Читать книгу General Besserley's Puzzle Box - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 3

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“General,” his companion pronounced, “you are getting fat. Too many cocktails.”

General Besserley, late of the Secret Service at Washington and now a very popular member of Monaco society, glanced downwards at his slightly increasing outline. He was rather a fine figure of a man and his carriage was beyond reproach, but it was certainly true that there was sometimes a little difficulty about the two bottom buttons of his waistcoat.

“Gas, Nicolas,” he confided. “I have spoken to the doctor once or twice about it lately. Not an ounce of fat anywhere. Gas—that’s what it is. Purely a temporary affair.”

The General proved that there was truth in his universal reputation as an obstinate man by summoning a waiter and pointing to his empty glass. The two men were seated at the most desirable corner table of the Royalty Bar at Monte Carlo. They were sheltered from the full glare of the sun by the trees which overhung the picturesque little place, amongst whose broad tropical leaves a pleasant breeze from the Mediterranean was rustling. It was a very attractive spot in which to spend an idle hour and habitués were arriving every few moments.

“As for you, Nicolas,” he went on deliberately, “I would sooner burst my clothes every time I put them on than go about the world with a lank body and a dyspeptic, hangdog expression like yours. If you were not by way of being a pal, I would not even allow you to watch me drink a cocktail! I would make you take your lemon juice elsewhere. By-the-by, that reminds me—why have you come hunting me up this morning? Francis told me that you had telephoned.”

Mr. Nicolas Fox, Nickey to his very few cronies, coughed slightly.

“Yes, I did just want a word with you, General,” he acknowledged. “Any fresh taps upon the puzzle box?”

“Not a sign of one.”

Mr. Fox pulled out his underlip.

“Well,” he continued, “I am told you may have one before long. There is a young fellow here—been playing pretty high at trente et quarante and roulette the last few days. Last night in the Sporting Club he was playing maximums at trente et quarante and maximums at roulette at the same time.”

“Bad sign,” General Besserley agreed gloomily. “Shows the thing has got hold of him. I think I know the young fellow you mean, but I don’t seem to have heard his name.”

“Lavarie he calls himself. Guy Lavarie. I see he’s got ‘Bart.’ after his name in the visitors’ book in the Hôtel de Paris.”

Mr. Nicolas Fox’s narrow eyes seemed to have drawn a trifle nearer to each other. It was obvious that he was watching his companion intently. The latter, however, evinced no evidence of familiarity with the name.

“What makes you imagine,” he inquired, “that this young fellow might be bringing his troubles to me?”

“Two things,” was the cautious reply. “First, I saw him talking pretty fiercely to Sichel—he’s the head of the credit department at the Sporting Club, as I expect you know. He didn’t seem to be getting on with him at all. Secondly, he is rather the type of young fellow you take an interest in.”

The General frowned.

“You are suggesting, I suppose, that I might help him financially,” he exclaimed indignantly.

“Well, you have the reputation here of putting your hand in your pocket pretty freely,” his friend rejoined.

“They will call me a moneylender next,” was the irate protest.

“They do now! I have heard more than one person wondering why the Establishment doesn’t give you a hint to leave Monte Carlo. If there’s any money-lending to be done that’s safe, they like to do it themselves.”

General Besserley chuckled. He knew his own business very well indeed, as also did the august members of the Société, and he knew that no one was less likely to receive that polite little suggestion that other pleasure resorts might be the gainers by his presence. He was no gambler but he was a rich man and he never hesitated to pay for his amusements.

“It’s this dyspepsia of yours that makes you take an embittered outlook on life, Nickey,” he sympathised. “You don’t realise the privilege you possess in being entitled to call yourself my friend. I am an honoured citizen of this Principality and persona grata with the authorities.”

“No doubt the Prince will be inviting you to high tea at the Palace before the season’s over!” Nicolas Fox suggested.

“If an invitation should come from the Palace, as is by no means unlikely,” the General declared, his fingers caressing his perfectly tied cravat, “it will be an affair of dinner at nine o’clock, orders worn. Chaffing apart, though, my sick friend, what is it that you want this morning? You have paid for a drink for me and you yourself have drunk two of those foul lemon juices. You must be expecting to get something out of it.”

“Because I don’t throw my money away in reckless fashion and because I happen to have been a member of the legal profession, I believe you think that I am a miser,” his companion grumbled.

“No more asides. Get along with it, Nicolas. I guess by the clumsy way you led up to it that you have something to say about this young fellow Lavarie.”

“Singularly enough,” Nicolas Fox admitted, with a great show of candour, “I have. It’s just this, General. You know I always take an interest in you. I wouldn’t see you get a raw deal. I’ve got it sort of settled in my mind that he will be looking you up before the day’s over. They cleaned him up last night and he’s not said a word about giving up his room. I found that out at the reception bureau at the hotel this morning. It’s not likely he would stay here without gambling and I’m pretty sure that he’s come to the end of the ready. The Casino have done their little bit. They have nothing more to say to him in the way of cheques or loans. That’s why he will be coming to you.”

“I don’t dislike the look of the fellow,” Besserley remarked thoughtfully.

“You would dislike the look of his bank book if he showed it to you,” Nicolas Fox grunted.

“A man does not always keep his money in the bank,” was the General’s sententious comment. “To tell you the truth, I am not worrying so much about the young man just now. I am wondering why you thought it worth your while to track me down here to stop my lending him any money.”

It was obvious that Mr. Nicolas Fox was hurt. He called a waiter and demanded his bill.

“For everything except that last cocktail,” he directed.

