his demand. His price was five hundred pounds in English or French
gold--an interesting phase of your ordinary blackmailer’s antipathy to
paper--merely an _hors d’œuvre_ to the solid things to come, of course.
But he was not dealing with a fool. Whether Miss Roscastle frankly had
not five hundred pounds just then, or whether she was better advised, we
cannot say. She temporised, the Linknorth being the intermediary. Then
the dummy pieces? Hay _was_ a menace and had to be held off. At one
point there may well have been the pretence of handing over the cash and
then at the last moment some specious difficulty, necessitating a short
delay, is raised. That would account for the otherwise unnecessary
detail of the lead counterfeits, for there is no need of them on
Thursday. Then, when the danger is past, when the tricked scoundrel has
lost his sting, _then_ there is no attempt at evasion or compromise.
‘Fool! What does it matter now?’ is the contemptuously unguarded message
and the five hundred doits are pressed upon him to complete his
humiliation. Why doesn’t it matter, Louis? Is there any other answer
than that Miss Roscastle is safely married?”
“It certainly looks like it,” agreed Mr Carlyle. “But if there was
anything so serious as to have compromised the marriage, surely Hay
could still have held it over her, as against her husband?”
“If it was as against the husband before--yes, perhaps. But suppose the
chink in the armour was the good grace of some third person whose
consent was necessary? This brilliant marriage.... Well, I don’t commit
myself any further. At any rate, in the lady’s estimation she is safe,
and if she had deliberately sought to goad Hay into suicide she couldn’t
have done better. He read the single line that shattered his greedy
dreams and its disdainful triumph struck him like a whip. He had spent
literally his last penny on pressing his unworthy persecution, and now
he stood, beggared and beaten, on the Embankment at midnight--‘he, a
gentleman.’ ... It doesn’t matter how he took it. He went over, and the
muddy waters of the Thames closed over the last page of his rotten
history.”
“Max!” exclaimed Mr Carlyle with feeling. “Remember the poor beggar,
with all his failings, is dead now. Not that I should mind,” he added
cheerfully, “but I saw him afterwards, you know. Enniscorthy had the
sense to keep away. And, by Gad! Max, that reminds me that this is
rather rough on my confiding young client--running up a bill to have a
successful rival sprung upon his hopes. Have you any idea who he is?”
“Yes,” admitted Carrados, “I have an idea, but to-day it is nothing more
than that. When does Enniscorthy return?”
“He ought to be back in London on Friday morning.”
“By then I should know something definite. If you will make an
appointment with him for Friday at half-past eleven I will look in on my
way through town.”
“Certainly, Max, certainly.” There was a note of faithful expectation in
Mr Carlyle’s voice that caused his friend to smile. He crossed the room
to his most-used desk and opened one of the smaller drawers.
“For this simple demonstration, Louis, I require only two appliances,
neither of which, as you will see, is a rabbit or a handkerchief. In
other and saner words, there are only two exhibits. That is from _The
Morning Mail_; this is from the Westminster street refuse tip.”
“This” was a small brown canvas bag. Traces of red sealing-wax still
marked the neck and across it were stamped the words:
BANQUE DE L’UNION
CLAIRVAUX
Mr Carlyle looked inside. It was empty, but a few specks of dull grey
metal still lodged among the cloth. He turned to the other object, as
Carrados had indicated an extract from the daily Press. It was a mere
slip of paper and consisted of the following paragraph:
“From Clairvaux, in the Pas de Calais, France, where he purchased a
country estate when he was driven into exile, it is reported that
ex-King Constantine of Villalyia has been lying dangerously ill for
the past week.”
“Quite so, quite so,” murmured Carlyle, quietly turning over the cutting
to satisfy himself that he was reading the right side.
* * * * *
“I see that you haven’t anything very hopeful to report,” said Mr
Enniscorthy--he and Max Carrados had entered Mr Carlyle’s office within
a minute of each other two days later--“but let me have it out.”
“It isn’t quite a matter of being hopeful or the reverse,” replied the
blind man. “It is merely final to your ambition. You know Prince Ulric
of Villalyia?”
“I have been presented. He hunted in Ireland last season.”
“He knew Miss Roscastle?”
“They were acquainted, she has told me.”
“It went deeper than you imagined. Miss Roscastle is Princess Ulric of
Villalyia to-day.”
