Da Souza's office was neither furnished nor located with the idea of
impressing casual visitors. It was in a back-street off an alley, and
although within a stone's throw of Lothbury its immediate surroundings
were not exhilarating. A blank wall faced it, a green-grocer's shop
shared with a wonderful, cellar-like public-house the honour of its more
immediate environment. Trent, whose first visit it was, looked about him
with surprise mingled with some disgust.
He pushed open the swing door and found himself face to face with Da
Souza's one clerk--a youth of unkempt appearance, shabbily but flashily
dressed, with sallow complexion and eyes set close together. He was
engaged at that particular moment in polishing a large diamond pin upon
the sleeve of his coat, which operation he suspended to gaze with much
astonishment at this unlooked-for visitor. Trent had come straight from
Ascot, straight indeed from his interview with Francis, and was still
wearing his racing-glasses.
“I wish to see Mr. Da Souza,” Trent said. “Is he in?”
“I believe so, sir,” the boy answered. “What name?”
“Trent! Mr. Scarlett Trent!”
The door of an inner office opened, and Da Souza, sleek and curled,
presented himself. He showed all his white teeth in the smile with which
he welcomed his visitor. The light of battle was in his small, keen
eyes, in his cringing bow, his mock humility.
“I am most honoured, Mr. Trent, sir,” he declared. “Welcome back to
England. When did you return?”
“Yesterday,” Trent said shortly.
“And you have come,” Da Souza continued, “fresh from the triumphs of the
race-course. It is so, I trust?”
“I have come straight from Ascot,” Trent replied, “but my horse was
beaten if that is what you mean. I did not come here to talk about
racing though. I want a word with you in private.”
“With much pleasure, sir,” Da Souza answered, throwing open with a
little flourish the door of his sanctum. “Will you step in? This way!
The chair is dusty. Permit me!”
Trent threw a swift glance around the room in which he found himself. It
was barely furnished, and a window, thick with dust, looked out on
the dingy back-wall of a bank or some public building. The floor was
uncovered, the walls were hung with yellow maps of gold-mines all in
the West African district. Da Souza himself, spick and span, with glossy
boots and a flower in his buttonhole, was certainly the least shabby
thing in the room.
“You know very well,” Trent said, “what I have come about. Of course
you'll pretend you don't, so to save time I'll tell you. What have you
done with Monty?”
Da Souza spread outwards the palms of his hands. He spoke with
well-affected impatience.
“Monty! always Monty! What do I want with him? It is you who should look
after him, not I.”
Trent turned quietly round and locked the door. Da Souza would have
called out, but a paroxysm of fear had seized him. His fat, white face
was pallid, and his knees were shaking. Trent's hand fell upon his
shoulder, and Da Souza felt as though the claws of a trap had gripped
him.
“If you call out I'll throttle you,” Trent said. “Now listen. Francis is
in England and, unless Monty is produced, will tell the whole story. I
shall do the best I can for all of us, but I'm not going to have Monty
done to death. Come, let's have the truth.”
Da Souza was grey now with a fear greater even than a physical one. He
had been so near wealth. Was he to lose everything?
“Mr. Trent,” he whispered, “my dear friend, have reason. Monty, I tell
you, is only half alive, he hangs on, but it is a mere thread of life.
Leave it all to me! To-morrow he shall be dead!--oh, quite naturally.
There shall be no risk! Trent, Trent!”
His cry ended in a gurgle, for Trent's hand was on his throat.
“Listen, you miserable hound,” he whispered. “Take me to him this
moment, or I'll shake the life out of you. Did you ever know me go back
from my word?”
Da Souza took up his hat with an ugly oath and yielded. The two men left
the office together.
* * * * *
“Listen!”
The two women sat in silence, waiting for some repetition of the sound.
This time there was certainly no possibility of any mistake. From the
room above their heads came the feeble, quavering sobbing of an old man.
Julie threw down her book and sprang up.
“Mother, I cannot bear it any longer,” she cried. “I know where the key
is, and I am going into that room.”
Mrs. Da Souza's portly frame quivered with excitement.
“My child,” she pleaded, “don't Julie, do remember! Your father will
know, and then--oh, I shall be frightened to death!”
“It is nothing to do with you, mother,” the girl said, “I am going.”
Mrs. Da Souza produced a capacious pocket-handkerchief, reeking with
scent, and dabbed her eyes with it. From the days when she too had been
like Julie, slim and pretty, she had been every hour in dread of her
husband. Long ago her spirit had been broken and her independence
subdued. To her friend and confidants no word save of pride and love
for her husband had ever passed her lips, yet now as she watched her
daughter she was conscious of a wild, passionate wish that her fate at
least might be a different one. And while she mopped her eyes and looked
backward, Julie disappeared.
