"NUMBER ONE."
Gilbert Warren, attorney-at-law, was seated in his office looking out
upon the main street of Gydisdorp.
He was an alert, straight, well-set-up man, not much on the further side
of thirty, handsome, too, in the dark-haired, somewhat hatchet-faced
aquiline type. He was attired in a cool, easy-fitting suit of white
duck, for the day had been hot, and still wore his broad-brimmed hat,
for he had only just come in.
Now he unlocked a drawer in his table, somewhat hastily, impatiently
might almost have been said. Thence he extracted a bundle of documents,
and began eagerly to peruse them. Among them were deeds of mortgage.
"A damn rotten place," he said to himself. "These fools have got bitten
this time, and serves 'em right. I advised them against touching it.
Now to me it doesn't matter. I don't mind dropping a little on it to
get _him_ out. If I take it over, why then he'll have to go--and it's
worth it. I will--Come in."
This in reply to a knock. A clerk entered.
"It's Ripton, about that committal judgment. Will you see him, sir?"
"--To the devil, willingly," replied Warren sharply. "Tell him to go
there."
The clerk went out, tittering, to inform the individual in question that
Warren was very busy, and couldn't possibly find time to attend to him
to-day, an intimation which had the effect of sending that much harassed
and debt-hung waggon-maker slouching down the street, gurgling forth
strange profanities, and consigning lawyers in general, and Warren in
particular, to the care of precisely the same potentate to whom Warren
had just consigned him; only in far more sultry, and utterly
unprintable, terms.
"Yes, I'll take it over," the attorney's thoughts ran on, as he scanned
the papers. "I can afford a loss on it--rather--and then the stake!
Good God! I'd cheerfully plank down all I've made, and start life
again, _kaal_, [lit: naked] for that. Out he'll have to walk--and not
much to take along with him either. He won't show his nose around that
neighbourhood again. Le Sage will take care of the rest."
Warren was the leading attorney in Gydisdorp. The district was large,
well-to-do, and litigious, wherefore over and above will-drawing and
conveyancing, and so forth, he had as much practice as he could take
care of. There were other matters he undertook, but on the quiet, which
were even more paying. Shafto, who came next to him, used to declare
that Warren ought to be struck off the rolls; but as the two were great
friends and invariably took a couple of "splits" together _per diem_, in
the bar of the Masonic Hotel, nobody believed Shafto--only laughed.
Besides, Warren was popular. He was genial and gifted, could tell a
good story and sing a good song; moreover, he was a keen sportsman. So
life, on the whole, was a rosy thing for him, and more so that Warren's
creed could be summed up in a word and a figure. This was it: Number 1.
Pushing the deeds aside, Warren unlocked a drawer, and produced another
enclosure. This he handled carefully, tenderly one might have said.
Undoing the soft paper wrappings, he extracted a--photograph. Propping
it up on his writing-table, he began to study it, and as he did so his
face softened unconsciously. Then he took up a large magnifying glass.
The powerful lens threw into relief the seductive lines of the splendid
figure, the curve of the smiling mouth, the glad, luminous dilation of
the eyes--and--it was identical with the portrait hanging on Wyvern's
wall--the one that _was_ dusted and cared for.
This had not been given to Warren by its original. Only one had been
given by her to anybody, and it we have seen before. Neither had he
stolen it. But a considerable bribe to the photographer's assistant,
himself in difficulties--Warren was nowhere if he failed to take
advantage of other people's difficulties--had procured him this, and
another copy, which, he kept at his own house. And as the photographer
drove his trade at Cape Town, some hundreds of miles distant from
Gydisdorp, why that rendered the transaction all the safer.
"Out he goes," he murmured mechanically, his glance riveted on the
portrait. "Out he goes--and then--I come in. Only--do I?"
The crack of a waggon whip and the harsh yell of the driver, from the
street outside; the clear, deep-toned voices of a group of Kafirs
passing along the footway, rising and falling in cadenced modulation,
the barking of a cur, these were the sounds--everyday sounds--that smote
upon his ear in the drowsy afternoon heat. Then rose another, and
hearing it he quickly put the photograph face downwards, drawing over it
a litter of papers. The sound was that of steps, ascending the wooden
staircase--for Warren chose to have his own office off the ground floor,
contrary to usual custom in Gydisdorp, so as to ensure greater privacy.
"Come in."
There entered the same clerk, having barely had time to knock.
"Mr Wyvern would like to see you, sir."
"Wyvern? Certainly. In a minute or two. I'll ring."
The clerk retired. The "minute or two" was spent by Warren in carefully
wrapping up the photograph again and replacing it in the drawer. Which
done he banged the spring handbell on his table and waited.
"Why, Wyvern, my dear old chap, how are you? Glad to see you again--
only wish I could be of more use to you though."
He was wringing the other's hand, and his tone was of the most cordial
Warren knew how to play on the cordiality stop in a way to soothe the
most suspicious, and Wyvern was not suspicious.
"Oh, I'm all right," said the other, with a careless laugh, not
altogether free from a note of despondency.
"By Jove! You look it too," said Warren, taking in the tall, fine
figure, and the clear-cut face with its hall-mark of breeding stamped
large. The clear blue eyes, too, were those of a man in the pink of
condition, and taking it all in he realised that with his own powers of
attraction, which were undoubted, he himself would be nowhere beside
this one, or, at any rate, not where he wanted to be--and the rest
didn't matter. "Well, now, what are the latest developments? They are
going to foreclose, aren't they?"
