"SALLIE HARRIS"
Sallie's first startled impulse was to deny the new identity Slyne had
so glibly bestowed on her. It seemed too preposterous to be believable;
and she was very suspicious of him. A little flushed, more than a little
afraid, and yet in some sense convinced in spite of herself by the
outward and visible signs about her that all these strange happenings
must have at least some foundation of fact, she sought to read the
others' thoughts in their faces.
The Marquis of Ingoldsby was gaping at her, in open wonder and
admiration. Slyne's features wore a subdued expression of triumph, and
Captain Dove's a dazed, incredulous frown. Mr. Jobling was beaming about
him, so apparently satisfied with her, so respectably prosperous-looking
himself that her doubts as to Slyne's good faith began to give way. When
the lawyer was in turn presented to her and also addressed her by that
new name, she could scarcely disclaim it.
"You'll stay and have luncheon with us, Lord Ingoldsby?" Slyne remarked,
touching the bell; and his lordship left off gaping at Sallie to look
him over with all the solemn sagacity of a young owl in broad daylight.
"Er--all right," his lordship at length agreed. "Don't mind if I do.
"Though I have some--er--friends waitin' for me," he added as an
afterthought, "that I promised to take for a run in your car, if--"
"You'll have time enough after lunch," Slyne suggested, and drew the
noble marquis toward the window.
"The Marquis of Ingoldsby!" muttered Captain Dove. "A run in Slyne's
car! And--_Lady Josceline Justice!_" He dug his knuckles forcibly into
his blinking eyes, and, "I seem to be wide enough awake," said he in a
stage aside as several waiters arrived on the scene.
While they were setting the table Sallie tried to collect her thoughts.
Slyne had told her nothing till then, but that he had found out who her
folk were. And she had come away from the _Olive Branch_ blindly, only a
little less distrustful of him than of Captain Dove's cruel intentions
toward her if she had remained on board. Even now, she scarcely dared to
believe--
In response to a sign from Slyne she took her place at the flower-decked
table. The Marquis of Ingoldsby immediately settled himself at her side;
he also was obviously a young man who knew what he wanted, and meant to
have that at all hazards and, while the others were seating themselves,
he ogled her killingly.
Slyne had sat down at her other hand, leaving Mr. Jobling and Captain
Dove to keep one another company behind the great silver centre-piece
which adorned the circular table. The marquis, leaning on one elbow, had
turned his back on Mr. Jobling, and Slyne turned his on Captain Dove.
"This is a little bit of all right!" his lordship remarked to Sallie,
with a confidential grin. "Only--I wish--How is it that we haven't met
before, Lady Josephine? But never mind that. Let's be pals now. Shall
we, eh?"
"I don't know," Sallie answered at random and since he seemed to expect
some reply to that fatuity. She had met a good many men in her time, but
never one quite like this Lord Ingoldsby--who actually seemed anxious to
look and act like a cunning fool.
A waiter intervened between them. But his lordship waved that
functionary away.
"Do let's," he implored with child-like insistence. "It would be so
deevy to be pals with you. And I'm beastly dull here, all by myself,
don't y'know. So--
"Eh?" He glared at Slyne, who had bluntly interrupted his _tete-a-tete_.
"No, I _don't_ want any oysters--I told that waiter-chap so. And I
_don't_ know any 'lady of the camellias.' I can't imagine what you're
talkin' about at all, I'm sure."
"I saw her again last night, at the Casino," said Slyne, imperturbably,
and went on to entertain Sallie with a long if not over-truthful account
of his own over-night's doings there. So that, for all his lordship's
lack of manners, it was some time before that spoiled youth again
succeeded in monopolising her attention. At every turn Slyne was ready
to balk him, and, but for his native self-conceit coupled with a certain
blind obstinacy, he must very soon have understood what was perfectly
plain to Sallie, that he was there merely on sufferance, to serve some
purpose of Slyne's.
"Goin' to be here long, Lady Josephine?" he managed to break in at last.
Slyne had turned to give a departing waiter some order.
"I don't know," Sallie answered again, since she could say nothing else.
"Hope to goodness you are," declared his lordship. "Stay for a week or
two, anyhow: and,"--he lowered his voice to a husky whisper, leaning
toward her--"let _me_ trot you about a bit, eh? You'll maybe see more
than enough of _him_ by and by!" He indicated Slyne with an eloquent
elbow, and further expressed his sentiments by means of an ardent sigh.
