Читать книгу A Little Way Ahead - Alan Sullivan - Страница 4

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TWO months after Anne had furnished the mansion that to her seemed very like a prison, a young man was pacing the deck of a Southampton-bound liner. He had booked his passage from New York, but registered as Bruce McLeod, of Comayagua, Honduras, Central America. He was tall, athletic and very quiet. His skin had been burned dark by tropical suns, and he walked with a smooth easy stride. Obviously an out-of-door man.

He hardly spoke at all, the reason being that years of isolation imposes on most people a sort of reticence that it is difficult to cast off. The other passengers noted him with approving eyes, and to the younger women he looked distinctly romantic. On the third day out his tongue loosened a little, and he exchanged generalities with the man who sat next him at table. It was during dessert that he glanced about, and gave an odd little laugh.

“I assume all this is natural enough to you, but it’s queer to me.” He made a gesture at the crowded saloon.

“Why queer?” The other man was Quantox, a smooth-faced Englishman, with mask-like features. He might have been any age.

“Well, for the last three years I’ve been practically alone except for Honduras Indians. Exploring, you know. When you’re buried in that jungle, you wonder if the rest of the world really exists.”

“H’m! I suppose one does. What were you looking for?”

Bruce gave a little smile in which there was no mirth, but a great deal of reflection.

“Supposing I were to tell you that I found copper ores in vast quantities, alluvial gold in the beds of mountain streams, forests of mahogany, ancient silver mines that were worked long before explosives were invented, remains of jungle-choked cities whose civilization must have been very like our own, and all this within a hundred miles of the Atlantic, in a district where there is plenty of cheap, peaceable labour—supposing I told you this, what would you say?”

Quantox glanced at him sharply, and checked an exclamation.

“I’d say it did credit to your imagination.” The voice was very suave.

McLeod shook his head. “No imagination about it—just fact. I’ve been sweating in those jungles for three years on end. One doesn’t tell fairy tales after that.”

The expression of Quantox betrayed nothing. It was more than ever a mask.

“What are you doing with it? Who owns this Eldorado?”

The younger man seemed to come to himself with a start.

“Owns it? The Honduras Government owns it, but I’ve got a concession giving me development rights for ten years. It’s renewable. That’s why I’m going to London. I want to raise the money. If I told you half the things I’ve seen there, you’d——”

He broke off, the picture again large before his eyes. Quantox made a little gesture, and did not speak at once. His brain, his shrewd, active, unscrupulous brain was working fast. He looked obliquely at this youth, and saw truth written on his face. If Quantox had been asked to describe something that he would like to get his hands on, he could have thought of nothing more completely inviting. And this stranger was so obviously and entirely innocent! Who but an innocent would blurt out his private affairs in such a fashion!

“Yes,” he said thoughtfully, “it sounds all right, but you won’t find raising money in London easy.”

“Why not?” This with a touch of anxiety.

“Well, a good many reasons. People have been coming to London with that sort of thing for hundreds of years, and the City is a bit sceptical. They seldom work out as expected—that’s the experience. Unforeseen difficulties and delays. In a general way London has cold feet and money is tight. It’s all very interesting, of course, and I dare say some day it may be a good thing, but I wouldn’t look for a very enthusiastic reception if I were you. Perhaps your connections are already made, and you know to whom you’re going?”

“No,” said McLeod dully, “I hardly know a soul in London, and those I do couldn’t help in this.”

“H’m! That makes it rather difficult. However, I’m a financial man myself, and might be able to help in a small way. Suppose we adjourn to my cabin. Then you can show me the documents and tell me all about the thing.”

That was how it began, and for the next few days the two were constantly together, Bruce emptying himself of information, withholding nothing, congratulating himself on having struck the right man actually before he landed; Quantox sucking it all in like a hungry vampire, licking his lips as the possibilities of the thing became larger and larger, and thanking his lucky star that something so soft and rich and juicy had come his way. But he never showed any undue enthusiasm.

“Look here,” he said finally, “come to my office a week from to-day. I’ll think the matter over. Meantime don’t peddle it about, or you’ll make it look cheap.”

That was all McLeod got out of him, and, landing at Southampton, wondered what he would do for the next few days. He felt rather afraid of London. Then, remembering that he knew a man in Burley in the New Forest, he betook himself to that delectable spot compassed by great calm beeches and ancient oaks, secret dales and dells, and all the magic of the inviolate woods. But the man he knew had moved away, and Bruce felt very lonely.