He slowly picked up his gloves and Homburg hat.

“You think that you are very clever, Besserley,” he observed with dignity. “You can never give a friend credit for being disinterested.”

General Besserley, notwithstanding the strength of his face, was a man of jovial and kindly appearance and people sometimes forgot or overlooked his firm mouth and the shrewd though kindly light in his eyes. Mr. Nicolas Fox, on the other hand, “Foxy” as he had been called in his younger days, when he occupied a position in a well-known firm of Lincoln’s Inn lawyers, had little in his personality that was attractive. He suffered from an undue propinquity of his eyes. His complexion was certainly grey and unwholesome. Well tailored though he was, he had not his friend’s appearance—the appearance of a healthy man looking out upon a world which he liked and which liked him.

“Nicolas,” the latter said, “you are a cute fellow in your way, and honour bright, I do not dislike you or I would not be drinking with you. I would sooner keep friendly with you than have to make faces at you from the other side of the street. What you need is a little more candour. Why don’t you want me to lend this young man money?”

“He will only lose it.”

“Philanthropy, eh? That doesn’t go with me, Nickey. Try again.”

Mr. Fox shook his head.

“You are in one of your bright moods,” he said, as he rose to his feet. “Your brain is overactive. Suspicions stand out of you like feelers on a hypersensitive insect. I shall leave you alone.”

“It is the first time in my life,” Samuel Besserley, who was six feet two and broad in proportion, declared, “that I have been likened to an insect!”

Mr. Nicolas Fox stuck on his hat at what he considered a jaunty angle.

“We shall probably meet later on in the day,” was his valedictory remark. “If we do, be so good as not to refer to this morning’s conversation. I have changed my mind. I have no desire to save you pecuniary loss. A little bleeding will do you no harm. However, you can remember this. If you want to take an extremely wise precautionary step and incidentally to gratify the curiosity of a friend, let me know, if this man should come to you, the nature of the security he offers, if he should, by chance, plead for a loan. So long, General. You understand—the nature of the security he offers.”

He sauntered off. General Besserley leaned farther back in his chair, exchanged amenities with a neighbour and decided that life was good. At the farther end of the place a swarthy Neapolitan, with a tuneful guitar, was making pleasant and romantic music. Young women in pretty frocks bowed and smiled at the popular and generous American as they passed. Men in all conditions of life nodded to him knowingly, respectfully or in friendly fashion. He received many invitations to join other tables, to all of which he replied with the same excuse—“Waiting for a friend.” As a matter of fact, he was doing nothing of the sort. He was still pondering about the indefinite conversation with his friend. Why should Nicolas Fox be interested in the nature of the security which Sir Guy Lavarie might have to offer for a loan?

His reflections were presently disturbed very much in the manner he had hoped for. A smart two-seater automobile, built so low that its chassis seemed almost to touch the ground, swung round the open space in front of the bar and was cleverly piloted to a narrow vacancy. A girl, so pretty that, although she was a familiar figure, there was a little buzz of admiration from the different tables in the place, sprang to the ground, followed by a young man who would himself have been good-looking enough if his face had possessed some of the healthy tan of his companion’s. Both were in tennis kit and had evidently come straight from the courts. The girl laid her hand upon his arm.

“Behold,” she pointed out, “there’s Uncle Sam—the large, good-natured-looking person with the carnation in his buttonhole, at the corner table.”

The young man glanced with covert curiosity in the direction indicated.

“Why, he looks more like an English country gentleman than a millionaire likely to help a fellow out of a hole,” he declared.

“The General is not a moneylender,” the girl assured him, a little indignantly. “He is a very dear friend of mine. Everyone in Monte Carlo loves him. He gives good advice sometimes to young idiots like you, who gamble more than they can afford to, and he may offer them a loan now and then, but moneylenders are not allowed in the Principality. You ought to know that.”

“I thought he did it on the quiet, perhaps,” the young man confessed. “You must introduce me, if you will, after we have had our cocktail.”

They turned into the flower-hung enclosure.

“He will have gone away if we wait till then,” the girl declared. “We will take our cocktails with him. Come along.”

Her companion, a trifle unwillingly, was led to the table where Besserley was seated in solitary dignity. The latter’s smile was almost cherubic as he greeted the girl.

“My dear Grace,” he exclaimed, “you are late this morning. I was beginning to think that I should have to trudge down to my lunch without a sight of you.”

“Tennis, my dear,” she told him. “Such good tennis. This was my partner. General Besserley—Sir Guy Lavarie. The General is one of our Monte Carlo institutions.”

“So I understand,” the young man remarked, shaking hands.

“Sit down and have a cocktail,” the General invited. “Lady Grace, you won’t desert us?”

“For a moment or two only,” she promised. “Order me a ‘sidecar’, please. There are one or two people I must speak to.”

She passed on to an adjacent table, waving her hand and exchanging greetings with many friends. Besserley smiled as he summoned the waiter and gave his order.

“Lady Grace calls me an institution,” he remarked. “She is a great deal more in the running than I am, though. The most popular young woman we have, I think.”

“She is very charming,” was the somewhat absent reply. “Plays a good game of tennis too. I used to know her when she was a schoolgirl, but upon my word I had forgotten her until Mendel, the secretary, introduced me the other day.”

The General was not at all sure that he was going to like this young man.

“People do not, as a rule, forget Lady Grace,” he observed stiffly.

Sir Guy drained off his cocktail at a gulp. There was a flash of something more pleasant in his tone and expression as he turned to his companion.

