Читать книгу The Twister - Edgar Wallace - Страница 4

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After Tony Braid's departure there was a long—and to one man a painful—silence. Frensham stood by his desk, his eyes moodily surveying the blotting pad, and fiddling with a paper knife. He was a poor man. His incursion into the city had been in a sense an act of desperation. There were directorships to be had. At first he had accepted every offer but had learned by painful experience the necessity for discriminating.

Lulanga Oils was his pet; he had bought a large block of shares, mortgaging his every asset, and had refused to sell. He had faith in this stock, more faith perhaps in this clever nephew of his who had preceded him in the city by a few years.

The very success of Julian Reef, who had started almost penniless and was now accounted in certain circles as a man with a great financial future, was the shining advertisement that led the older man into the troubled waters of finance. It was on Julian's advice that he had bought Lulangas and assumed the chairmanship of the company. Julian it was who had suggested the administration of a fund when Ursula's aunt had died leaving her sixty thousand pounds. The investments had prospered; the gilt edge of the stocks originally purchased had deepened auriferously.

"What does he mean about yellow diamonds?"

Lord Frensham broke the silence.

"Oh, that?" Julian was his laughing self. "The brute has discovered my hobby. I'm rather keen on diamonds, but unfortunately I can't afford to buy them, so I've trained myself into a proper appreciation of the tinted stones, particularly the yellow ones which are of course worth only a tenth of the white diamonds."

The other man suddenly remembered that a certain amount of sympathy was due to his nephew.

"Oh, Lord, no, he didn't hurt me," said Julian lightly, though his jaw was throbbing painfully. "He hooked me so suddenly I didn't see it coming, and of course I couldn't retaliate—not in your house."

"It's the last time he comes here," said Frensham. He looked to the door and frowned warningly. Ursula came in.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but where is Anthony?" she asked, looking round in surprise.

Lord Frensham cleared his voice.

"Anthony has gone, and he'll not put his foot in my house again. He committed a brutal and unprovoked attack upon Julian. It was the most outrageous thing I have ever seen."

She stared at him in amazement.

"Hit Julian? Why?"

"It was my own fault," Julian broke in. "I called him a liar, and by his code that is the unpardonable sin. I should have done the same to him."

She was troubled, worried, by the news.

"I'm sorry. I'm very fond of Tony. Are you really serious about his not coming again?"

"I'm quite serious," said Frensham curtly.

She looked at Julian and was about to speak, but changing her mind went out of the room, Reef's sly eyes following her.

"It seems incredible," he said as one who is speaking aloud his thoughts.

"What?" Frensham looked up quickly. "There's nothing incredible about a friendship like that. I should imagine he's a fascinating brute with impressionable people."

Julian shook his head.

"Ursula isn't an impressionable girl," he said slowly, and something in his tone alarmed the older man.

"You don't mean he's been making love to her or anything of that sort?"

Julian Reef was on dangerous ground, but there was greater danger elsewhere. He preferred to play with this particular peril than risk the attention of his uncle straying back to another matter.

"I wouldn't say he's made love to her or made any declaration. People don't do that sort of thing nowadays: they drift into an understanding and drift from there into marriage. I don't think you kicked him out a minute too soon."

He took up his hat.

"I'll dash to the office. My Mr. Guelder is an exacting taskmaster."

"Where did you pick up that Dutchman?" asked Frensham.

"I knew him in Leyden twelve years ago," said Julian patiently. Frensham's memory was not of the best, and he had asked that question at least a dozen times before. "I was taking a chemistry course at the university, and he was one of the minor professors. An extraordinarily clever fellow."

Lord Frensham plucked at his lower lip thoughtfully.

"A chemist—what does he know about finance? Yes," he said slowly. "I remember you told me he was a chemist, and he knew nothing about finance. Why on earth do you keep him in your office in a confidential position?"

"Because he knows something about chemistry," smiled the other, "and when I am dealing with mining propositions and the wildcat schemes that are always coming to me I like to have a fellow who can tell me exactly the geological strata from which a piece of conglomerate is taken."

His hand was on the door when—"One minute, Julian—you're not in such a great hurry. Of course, I don't take the slightest notice of what that fellow said about Ursula's money, but it's all right, I suppose? I was looking at a list of the securities the other day: they seem fairly good and fairly safe properties."

Julian's mouth was very expressive. At the moment it indicated good-natured annoyance.

"I seem to remember that Ursula had dividends at the half year," he said. "Of course, if you want to go into the thing as the Twister suggests—that fellow's getting terribly honest and proper in his old age—send your accountant down, my dear uncle, and let him check the securities or turn them over to your bank——"

"Don't be a fool," Frensham interrupted abruptly. "Nobody has suggested that you can't handle the fund as well as any bank manager. I suppose none of the securities has been changed?"

"Naturally they've been changed," said Julian quickly. "When I see stock that promises to be unproductive I get rid of it and buy something more profitable. Ursula's money has given me more thought than all the other business I do in the course of a year. For example, I had the first news of that slump in Brazil and got rid of all her Brazilian Rails before the market sagged. I saved her over a thousand pounds on that contract. And if you remember I told you I was selling the Spanish Tramway shares——"

"I know, I know," said the other hastily. "I'm not suggesting that you haven't done splendidly. Only I'm a poor man, Julian, and a reckless man, and I must think of the future where Ursula is concerned."

Mr. Julian Reef left him on this note, and all the way to the office he was wondering what would have happened if his uncle had accepted his suggestion and had placed Ursula Frensham's money in the hands of a discriminating banker. For the sixty thousand pounds' worth of shares which he held in her name were no longer as gilt-edged as they had been.