THE CALL OF TILLIZINI
Marjorie turned with a start.
“Five hundred pounds?” she repeated.
Vera nodded.
“I want that sum,” she said, “for a purpose. You understand that this
is confidential?”
“Oh, quite,” said Marjorie, “but it is a lot of money. Couldn’t you get
it from Uncle Ralph?”
“Uncle Ralph!” repeated the other contemptuously. “He wouldn’t give
five hundred potatoes! A demand for five hundred pounds would estrange
us for the rest of our lives.”
She gave a bitter little laugh.
Marjorie knit her pretty brows in thought.
“I can’t think of anybody,” she said slowly.
“Then don’t,” said Vera briskly. “I don’t know exactly why I asked you.”
Further discussion of the subject was made impossible by the arrival of
Sir Ralph himself.
He had evidently forgotten that any strained relations existed between
himself and his wife, or that her iniquitous extravagance in prepared
oats had ever come between them.
“Vera,” he said, going toward her, “did you notice a man in the court
to-day, a peculiarly foreign-looking man?”
She thought a moment.
“Yes there was a person sitting near----” She nearly said Hilary
George, but deemed it tactful to mention another barrister who had been
engaged in the case.
“How did he impress you?” he asked.
“I should like to say that he did not impress me at all,” she said,
with a smile. She was most anxious to restore him to good humour.
“But unfortunately, I did take particular notice of him: rather a
distinguished-looking man, clean-shaven and with a lined, thoughtful
face.”
Sir Ralph nodded.
“That’s the man,” he said. “I’ve just had a note from him. I didn’t
know he was in Burboro’. That is Tillizini.”
He said this impressively. At the moment, Tillizini’s name was in the
mouth of half the population of England.
“Tillizini?” she repeated, and her eyes narrowed.
He nodded.
“None other,” he said. “I had a note from one of the under-secretaries
of the Home Office saying that he was coming down. I don’t know why our
little burglary should have attracted his attention, but at any rate
he could not have been very interested, for he did not turn up until
to-day. He has just sent a note to tell me that he is staying at the
George, and I have written to ask him to come up to dinner to-night.”
She made a little face.
“He’s a detective or something, isn’t he?” she asked.
“More than a detective.”
Sir Ralph was rather inclined to be irritable if you did not rise to
his values. It was better to overestimate them than to underestimate
them in any case.
“Surely you have read the papers?” he went on, with his best
magisterial air. “You couldn’t very well escape his name nowadays.
He is the man whom the English government brought over as a sort of
consultant, to deal with this terrible outbreak of crime.”
“I’ve heard something about it,” said his wife carelessly. “The Black
Hand or the Red Hand--I forget exactly what colour it is.”
Sir Ralph frowned.
“You must not treat these matters frivolously, Vera,” he said coldly.
“I’ve had reason to speak to you before on similar occasions. The
Red Hand is a very mysterious organization which is striking at the
very heart of our domestic security. Any man, and I may add any
woman, should be extremely grateful to those who, by their gifts of
divination, are endeavouring to shield the innocent victims of a band
of organized criminals.”
Vera hated her husband when he made speeches to her. She knew more
about the Red Hand and its workings than she was prepared to discuss
with Sir Ralph.
It was a pose of hers, as it was a pose of certain members of her
class, to profess a profound ignorance upon matters which were engaging
the attention of newspaper readers. The pose of ignorance is a popular
one with members of the leisured classes; popular, because it suggests
their superiority to the influences which surround them; because it
signalizes their independence of chronicled facts, and because, too, it
is the easiest of all poses to assume and to sustain.
Vera had caught the trick and found it a profitable one. It lent her
an overpowering naïveté, which had a paralyzing effect upon the
better-informed but socially inferior members of the community, and
it precluded one being bored by a long recital of the news which one
had read in the morning papers in a more concise or a more accurate
form. Her interest in the great Italian detective for the moment was a
conventionally domestic one, for she rose from the music stool.
“I shall have to tell Parker to set another place,” she said.
“If he accepts,” interjected Marjorie.
Vera raised her eyebrows with a little smile.
“Don’t be absurd, Marjorie, of course he will accept. What do we call
him--Inspector or Sergeant or something?” she asked of Sir Ralph.
The spirit of revolt was stirring within her, and she permitted herself
a facetiousness of attitude which ordinarily she would not have
expressed. And this, despite the subconscious desire to soothe him into
a complaisant mood.
She never for one moment imagined that he would advance her the money
she required, but he might let her have a portion of it if she could
only invent a story sufficiently plausible. The truth was out of the
question. She smiled to herself at the thought. She was an imaginative
woman but not sufficiently so to picture Sir Ralph in that moment of
confession. She needed the money as she had never needed money before.
It was not for herself--her own wants were few and her tastes simple.
She might, perhaps, induce her husband to let her have a hundred if she
could invent a good reason--and it would have to be a superlatively
good reason to induce Sir Ralph to part with his money.
