terribly prosperous gentleman from Newcastle.” Horace nodded cautiously. “Friend of yours too, ain’t he?” The old man turned swiftly to Sir Isaac. “I asked his daughter to come to dinner—father couldn’t come. She ain’t here.”

He glared round the table for the absent girl.

“In a sense Sandford is a friend of mine,” said Sir Isaac no less cautiously, since he must make a statement in public without exactly knowing how the elder man felt on the subject of the absent guests; “at least, he’s a friend of a friend.”

“Black,” snarled Lord Verlond, “bucket-shop swindler—are you in it?”

“I have practically severed my connection with him,” Sir Isaac hastened to say.

Verlond grinned. “That means he’s broke,” he said, and turned to Horace. “Sandford’s full of praise for a policeman who’s mad keen on his girl—friend of yours?”

Horace nodded. “He’s a great friend of mine,” he said quietly.

“Who is he?”

“Oh, he’s a policeman,” said Horace.

“And I suppose he’s got two legs and a head and a pair of arms,” said the earl. “You’re too full of information—I know he’s a policeman. Everybody seems to be talking about him. Now, what does he do, where does he come from—what the devil does it all mean?”

“I’m afraid I can’t give you any information,” said Horace. “The only thing that I am absolutely certain about in my own mind is that he is a gentleman.”

“A gentleman and a policeman?” asked the earl incredulously. Horace nodded. “A new profession for the younger son, eh?” remarked Lord Verlond sardonically. “No more running away and joining the army; no more serving before the mast; no more cow-punching on the pampas—”

A look of pain came into Lady Mary’s eyes. The old lord swung round on her.

“Sorry” he growled. “I wasn’t thinking of that young fool. No more dashing away to the ends of the earth for the younger son; no dying picturesquely in the Cape Mounted Rifles, or turning up at an appropriate hour with a bag of bullion under each arm to save the family from ruin. Join the police force, that’s the game. You ought to write a novel about that: a man who can write letters to the sporting papers can write anything.”

“By the way,” he added, “I am coming down to Lincoln on Tuesday to see that horse of yours lose.”

“You will make your journey in vain,” said Horace. “I have arranged for him to win.”

He waited later for an opportunity to say a word in private to the old man. It did not come till the end of the dinner, when he found himself alone with the earl. “By the way,” he said, with an assumption of carelessness, “I want to see you on urgent private business.”

“Want money?” asked the earl, looking at him suspiciously from underneath his shaggy brows.

Horace smiled. “No, I-don’t think I am likely to borrow money,” he said.

“Want to marry my niece?” asked the old man with brutal directness.

“That’s it,” said Horace coolly. He could adapt himself to the old man’s mood.

“Well, you can’t,” said the earl. “You have arranged for your horse to win, I have arranged for her to marry Ikey. At least,” he corrected himself, “Ikey has arranged with me.”

“Suppose she doesn’t care for this plan?” asked Horace.

“I don’t suppose she does,” said the old man with a grin. “I can’t imagine anybody liking Ikey, can you? I think he’s a hateful devil. He doesn’t pay his debts, he has no sense of honour, very little sense of decency; his associates, including myself, are the worst men in London.” He shook his head suspiciously. “He’s being virtuous now,” he growled, “told me so confidentially; informed me that he was turning over a new leaf. What a rotten confession for a man of his calibre to make! I mistrust him in his penitent mood.” He looked up suddenly. “You go and cut him out,” he said, the tiny flame of malice, which gave his face such an extraordinary character, shining in his eyes. “Good idea, that! Go and cut him out; it struck me Mary was a little keen on you. Damn Ikey! Go along!”

He pushed the astonished youth from him.

Horace found the girl in the conservatory. He was bubbling over with joy. He had never expected to make so easy a conquest of the old man—so easy that he almost felt frightened. It was as if the Earl of Verlond, with that sardonic humour of his, was devising some method of humiliating him. Impulsively he told her all that had happened.

“I can’t believe it,” he cried, “he was so ready, so willing. He was brutal, of course, but that was natural.”

She looked at him with a little glint of amusement in her eyes. “I don’t think you know uncle,” she said quietly.

“But—but—” he stammered.”

“Yes, I know,” she went on, “everybody thinks they do. They think he’s the most horrid old man in the world. Sometimes,” she confessed, “I have shared their opinion. I can never understand why he sent poor Con away.”

“That was your brother?” he asked.

She nodded. Her eyes grew moist. “Poor boy.” she said softly, “he didn’t understand uncle. I didn’t then. I sometimes think uncle doesn’t understand himself very well,” she said with a sad little smile. “Think of the horrid things he says about people—think of the way he makes enemies—”

“And yet, I am ready to believe he is a veritable Gabriel,” said Horace fervently. “He is a benefactor of the human race, a king among men, the distributor of great gifts—”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, and laying her hand on his arm, she led him to the farther end of the big palm court.

Whatever pleasure the old lord brought to Horace, it found no counterpart in his dealings with Sir Isaac. He alternately patted and kicked him, until the baronet was writhing with rage. The old man seemed to take a malicious pleasure in ruffling the other. That the views he expressed at ten o’clock that night were in absolute contradiction to those that he had put into words at eight o’clock on the same night did not distress him; he would have changed them a dozen times during the course of twenty-four hours if he could have derived any pleasure from so doing.

Sir Isaac was in an evil frame of mind when a servant brought him a note. He looked round for a quiet place in which to read it. He half suspected its origin. But why had Black missed so splendid an opportunity of meeting Lord Verlond? The note would explain, perhaps.

He crossed the room and strolled towards the conservatory, reading the letter carefully. He read it twice, then he folded it up and put it into his pocket; he had occasion to go to that pocket again almost immediately, for he pulled out his watch to see the time.

When he had left the little retreat on his way to the hall, he left behind him a folded slip of paper on the floor.

This an exalted Horace, deliriously happy, discovered on his way back to the card-room. He handed it to Lord Verlond who, having no scruples, read it—and, reading it in the seclusion of his study, grinned.