Читать книгу Prodigals of Monte Carlo - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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Hargrave Wendever began the next day without any of that sense of boredom which had at times depressed him. Subconsciously he knew that something fresh and tragic had taken its place in his life, but with that knowledge was born also the stern intention to keep the memory of it back in the secret places, to live through his days without brooding or profitless regrets. Nearer the surface, he was aware of a new interest, a new search to conduct. He noticed with satisfaction that Andrews, who when in town combined the duties of butler and valet, was looking a little tired.

“You’re not quite yourself to-day, Andrews,” he remarked, as, after his bath and leisurely toilet were completed, he sat down to breakfast. “I’ve been keeping you up too late, I’m afraid.”

Andrews negatived the suggestion emphatically but respectfully.

“Not at all, Sir Hargrave,” he insisted. “The fact is——”

He coughed and hesitated. Hargrave did his best to adopt a sympathetic attitude.

“Some little trouble?” he suggested hopefully. “Get it off your chest, Andrews.”

“Not at all, Sir Hargrave,” the man replied. “The fact is, the wife has come into a bit of money lately—an uncle of hers who kept a public house—and we had a sort of celebration—after you’d gone to bed, of course, sir—a little party round in the mews here. We were not perhaps altogether discreet.”

“I see,” Hargrave murmured, his expectations somewhat dashed. “Congratulate your wife for me, Andrews. I hope that won’t mean that you’re not coming down South with me?”

“Not at all, Sir Hargrave,” the man assured him. “We are, I am thankful to say, in easy circumstances, but we know a good place when we have it.”

Hargrave finished his breakfast and presently strolled out towards his coiffeur. On the way he called at his gunmaker’s. A superior but despondent-looking young man came forward and received his complaint about some too lightly loaded cartridges.

“Very sorry, sir,” he apologised. “I’ll see that it doesn’t happen again.”

“Business seems a little quiet with you,” Hargrave remarked, glancing around.

“It’s just a trifle early, sir,” the young man explained. “As a matter of fact, we’ve never had a better season.”

“Mr. Martin keeping well?” Hargrave enquired, referring to the principal of the firm.

Mr. Martin came hurriedly forward to answer the enquiry for himself.

“Very well indeed, thank you, Sir Hargrave,” he announced; “very well but a bit worried.”

Hargrave tapped a cigarette upon his case thoughtfully. He remembered stories he had heard about respectable tradesmen who had been obliged to go through the ignominy of failure through lack of sufficient capital.

“Worried, eh?” he repeated. “Why, how’s that, Mr. Martin? Business is good, isn’t it?”

“Never knew it better,” the gunmaker confessed. “The fact is, sir,” he confided, lowering his voice, “I’ve had a very wonderful offer for amalgamation with another firm—one of the tiptop houses—and I can’t quite make up my mind whether to accept it or not.”

“I see,” Hargrave murmured, by this time thoroughly discouraged. “Well, good luck to you, whichever way you decide.”

Notwithstanding a slight rain he continued his journey on foot and came to the conclusion by the time he had reached his hair-dresser’s that he had never seen a more contented and cheerful-looking lot of pedestrians. At the coiffeur’s he was received with all the consideration due to an occasional but respected client. He submitted himself to the ministrations of his regular attendant, who shaved him and trimmed his hair.

“You’re looking very well, Sir Hargrave, if I may be permitted to say so,” the young man remarked.

“Yes, I’m very well,” Hargrave acknowledged. “Sorry I can’t say the same of you,” he added, with a sudden gleam of hope as he noticed the lines under the young man’s eyes. “You look as though you needed a holiday. A month down at the seaside, eh?”

The assistant leaned confidentially down.

“To tell you the truth, sir,” he admitted, “me and my young woman had a bit of a tiff last night. She’s earning too much money, and that makes her uppish. I worried about it and couldn’t sleep. She’ll be all right to-day, though.”

“I hope so,” Hargrave remarked drily, as he rose to his feet, slipped his usual tip into the young man’s hand and passed into the manicure room.

The manageress bustled forward to meet him.

“Miss Martin is disengaged, sir,” she announced, “the only young lady we have free at the moment.”

“Miss Martin will do very nicely for me,” Hargrave replied, as he seated himself in the vacant cubicle.

Entirely from this recently acquired habit, he looked more closely than ever before into the face of the attendant who had drawn her stool to his side. She was perhaps a little pale, but it was a face entirely free from any signs of discontent. For the first time, he realised that she was, notwithstanding the extreme simplicity of her clothes, a remarkably good-looking young woman. She had a clear skin, utterly untouched by cosmetics, soft hazel-brown eyes, a quantity of neatly arranged light brown hair, and a delightful mouth. Her figure—peculiarly graceful she seemed as she leaned forward—was still the figure of a young girl, and the casual interest with which he had looked at her was merged, somewhat to his surprise, in a genuine admiration. Nevertheless she bent over her task, as he was bound to perceive, with rather less animation than was her custom.

“Is it my fancy,” he asked presently, “or are you not quite as cheerful as usual this morning?”

She looked up at him quickly, almost nervously.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s hard to be cheerful this weather, though, isn’t it?”

“I should think so,” he admitted, looking gloomily out of the window.

“Besides,” she went on, “as a rule you have the air of not wanting to talk much.”