“Forgive my apparent greed,” he begged. “I am ordering another for both of us. You don’t mind? I had a late night.... Of course, Grace Shardlow is perfectly charming but she was quite a revelation to me. She was actually at boarding school when I saw her last.”

Besserley was mollified.

“I hear that you have been taking them on at the tables. Done any good?”

The young man indulged in a significant grimace.

“I have lost a great deal more money than I can afford,” he confessed. “The fact of it is, General, when I asked to be introduced to you—I hope you won’t be offended—it was with a definite object.”

“You were told that I was a moneylender, eh?”

“Of course not,” was the emphatic reply. “On the other hand, I did hear that you were the likeliest person about here to give anyone a leg up, provided he was a decent sort of a chap: the kind of fellow, for instance, who would pay back a loan.”

The General’s smile was not discouraging.

“I lend money sometimes when it pleases me,” he admitted. “It has to be, however, to a friend or to a friend’s friend. I am not by any means a professional at the game, though.”

“May I look you up and see if I can touch you for a spot of the ready?” Sir Guy asked diffidently.

“Come and have an early cocktail with me—say, seven o’clock at my rooms in the Paris,” the other invited.

Lady Grace, breaking off her conversation abruptly at an adjoining table, bore down upon them.

“Save me, Uncle Sam, please,” she implored. “All that mouldy crowd of Uncle Antony’s are bothering me to come to a luncheon. I swore I was lunching with you but would try to get you to excuse me. Don’t dare to let me down!”

He shook his head with well-assumed reluctance.

“You can’t be excused, my dear. Ré’s in half an hour. Go back and tell your friends that elderly gentlemen are very sensitive and cannot be thrown over in that fashion.”

She lingered for a moment, then did as she was bidden. Perhaps the slight cloud on her face was due to the fact that her prospective host did not include Sir Guy in his invitation.

Ré’s is one of those old-fashioned, dignified restaurants which owes its success to the excellence of its cooking and to the exclusive nature of its clients. A new patron is looked upon with suspicion and strangers meet with a very cold reception indeed. On the other hand the cooking, personally supervised by the proprietor, is above criticism, and the bills for the same, personally supervised by his better half, account in some measure for its obvious lack of appeal to the general public. General Besserley and his guest, at a corner table in the window, talked of many things. Lady Grace, who had changed her tennis things for a cool, white linen frock and a fascinating béret, took her companion seriously to task on gastronomic matters.

“Uncle Sam,” she said firmly, “your penchant for all these rich meals, especially in the middle of the day, will get you into trouble. Mayonnaise is a very good thing on a lobster salad, but mayonnaise such as you have ordered, delicious though it may be, is a sin! Some day you will fall in love and then the trouble will begin!”

“You mean that I shall have to bant,” he observed. “I am not so sure. The days when nobody loved a fat man have passed.”

“Seriously, my dear, you should be careful,” she advised him. “But begin being careful when I am not lunching with you! How did you like my new young man?”

“He is personable,” was the blunt admission, “but they say that he has been gambling very heavily and has no money. A young man like that is not much good to anybody, my dear.”

She was silent for a few minutes.

“I’m afraid he is rather reckless,” she acknowledged. “What are you going to do about him?”

“That depends upon whether I take a fancy to him or not. Do you want me to take a fancy to him for your sake?”

She felt his keen eyes fixed upon her. His question was almost a demand.

“No,” she answered, after a moment’s hesitation. “I am not so far gone as that.”

A transfiguring smile changed his whole expression. She drew a sigh of relief.

“How handsome you can be when you are really agreeable, Uncle Sam,” she murmured.

The luncheon, of course, with the Ré cuisine and its donor’s gift of selection, was a marvellous meal. Nevertheless, about half-way through its service, Besserley glanced down the room and temporarily lost his appetite. Making his way towards the opposite corner table, with a somewhat sheepish grin upon his sallow face, was his friend Nicolas Fox and, accompanying him, lounged the young man whose losses the night before had become the subject of gossip!

“You see that?” the General pointed out.

His guest nodded and waved her hand.

“He told me he was probably lunching with a man who was a partner in the firm of lawyers his father used to employ,” she confided.

“Nickey must have left the firm soon after your friend was born,” her vis-à-vis acquiesced. “All the same, once a lawyer, always a rascal! I’ll bet Nickey is not spending money on a lunch for nothing.”

Mr. Nicolas Fox’s hospitality had, at any rate, definite limits. He ordered the table d’hôte luncheon and, meeting with a somewhat indifferent response from his guest as to wine, chose a vin rosé.

“Is Mr. Fox a very rich man?” Lady Grace inquired.

“In wits, perhaps,” was the somewhat sardonic reply. “I’m afraid that’s mostly where his wealth lies. If he has a fortune tucked away, I fancy his bank doesn’t know about it.”

“Then I don’t see what use he is to Guy,” the girl meditated.

“Nobody could be of any use,” her host said firmly, “to a young man who has no money, no prospects and wants to borrow with a view of going on gambling.”

“It doesn’t sound,” she laughed, “as though you were going to be much use, either.”

“I don’t think I am,” he agreed.

For some reason—perhaps the table d’hôte luncheon failed to please or the vin rosé was sour—the opposition luncheon party was brought to an end whilst the General and his guest were still meditating about their final crêpes Suzette. Adieux were exchanged and the two men left the restaurant. A few minutes later, during the temporary absence from the small room of the maître d’hôtel and the waiter, Besserley rose lightly to his feet, made his way to the table which the two men had occupied and, stooping down, picked up a slip of paper which lay upon the floor. He glanced at it and placed it carefully in his pocketbook. His companion watched him with a significant smile.