“Una! Oh,” cried Enniscorthy, “but--but that is impossible! You don’t
mean that she----”
“I mean exactly what I say. They were married within a week of her
disappearance from London.”
Enniscorthy’s pained gaze went from face to face. The fatal presentiment
that had always just robbed him of the heroic--the fear that he might be
making an ass of himself--again assailed him.
“But isn’t Ulric in the line of succession? They couldn’t be really
married without the king’s consent. Of course Villalyia is a republic
now, but----”
“But it may not be to-morrow if the expected war breaks out? Quite true,
Mr Enniscorthy. And in the meanwhile the forms and ceremonies are
maintained at the exile Court of Clairvaux. Yet the king gave his
consent.”
“Gave his consent! For his son to marry an actress?”
“Ah, there was a little sleight of hand there. He only knew Miss
Roscastle as Miss Eileen O’Rourke, the last representative of a line of
Irish kings. She was a Miss O’Rourke?”
“Yes. Roscastle was only her stage name. The O’Rourkes were a very old
but impoverished family.”
“Royal, we may assume. This business was the outcome of one of the
interminable domestic squabbles that the Villalyia Petrosteins seemed to
wage in order to supply the Continental comic papers with material.
Ex-King Constantine recently quarrelled simultaneously and irrevocably
with his eldest son Robert and his first cousin Michael. Robert, who
lives in Paris, has respectably married a robust minor princess who has
presented him with six unattractive daughters and now, by all report,
stopped finally. Hating both son and cousin almost equally, old
Constantine, who had fumed himself into a fever, sent off for his other
son, Ulric, and demanded that he should at once marry and found a
prolific line of sons to embitter Robert and cut out the posterity of
Michael. Prince Ulric merely replied that there was only one woman whom
he wished to marry and she was not of sufficiently exalted station, and
as she refused to marry him morganatically--yes, Mr Enniscorthy--there
was no prospect of his ever marrying at all. The king suddenly found
that he was very ill. Ulric was obdurate. The constitution allowed the
reigning monarch to sanction such an alliance, provided there were no
religious difficulties, and I understand that Miss Roscastle is a
Catholic. Constantine recognised that if he was to gratify his whim he
must consent, and that at once, as he was certainly dying. As things
were, Ulric would probably renounce and marry ignominiously or die
unmarried and the hated Michaels would step in, for, once king, the
conventional Robert would never give his consent to such an alliance.
Besides, it would be a ‘damned slap in the face’ to half the remaining
royalty of Europe, and Constantine had always posed as a democratic
sovereign--that was why his people ran him out. He coughed himself faint
and then commanded the lady to be sent for.”
“If only Una had confided in me I would--yes, I would willingly have
flown to serve her.”
“I think that Miss Roscastle was well qualified to serve herself,”
responded Carrados dryly. “Now you can put together the whole story, Mr
Enniscorthy. Many pages of it are necessarily obscure. What the man Hay
knew and threatened--whether it was with him in view or the emissaries
of the hostile Robert and Michael that she took the sudden chance of
concealing her absence and cloaking her identity--what other wheels
there were, what other influences at work--these are only superfluities.
The essential thing is that, in spite of cross-currents, everything went
well--for her, and perhaps for you; the lady’s married and there’s an
end of it.”
“I hope that she will be as happy as I should have tried to make her,”
said Enniscorthy rather shakily. “I shall always think of her. Mr
Carrados, I will write to thank you when I am better able to express
myself. Mr Carlyle, you know my address. Good-morning.”
“A very manly way of taking it and very properly expressed--very well
indeed,” declared Mr Carlyle with warm approval as the door closed.
“Max, that is the outcome of good blood--blood and breeding.”
“Nonsense, you romantic old humbug,” said Carrados with affectionate
contempt. “I have heard exactly the same words in similar circumstances
once before and they were spoken by a Canning Town bricklayer’s
labourer.”
One incident only remains to be added. A month later Mr Carlyle was
passing the Kemble Club when he became conscious of someone trying to
avoid him. With a not unnatural impulse he made for his acquaintance and
insisted on being recognised.
“Ah, Mr Stokesey,” he exclaimed, “_Call a Spade----_ is still going
strong, I see.”