"Yes. It doesn't matter much in the long run. I've got another scheme
on hand now. I'm going to sell out and clear."
"Eh? The deuce you are?" cried Warren, surprised out of his normal and
impassive attitude. "Have a drink, old chap--then we can talk things
over snugly. What'll you have? Whisky or _dop_?"
"_Dop_, thanks. It's a Heaven-sent liquor for this climate."
Warren took the opportunity while getting out the said refreshment to
pull himself together. The other's news had come just in the nick of
time. He need not now take over the mortgage on Seven Kloofs. Its
owner was going to dear out anyhow; and he himself would be saved a sure
and certain loss.
"Here you are now," he said, "help yourself. Have a weed, too," taking
a cigar out of a box, and shoving the latter across to Wyvern. "So
you're going to clear, are you? Well, I shall miss you, old chap, so
will someone else, I expect--eh? Of course, as acting for Keeling, I've
been in a sort of way a professional enemy, but I haven't really, for
I've more than once kept him from putting the screw on you."
"I know you have, Warren, and it's devilish good of you."
"Oh, that's all right. You see, we can't refuse business unless it's
downright shady, so I couldn't chuck this because you and I are pals.
Besides, I've done you far more good by taking it. If I hadn't, Shafto
would have got it, and I don't think, somehow, you'd have found him any
improvement. Eh?"
"No, indeed," laughed Wyvern, who didn't like Shafto, and whom Shafto
didn't like.
"You'll find it a bit of a wrench parting with your place, Wyvern?"
"Rather. I love every stick and stone on it, although I've only had it
such a short time. Besides--it has associations."
"Of course," laughed the other, significantly. "One of them being that
it has ruined you."
"Well, yes. But even that has carried its compensations."
"What are you going to launch out in next? I know you're a reticent
chap, Wyvern, but we're old pals, and if there's any sort of way in
which I can ever give you a leg up, you know you can rely upon me. I
don't ask with any notion of poking my nose into your private affairs,
you know."
"Well, first of all I'm going to Natal to look up a former friend of
mine. We served together in the Zulu War; in fact, we raced neck to
neck off that infernal Hlobane Mountain, through thousands of raging
devils, and made rather more than a nodding acquaintance with grim old
Death that day."
"By Jove! I should think so. Who is he, by the way?"
"He's trading in Zululand. He thinks I might join him with advantage."
"I see," said Warren, secretly foiled in that he had not got the name.
But he was nothing if not cautious. He could get at that later, while
not seeming too curious. "Well, I hope you'll have luck--and return
triumphant. By the way, didn't you have a bit of a breeze with old Le
Sage the other day?"
"Now how the devil did you get hold of that for a yarn, Warren? I
haven't opened my head about it to any living soul--not even a nigger."
The other smiled knowingly.
"There's very little I don't get hold of, old chap. What if Le Sage
told me himself?"
"Did he?"
"Yes. He abused you so infernally that I had to tell him to stop--
reminding him you were a pal of mine. Then he abused me, but that I
didn't mind. We do a lot of business together. You can stand a good
deal from anybody on those terms."
"I suppose so. I like Le Sage and don't bear any grudge against him,
though for a day or two after I did feel rather sore. He lost his
temper a bit, and I felt sorry for him, because losing one's temper
takes it out of one so. I know it does out of me when I lose mine."
Warren roared.
"When you lose yours! Why, you never do."
"Don't I? But it's a most infernal weakness. You are sure to come out
bottom dog if you do."
"That's about it. Have another drink? No? Sure? Well, then, old man,
come out with me to my place for the night. What do you say? We can
have a good old yarn, and we shan't have many more of them if you're
trekking."
"All right. I will."
"That's good. Now look here. I've got about an hour's business to
tackle, then you romp back here, and we'll ride out together. No. I
won't ask you to take a cut in at _ecarte_. I know you hate the sight
of a pack of cards as dourly as any Covenanting Presbyterian
`meenister.'"
"Well, I do," laughed Wyvern, "but not for the same reason. The evening
isn't the time for mathematical calculation. It's the time for yarning
and pipes, and conviviality in general. All right. In an hour, then.
So long."
Warren ran a bachelor establishment some seven miles out of Gydisdorp.
It was, in fact a fine farm, but he was interested in it mainly as a
game preserve; the fanning department he turned over to an overseer "on
the halves." Not that he was ignorant on that side either, for he
exacted his full share of what was yielded by the capabilities of the
place. Here he was wont to entertain his friends, and comparatively
high play was frequently the order of the evening; indeed it was
whispered that it constituted a material addition to his store, both in
currency and landed estate. He did neither at Wyvern's expense,
however, for the latter declared, once and for all, that he had nothing
to lose, and in the next place the whole thing bored him beyond words.
So when Wyvern returned an hour later the two men rode out together, and
passed an exceedingly pleasant and convivial evening. Wherein Warren
was a paradox. He had a real liking for the other, and would have done
anything in the world to do him a good turn, under all other
circumstances. Here, however, Wyvern must be sacrificed, for mere
friendship was but a featherweight beside Warren's overmastering but as
yet secret passion for Lalante Le Sage, and have we not said that the
sum of Warren's _credo_ was Number 1!
And of the two portraits, one in Warren's office, the other in his home,
Wyvern, of course, knew nothing.