MR. MILLER
Outside their own country two British types carry their caste marks
patently. They are the tourist and the officer. Gibraltar abounds with
both, the company of the first having an occasional and transient
superiority when it is swollen by Transatlantic arrivals or intermittent
yachting cruisers. But the officers of the garrison and their wives and
daughters are the reigning members of the informal club which makes
Society on the Rock. They know each other, they discuss each other; the
longer they stay the more parochial grow their interests. Newcomers
undergo a period of silent probation. They cannot slip in unobserved.
The who and the whence test is applied to each with unction, sometimes
without justice, but almost invariably with good-humor. As a consequence
everybody, within limits, knows something about everybody else.
There are exceptions, and one, an olive-complexioned, gray-clad,
gray-haired, dark-eyed man, was walking steadily down the Waterport one
sunny afternoon as a rush of cabs towards the custom-house proclaimed
the incoming of an important steamer. Mr. William Miller had a
pleasantly situated cottage in the South Town. The postman knew that he
had many correspondents in Spain, England, Germany, and elsewhere.
Moorish visitors from across the straits were not infrequent at a small
office which he retained in Waterport Street. Men of letters, desiring
information on recondite subjects, separated themselves from the
frivolous landing parties of Messrs. Cook and called at the same
address. No one had ever tapped the sources of Mr. Miller's encyclopaedic
knowledge in vain. No one had found him otherwise than affable. And
though it was understood that his activities were literary, no resident
or tourist had successfully probed the nature of his life-work.
The wives of many colonels had recognized this and had flung themselves
with ardor against the breastworks of his imperturbability. Not one of
them could look back with pride on any action in which they had won even
a temporary advantage. Mr. Miller spoke freely, showed an intimate
knowledge of men and manners throughout the civilized world, and
appeared to manifest pleasure in sociabilities. His only attempts to
return these lay in small but eclectic tea-parties whereat he displayed
hoards of artistic treasures and discoursed learnedly of carpet dye and
porcelain marks.
But he was by no means a ladies' man. He accepted, and was welcome at
the hospitalities of many a mess or gun room. He sang well and could
play a more than ordinary effective accompaniment to a comic song after
hearing the air whistled half a dozen times by its would-be interpreter.
The impersonality of his social attitude prevented his being popular,
but he was an institution. As he walked along he bowed, nodded, smiled;
obviously he knew everybody. Obviously everybody knew him.
As he walked across the sunlit square and dived into the deeply shadowed
tunnel which is the Waterport, a tender fussed noisily up to the quay.
Mr. Miller eyed the passengers on its deck keenly.
The steamer was evidently a White Star in from New York. The load of
colossal trunks upon the deck would have told him that apart from the
accent of the passengers and the flag at the masthead. Baggage agents
began to dart here and there; Mr. Cook's uniformed interpreters were in
the forefront of the fray; Spanish cab runners yelled and grimaced.
Mr. Miller stood aside without attempting to force a way into the
tumult. His hands rested quietly together on the hilt of his cane. His
brow was contemplative and unruffled. Certainly if he awaited anything
he was in no hurry to find it.
All things come to those who wait, and Mr. Miller had not to wait long.
A man strode suddenly out of the custom-house gate, thrust aside the
Spanish porter who was snatching at his handbag, and made a beckoning
motion towards a cab.
Mr. Miller strode quietly forward and reached it simultaneously with the
fare.
The man looked at him with a sudden irritable alertness and then broke
into a grin.
"You're here," he said, and flung his bag upon the seat. The other
responded with a tiny shrug as if he deprecated the platitudinous nature
of the remark. He motioned the man to take his seat, sat down beside
him, and told the driver the name of an hotel. "Your man is looking
after your heavy luggage?" he questioned.
The other nodded impatiently.
"Yes," he said. "Not that there's much to look after." He turned and
glanced into his companion's face. "I'm getting down to bed-rock now;
nothing left to waste on trivialities. I nearly came second class."
Miller's eyebrows rose.
"That would have been unnecessary." He speculated.
"Imbecile, as it turned out," agreed the man. "There were some
bridge-playing Southerners on board, old school, couldn't bring
themselves to be civil to the New Yorkers, but ready to take an
Englishman, and a lord, moreover, to their hearts. No high play, but I'm
eight hundred dollars up on the voyage."
Miller nodded placidly.
"Bed-rock is quite a way down yet," he smiled.
"Not if expenses are to mount as you advised me in your last letter,"
snapped the other. "Has anything been done?"
Miller shook his head slowly.