Beyond the blossom-laden epergne, Mr. Jobling and Captain Dove, almost
cut off from other intercourse by that barrier, were exchanging coldly
critical glances. Neither seemed to be quite at his ease with the other,
and both had, of course, a great many urgent questions to put to Slyne
as soon as the Marquis of Ingoldsby should be gone. So that the
luncheon-party must have proved a very dull affair to them, and they
were no doubt glad when it was over.
Slyne signalled to Sallie as soon as coffee was served, and she rose to
leave the room. She was quite accustomed to being promptly dispensed
with whenever her company might have been inconvenient.
"Oh, I say!" protested Lord Ingoldsby. "You're not goin' yet, Lady J.
Half a mo'. Won't you come for a spin with me now that the car's mine?
Just say the word and I'll drop my other engagement. And then we could
dine at--"
"Lady Josceline will be engaged with her lawyer all afternoon," Slyne
cut him short with the utmost coolness, "and she's leaving Monte Carlo
again to-night."
The Marquis of Ingoldsby glowered at him.
"I'll see you in Paris, then, Lady J.," he went on, pointedly ignoring
Slyne, "or in London, at least, later on. Well, good-bye--if you must be
goin'."
He bowed her out of the room, and then, snatching up his hat and cane
with very visible annoyance, included the others in a curt nod of
farewell and made off himself.
He passed her before she had closed her own door--and would gladly have
paused there.
"You won't forget me, will you?" she heard him ask eagerly from behind
her. But she did not delay to answer that question.
A few minutes later, Slyne knocked at her door and entered, followed by
the other two men. He had brought with him the papers which Mr. Jobling
had prepared. Mr. Jobling carried an inkstand, and Captain Dove a
decanter of brandy. Slyne seated himself at the table and waved Sallie
back to her chair by the window.
"We're going to talk business for a few minutes," he told her, "and then
get everything settled in writing--to keep you safe.
"Fire ahead now, Dove. You want to know--"
"Is Sallie really--"
"_I_ don't know anyone of that name now. D'you mean Lady Josceline?"
Captain Dove glared at him, and then at the lawyer, and then at Sallie
herself.
"Is that really who I am now, Jasper?" she asked, a most wistful
inflection in her low voice.
"You needn't believe _me_," he answered her. "Ask Mr. Jobling. He'll
tell you."
Mr. Jobling coughed importantly. "I'll tell you all I know myself, Lady
Josceline," he promised her, and proceeded to repeat in part what he had
told Slyne on the terrace the night before concerning the Jura family,
but without a single word of the fortune awaiting the next of kin.
Captain Dove's face expressed the extreme of astonishment as he too sat
listening with the closest attention.
"That's as far as my present knowledge goes," the lawyer finished
blandly. "And now--I understand that Captain Dove is prepared to supply
the proof required in conclusion.
"How long have you known Lady Josceline, Captain Dove?"
Captain Dove frowned as if in deep thought, and Slyne looked very
crossly at him.
"About three quarters of an hour," the old man answered, and, glancing
at Slyne, chuckled hoarsely. "She's only been Lady Josceline for so
long."
Mr. Jobling nodded understanding and the creases on his fleshy forehead
disappeared again.
"And before that--?" he suggested, politely patient.
"Before that she was--what she still is so far's I'm concerned--Saleh
Harez, my adopted daughter."
"Sallie--_Harris!_" Mr. Jobling ejaculated. "Dear me! Did you say
Sallie--er--Harris?"
"I said Saleh Harez," affirmed Captain Dove, and filled the glass at his
elbow again. "But all that concerns you, so far's I can see, is that
I've known her ever since she was knee-high to me. I've been a father to
her all those years, and she's my adopted daughter. So now, you can take
it from me, Mr. Jobling, that I'm the joker, and both bowers too, in
this merry little game."
"Which makes it all the more unfortunate for you that you haven't a
single penny to stake on your hand," Slyne put in, while the lawyer
looked somewhat blankly from one to the other of them. "So--don't waste
any more time bluffing, but tell Jobling how you found Sal--Lady
Josceline."
Captain Dove darted a very evil look at his friendly adviser. "And what
if I refuse?" he asked.
Slyne almost smiled. "Why cut off your own nose to spite your face?" he
returned. "You won't refuse, because it would cost you a hundred
thousand dollars to do so."
Captain Dove stroked his chin contemplatively, and his face slowly
cleared.
