A girl on a horse had just cantered past. She saw him and lifted her
whip to acknowledge his raised hat.
"Who is that?" Evie was more than curious.
"A girl I know," he said suavely. "The daughter of my doctor, and
rather a gossip."
"You're ashamed of being seen with me."
"Rubbish!" he laughed. "I am so proud of you that I wish she had
stopped, confound her!" He took her hand and smiled into her eyes.
"Goodbye, beloved," he breathed.
Evie Colebrook watched the car until it had turned out of sight. It
was following the gossiping girl, but she did not care. She went
home walking on air.
At the corner of the Row, the big car drew abreast of the rider.
"Why on earth are you riding on Bank Holiday, Beryl--the park is full
of louts, and there aren't half-a-dozen people in the Row!"
Beryl Merville looked at him quizzically. "And why on earth are you
in the park, Ronnie; and who was your beautiful little friend?"
He frowned. "Friend? Oh, you mean the girl I was speaking to?
Would you call her beautiful--yes, I suppose she is pretty, but quite
a kid. Her father is an old friend of mine--colonel--I forget his
name, he is something at the War Office. I have an idea they live
near the park. I saw her walking and stopped the car to talk to her.
Frankly I was so bored that I almost fell on her neck. I wasn't with
her for five minutes."
Beryl nodded and dismissed the matter from her mind. She was more
interested in another subject.
"Yes, dear, I had your letter. I'm an awful brute not to have come
over and seen you. But the fact is, I have been working hard. Don't
sneer, Beryl. I really have. Sturgeon, the editor of the
_Post-Herald_, has discovered in me a latent genius for writing. It
is rather fun--apparently I have a flair for that kind of work."
"But, Ronnie, this is great news! Stop your car by the corner and
find a man to hold my horse--there is an awful lot I want to talk to
you about."
He parked his car and, helping her dismount, handed the reins to an
idle groom. A watchful attendant drew near.
"You will have to pay for the seats, Ronnie, I have no money."
"Happily I have two tickets," he said and realized his mistake before
he drew them from his pocket.
"I thought you hadn't been with your colonel's daughter more than
five minutes?" she challenged and laughed, "I sometimes think that
you'd rather lie than eat!"
"My dear Beryl," Mr. Morelle's tone revealed both shock and injury.
"Did I say that I didn't sit with her? I couldn't be so uncivil as
to expect her to stand. The fact is, that she hinted that she would
like me to drive her round the park and I had no wish to."
"Never mind your guilty secret," she said gaily, "tell me all about
your new job. Poor Ronnie, so they have made you work at last! I
feared this."
Ronnie smiled good-naturedly. "It is amusing," he said. "I was
always rather keen on that kind of work, even when I was at Oxford.
Sturgeon saw some verses of mine in one of the quarterlies and asked
me if I would care to describe a motor-car race--the Gordon Bennett
cup. I took it on and he seemed immensely pleased with the account I
wrote. I feel that I am doing some poor devil out of a job, but--"
"But it doesn't keep you awake at nights," she finished. "But how
lovely, Ronald. You will be able to describe Mr. Steppe's
trial--everybody says that one of these days he will be tried--"
Ronald Morelle was not amused. She saw a frown gather on his
forehead and remembered that he and Mr. Steppe had some association.
"Of course I'm joking, Ronnie. How awfully touchy you are! Mr.
Steppe is quite nice, and people invariably say unpleasant things
about a successful man."
"Steppe--" he paused. There was a nervousness in his manner and in
his tone which he could not disguise. "Steppe is quite a good
fellow. A little rough, but he was trained in a rough school. He is
very nearly the cleverest financier in this country or any other."
He would have changed the conversation had she not interpolated a
question.
"I do not know him--Sault you said? No, I've never met him. He does
odd jobs for Moropulos. A half-caste, isn't he? What nerve the
fellow had to come to the house! Why didn't you kick him out?"
"It is obvious that you haven't seen him or you wouldn't ask such a
question," she replied, her eyes twinkling.
"I don't know what he does," Ronnie went on. "Steppe has a good
opinion of him. That is all I know. He has three decorations for
something he did in the war. He was in the Field Ambulance and
brought in a lot of people from No Man's Land. He is quite old,
isn't he?"
She nodded. "Moropulos isn't anything to boast about. Steppe likes
him, though." Apparently the cachet of Mr. Steppe satisfied Ronnie
in all things. "He's a Greek--you've met him? A sleek devil. They
say that he's afraid except when he is drunk."
"Ronnie!"
"A fact. Moropulos drinks like a fish. Absinthe and all sorts of
stuff. Steppe told me. That is why this nigger fellow Sault is
useful. Sault is the only man who can handle him. He's as strong as
an ox. There isn't a smarter devil than Moropulos. He has the brain
of a cabinet minister, and is as close as an oyster. But when the
fit is on him he'd stand up in the street and talk himself into gaol.
And others--not Steppe, of course," he added hastily, "Steppe has
nothing to be afraid of, only--well, Moropulos might say things that
would look bad."
"And is that all?" she asked with an odd sense of disappointment.
"Doesn't Mr. Sault do anything else but act as a sort of keeper?"
Ronnie, already weary of the subject, yawned behind his hand.