"Force is beyond us," he said, "for we don't possess it. Bribery is out
of the question; there is no one left by the other side who has not had
his price. Opportunity may be ours. We must await it."
"And waiting costs twenty pounds a week!"
The gray man turned his opened palm outwards with a deprecative motion
which was not English at all.
"My dear Lord Landon, how can Opportunity be seized if there is no one
to meet her when she appears?"
Landon gave a dissatisfied grunt.
"How many lacqueys have you set to wait on her?"
"Six," said Miller, succinctly. "Six men of action, who would have
succeeded before now, but for an accident."
Landon's face took on the eager expression of a wolf to whom a distant
taint is brought by the evening wind.
"Eh?" he cried. "There has been a chance, then; their defences are not
impregnable?"
Miller shook his head.
"They have been strengthened since," he said diffidently. "But the weak
spot in them is the child himself. He has never had, if you will pardon
the remark, proper control. He is frankly disobedient of the precautions
with which they surround him."
Landon grinned.
"There's my blood in him," he chuckled. "And, by God, I'm fond of the
little toad, too. It's not only to spite her, Miller, or for the money
that's in it. I never took the trouble to whop him; I believe he'd come
to me of his own accord, if he had the chance."
"It's a large if," suggested Mr. Miller, politely.
Landon made no retort. His face had assumed a meditative mask; his lips
were firmly pressed together; he had the effect of one who calculates
pro against con.
"That's why I think it's time I took a hand," he said suddenly. "We'll
knock off three of your six, Miller. I am prepared to be a host in
myself."
For the moment the other said nothing. They had swung out of the
Waterport Street and turned the sharp corner which brought them to the
entrance of the hotel. He listened quietly as his companion demanded the
number of the room engaged for him, received his letters, and entered
the lift. He accompanied him silently. It was not till they were left
alone that he pulled a pocket-book out, tranquilly turned the leaves,
and consulted an entry.
"I note that I have had no remittance from you, Lord Landon," he
announced, "since November."
"Six weeks ago," agreed Landon, languidly. "Six times twenty is a
hundred and twenty. You reinforce my argument, my good Miller. A hundred
and twenty pounds gone and you show me--nothing."
The other coughed a dry, perfunctory little cough.
"As far as I am concerned, the money is, as you say, gone," he allowed,
"but you have just come by one hundred and sixty sovereigns owing to the
complacence of these Southern gentlemen on board your boat. That puts us
right and safeguards another fortnight."
Landon nodded and answered in a voice as dry as his own.
"That is a matter for discussion," he intimated. "I should like to hear
these expenses justified to some appreciable extent. What was the chance
which failed?"
"Though it failed," rejoined Miller, "it proved the advantage of
constant vigilance. The child separated himself from his guardians in
the very midst of the late afternoon traffic and got into the hands of
one of our men. They reached the pier together; they were within an ace
of success. Then Fate interfered--it must have been Fate," he
interpolated with the ghost of a grin--"because her instrument was of
your own house."
Landon came to a sudden halt in the opening of an envelope.
"What's that?" he cried quickly. "A relation of mine?"
"Captain John Aylmer, R.A., Assistant Secretary to the new Military
Works Commission," answered Miller, sedately.
Landon swore. Then suddenly he began to laugh.
"It's quaint," he conceded. "It's damned quaint, Miller. And he
did--what?"
Miller shrugged his shoulders.
"Interested himself in the situation, caused a delay which was fatal,
for the moment, to our success. He cross-questioned the child and our
man had to save himself, alone."
Landon laughed again.
"And he knew, this cousin of mine? He knew whose child it was?"
"Not then, but now, I imagine. He has met him since, at the Tent Club.
He has also met your late father-in-law."
"What? The Kite--old Jacob--he's there?"
"Personally superintending a situation which gets daily more
impenetrable, for us. Each fright we give them adds another palisade to
the defence."
Landon took up the letters which he had laid down and went on opening
and glancing through them. He pursed up his lips into an obstinately set
expression; he assumed the air of a bargainer who has reached the limit
of his purpose. For he fully understood the drift of Mr. Miller's
remarks.
"We had better be plain with each other," he said at last. "My little
expedition to the States has been a failure. As a matrimonial
proposition I am, for the present, out of the running. They told me to
come again in a year's time. Title-hunting American women have short
memories, but some beastly reporter recognized me and ran two columns of
reminiscences of the trial. That queered me, and after all the decree is
not made absolute for another six months."
"Is this anticipatory of the announcement that those eight hundred
dollars are the only support between you and bed-rock after all?"
