“Ali! H'm! No--I--no! My son knows all sorts of people. I shall have to
try Mentone. Are you going? Good-bye! Good-bye! I'm sorry; ah! ha! My
cough--ah! ha h'h'.! Very distressing. Ye-hes! My cough-ah! ha h'h'.!
Most distressing. Ye-hes!”
Out in the drive Mr. Ventnor took a deep breath of the frosty air. Not
much doubt now! The two names had worked like charms. This weakly
old fellow would make a pretty witness, would simply crumple under
cross-examination. What a contrast to that hoary old sinner Heythorp,
whose brazenness nothing could affect. The rat was as large as life!
And the only point was how to make the best use of it. Then--for his
experience was wide--the possibility dawned on him, that after all, this
Mrs. Larne might only have been old Pillin's mistress--or be his
natural daughter, or have some other blackmailing hold on him. Any such
connection would account for his agitation, for his denying her, for his
son's ignorance. Only it wouldn't account for young Pillin's saying that
old Heythorp had made the settlement. He could only have got that from
the woman herself. Still, to make absolutely sure, he had better try
and see her. But how? It would never do to ask Bob Pillin for an
introduction, after this interview with his father. He would have to
go on his own and chance it. Wrote stories did she? Perhaps a newspaper
would know her address; or the Directory would give it--not a common
name! And, hot on the scent, he drove to a post office. Yes, there it
was, right enough! “Larne, Mrs. R., 23, Millicent Villas.” And thinking
to himself: 'No time like the present,' he turned in that direction.
The job was delicate. He must be careful not to do anything which
might compromise his power of making public use of his knowledge.
Yes-ticklish! What he did now must have a proper legal bottom. Still,
anyway you looked at it, he had a right to investigate a fraud on
himself as a shareholder of “The Island Navigation Company,” and a fraud
on himself as a creditor of old Heythorp. Quite! But suppose this Mrs.
Larne was really entangled with old Pillin, and the settlement a mere
reward of virtue, easy or otherwise. Well! in that case there'd be no
secret commission to make public, and he needn't go further. So that, in
either event, he would be all right. Only--how to introduce himself? He
might pretend he was a newspaper man wanting a story. No, that wouldn't
do! He must not represent that he was what he was not, in case he had
afterwards to justify his actions publicly, always a difficult thing, if
you were not careful! At that moment there came into his mind a question
Bob Pillin had asked the other night. “By the way, you can't borrow on a
settlement, can you? Isn't there generally some clause against it?” Had
this woman been trying to borrow from him on that settlement? But at
this moment he reached the house, and got out of his cab still undecided
as to how he was going to work the oracle. Impudence, constitutional and
professional, sustained him in saying to the little maid:
“Mrs. Larne at home? Say Mr. Charles Ventnor, will you?”
His quick brown eyes took in the apparel of the passage which served for
hall--the deep blue paper on the walls, lilac-patterned curtains over
the doors, the well-known print of a nude young woman looking over her
shoulder, and he thought: 'H'm! Distinctly tasty!' They noted, too,
a small brown-and-white dog cowering in terror at the very end of the
passage, and he murmured affably: “Fluffy! Come here, Fluffy!” till
Carmen's teeth chattered in her head.
“Will you come in, sir?”
Mr. Ventnor ran his hand over his whiskers, and, entering a room, was
impressed at once by its air of domesticity. On a sofa a handsome woman
and a pretty young girl were surrounded by sewing apparatus and some
white material. The girl looked up, but the elder lady rose.