He had often been lonely before, but not in the same way. Here he was on the very edge of life, and not in it. London loomed large, formless and formidable. Thanks to Quantox, he was a little afraid of London. What would Quantox tell him next week? It never entered his head that the man might be a crook.

He was walking one day through a glade that led towards Lyndhurst when he encountered a girl in a sports suit. She had very bright eyes, and a figure that he looked at rather hard. She looked at him, also rather hard, and stopped.

“I say,” she demanded, “could you possibly give me a match?”

He smiled. There was something in it that she liked, and she smiled back. She lit her cigarette, and nodded.

“Awfully nice after all the rain, isn’t it?”

“Rain?”

“Of course—it’s been pouring for a week, and practically spoilt my holiday. Didn’t you know that?”

“No—I’ve just got here—from Central America. We have real rain there.”

She laughed, and regarded him with interest. So different from the average City man. He, too, was interested, this being the first white girl he had talked to for three years. Clever, he said to himself. Wonder what she does?

“Look here,” he blurted, explaining who he was and how he got there, “mind if I go your way a little?”

She examined him quite deliberately and with a faint smile, and then nodded. Something got at Bruce, and he began to talk. He gave her pictures of Honduras that fascinated her. She let him talk, and he unfolded himself more and more. By the time they reached Burley, the whole story had come out—Quantox and all. At the name of Quantox she looked up sharply.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, I think you’re making a mistake there.”

He stared at her. What could she know about Quantox?

“Mistake! Why?”

“I know it sounds queer, and it’ll take a little time to explain. But if I were you I’d let him alone, and see Mr. Marbury.”

Bruce was vastly surprised. It had taken him half an hour to tell her only a fraction of what he had seen in Honduras. It began as a pleasant period, and, as he talked, it became more than pleasant. Something about her that appealed to him enormously. Of course, he had just emerged from the jungle where life was more primitive than anything she could imagine, and, as a result, he was in a very impressionable condition. To such a man Frances King would seem a sort of goddess. That was inevitable. But that the goddess should begin by offering a bit of candid business advice was past his comprehension.

“Why do you say that?” he stammered. “Who’s the other man, and do you know Quantox?”

As it happened, she did, because a few weeks previously information concerning him had come to Felix, as did information about a great many others who never suspected it. It was not favourable, and Felix merely made a mental note of it and said nothing. One could never tell when such things might not be useful.

But this Honduras affair piqued her imagination, and she knew that it would pique his. He could do it single-handed. And, being a very clear-headed young woman, she realized that she herself would come in on the ground floor. That was apart from any commission.

“Well, it happens that I do know something about Mr. Quantox, and if you want to you can find out for yourself in London. I’m Mr. Marbury’s secretary.”

“Marbury?”

She glanced at him, then remembered that he had just arrived from the wilds. Otherwise he might have known about Felix.

“Yes. It’s rather a wonderful story, and quite well-known in the City. He has an extraordinary financial judgment. He’s continually being asked to support this or that company, but is never influenced by anything but his own decision. If he chose to finance a company to develop your concessions, you could regard the thing as settled.”

“I say,” blurted Bruce, “aren’t you awfully young for this sort of thing?”

She laughed. “Am I? You’re not so very advanced yourself.”

“I know that, but——”

He sent her a glance that she interpreted very accurately. So many glances like that, and often from men she did not know. As to this one, all she felt was that he was too trusting for his own safety. He was big and strong, but so far as London was concerned, defenceless. She felt nothing sentimental for him. Just rather protective. Queer to feel that for a man!

Bruce had mixed feelings. He began to wonder whether he had not told Quantox too much. But here he was telling this girl the same story. She looked straight. He would swear that she was.

“Are you thinking that I talk too easily about my own affairs?” he demanded abruptly.

She nodded. “I do, rather. In London you mustn’t. Too many people there who live on whatever they can pick up. You wouldn’t be considered at all.”

“Is Quantox like that?”

“I’d sooner not say any more about him.”

“If Mr. Marbury took up this thing, would you have to do with it?”