Somehow the old weariness of it all, the old distaste for the life she
was living, came over her, and induced her to treat the subject in a
manner in which she knew her husband would heartily disapprove.
“You will call him Doctor Tillizini,” said Sir Ralph sternly. “He is a
professor of anthropology in the Florentine School of Medicine. He is a
gentleman, Vera, and I shall expect you to treat him as such.”
Marjorie, who had been an interested spectator of the passage between
husband and wife, had discreetly withdrawn to her book and her chair by
the window. As Sir Ralph turned to go, she rose.
“I say, what fun,” she said. “Is he really coming, Uncle?”
Sir Ralph nodded.
“I hope so. I can do no more than invite him, but he is such a busy
man that he may probably have to go back to town. At any rate, I am
certain,” he said, a little pompously, “that he will approve most
heartily of my treatment of that rascal to-day. I think it is monstrous
the way Hilary George went on....”
He was still sore over his treatment by his whilom friend, and he
launched forth into a sea of explanation and justification, and,
incidentally, gave the girl a fairly garbled version of the scene which
had occurred outside the Session House--a scene in which he had played,
by his account, a dignified and proper part, and in which Hilary had
lost his temper to a distressing degree.
The fire of Sir Ralph’s eloquence burned itself down to glowerings and
splutterings of incoherent disapproval.
“Hilary George,” he said, “will regret this.” He spoke in the satisfied
tone of one who had made special arrangements with Providence to that
end.
Marjorie was following her uncle from the room, when a glance from Vera
brought her back. The older woman waited until the door had closed
behind her husband.
“Marjorie,” she said, in the mild and honeyed tone which the girl
recognized as her At Home voice, “I want you to do something for me.”
“With pleasure, dear,” said the girl warmly.
Lady Morte-Mannery fingered the little silver ornaments on one of
the tables which abounded in the drawing room, and placed them as
though they were pawns in a new game she was playing. She seemed to be
concentrating her attention upon this pastime as she spoke.
“I want you to do something very special for me,” she repeated. “Of
course, I know I can trust you about that money, and now I want to ask
you to help me with a little ruse. This man who is coming to-day,” she
said, “this Italian person, is really not the kind of man I want to
meet. I hate detectives and all those crude, melodramatic individuals.
They talk about crime and things, and besides,” she hesitated, “I can
trust you, can’t I?”
She looked up sharply.
“Yes,” said the girl gravely, wondering what was coming.
“Well, you know, dear,” said Vera slowly, and still playing her
mysterious game with the comfit boxes and Dutch silver, “I’m a member
of a club. It’s a ladies’ club; you won’t find it in Whitaker because
we do not care to advertise our existence, although, of course, we are
registered. Well, we had rather a bother there, two or three months
ago. We--we---- Why should I deceive you?” she said in a burst of
confidence, and with her rare smile. “We were raided! You see, dear, we
played rather heavily. We did not confine ourselves to the prosaic game
of bridge. Some woman--I forget her name--introduced baccarat, and we
had a little wheel too; you know----”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“It was awfully fascinating, and one lost and won quite a considerable
sum. And then there was a bother, and the police came in one night
quite unexpectedly. Your dear Uncle Ralph was in town for the May
Meetings, and I had quite a lot of time on my hands.
“It was very fortunate I escaped any serious consequences of my
rashness. I gave a false name and was brought up the next morning at
Bow Street with the rest of the women--you remember, the case created
quite a sensation--and I was bound over in a false name. Nobody
recognized me and nobody but you is any the wiser.”
She stopped again, and shot a swift, sidelong glance at the girl.
“Oh, you needn’t be shocked,” she said, the acid in her tone asserting
itself. “It wasn’t so very dreadful, only this Tillizini man was in
court that day, and I think he may have recognized me.”
“How awkward!” said Marjorie. “Really, Vera, I’m not a bit shocked, and
it’s not for me, anyway, to sit in judgment on your actions. What do
you want me to do?”
“I want you to help me when I tell Sir Ralph that I am too ill to
entertain this person. I’ll go straightaway to bed, and I want you,
like an angel, to do the honours.”
“Why, with pleasure,” said Marjorie, with a little smile.
“Anyway,” said Vera, a little hardly, “Ralph won’t bully you before
visitors, nor will he refer pointedly to your needless extravagance in
potatoes. Ralph is rather a fanatic on the question of potatoes,” she
said. “There is a standard by which he judges all phases of domestic
economy.”
Marjorie was filled with an infinite pity for the girl. She was not
more than seven or eight years older than herself, still young enough
to find joy in the colour and movement of life.
“I will do anything I can,” she said. For the second time that day she
laid her hand upon the other’s shoulder.
“Don’t paw me, dear,” said Vera, with sudden asperity, and the warm,
generous heart of the girl was chilled. Vera saw this and tried to make
amends.
“Please don’t bother about me, dear,” she said in a softer tone. “I am
rather jagged; too jagged, indeed, to meet this----”
At that point the door of the drawing room was opened, and Parker, the
butler, came in importantly. He stood by the open door.
“Professor Tillizini,” he announced.