“Is that something which Sir Guy or Mr. Fox dropped?” she asked.

“Evidently.”

“Hadn’t you better put it in an envelope and give it to me to give to Sir Guy? I shall be seeing him this evening.”

“So shall I—probably before you.”

After that a different atmosphere seemed to reign. With the coffee he leaned over and laid his fingers upon his companion’s wrist.

“Lady Grace,” he said severely, “you are not behaving well.”

“In what respect?”

“You have it in your mind that I have picked up something which belongs to someone else and have no intention of returning it.”

“Well,” she admitted, “doesn’t it rather look like it?”

“To a superficial intelligence, perhaps,” he acknowledged gravely. “I have known you since you were a child, though. Have I ever done anything that you would consider dishonourable?”

“Never.”

“In this hotbed of gossip, as often as not malicious,” he went on, “have you ever heard anyone suggest that I have been guilty of a dishonourable action?”

“Never.”

“Very well, then,” he insisted, “don’t let a momentary prejudice or a fancy that just flits through your brain carry any weight. If I do not at once return this paper to whom it belongs, it is for the sake of your friend, Sir Guy Lavarie.”

She leaned over and kissed him in brazen fashion on the cheek.

“I am a silly idiot, my dear man,” she confessed. “I would trust you whatever you do.”

Sir Guy Lavarie presented himself at General Besserley’s apartment at precisely the hour arranged. He was received in the usual Anglo-Saxon fashion.

“Cocktail or whisky and soda?”

“Dry Martini, please,” the visitor begged.

The General, with meticulous care but disdaining a measure, mixed two cocktails at the sideboard and poured them out with a professional air. His guest was impressed.

“You seem to have got that exactly right, sir,” he commented, setting down his glass.

“Took me years,” was the gratified admission. “I think I could do it now blindfold. It’s just the fraction more gin than vermouth that’s difficult.... So you lunched with my friend Nickey Fox this morning?”

The young man nodded.

“He doesn’t seem to have lost interest in the family affairs, either. He was asking questions from the moment we sat down until we had finished our coffee.”

“What about?”

“Chiefly about some wretched gold mine in which my father lost all his money.”

“What did he want to know about it?”

Sir Guy raised his eyebrows.

“I don’t see that that has anything to do with our business,” he said. “As a matter of fact, he was wondering why my father took over all the shares which he had sold to his friends and why he sold them back to Lord Wendover, the chairman of another mine, at about sixpence each.”

“And why did he?”

“Not for any reason you could hope to make a man like Mr. Fox understand,” was the caustic reply. “He took the shares back because he had advised his friends to buy them. He sold them for nothing because they were worth nothing.”

“Did Fox offer to lend you any money?”

The young man smiled.

“I didn’t ask him. As a matter of fact, we didn’t get on together particularly well. Mr. Fox was not a very agreeable host and I am sure I was a very unappreciative guest. All the time he gave me the idea that he was trying to worm something out of me, and all the time I knew that I had nothing to tell.”

Besserley motioned his guest to a chair and handed over a box of cigarettes.

“Let’s get down to business,” he suggested. “You have been gambling out here, you have lost your money and you want to borrow some more.”

“Quite true,” the other assented, “if I can find anyone idiot enough to lend it to me.”

“We’ll see later on. What do you want to do with it? Do you want to replace what you have lost in England, or do you want to have another shy at the gambling?”

“I want to go on gambling. A few months ago, just as I realised that I was absolutely penniless, an old aunt left me seven thousand pounds. Seven thousand pounds didn’t seem the faintest use to me. I could not live in my own house upon the interest of it, I couldn’t shoot, ride or even pay my servants’ wages. Of course, I didn’t expect to come out here and pick up money easily, but I did think that it was about time that my luck turned, and if I could even have doubled that seven thousand of mine I might have got along somehow.”

“And instead you lost it?”

“I not only lost it,” the young man admitted frankly, “but the cashier at the Sporting is expecting me to give him a cheque for five hundred when I come in this evening, and that happens to be considerably more than I have in the bank.”

The General’s smile was both agreeable and sympathetic.

“Not by any means an unheard-of situation,” he observed. “What are you going to do about it? Cheques that are not met lead to all sorts of unpleasantness in this part of the world.”

Sir Guy flushed.

“I have just sufficient personal belongings to raise enough money to honour that cheque when I give it,” he confided. “The point is, however, that I am not satisfied. I don’t feel knocked out yet. I want to borrow a few thousand pounds and have another go.”

“You are very frank,” his host remarked, lighting a cigarette and pushing the box once more across the table.

“I always try to be.”

“What security have you?”

“Not a single scrap.”

“What about the house? Lavarie Court used to be rather a famous place, I was told.”

“Two mortgages. If it had to go up for sale, the second mortgagee would lose money.”

“Any furniture?”

“Also mortgaged. There’s some Queen Anne and Chippendale stuff which might pull the thing straight, but not a penny over.”

The General reflected.

“Horses, guns, furniture in town flat?” he suggested. “Jewellery?”

“Nothing worth a bean. The pearl studs I wear in the evening are the only jewellery I ever possessed. Might be worth eighty pounds at a pinch.”

“Well, that doesn’t make things very easy, does it? Didn’t your father leave any shares or life insurance?”

“He left nothing.”

Besserley reflected for several moments upon that slip of paper which he had picked up in Ré’s restaurant.

“He had interests once in South African gold mines, didn’t he? The East Ungwar, I think, was the name of the mine.”