“I’m afraid you must find me a little unsociable.”

She shook her head.

“Not at all. Why should you expect to be talked to or to talk whilst you are having your nails done? Purposeless conversation is so irritating, isn’t it?”

“One might talk more seriously,” he suggested.

She examined one of his nails thoughtfully and changed the file she was using.

“One might,” she admitted, “but it would be rather difficult to find different subjects with one’s casual clients, wouldn’t it? They tell me, for instance, that you’re a hunting man. Well, I don’t know anything about hunting.”

“I hear enough of it down at home,” he remarked. “I’d rather talk about what interests you—the best film to see, or the best show at the theatres.”

“There again, I’m no use,” she confided. “I haven’t been to either for a month.”

Hargrave sat up a little in his chair.

“Why not?” he ventured.

“Lack of invitations, I suppose,” she answered lightly. “One or two people who used to ask me out sometimes don’t bother about me any more. I have come to the conclusion that I am a very unpopular person.”

He looked at her again curiously. Although he was not in any sense of the word a woman’s man, he had very correct tastes, and with them considerable insight. He realised for the first time, in those few moments, that apart from her physical qualities she was really a young woman of marked attractions. Her expression pleased him. There was a pleasant frankness about her speech, a lack of embarrassment without familiarity which was distinctive. Her personality, too, impressed him more favourably every time he looked at her.

“If I may say so without impertinence,” he remarked, “I should have thought that you would have been a very popular person indeed amongst the younger members of my sex.”

“I really am not,” she assured him, smiling. “Even if I were, I don’t know that it would give me much satisfaction. Most of the young men I meet, at any rate, are painfully alike in every respect.”

“I’m afraid we older ones are pretty well made in the same mould,” he ventured.

She looked up at him quickly.

“I would rather think that you weren’t,” she said.

She completed her task, handed him a ticket and rose a little abruptly to her feet. She shook her head dubiously at the tip he laid upon the table.

“You should not give me so much,” she protested.

He affected not to hear, and hurried off. At the door, he glanced around. She was standing with her hands behind her, looking out through the streaming windowpanes, and there was something in her expression which haunted him for the rest of the day.

Hargrave lunched by appointment with Marston at his Club. The conversation was casual enough until the cigars and coffee had arrived. Then Hargrave, after a careful glance around the room to make sure that they were not overheard, leaned forward in his chair.

“John,” he confided, “I want to buy O. P. Trusts.”

The broker nodded.

“For investment?”

“For a speculation.”

Marston looked at his host keenly.

“You know the man who holds nearly all the stock?”

“I know,” Hargrave assented. “Andrea Trentino—the man who broke poor Ned Penlow.”

“A great pal of yours, Ned Penlow, wasn’t he?”

“He was so much of a pal,” Hargrave admitted, “that for the last two years I have been wondering whether I wouldn’t try to get even with that blackguard Trentino. I came to the conclusion that it might cost even more than I could afford. Within the last few hours I’ve changed my mind.”

“The Company isn’t doing any too well,” Marston pointed out, a little dubiously. “I wouldn’t get in too deep.”

“That’s just the reason,” Hargrave remarked, “why I think Trentino will be eager to sell. What I want him to be is just a little too eager. So long as he doesn’t know who’s buying, I should think that might happen.”

“You want to control the stock?”

“I want to do more than that—I want to corner it.”

Marston considered the matter for a moment or two.

“Well,” he said, “it’s just the sort of semi-proprietory affair which might make the thing possible, but it’s only just to point out that it might involve you in very heavy loss. Trentino’s a shrewd fellow.”

“I’m willing to lose half a million, if necessary,” Hargrave announced.

The stockbroker was not altogether comfortable. Hargrave was considerably more than a client. The two men were really in their way friends, and the memory of last night’s conversation loomed up before Marston in sinister fashion.

“You’re a bit reckless, aren’t you, what?” he ventured.

“There are times in a man’s life when he gets that way,” was the indifferent reply.

“Apropos of our conversation last night,” Marston began—

His companion checked him.

“Get ahead with the buying and let me hear from you continually, John,” he directed. “I shall be off to Monte Carlo in a day or two. There’s always a bed for you at the villa, or a room at the hotel, if you feel like running down as my guest.”

“Shouldn’t I love it!” the other sighed, with a glance through the window at the murky obscurity outside. “I might take you at your word.”

Hargrave rose to his feet.

“You’ll be very welcome at any time,” he said, as the two men strolled towards the door together.

At the corner of Bond Street, Hargrave came face to face with Miss Violet Martin. Save for his recently awakened interest, he would certainly have failed to recognise her. She wore a shabby mackintosh, a hat, once becoming enough, but whose antiquity was only justified by the abominable weather, and the umbrella, which she was clutching in her hand, displayed at least one partially naked rib. She looked at him with surprise, as he accosted her.

“A tragedy has happened,” he announced solemnly. “Forgive my stopping you, but I have broken a finger nail.”

She suddenly laughed, for the humour of his grave tone was irresistible.

“If you’ll come in, I’ll see what I can do for you,” she suggested.

He turned as though to accompany her. She shook her head.

“In ten minutes, please,” she begged. “I—I have a call to make.”

“In ten minutes,” he assented tactfully.