That was a pointed question, and she knew why it was put. This angle of it did not disturb her. She saw quite clearly that if he went to Felix it would not be with the sole object of getting backing. Also she had read without the slightest difficulty the real design of Felix concerning herself. It didn’t alarm her, and her own business future was too brilliant to upset things. Not yet! And if in the meantime another man were ushered on to the stage, the result might be distinctly worth while.

“Yes,” she said, digging her stick into the soft ground, “I’d have more or less to do with it. Of course, I can’t say that he will take it up.”

“Right!” He got this out explosively. “I’ll forget about Quantox and see your man. How do I see him?”

“I’m going up to town to-morrow. I’ll speak to him and write.”

“Holidays over?” He was frankly disappointed.

“Yes.”

He was silent for a moment. Then, abruptly: “I say, isn’t it odd?”

“Just what?”

“If you hadn’t happened to ask for that match, this wouldn’t have happened either. Now suppose the thing goes through, and we both do well out of it, wouldn’t you rather feel that the whole affair had been meant—I mean our meeting and all that?”

He spoke lightly, but his eyes were serious. Frances confessed to a twinge of regret. Later on would he feel that she had used him? Was she, after all, so very different from Quantox? Profit—that was it! She and Quantox both after profit! A slow blush crept into her cheek, and instantly she saw that he misunderstood it. But the twinge had not passed.

“I don’t know whether things are meant—or not. Sometimes they seem to be, when one looks back at them. And I hope, too, that everything will go as you want it to.” Then, realizing how a man like this might interpret the word “everything,” she added hurriedly, “I’ll see Mr. Marbury as soon as I reach the office.”

At the point of a preternatural intelligence, Felix had achieved amazing success. There was nothing to his knowledge with which he could compare it. He surveyed the careers of other men pre-eminent in the financial world, and found that their lives were open books. They got their start in such and such a way; they advanced from that, generally slowly and laboriously; they became a little better known; they associated themselves with this or that prominent group, and—after a while—they emerged at the head of it. But they never stood quite alone.

How utterly different in his own case! He owed nothing to anybody. He had no associations, no obligations. He was as free as the wind. And, best of all, he was a mystery.

That appealed to him more than anything else, and he determined to maintain it. He would work behind a curtain. So from the very first he gave no hints, no information whatever. When he went in to see Burk he merely gave a month’s notice. Burk, not wanting to lose such a steady-going man, at once offered an increase, but Felix only smiled. When he approached Pumphrey, he began by showing him a passbook indicating a credit that made Pumphrey’s eyes bulge. Would Pumphrey join him at fifty per cent over his present salary? Merely office duties, and no personal responsibility. Pumphrey, swallowing his astonishment, asked how the thing had been done, whereas Felix smiled again and said that that was his affair. So it was settled.

Then Frances. Frances had been watching the change in the man much as one watches the chrysalis emerge from a cocoon. He was not a thing of beauty, he would never be a butterfly, but he was infinitely more impressive. It was the process of a man finding another man within himself, and to Frances the personality of this second one was compelling. It spoke of power—power that was the more striking because it was compassed in such an insignificant body.

She knew perfectly well what he anticipated with regard to herself, but she knew, also, that he would never bring her to that point, and she perceived, very shrewdly, that he did not understand women. In this she was right. He never had and never did understand them. Men—yes! But even in their case only up to a point. He could read their weakness, had shared their temptations, disillusionments and disappointments, had committed all their mental crimes, and explored with them secret and forbidden regions of which he never spoke. But he could not read the soul of a woman, and it was already written that because of this Felix would be called to pay the price.

Then Onslow Square. Anne had turned over its furnishing to a firm that often in the course of business found itself called upon to supply not only furniture, but taste. They did it all—cellar to attic. They put in a Tudor room, an Elizabethan room, and did her bedroom in fifteenth-century Italian style. She marvelled, and said nothing. It must be all right, because it cost so much. She didn’t worry about the cost, as the purse of Felix was evidently inexhaustible. Felix, for his part, didn’t seem interested. “Have anything you like,” he said. “It’s your house.”

That weighed on her like lead. It was hers, not his. He put it in her name, and, in doing this, moved another step away from her. She did not see what she could do to stop it, and he seemed to be building a wall round himself. The old days when they used to squabble and make it up—and kiss—and be fairly happy till the next squabble—those days had vanished! Brixton was a dream!