“He had very large interests in that particular one, unfortunately,” the young man acknowledged. “It helped to ruin him. He believed in it. He even went so far as to go out to South Africa to inspect it. The mine went ‘phut’ and the little he had left he spent taking the shares back from the people he had advised to buy them.”

The General’s thoughts were still upon that scrap of paper.

“And where are the shares now?” he asked.

The young man sighed.

“I have already told you that they were worthless,” he said, “but as a matter of fact, my father sold them before he died.”

“Privately or upon the market?”

Sir Guy laughed scornfully.

“There was no quotation whatever upon the market,” he confided. “They were taken over by the West Ungwar, which seems to be a very prosperous concern. They only wanted them to secure their right of water which passes near. They gave about sixpence a share, which was supposed to be a great deal more than they were worth. It was before your friend Mr. Fox’s time, but he seemed to know something about it.... Damn good cocktail that was.”

The General took the hint. He rather liked the laugh in the young man’s eyes when he made the suggestion.

“No, sir,” the latter continued, as he accepted the glass. “I am not worth a bob in the world. I have tried to earn money for the last five years and failed. I can quite understand that no sane person would be willing to lend me any. Let’s forget it. One doesn’t starve nowadays, anyway.”

“Do you feel lucky this evening?”

“What’s the good?” the young man demanded, with a new note of sullenness in his tone. “I went into the ‘kitchen’ this afternoon for half an hour until it was time for my tennis match. My numbers were turning up at every table I went to and at the trente et quarante table there was run of sixteen upon red—the only colour I back!”

“Too bad,” his host sympathised, unlocking a despatch box. “Give me an I.O.U. for a hundred mille, young fellow. That will enable you to pay back the Sporting Club people and amuse you for the evening. I will see you again to-morrow.”

Sir Guy accepted the notes without hesitation and signed the I.O.U.

“You will have to wait the devil of a time for your money if I lose,” he warned his benefactor.

“If you lose, you may have to wait the devil of a time before you get any more,” the General assured him.

The young man pocketed the notes.

“Why are you lending me this money?” he asked curiously.

“That is a very intelligent question to which I have no reply,” was the smiling rejoinder. “I am going to turn you out now. I have a telephone call coming through from London.”

“Shall I see you later?”

“Sporting Club for dinner, a couple of hours’ roulette afterwards and a look at this new dancer in the Night Club—that’s my programme for the evening.”

“Then we shall certainly come across one another,” was the young man’s valedictory remark.

As a quarter to twelve on the following morning, General Besserley descended from a very handsome automobile and was bowed to his accustomed table by one of the urbane proprietors of the Royalty Bar. He was becomingly attired in grey flannels and panama hat, he wore the tie of a famous club, his pleasant rubicund face was fresh from the ministrations of the coiffeur and his hands showed signs of the manicurist’s care. Altogether he was a remarkably good-looking and well-turned-out specimen of the early middle-aged cosmopolitan just a trifle short of exercise. He ordered the customary Americano, which was the usual prelude to his two cocktails before luncheon, and, opening a tin of fragrant cigarettes, lit one with a sigh of pleasure. He had already exchanged a good many salutations but he had a peculiar way of giving his friends to understand when he wished for their company and when he preferred to remain for the time alone. To-day it was evidently solitude for the moment that appealed to him, and no one was tactless enough to encroach upon it. At twelve o’clock he took out his watch and frowned. He was a punctual man himself and he liked punctuality in others. At five minutes past twelve he summoned one of the white-coated waiters.

“Henri,” he directed, “ring up Mr. Fox at the Imperial Flats and say that General Besserley is waiting for him at the Royalty.”

The waiter hurried away. He returned very shortly.

“Mr. Fox was called unexpectedly to Paris yesterday evening, sir,” he announced.

The General’s lips were pursed in an imaginary whistle.

“Ah, indeed,” he murmured, half to himself.

The waiter drew a little nearer.

“The concierge said Paris, sir,” he went on, “but I happened to be in the agency of the C.A.F. last evening and I heard Mr. Fox asking if he could catch a plane from Le Bourget early this morning. It looked as though he were going to London.”

Besserley appeared grave but there was nevertheless a twinkle in his eye. This was indeed pleasant confirmation of his suspicions.

“Then I won’t wait any longer for my cocktail,” he observed. “The usual, Henri, if you please....”

Lady Grace came in a few minutes later with a large party. She detached herself at once and came over to where her friend was seated. He looked at her critically as he held her chair.

“Up late, my dear?” he asked.

“Latish,” she admitted. “That poor boy was so depressed that I had to take him on and dance.”

“Lost all his money, I suppose?”

She nodded.

“He had just kept enough for the supper. I’m afraid he is not lucky, Uncle Sam. What a pity it is that none of the nice people seem to be.”

Her companion watched the arrival of the cocktails and lit a cigarette.

“My dear,” he confided, “I am not so sure about that. I am inclined to think that Guy Lavarie is a very lucky young man indeed.”

“A pauper,” she exclaimed, “and with no idea how to earn money—only a singular capacity for losing it! You must have been digging very deep in your puzzle box, Uncle Sam!”

The General avoided the argument.

“Supposing he were rich,” he asked, looking at her steadily, “how should you feel about him, Grace?”

“Very much as I do now,” she answered. “I like him. I think that he is nice and there are so few nice men nowadays. Of course, there’s you, my dear,” she went on, letting her hand fall upon his. “But as every young woman in Monte Carlo has had a try for you and given it up, not to speak of dozens of grass widows, I expect I shall have to fall in line with them.”