“Mr Carlyle, to be sure,” said the manager. “Bother me if I didn’t
mistake you for a deadhead who always strikes me for a pass. Good
heavens! yes; they come in droves and companies to see the part that the
romantic Princess Ulric of Villalyia didn’t create! I’ve had three
summonses for my pit queue. Didn’t I tell you it was a gamble? When I
have to find a successor--_when_, mind, I say--I’m going to put on _You
Never Can Tell_! What?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VII
The Ingenious Mr Spinola
“You seem troubled, Parkinson. Have you been reading the Money Article
again?”
Parkinson, who had been lingering a little aimlessly about the room,
exhibited symptoms of embarrassed guilt. Since an unfortunate day, when
it had been convincingly shown to the excellent fellow that to leave his
accumulated savings on deposit at the bank was merely an uninviting mode
of throwing money away, it is not too much to say that his few hundreds
had led Parkinson a sorry life. Inspired by a natural patriotism and an
appreciation of the advantage of 4½ over 1¼ per cent., he had at once
invested in consols. A very short time later a terrible line in a
financial daily--“Consols weak”--caught his agitated eye. Consols were
precipitately abandoned and a “sound industrial” took their place. Then
came the rumours of an impending strike and the Conservative press
voiced gloomy forebodings for the future of industrial capital. An
urgent selling order, bearing Mr Parkinson’s signature, was the
immediate outcome.
In the next twelve months Parkinson’s few hundreds wandered through many
lands and in a modest way went to support monarchies and republics, to
carry on municipal enterprise and to spread the benefits of commerce.
And, through all, they contrived to exist. They even assisted in
establishing a rubber plantation in Madagascar and exploiting an oil
discovery in Peru and yet survived. If everything could have been lost
by one dire reverse Parkinson would have been content--even relieved;
but with her proverbial inconsequence Fortune began by smiling and
continued to smile--faintly, it is true, but appreciably--on her
timorous votary. In spite of his profound ignorance of finance each of
Parkinson’s qualms and tremors resulted in a slight pecuniary margin to
his credit. At the end of twelve months he had drawn a respectable
interest, was somewhat to the good in capital, and as a waste product
had acquired an abiding reputation among a small but choice coterie as a
very “knowing one.”
“Thank you, sir, but I am sorry if I seemed engrossed in my own
affairs,” he apologised in answer to Mr Carrados’s inquiry. “As a matter
of fact,” he added, “I hoped that I had finished with Stock Exchange
transactions for the future.”
“Ah, to be sure,” assented Carrados. “A block of cottages Acton way,
wasn’t it to be?”
“I did at one time consider the investment, but on reflection I decided
against property of that description. The association with houses
occupied by the artisan class would not have been congenial, sir.”
“Still, it might have been profitable.”
“Possibly, sir. I have, however, taken up a mortgage on a detached house
standing in its own grounds at Highgate. It was strongly recommended by
your own estate agents--by Mr Lethbridge himself, sir.”
“I hope it will prove satisfactory, Parkinson.”
“I hope so, sir, but I do not feel altogether reassured now, after
seeing it.”
“After seeing it? But you saw it before you took it up, surely?”
“As a matter of fact, no, sir. It was pointed out to me that the
security was ample, and as I had no practical knowledge of house-valuing
there was nothing to be gained by inspecting it. At the same time I was
given the opportunity, I must admit; but as we were rather busy then--it
was just before we went to Rome, sir--I never went there.”
“Well, after all,” admitted Carrados, “I hold a fair number of mortgage
securities on railways and other property that I have never been within
a thousand miles of. I am not in a position to criticise you, Parkinson.
And this house--I suppose that it does really exist?”
“Oh yes, sir. I spent yesterday afternoon in the neighbourhood. Now that
the trees are out there is not a great deal that can be actually seen
from the road, but I satisfied myself that in the winter the house must
be distinctly visible from several points.”
“That is very satisfactory,” said Carrados with equal seriousness. “But,
after all, the title is the chief thing.”
“So I am given to understand. Doubtless it would not be sound business,
sir, but I think that if the title had been a little worse, and the
appearance of the grounds a little better, I should have felt more
secure. But what really concerned me is that the house is being talked
about.”
“Talked about?”
“Yes. It is in a secluded position, but there are some old-fashioned
cottages near and these people notice things, sir. It is not difficult
to induce them to talk. Refreshments are procurable at one of the
cottages and I had tea there. I have since thought, from a remark made
to me on leaving, that the idea may have got about that I was connected
with the Scotland Yard authorities. I had no apprehension at the time of
creating such an impression, sir, but I wished to make a few casual
inquiries.”
