MISS GUYNER INTERVENES
Carsdale, interviewing his guest over the breakfast table on the
morning following their chance meeting in the Strand, found Mr. Sydney
Werrick extraordinarily amenable to reason. It appeared that at that
moment he wanted nothing that was out of the way, beyond the immediate
advancing of a sum of money which would re-attire his person in
garments suited to his new environment, and leave something over to
jingle in his pockets. He had no desire to interfere with Carsdale or
with Mrs. Walsingham just then; let them play whatever game they were
after, so long as they remembered him in connection with it.
“I may want you to take a hand in it,” said Carsdale. “It’s very
probable I shall want you. But you shan’t be left, Sydney.”
“I don’t propose to be left,” remarked Mr. Werrick, helping himself
to another of the excellent lamb cutlets, which adorned Carsdale’s
breakfast table. “I didn’t come across to be left.”
Carsdale took no notice of this quiet intimation. He drew out a
pocket-book. It was a characteristic of his that he always carried a
considerable amount of money about him in cash. He began to count some
bank-notes, and finally tossed a wad of them over to Werrick.
“You’ll want some money to be going on with, Sydney,” he observed.
“There’s a hundred.”
Werrick cast a careless glance at the present.
“Pounds or dollars?” he asked lazily.
“Pounds, of course!” answered Carsdale. “You want a new fit-out. Do you
know where you can get what you need, ready for wear?”
“If I don’t, I’ll soon find the place,” said Werrick, picking up and
pocketing the notes. “All right. Then--you don’t want me for anything,
just yet, at all events?”
“No,” replied Carsdale. “What I want you to do is to keep quiet. You’re
not to bother Sylvie, you understand. You’re to abstain from any
interference. I’ll see you’re all right at the proper moment. You can
look round the town, and you can put up here. Of course, you don’t know
where my office is?”
“That,” answered Werrick, “is just what I was going to find out--if you
had one--this very morning.”
“Well, there’ll be no necessity,” said Carsdale. “My office is in
Abbotsbury House, Norfolk Street, Strand. And, you’re not to come
there, remember. What transactions you and I have can be done here. But
if you ever want to ring me up, you can do so. There’s the telephone
number.”
Werrick took the letter-heading which Carsdale threw him and put it in
his waistcoat pocket with a nod. And Carsdale presently went off to
business, leaving his guest alone, with an intimation to him to take
care of himself. Werrick lighted a cigar, put his feet on a chair,
and read the newspaper. The woman who attended to Carsdale’s rooms
appeared, removed the breakfast things, made the beds, tidied and
dusted, and removed her presence. Werrick was alone, with a hundred
pounds in his pocket, and the day before him. He smiled grimly as he
turned over to the sporting page, and he informed himself, rolling the
thought over in his mind as if he extracted much pleasure from its
intellectual stimulus, that there was nothing in this life so certain
as the unexpected.
Werrick was still considering this thought when a gentle, but decisive
knock sounded on the outer door of Mr. John Carsdale’s chambers. The
guest paid no attention to the first summons, but when it was repeated
he asked himself lazily whether he had not better see who stood
without. He was quite certain that no one could want him, but it might
be interesting to know who wanted Carsdale. So, newspaper in hand and
cigar in mouth, he lounged forth and opened the door to find a slim,
neat-figured young lady, heavily veiled, confronting him. Mr. Werrick
gazed curiously at her features and could make nothing of them. He felt
somewhat astonished, too, at the fact that the visitor did not speak.
Accordingly he himself gave voice.
“Mr. Carsdale?” he said, taking it for granted that the caller wanted
his host. “Well, he doesn’t happen to be in.”
The only effect of this intimation was that the veiled lady walked into
the chambers and that Werrick retreated before her. And as she crossed
the threshold, she raised her veil and revealed to Werrick’s astonished
eyes the keen, yet pleasing features of Miss Sophie Guyner. Werrick, in
sheer surprise, dropped his cigar.
“Great Scott!” he exclaimed. “So, it’s you?”
Miss Guyner, with characteristic presence of mind, pointed to the outer
door, and her host made haste to shut it. He looked at his visitor a
little doubtfully.
“I say,” he said. “Carsdale might come back any minute, you know.”
“No!” said Miss Guyner. “He won’t. I know his habits--I ought to. And
it wouldn’t matter if he did. I’m equal to any Carsdales. Sit down.
No--give me a drink, for I’m thirsty with the heat. Something with a
fizz in it. But not champagne, though I dare say there’s plenty in that
cupboard. See what else there is.”
Werrick opened the cupboard door in silence, wondering all the time
what Sophie wanted. At her command he mixed her a tumbler of light wine
and mineral water; he refreshed himself, having the consciousness of a
solid breakfast behind him, with something a little stronger. And then,
perched on the edge of the table, he looked at Miss Guyner, who had
installed herself in Carsdale’s easiest chair, and his look was full of
inquiry. Nevertheless, Miss Guyner’s first remark was also of inquiry.
“So you’re here, are you?” she said.
“I’m here,” answered Werrick. “Right here.”
Miss Guyner looked him carefully up and down, from tip to toe.
“Well,” she observed, reflectively. “You look like as if it was time
you’d got somewhere. I’ve seen you much worse, but still, you do look
as if it would soon be time you went where they keep things ready to
put on as soon as you lay down the cash.”
“If you’d only looked in this afternoon,” remarked Mr. Werrick,
slapping his trousers pocket, “you’d have found me in purple and fine
linen.”