“I have never noticed any particular effort on your part to win my young affections,” he reflected.

“Well, I can’t wear my heart upon my sleeve in Monte Carlo, of all places, can I?” she laughed.

“Supposing you tried to be serious for one moment,” he begged. “If this young man had money, would you marry him?”

“Would he ask me?” she fenced.

“If he did ask you,” Besserley persisted patiently.

She considered the matter.

“It is a very difficult question,” she confessed. “The only thing I can say is that I could not marry him unless he had money.”

“I suppose that is as near a definite reply as I am going to get, is it?” he asked bluntly.

A cryptic smile played about her lips.

“No girl really knows beforehand whether she is going to accept a man or not until he actually asks her,” she pronounced. “Then it depends very often upon a trifle—upon what sort of tie he is wearing, his use of pronouns, or whether he gets just the right amount of timbre in his voice.... Don’t let’s discuss such profitless questions. Is there any chance of the poor boy coming into money? I’m sure there’s not or he would have told me so.”

“He may not know himself,” the General meditated. “One cannot tell. Mr. Nicolas Fox has gone to London to find out. If Mr. Nicolas Fox returns to-morrow or the next day and offers him a loan on very liberal terms—”

“We were not speaking of miracles,” Grace interrupted with a laugh.

“Where is the lad this morning?”

“I really do not know,” she admitted. “He was not in our tennis four so he said he should stay at home and write letters.”

There was an uneasy look in her questioner’s face.

“I never,” he acknowledged, “feel entirely comfortable about the man who has been losing a great deal more money than he can afford to lose at Monte Carlo and who stays in on a fine morning to write letters.”

“You are lunching with us,” she reminded him, as she turned away.

“My dear, I am going to ask you to excuse me,” he begged. “It is only your young tennis crowd, I know, and I am not quite in the party humour.”

“You are not ill?” she asked anxiously.

“Liver,” he confided. “I shall lunch off a dry biscuit and a glass of soda water.”

She turned and laughed back at him as she answered a signal from her friends.

“You are not getting one scrap of sympathy from me,” she called out, “because I don’t believe a word of it.”

Nevertheless, General Besserley was not wholly at ease. The shadow of anxiety which had disturbed him at the Royalty Bar was increased when, upon asking for Sir Guy Lavarie at the Hôtel de Paris, he was civilly told that Sir Guy had left word that he was particularly engaged for the next two hours and did not wish to be disturbed.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the reception clerk apologised. “I am sure if he had known that you were going to call, it would have been a different affair but, as it is, perhaps it would be as well if you asked again or rang him up later in the day.”

“I will look Sir Guy up before dinner time,” his caller promised with well-assumed carelessness. “Number 279, isn’t it?”

“Quite so, sir.”

The General, however, had no intention of postponing his visit a second longer than was necessary. He ascended in the lift as though to go to his own rooms but he descended again almost at once to the floor below, paid a brief visit to the service room, where he helped himself to a master key from a drawer, went out on to the corridor and, boldly opening the door of Number 279, entered. The young man, who was seated at a writing table, turned his head impatiently. He recognised his visitor with surprise.

“How the devil did you get in?” he demanded. “I thought that I’d locked the door.”

Besserley was apologetic but firm.

“I have had some experience of young men going through a rough time in Monte Carlo who lock themselves up in their salons,” he explained. “I stole the passkey from the service room.”

“I don’t see what the devil right you have to do anything of the sort,” Lavarie exclaimed angrily. “How dare you force your way into my apartment?”

The General’s expression was entirely disarming.

“My young friend,” he said, “I am not quite so old as I look, perhaps, but I am still your senior by a great many years. I know the shape of a gun when a newspaper has been thrown hurriedly over it, and I know what the first impulse of a young man generally is after the excitement of gambling and the depression of losing, if he has nothing particular to look forward to in life.”

There was a glint of red in the young man’s eyes. His hand stole underneath the newspaper. The situation had suddenly become tense.

“Look here,” he rejoined, “there is no need for any beating about the bush. I have no particular grudge against you, sir, but if you don’t clear out right away, there’s going to be a double tragedy instead of a single one. I’m sorry about your hundred mille, if that’s what you’ve come for. You may get it or you may not. It was your own risk. I didn’t worry you for your money.”

“Of course you didn’t,” his unwelcome visitor admitted. “As a matter of fact, I’ve brought you another fifty mille to try your luck again to-night.”

Sir Guy stared in astonishment. A new emotion—surprise—found its way into his brain. From that moment Besserley knew that the situation was saved.

“A few minutes ago,” the former said deliberately, “I was quite convinced that I was temporarily insane and that a verdict to that effect would be entirely in order. Just now I am inclined to think that it is you who have gone off the deep end. Is this a new cure you are trying on me, like the half bottle of whisky a day for drunkards?”

The General, his hands in his pockets, lounged lazily across the room towards the window. With a sudden swift, but seemingly unhurried movement, the newspaper was swept away and the weapon underneath transferred to his own pocket. The young man watched him without apparent interest.

“You will make me a present of this as a memento in a few weeks’ time, young fellow,” he assured him. “Believe me, meanwhile, if I am an intruder, I have not come here to preach. I am rather a believer in suicide under certain circumstances. The trouble about you, though, is that you are a trifle hasty. I have a sort of fancy that your luck’s going to change.”

“You wouldn’t say so if you had seen my last few stakes at the tables,” was the bitter reply.

“I’m not talking of gambling. That’s a very small thing in life. I shouldn’t have said a word about this just yet if you had not hurried things to a crisis, but I hold a divining rod in such matters and I have a sort of fancy that you are coming into money.”