"A hundred and fifty thousand, you mean," he said in a most malevolent
tone.
Slyne got up from the table as if in anger, and for some time the two
wrangled over that point, the stout solicitor gazing at them with
evident dismay, while Sallie awaited the upshot of it all with bated
breath. She knew it was over the price to be paid for her that they were
disputing, but that knowledge had ceased to be any novelty. The wrathful
voices of the two disputants seemed to come from a great distance. She
felt as if the whole affair were a dream from which she might at any
moment awake on board the _Olive Branch_ again.
"There isn't money enough in it to pay you so much for a mere
affidavit," she heard Slyne say, and Mr. Jobling, under his glance,
confirmed that statement emphatically.
"A hundred and twenty-one thousand is the last limit--a thousand down,
to bind the bargain, and the balance the day of my wedding with Sallie,"
Slyne declared. "If that doesn't satisfy you--there's nothing more to be
said. And I'll maybe find other means--"
"Show me even the first thousand," requested Captain Dove, and Slyne
counted out on to the table, at a safe distance from the old man's
twitching fingers, five thousand francs of the amount Lord Ingoldsby had
paid him for his car.
"All right," said Captain Dove gruffly, and snatched at the notes. But
Slyne picked them up again.
"As soon as you've given Jobling your statement," he said, "and signed
whatever other documents he may think necessary, I'll hand you these and
my note of hand, endorsed by him, for the balance remaining due you."
Mr. Jobling picked up a pen and Slyne pushed a sheet of foolscap toward
him. Captain Dove, with a grunt of disgust, sat back in his chair and,
while the lawyer wrote rapidly, related how he had found Sallie.
When he had finished, Mr. Jobling read his statement over aloud, and
chuckled ecstatically. His own eyes were shining.
"That settles it, Lady Josceline," said he triumphantly, turning to
Sallie. "I'll stake my professional reputation on your identity now. You
need have no further doubt--"
"And just to clinch the matter," growled Captain Dove, "you'd better add
this to your affidavy:--The clothes the kid was wearing when I fetched
her off that dhow were all marked with the moniker 'J. J.' and some sort
of crest. But--they were all lost when the ship I commanded then
was--went down at sea."
Mr. Jobling groaned. "How _very_ unfortunate!" he remarked before he
resumed his writing. And Slyne stared fixedly at the old man until the
lawyer had finished.
"Now," said Mr. Jobling, adjusting his pince-nez and beaming about him
again, "we can call in a couple of witnesses and--"
"We'll witness each other's signatures." Slyne disagreed. "Better not
bring in any outsiders."
The stout solicitor frowned over that, but finally nodded concurrence.
And Captain Dove took the pen from him, only to hand it to Slyne.
"Gimme my thousand dollars and your joint note for the balance first,"
he requested unamiably.
Slyne signed the new note Mr. Jobling pushed across the table, and Mr.
Jobling endorsed it. Captain Dove read it over carefully before he
pocketed it, and also counted with great caution the bills Slyne tossed
to him. Then he in his turn signed, without reading it, the statement
the lawyer had drawn up from his dictation, and the more lengthy
agreement between Sallie and Jasper Slyne.
Slyne and Jobling added their names to that, and Slyne attached his
careful signature to a promise to pay the solicitor the percentage
agreed upon. Captain Dove witnessed it and then called Sallie from her
seat in the window-alcove, and she came forward with anxious eyes, to
fulfil the undertaking she had finally had to give Jasper Slyne as the
price of his help in her most unhappy predicament.
She did not know--nor did she greatly care then--what was contained in
the contract he laid before her without a word. She took from him
without demur the pen he held out to her. She had promised to do all he
told her and give him whatever he asked--except, for the present,
herself.
"Sign 'Josceline Justice' at the foot of each page," he said gently, and
she did so without a word. For she would not for all the world contained
have broken any promise she had given. Then Mr. Jobling desired her to
witness the two other men's signatures.
As she handed him back the pen she had a final question to ask him.
"You said my father and mother are both dead, and my step-brother too.
Is there no one else--"
"No one you need worry about in the least," he assured her,
misunderstanding. "There was a beggarly American who lodged a claim to
the title and--to the title; his name was Carthew, I think--yes, Justin
Carthew. But even if I--if he hadn't gone and got lost while looking for
you, his claim would be quite ineffectual now. You're your father's
daughter, Lady Josceline. Justin Carthew was a dozen or more degrees
removed from the trunk of your family tree. He had only the faintest
tinge of blue blood in his veins. He was an absolute outsider. We'll
hear no more about _him_ now."