Carrados nodded. “Quite so,” he murmured encouragingly.
“It was then that I discovered what I have alluded to. These people,
having become suspicious, watch all that is to be seen at Strathblane
Lodge--as it is called--and talk. They do not know what goes on there.”
“That must be very disheartening for them.”
“Well, sir, they find it trying. Up to less than a year ago the house
was occupied by a commercial gentleman and everything was quite regular.
But with the new people they don’t know which are the family and who are
the servants. Two or three men having the appearance of mechanics seem
to be there continually, and sometimes, generally in the evening, there
are visitors of a class whom one would not associate with the
unpretentious nature of the establishment. Gentlemen for the most part,
but occasionally ladies, I was told, coming in taxis or private motor
cars and generally in evening dress.”
“That ought to reassure these neighbours--the private cars and evening
dress.”
“I cannot say that it does, sir. And what I heard made me a little
nervous also.”
Something was evidently on the ingenuous creature’s mind. The blind
man’s face wore a faintly amused smile, but he gauged the real measure
of his servant’s apprehension.
“Nervous of what, Parkinson?” he inquired kindly.
“Some thought that it might be a gambling-house, but others said it
looked as if a worse business was carried on there. I should not like
there to be any scandal or exposure, sir, and perhaps the mortgage
forfeited in consequence.”
“But, good heavens, man! you don’t imagine that a mortgage is like a
public-house licence, to be revoked in consequence of a rowdy tenant,
surely?”
Parkinson’s dubious silence made it increasingly plain that he had,
indeed, associated his security with some such contingency, a conviction
based, it appeared, when he admitted his fears, on a settled belief in
the predatory intentions of a Government with whom he was not in
sympathy.
“Don’t give the thing another thought,” counselled his employer. “If
Lethbridge recommended the investment you may be sure that it is all
right. As for what goes on there--that doesn’t matter two straws to you,
and in any case it is probably idle chatter.”
“Thank you, sir. It is a relief to have your assurance. I see now that I
ought to have paid no attention to such conversation, but being
anxious--and seeing Sir Fergus Copling go there----”
“Sir Fergus Copling? You saw him there?”
“Yes, sir. I thought that I remembered a car that was waiting for the
gate to be opened. Then I recognised Sir Fergus: it was the small dark
blue car that he has come here in. And just after what I had been
hearing----”
“But Sir Fergus Copling! He’s a testimonial of propriety. Do you know
what you are talking about, Parkinson?”
The excellent man looked even more deeply troubled than he had been
about his money.
“Not in that sense, sir,” he protested. “I only understood that he was a
gentleman of position and a very large income, and after just listening
to what was being said----”
Carrados’s scepticism was intelligible. Copling was the last man to be
associated with a scandal of fast life. He had come into his baronetcy
quite unexpectedly a few years previously while engaged in the drab but
apparently congenial business of teaching arithmetic at a public school.
The chief advantage of the change of fortune, as it appeared to the
recipient, was that it enabled him to transfer his attention from the
lower to the higher mathematics. Without going out of his way to flout
the conventions, he set himself a comparatively simple standard of
living. He was too old and fixed, he said, to change much--forty and a
bachelor--and the most optimistic spinster in town had reluctantly come
to acquiesce.
Carrados had not forgotten this conversation when next he encountered
Sir Fergus a week or so later. He knew the man well enough to be able to
lead up to the subject and when an identifiable footstep fell on his ear
in the hall of the Metaphysical (the dullest club in Europe, it was
generally admitted) he called across to the baronet, who, as a matter of
fact, had been too abstracted to notice him or anyone else.
“You aren’t a member, are you?” asked Copling when they had shaken
hands. “I didn’t know that you went in for this sort of thing.” The
motion of his head indicated the monumental library which he had just
quitted, but it might possibly be taken as indicating the general
atmosphere of profound somnolence that enveloped the Metaphysical.
“I am not a member,” admitted Carrados. “I only came to gather some
material.”
“Statistics?” queried Copling with interest. “We have a very useful
range of works.” He suddenly remembered his acquaintance’s affliction.
“By the way, can I be of any use to you?”