“It’s not possible,” was the fervent denial.

“Well, there’s one man who thinks it is,” the General declared. “That’s Nicolas Fox. He’s gone off to London to see about it—taken a plane so as to get there before I could interfere. I wouldn’t mind laying five to one that before twenty-four hours are past, you have either a very pleasant visit or a civil request from that gentleman to be allowed to lend you just as much money as you want.”

Sir Guy leaned back in his chair and laughed.

“Tragedies are off for the day, anyway,” he said. “Ring the bell, there’s a good fellow. It’s close to your finger. We’ll have a cocktail.”

“Nothing,” his self-invited guest pronounced heartily, “would give me greater pleasure.”

Refreshments were brought in by a rather relieved floor waiter, who stared in surprise at seeing a third person in the room.

“You may be nothing but an interfering old busybody, sir,” Lavarie continued, as soon as they were alone again. “There’s something about you I rather like, though. Here’s the best of health! Now, listen to me. You say that I am coming into money. I have not one single living relative who owns as much as a thousand pounds. I don’t possess a square yard of land unmortgaged standing in my own name. I don’t own a single share in any mine, land scheme, industrial concern or any of those Arabian Nights sort of things from which fortunes spring up in the night. I own nothing. Now, from whom and from where can a fortune come to me?”

His visitor chuckled.

“It is a problem, isn’t it? You sit tight, though, take another fifty mille from me to-night and by to-morrow something may have happened. I have been doing a little telephoning to London myself and I am getting a line on Mr. Fox.”

The young man smiled. He was really very good-looking at times.

“Of course, it’s all rubbish, but I shall do just what you say,” he conceded.

“Then get your hat,” the other enjoined, “and I will take you over to the Réserve at Beaulieu. You shall taste there the Jeunes Desmoiselles of the sea as no one else in the world except the Beaulieu chef can prepare them.”

Sir Guy took up his hat in meek obedience.

Mr. Nicolas Fox, through the accident of having taken a voiture from the station instead of waiting for the rather heavily laden bus, very nearly achieved the most successful escapade of his career as a schemer on the right side of the law. The paper was drawn up and a very dazed young man was already taking the fountain pen into his hand. The latter ventured upon one final protest.

“Look here, Mr. Fox,” he said, “before I sign, or rather before you hand me over that cheque you have been brandishing about, I want you clearly to understand this. I don’t own a single share in the West Ungwar Gold Mine. The East Ungwar Gold Mine, which practically broke my father, does not exist any longer, and if it did my father sold every share he possessed before his death. I shall borrow this money from you if you insist upon it, but I can see no earthly means of paying it back.”

Mr. Nicolas Fox wiped the perspiration from his forehead. Considering that he had ridden up from the station, his condition of fatigue certainly denoted a low state of vitality.

“You have some very valuable old furniture,” he declared impressively, “and as I told you before, Sir Guy, I think I could disentangle your estates more profitably than anyone else. I have plenty of money and it gives me pleasure to be a lender. Personally, I don’t mind if you gamble. The money is yours, or will be, when you have signed that paper, and I should not be surprised if you succeed in making a fortune. There was a Dutchman here last week who went away with a hundred thousand pounds.”

“Yes, that’s all very well,” Lavarie commented, in a rather worried tone, “but I see that this paper you want me to sign cedes to you any rights I might have remaining in the East or West Ungwar mines. Well, if I sign it, anyone would think that I had told you I had such rights, whereas I have told you quite frankly that I have not. The East Ungwar Gold Mine was wiped right out of existence, and in the West Ungwar even my father never owned a single share.”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Mr. Fox urged feverishly. “I only want this note as a matter of form. The thing must be done in a legal fashion and I have to prove that certain considerations have been given me for the loan. I agree with you that the consideration shewn is not worth a snap of the fingers but it makes the whole business right from a legal point of view.”

Sir Guy took up the pen and searched for the place where his signature was pencilled in. Just at that moment there was a knock at the door and General Besserley entered. The young man stared at him in amazement. There was something a good deal more malevolent in Mr. Nicolas Fox’s expression.

“Sorry if I am intruding,” the newcomer apologised. “They did tell me that you were engaged, Sir Guy, but I thought I’d better come right up. Hello, Nickey! What’s London like?”

“How did you know that I’d been to London?” the lawyer asked with a sickly smile.

“Nicolas Fox,” was the impressive reply, “you are one of those men whom I made a point of watching since we first met down here. A man who has an engagement to drink a cocktail with a friend and who slips away to London without saying a word—hiring a plane for half the journey, mind—is a man of suspicious habits. Why did you go to London, Nickey?”

“What the hell has that to do with you?” was the angry retort. “If it comes to that, what are you butting in here for, anyway? I am engaged in a business talk with the son of a client of my old firm.”

“I really think, sir—” Lavarie began, glancing at the cheque which Nicolas was still holding.

“Don’t,” the General interrupted. “Let me do the thinking. It will probably be more profitable for you. In the first place, are you borrowing money from our friend, Mr. Nicolas Fox?”

“That’s rather the idea,” Lavarie acknowledged. “He seems very anxious to lend it.”

“There’s not the slightest need for you to borrow,” the newcomer told him emphatically. “You are a comparatively wealthy man, Sir Guy.”

The latter was thunderstruck. He stared at his visitors, who remained speechless. Nicolas Fox’s upper lip was slightly raised, showing his unpleasant teeth. His eyes seemed to have come closer than ever together.