"You mean that it's an absolutely sure thing for her," Captain Dove
suggested, and Mr. Jobling looked pained.
"I can't afford to risk anything on uncertainties, sir," he answered
stiffly. "And I'll stake my professional reputation on--"
"Oh, never mind about all that," Slyne broke in, folding his share of
the papers together and pocketing them. "The syndicate's safely floated.
And now--as to our next move.
"You'd better get away back to Genoa by the five o'clock train, Dove.
And you must take Ambrizette with you; I'll get Sal--Lady Josceline
another maid in Paris--one who won't attract quite so much attention to
us as that damned dwarf would.
"Jobling and I will go on there by the night-mail, on our way to London
with--Lady Josceline. You can take the _Olive Branch_ round to some safe
English port and lay her up there in the meantime. As soon as you land,
you can rejoin us--at Jobling's address. By that time we'll probably be
ready to redeem our note to you."
"By that time," Captain Dove returned with concentrated bitterness,
"you'll have found some way to give me the slip altogether. D'ye take me
for a blind idiot, Slyne? D'ye think I'm going to let Sallie out of my
sight, with you?"
Slyne was visibly disconcerted. "But--aren't you going to take your ship
round to England?" he asked, in genuine surprise. "You can't very well
leave her lying in Genoa!"
"I'll attend to my own end of the business," said Captain Dove with
angry decision. "If you're going to London by train to-night, so am I.
If you like to come back on board with me, I'll sail you round. But I'm
not the only man on the _Olive Branch_ who can sail a ship. Why, I've
half a dozen broken captains--and most of 'em with extra masters'
certificates, too--among my crew.
"I've left Brasse and Da Costa in charge, and they'll work her across
the Bay if I tell them to. I've only to send them a wire. And all you
have to do now is to say which way you want to travel--with me; for I'm
going to stick to you like a leech till the day you pay me off."
Slyne walked to the window, humming a tune. But it was obviously costing
him all of his refreshed fortitude to refrain from expressing his real
sentiments toward Captain Dove. His face, as he stood glaring blindly
out at the beautiful scene before him, was like that of a wild beast
balked of its fair prey. But from between his bared, set teeth the
careless hum came unbroken.
"I think you're foolish," was all he said when he turned again,
convinced that it would be a waste of time to argue the matter with the
old man, "but--suit yourself. Jobling and I _must_ get to London with
Sal--Lady Josceline at the earliest possible moment. If you insist on
travelling with us to-night--so be it. All I want you to understand is
that there's to be no more drinking, and that you must be advised by me
in every other particular. This isn't really the sort of game you're
liable to shine in. It would be far better for all of us if you'd stay
on board your ship."
Captain Dove's weather-beaten countenance was turning slowly purple. He
was striving after speech. Slyne, outwardly cool and contemptuous of his
visible fury, stood gazing down at him, hands in pockets. Mr. Jobling
was wriggling restlessly in his chair, glancing from one to the other,
prepared to flee from the coming storm.
Still without a word, Captain Dove reached again for the
brandy-decanter, directly defying Slyne. Slyne stepped forward and
snatched it out of his hand.
Simultaneously, the old man and Mr. Jobling sprang from their seats, the
former making for Slyne and the latter for the door, which opened just
as he reached it, so that he all but fell over a boy in buttons who had
knocked and entered carrying a telegram on a tray.
Slyne had not moved. Captain Dove, almost at his throat, spun round on
one heel.
"For me?" Mr. Jobling exclaimed anxiously as he ripped the envelope
open. And a slow pallor overspread his puffy pink features while he was
perusing its contents.
"From Mullins, my managing clerk," he mumbled as he passed the message
to Slyne, who looked it over indifferently, and then re-read it aloud in
a low but very ominous voice: "'_American claimant landed at Genoa
yesterday. Now on way to London. Court granted decree in his favour._'
Handed in at Chancery Lane, in London,"--he pulled out his watch--"fifty
minutes ago."
The page-boy had disappeared. Slyne pushed suddenly past Mr. Jobling and
set his back against the door. Captain Dove was approaching the
terrified solicitor softly, on tiptoe, his fists clenched, all his
tobacco-stained fangs displayed in a grin of fury. One of his long arms
shot out just as the door opened behind Slyne's back and a voice
announced:
"M. Dubois."