Even Julie, as she ascended the stairs with the key of the locked room
in her hand, was conscious of unusual tremors. If her position with
regard to her father was not the absolute condition of serfdom into
which her mother had been ground down, she was at least afraid of him,
and she remembered the strict commands he had laid upon them all. The
room was not to be open save by himself. All cries and entreaties were
to be disregarded, every one was to behave as though that room did not
exist. They had borne it already for days, the heart-stirring moans,
the faint, despairing cries of the prisoner, and she could bear it no
longer. She had a tender little heart, and from the first it had been
moved by the appearance of the pitiful old man, leaning so heavily upon
her father's arm, as they had come up the garden walk together. She made
up her mind to satisfy herself at least that his isolation was of his
own choice. So she went boldly up the stairs and thrust the key into the
lock. A moment's hesitation, then she threw it open.
Her first impulse, when she had looked into the face of the man who
stumbled up in fear at her entrance, was to then and there abandon her
enterprise--for Monty just then was not a pleasant sight to look upon.
The room was foul with the odour of spirits and tobacco smoke. Monty
himself was unkempt and unwashed, his eyes were bloodshot, and he had
fallen half across the table with the gesture of a drunken man. At the
sight of him her pity died away. After all, then, the sobbing they had
heard was the maudlin crying of a drunken man. Yet he was very old, and
there was something about the childish, breathless fear with which he
was regarding her which made her hesitate. She lingered instead, and
finding him tongue-tied, spoke to him.
“We heard you talking to yourself downstairs,” she said, “and we were
afraid that you might be in pain.”
“Ah,” he muttered, “That is all, then! There is no one behind you--no
one who wants me!”
“There is no one in the house,” she assured him, “save my mother and
myself.”
He drew a little breath which ended in a sob. “You see,” he said
vaguely, “I sit up here hour by hour, and I think that I fancy things.
Only a little while ago I fancied that I heard Mr. Walsh's voice, and he
wanted the mission-box, the wooden box with the cross, you know. I keep
on thinking I hear him. Stupid, isn't it?”
He smiled weakly, and his bony fingers stole round the tumbler which
stood by his side. She shook her head at him smiling, and crossed over
to him. She was not afraid any more.
“I wouldn't drink if I were you,” she said, “it can't be good for you,
I'm sure!”
“Good,” he answered slowly, “it's poison--rank poison.”
“If I were you,” she said, “I would put all this stuff away and go for a
nice walk. It would do you much more good.”
He shook his head.
“I daren't,” he whispered. “They're looking for me now. I must
hide--hide all the time!”
“Who are looking for you?” she asked.
“Don't you know? Mr. Walsh and his wife! They have come over after me!”
“Why?”
“Didn't you know,” he muttered, “that I am a thief?”
She shook her head.
“No, I certainly didn't. I'm very sorry!”
He nodded his head vigorously a great many times.
“Won't you tell me about it?” she asked. “Was it anything very bad?”
“I don't know,” he said. “It's so hard to remember! It is something like
this! I seem to have lived for such a long time, and when I look back I
can remember things that happened a very long time ago, but then there
seems a gap, and everything is all misty, and it makes my head ache
dreadfully to try and remember,” he moaned.
“Then don't try,” she said kindly. “I'll read to you for a little time
if you like, and you shall sit quite quiet.”
He seemed not to have heard her. He continued presently--
“Once before I died, it was all I wanted. Just to have heard her speak,
to have seen my little girl grown into a woman, and the sea was always
there, and Oom Sam would always come with that cursed rum. Then one day
came Trent and talked of money and spoke of England, and when he went
away it rang for ever in my ears, and at night I heard her calling for
me across the sea. So I stole out, and the great steamer was lying
there with red fires at her funnel, and I was mad. She was crying for me
across the sea, so I took the money!”
She patted his hand gently. There was a lump in her throat, and her eyes
were wet.
“Was it your daughter you wanted so much to see?” she asked softly.
“My daughter! My little girl,” he answered! “And I heard her calling to
me with her mother's voice across the sea. So I took the money.”
“No one would blame you very much for that, I am sure,” she said
cheerfully. “You are frightening yourself needlessly. I will speak to
Father, and he shall help you.”
He held up his hand.
“He is hiding me,” he whispered. “It is through him I knew that they
were after me. I don't mind for myself, but she might get to know, and I
have brought disgrace enough upon her. Listen!”
There were footsteps upon the stairs. He clung to her in an agony of
terror.
“They are coming!” he cried. “Hide me! Oh, hide me!”
But she too was almost equally terrified, for she had recognised her
father's tread. The door was thrown open and De Souza entered, followed
by Scarlett Trent.