“Yes, if you will,” said Carrados. “Let me go to lunch with you. There
is an appalling bore hanging about and he’ll nab me if I don’t get past
under protection.”
Copling assented readily enough and took the blind man’s arm.
“Where, though?” he asked at the door. “I generally”--he hesitated, with
a shy laugh--“I generally go to an A.B.C. tea-shop myself. It doesn’t
waste so much time. But, of course----”
“Of course, a tea-shop by all means,” assented Carrados.
“You are sure that you don’t mind?” persisted the baronet anxiously.
“Mind? Why, I’m a shareholder!” chuckled Carrados.
“This suits me very well,” remarked the ex-schoolmaster when they were
seated in a remote corner of a seething general room. “Fellows used to
do their best to get me into the way of going to swell places, but I
always seem to drift back here. I don’t mind the prices, Carrados, but
hang me if I like to pay the prices simply to be inconvenienced. Yes,
_hot_ milk, please.”
Carrados endorsed this reasonable philosophy. Carlton or Coffee-house,
the Ritz or the tea-shop, it was all the same to him--life, and very
enjoyable life at that. He sat and, like the spider, drew from within
himself the fabric of the universe by which he was surrounded. In that
inexhaustible faculty he found perfect content: he never required “to be
amused.”
“No, not statistics,” he said presently, returning to the unfinished
conversation of the club hall. “Scarcely that. More in the nature of
topography, perhaps. Have you considered, Copling, how everything is
specialised nowadays? Does anyone read the old-fashioned, unpretentious
_Guide-book to London_ still? One would hardly think so to see how the
subject is cut up. We have ‘Famous London Blind-alleys,’ ‘Historical
West-Central Door-Knockers,’ ‘Footsteps of Dr Johnson between Gough
Square and John Street, Adelphi,’ ‘The Thames from Hungerford Bridge to
Charing Cross Pier,’ ‘Oxford Street Paving Stones on which De Quincey
sat,’ and so on.”
“They are not familiar to me,” said Sir Fergus simply.
“Nor to me; yet they sound familiar. Well, I touched journalism myself
once, years ago. What do you say to ‘Mysterious Double-fronted Houses of
the outer Northern Suburbs’? Too comprehensive?”
“I don’t know. The subject must be limited. But do you seriously
contemplate such a work?”
“If I did,” replied Carrados, “what could you tell me about Strathblane
Lodge, Highgate?”
“Oh!” A slow smile broke on Copling’s face. “That is rather
extraordinary, isn’t it? Do you know old Spinola? Have you been there?”
“So far I don’t know the venerable Mr Spinola and I have not been there.
What is the peculiarity?”
“But you know of the automatic card-player?”
The words brought a certain amount of enlightenment. Carrados had heard
more than once casual allusions to a wonderful mechanical contrivance
that played cards with discrimination. He had not thought anything more
of it, classing it with Kempelen’s famous imposture which had for a time
mystified and duped the chess world more than a century ago. So far,
also, some reticence appeared to be observed about the modern
contrivance, as though its inventor had no desire to have it turned into
a popular show: at all events not a word about it had appeared in the
Press.
“I have heard something, but not much, and I certainly have not seen it.
What is it--a fraud, surely?”
Copling replied with measured consideration between the process of
investigating his lightly boiled egg. It was plain that the automaton
had impressed him.
“I naturally approached the subject with scepticism,” he admitted, “but
at the end of several demonstrations I am converted to a position of
passive acquiescence. Spinola, at all events, is no charlatan. His
knowledge of mathematics is profound. As you know, Carrados, the subject
is my own and I am not likely to be imposed on in that particular. It
was purely the scientific aspect of the invention that attracted me, for
I am not a gambler in the ordinary sense. Spinola’s explanation of the
principles of the contrivance, when he found that I was capable of
following them, was lucid and convincing. Of course he does not disclose
all the details of the mechanism, but he shows enough.”
“It is a gamble, then, not a mere demonstration?”
“He has spent many years on the automaton, and it must have cost
thousands of pounds in experiment and construction. He makes no secret
of hoping to reimburse his outlay.”
“What do you play?”
“Piquet--rubicon piquet. The figure could, he claims, be set to play any
game by changing or elaborating the mechanism. He had to construct it
for one definite set of chances and he selected piquet as a suitable
medium.”
“It wins?”
“Against me invariably in the end.”