_BOOK THE FIRST_
I
Beryl Merville wrote:
"_Dear Ronnie_: We are back from Italy, arriving this afternoon.
Daddy thought you would be there to meet us, and I was so
disappointed to find nobody but Mr. Steppe. Oh, yes! I know that he
is a most important person, and his importance was supported by his
new car; such an impressive treasure, with a collapsible
writing-table and cigar-lighter and library--actually a library in a
cunning little locker under one of the seats. I just glanced at them.
I am a little afraid of Mr. Steppe, yet he was kindness itself, and
that bull voice of his, bellowing orders to porters and chauffeur and
railway policemen was comforting in a way. Daddy is a little
plaintive on such occasions.
I thought he was looking unusually striking--Steppe I mean. People
certainly do look at him, with his black, pointed beard and his
bristling, black eyebrows. You like him, don't you? Perhaps I
should too, only--he is very magnetic; a commanding person, he
frightens me, I repeat. And I have met another man, I don't think
you know him, he said he had never met you. Daddy knows him rather
well, and so does Mr. Steppe. Such a queer man, Ronnie!
He arrived after Daddy had gone to his club, to collect some
correspondence. The maid came and told me there was a strange man in
the hall who said Dr. Merville had sent for him; so I went down to
see him.
He made the queerest impression on me. You will be amused, but not
flattered, when I confess that the moment I saw him, I thought of
you! I had a sort of warm impulse toward him. I felt as though I
were meeting you, as I wanted you to be. That sounds feeble, and
lame, but employing my limited vocabulary to the best of my poor
ability, I am striving to reduce my mad impression to words. How mad
it was, you'll understand. For, Ronnie, he was a stoutish man of
middle age--no more like you than I am like Mr. Steppe! Yet when I
saw this shabbily dressed person (the knees of his trousers shone and
the laces of his untidy boots were dragging) I just gasped. He sat
squarely on one of the hall chairs, a big, rough hand on each knee,
and he was staring in an absent-minded way at the wall. He didn't
even see me when I stood almost opposite to him. But his head,
Ronnie! It was the head of a conqueror; one of those heroes of
antiquity. You see their busts in the museums and wonder who they
are. A broad, eagle face, strangely dark, and on top a shock of
gray-white hair brushed back into a mane. He had the most beautiful
eyes I have ever seen in a man, and when they turned in my direction,
and he got up from his chair, not awkwardly as I expected, but with
the ease of an Augustus, there was within them so much
loving-kindness that I felt I could have cried.
And please, Ronnie, do not tell me that I am neurotic and over-tired.
I was just mad--nothing worse than that. I'm mad still, for I cannot
get him out of my mind. His name is Ambrose Sault, and he is
associated with daddy and Mr. Steppe, though I think that he is
really attached to that horrid Greek person to whom daddy introduced
me--Moropulos. What sort of work he does for Moropulos I have not
discovered. There is always a great deal of mystery about Mr.
Moropulos and Mr. Steppe's business schemes. Sometimes I am very
uncomfortable--which is a very mild way of describing my
feelings--about daddy--and things.
Ronnie, you have some kind of business dealings with father, what is
it all about? I should so like to discover. It is to do with
companies and corporations, isn't it? I know Mr. Steppe is a great
financier, but I don't quite know how financiers work. I suppose I
ought not to be curious, but it worries me--no, bothers is a better
word--sometimes.
Come and see me soon, Ronnie. I promise you I won't--you know. I've
never forgiven myself for hurting you so. It was such a horrid
story--I blame myself for listening, and hate myself for telling you.
But the girl's brother was so earnest, and so terribly upset, and the
girl herself was so wickedly circumstantial. You have forgiven me?
It was my first experience of blackmailers and I ought to have known
you better and liked you better than to believe that you would be
such a brute--and she was such a common girl, too--"