“Rubbish!” he exclaimed. “Sir Guy is practically penniless. My old firm wound up his father’s affairs when Sir Guy here was at a preparatory school, so we ought to know.”

“You were invited to leave the firm,” the General said, “too early to know anything about a certain incident, or you would have been hunting for Sir Guy long ago!”

“What incident?” Nicolas Fox demanded.

“The sale by Sir Guy’s father, under certain conditions, of the whole of the remaining shares in the East Ungwar Gold Mine to the present Lord Wendover’s father, who was chairman of the company.”

“There’s nothing to come to me out of that,” the young man lamented. “The shares were extinguished.”

“The East Ungwar Gold Mine,” Nicolas Fox declared, “was dismantled and abandoned many years ago.”

“That’s quite true, so far as it goes,” General Besserley agreed. “The late Lord Wendover and Mr. Philpotts, I think his name was, the then secretary of the company, were perfectly honest in what they did. They bought up the old shares in the East Ungwar Gold Mine at a ridiculous price, but still more than they were worth in those days, simply and solely to secure the water rights necessary to their own mine. I repeat that there was no idea in the mind of anyone that these shares were worth anything at all, except as giving the water rights.”

“No more they were,” Nicolas Fox burst in. “What’s all this about?”

“But,” the General continued, gently but firmly, “by some miraculous instinct of self-preservation on the part of Sir Guy’s father, or I am inclined to think that it may have been a quixotic idea on the part of the late Lord Wendover, an agreement was signed at the time of the sale that if, at any later date, the West Ungwar Gold Mine should sink fresh shafts on the property they were acquiring from their neighbours, or should work the mine for gold in any way, they should hand over to the representatives of the Lavarie family, at the market price of the day, shares in the West Ungwar Gold Mine equal in number to those they were purchasing and extinguishing from the East Ungwar. The miracle has happened! The most valuable lode of the West Ungwar properties has been discovered to turn almost at right angles into the property which formerly belonged to the East Ungwar! Shafts have been sunk and to-day gold is being mined in large quantities. The market price of the shares, I see, is forty-seven shillings. The debt due to Sir Guy upon the hundred thousand shares is something like two hundred and thirty thousand pounds.”

“This is rubbish,” Nicolas Fox exclaimed angrily. “There is no such agreement in force.”

“The original agreement,” General Besserley continued, with a cheerful smile, “could only have been in the one remaining box labelled ‘The Lavarie Estates’ which the present members of the firm to which our friend here belonged had consigned to an attic many years ago. From inquiries I have made, Mr. Nicolas Fox paid a visit to his late firm on Wednesday, I think it was, and he could probably—if he cared to—give us more precise information.”

“It’s a lie,” Nicolas Fox shouted. “I have never seen or heard of such an agreement. I don’t believe that it exists. My business in London was of a different nature altogether.”

“The matter is of no importance,” the General declared suavely.

“Of no importance!” the bewildered young man repeated.

“Simply because,” the other went on, “fortunately for you, people in those days were meticulously careful when anything connected with gold mines was doing and an exact copy of the agreement, signed by the late Lord Wendover and Stephen Philpotts, the late secretary of the West Ungwar Gold Mine, was filed at the time at Somerset House, where it now exists. For a small fee I procured a copy of it. The present Lord Wendover knew nothing of his father’s action but he is staying at this hotel at the present moment and he has assured me that on production of the necessary papers, the claimant of the Lavarie interests, who is our young friend Sir Guy here, will be paid in cash or in shares from the reserves held by the company.”

“Do you mean to say,” Guy Lavarie gasped, “that the money is coming to me?”

“Every penny of it,” the General assured him. “There will be the question of interest too, unless you like to waive it. The copy of the agreement is in my pocket and you shall read it the moment we are alone.”

Nicolas Fox took the hint. He snatched up the document which the young man had been in the act of signing, replaced his fountain pen in his pocket, took up his hat and left the room.

A few mornings later General Besserley, seated in his usual place at the Royalty Bar, gravely folded up the financial paper which he had been studying and, leaning a little farther back in his chair, gazed upwards through the rustling green leaves to the blue sky. For several moments he remained wrapped in silent reflection and it would have taken a very clever physiognomist to have divined the nature of his thoughts. Suddenly he was conscious of a very slight but delicately familiar perfume. He opened his eyes. Someone was leaning over him. He looked into Grace’s laughing face.

“And that glove shop so conveniently near!” she sighed.

“I can relapse again,” he assured her.

She glanced at the newspaper and laughed outright.

“Don’t tell me that the Financial Times can send you off into a world of fancies like that,” she exclaimed.

“I won’t quote Shakespeare to you,” he replied, “but I am not at all sure that there is not as much romance in Throgmorton Street sometimes as in this perfervid atmosphere. As a matter of fact, I have just been reading an account of the extraordinary meeting convoked by young Lord Wendover, chairman of the West Ungwar Gold Mines.”

“What happened?”

“The Lavarie claim was recognised and the meeting decided that it should be paid for in cash out of the reserve.”

“How much did it amount to?”

“Nearly a quarter of a million.”

“Well, I hope that young man won’t gamble it all away,” she said fervently.

“I suppose to-morrow or the next day we shall see something of him?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t think so.”

He straightened himself in his chair.

“What do you mean? Of course, he has written you.”

“I did have a letter,” she admitted. “As a matter of fact, he suggested coming down.”

“And you?”

She, too, looked up for a moment at the patches of brilliantly blue sky between the leaves.

“I told him that it was a little too late in the season,” she answered.