"You jump at my meaning. I'm going to take over the duties of your six,
or of some of them, at any rate."
The other's gray eyes reviewed his companion with a keenly calculating
glance. There was no irritation in it, rather there was satisfaction.
Mr. Miller did not present the aspect of a man whose chances of
receiving a debt of one hundred and twenty pounds had been made
doubtful. He had more the look of a bull speculator watching a tape as
the eighths and sixteenths are added every few minutes to the stock
which he commands.
"You will fail," he said drily. "Without funds you must fail. One poor
man, in spite of the story books, can do nothing against a hundred and
wealth."
"Possibly," said Landon. "But one may be permitted to try."
"No," said the other, stolidly. "One may not be permitted, in Tangier."
Landon looked up and for a moment silence hung heavily between the two
men. The one who stood was the picture of heavy, imperturbable
resolution. Landon, sitting back in his chair, was animate with energy,
with a sort of tenseness which was almost magnetic. It was as if a
panther faced a rhinoceros.
Then Landon shrugged his shoulders.
"Am I being threatened, my dear Miller?" he asked quietly.
"You are being informed," said the other. "The Syndicate which I
represent is willing to finance you, for an adequate return. Without
that it proposes to make Tangier an impossible residence for you."
Landon stared his surprise and his obvious relief.
"They are going to speculate in me?" He pondered for a moment. "I don't
promise, or I haven't promised, that I shall allow old Jacob to buy the
child back, if we get him, at all."
Miller nodded weightily.
"That does not matter to us," he announced. "That is as you like."
Landon's eyes were still wide and debating.
"Then your return comes--where?" he asked.
"We are willing to wait for it," said the other. "The first service we
require from you is that you will renew your acquaintance with your
cousin, Captain Aylmer, and endeavor to remove the distaste which I
regret to think he feels for your company."
Landon bent forward, leaned his elbows on the table and his chin on his
closed fists. He stared at his companion with a concentrated,
dispassionate examination which seemed to probe and fathom through the
depths of the other's impenetrability.
Miller met the scrutiny with no other manifestation than an, if
possible, increase of apathy.
Landon dropped his hands slowly upon the table and gave his head a tiny
shake.
"I don't understand you," he said. "Why has my cousin a distaste for my
society? We have never been in collision. As a matter of fact, he was
best man at my wedding."
"It is to be supposed that he read the account of your divorce," said
the other, stolidly. "He has now made the acquaintance of your wife's
relations."
"I see," said Landon, slowly. "Is that all?"
"Isn't it enough? Are you generally received?"
There was something callous, almost brutal, in the man's tone. The tiny
spot of color which began to burn in Landon's sallow cheek was evidence
that he recognized it.
"So," he answered, "I am to eat dirt at the hands of Captain John
Aylmer? I am to appear to like it? Why?"
"Because," said Miller, dispassionately, "you are practically
penniless. That is your side of the question. Our side is that your
cousin happens to be what he is--Secretary to the Military Works
Commission, who hold the immediate future of Gibraltar in their hands."
For the second time, and through a longer silence, the two stared at
each other. As the fiery torch of comprehension burned brightly on
Landon's face, rose to his forehead, seemed, indeed, to gleam in his
eyes, his lips, which were at first grim and rigid, curled slowly into a
sneer.
"By the Lord!" he swore. "By the Lord, Miller, you have an impudence!"
"I have a knowledge of values," said the other, impassively. "I wish to
get my commission both ways. I expect it from you, because you get the
job from no one else. I expect it from my employers, because you are
practically the only tool at present, which they can use. I am perfectly
open with you."
"As open as the Pit!" snarled Landon. "As candid as midnight! Let's have
a taste of it plainly. What is it you want of me--robbery?"
Miller made a gesture of deprecation.
"I want you to--borrow--unknown to your cousin, certain books, the
nature of which will be indicated to you in detail."
"And if I don't?"
"You must, at any rate, try."
"And if I won't?"
Miller smiled.
"We don't discuss absurdities."
There was nothing manifestly menacing in this, but there was a sense of
finality. It reached Landon like a shaft of cold air blown in through
the suddenly opened door. Mentally he flinched from it; he lifted his
shoulders into a shrug of resignation.
"Where are his quarters?"
"In the South Town near my own cottage. For the moment that does not
matter. You meet him to-morrow, by accident. You do not know, you see,
that he is here?"
He consulted a small time-table.
"We should be on the quay about three-thirty to-morrow, when the steamer
gets in from Tangier."
For the second time Landon expressed surrender with a passive shrug.