"Awfully sorry, but I was up late last night. Sault? Oh, yes, I
believe he does odd jobs. He is rather an ugly brute, isn't he?"
She did not answer this. Her interest in the man puzzled her. He
appealed in a strange fashion to something within her that was very
wholesome. She was glad, very glad, about his war decorations. That
he should have done fine things--she liked to forget Ronnie's war
services.
"I wish I had decided to ride this morning," complained Ronnie. "I
never dreamed you would be out on a day like this. Why I came into
the park at all I really do not know. I didn't realize it was a bank
holiday and that all these dreadful people would be unchained for the
day. How is the doctor--well?" She nodded.
"He looked a little peaked when I saw him last. Look,
Beryl--Steppe!" A car, headed for Marble Arch, had swerved across the
road in response to the signal of its occupant. It pulled up behind
Ronald's machine and Mr. Steppe, with his queer sideways smile,
alighted, waving a white-gloved hand.
"Oh, dear," said Beryl plaintively, "why did I get off that horse? I
could have pretended that I had not recognized him."
"My dear girl!"
Ronald was genuinely distressed and it came to Beryl in the nature of
an unpleasant discovery that he was so completely in awe of the
financier, that his manner, his attitude, the very tone of his voice,
changed at the sight of him. And Steppe seemed to expect this
homage, took it as his right, dismissed and obliterated Ronnie from
participation with a jerk of his head intended as an acknowledgment
of his greeting and as an excusal of his presence.
Beryl could not help realizing his unimportance in the millionaire's
scheme of life.
The photographs of Jan Steppe which have from time to time appeared
in the public press, at once flatter and disparage him. The lens has
depicted faithfully the short black beard, the thick black eyebrows,
the broad nose and the thick bull neck of him. They missed his
immense vitality, the aura of power which enveloped him, his dominant
and forceful ego. His voice was thick and deep, sometimes in a
moment of excitement guttural, for his grandfather had been a
Transvaal Boer, a _byworner_ who had become, successively, farmer and
mine owner. Jan Cornelius Steppe, the first, had spoken no English;
his son Commandant Steppe, an enlightened and scholarly man, spoke it
well. He had been killed at Tugela Drift in the war, whilst Jan the
third was in England at a preparation school.
"Huh! Beryl! Very good luck, huh? I shall miss my train but it is
worth while. Riding? God! I wish I wasn't so fat and lazy. Motor
cars are the ruin of us. My grandfather rode twenty miles a day and
my father was never off a horse. Huh!"
Beryl often asked her father why Mr. Steppe grunted at the end of his
every question. But it was not a grunt. It was a throaty growl cut
short, a terrifying mannerism of his, meaningless but menacing. She
used to wonder whether the impression of ruthless ferocity which he
gave, was not more than half due to this peculiarity. He towered
above her, a mountain of a man, broad of shoulder and long of arm.
There was something simian about him, something that was almost
obscene. He was fond of describing himself as fat, but this was an
exaggeration. He had bulk, he was in the truest sense gross, but she
would not have described him as fat.
"Sit down," he commanded, "I haven't seen you since Friday. The
doctor came in yesterday morning. Nerves, huh? What's the matter
with him?"
Beryl laughed. "Father receives a great deal of misplaced sympathy.
He is really very well. He has been jumpy ever since I can remember."
Steppe nodded. He was sitting by her side in the chair vacated by
Ronnie, and Ronnie was standing.
"Sit down, Ronnie," she pointed to a chair at the other side of her.
"No-no thank you, Beryl," he said hastily, for all the world like a
schoolboy asked to sit in the presence of his master.
"Sit down," growled Steppe, and to the girl's amazement, Ronnie sat.
It was the only notice Jan Steppe took of his presence throughout the
interview, and Ronnie neither showed resentment nor made the
slightest attempt to intrude into the conversation that followed.
Presently Steppe looked at his watch. "I can catch that train," he
said, and got up. "You're coming to dinner with me next week--I'll
fix the date with the doctor." She said she would be delighted.
Something of the mastership extended to her.
"You saw Sault?" He turned back after he had taken her hand. "Queer
fellow, huh? Big man, huh?"
"I thought he was--interesting," she admitted.
"Yes--interesting. A man." He glowered at Ronald Morelle.
"Interesting," he repeated, and went away with that. Her fascinated
gaze followed him as he strode toward the car. "Paddington--get me
there, damn you," she heard him say, and when the car had gone--
"Dynamic," she said with a sigh. "He is like a power house. When I
shake hands with him, I feel as though I'm going to get a bad burn!
You were very silent, Ronnie?"
"Yes--" absently. "Old Steppe is rather a shocker, isn't he? How
did he know you had seen Sault?"
"Father told him, I suppose. Ronnie, are you afraid of Mr. Steppe?"
He colored. "Afraid? How stupid you are, Beryl! Why should I be
afraid of him? He's--well, I do business with him. I am a director
of a company or two, he put me into them. One has to--how shall I
put it? One has to be polite to these people. I'll go along now.
Beryl--lot of work to do."
He was uncomfortable, and she did not pursue the subject. The
knowledge brought a little ache to her heart--that Ronnie was afraid
of Jan Steppe! She would have given her soul to respect Ronald
Morelle as she respected the swarthy gray-haired man whom even Steppe
respected.