“A nice tweed suit--grey or brown--and a coloured shirt would look
better,” said Miss Guyner. “Quiet patterns, of course.”
Mr. Werrick took another pull at his tumbler, and mentally
congratulated Carsdale on his taste in whiskey and his make of
soda-water.
“And how did you find me, Sophie?” he inquired, almost affectionately.
“I heard Carsdale tell her last night--or, rather, this morning,”
answered Miss Guyner. “She thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t. I’m
often--very often--awake when she thinks I’m asleep. It pays me to keep
my ears open. I didn’t hear all that they said, but I heard plenty to
learn that you were here. And so, naturally, I came to see you.”
Mr. Werrick left his seat on the table, took one on the arm of Miss
Guyner’s chair, and putting his arm round her shoulders, kissed her.
“You were always a good sort to me, Sophie,” he said. “I’ve thought an
awful lot about you.”
“And I’ve thought a good lot about you,” said Miss Guyner. “A good deal
more than you deserve. Now, then, that’ll do for the present. What are
you up to, Sydney Werrick?--what’ve you come over here for?”
Mr. Werrick re-seated himself on the edge of the table, having first
chosen and lighted a fresh cigar.
“What did I come over here for?” he repeated reflectively. “What am
I up to? Well, I just guess that I’m going to make John Carsdale and
Mrs. Sylvie Werrick do something in the way of compensating me for the
trick they played on me over there in New York. And I also guess that
Carsdale, at any rate, knows it. So he was with her last night, was he?”
“He was there last night,” answered Miss Guyner, “and I heard enough to
know that he impressed it upon her that whatever it is they’re up to,
you’d have to come in at it. But----”
She paused abruptly and gave her hearer a nod full of meaning.
“Yes?” asked Mr. Werrick, interestedly. “Yes? And----”
“You keep your eyes skinned,” said Miss Guyner. “Not so much for him
as for her. She gets cunninger and cunninger every day. She’s up to
something now, or I’m a Hottentot.”
“Um!” said Mr. Werrick. “About this young dude, now? Was she going to
marry him, straight?”
“She was,” affirmed Miss Guyner.
Mr. Werrick looked into his tumbler.
“She can marry him to-morrow, for anything I care,” he remarked
carelessly. “But of course, she can’t. Has she had much out of him,
now?”
“There hasn’t been time,” replied Miss Guyner.
“Last night I saw her wearing a diamond necklace,” observed Mr.
Werrick. “Real, Sophie?”
“Real enough! It’s worth every cent of ten thousand pounds, that
necklace,” said Miss Guyner, with enthusiasm. “But--she carried it off
to the bank this morning.”
Mr. Werrick emptied his tumbler and set it down with a deep sigh.
“Ah!” he said. “That’s a pity. If that bit of property, Sophie, had
come into my hands, and had been converted, as it would have been,
into good solid cash, the proceeds would have gone a long way towards
advancing a certain little scheme which I have in view, and in hearing
of which you would be greatly interested.”
“Why should I be interested?” inquired Miss Guyner, watching him
narrowly.
“Because you may be inclined to take a partnership in it,” answered
Mr. Werrick. “The fact is, Sophie, I’m sick of knocking about, and I
want to settle down. I’ve been right away out West, and I’m returning
West--as soon as I’ve collected capital. I came over here to collect
capital, and I was highly gratified, when I met Carsdale last night,
to find that I was going to have a better time than I’d anticipated. I
hadn’t figured on it that Carsdale would be able to command so much
money. Now that I know he can, well, I’m just going to have what I
want, and then I’m going back--to settle down.”
“At--what?” asked Miss Guyner.
“At fruit farming,” replied Mr. Werrick. “Fruit farming. California.
The loveliest climate in the world, and the most dependable. You’ve
nothing to do but see your fruit grow, ship it off, and rake in the
dollars. That’s what I’m going to do. And you shall come with me,
Sophie.”
“We’ll see,” answered Miss Guyner in matter-of-fact tones. “I might, if
it seems to promise well. But your present game, Syd, is to watch those
two. Both Carsdale and her will do you if you’re not sharp. I tell you
she’s up to something now. And I dare say he is.”
Mr. Werrick’s eyes grew sombre and his brow threatening.
“I’ll watch ’em!” he observed.
“You thought to watch ’em in New York, and they were up and out to
Europe, leaving you there to face the music, before you as much as knew
they were after anything,” said Miss Guyner.
“Yes, that’s so,” agreed Mr. Werrick; “but I believe Carsdale wants to
sort of make up for that trip. In fact, I think he’s got something for
me to do that’ll be useful to him.”
“Mind you’re paid in advance, then,” said Miss Guyner. “Now, about
her. I can keep an eye on her as long as she stops at the flat. And I
can post you up. And that’s the real reason why I came down here this
morning--we must meet somewhere.”
“Sure,” said Mr. Werrick. “But where? You know best.”
“Yes,” remarked Miss Guyner. “We mustn’t write, and it isn’t safe to
telephone, because, after all, I’m never certain when she mayn’t be in.
Do you know Tottenham Court Road, Sydney?”
“I know there is such a street, and maybe I’ve been in it,” replied Mr.
Werrick. “Off Oxford Street, isn’t it?”
“It is, and a few doors along it, and on the left-hand side, there’s
a little restaurant called Cyrano’s,” answered Miss Guyner. “Now, for
the present, you drop in there at twelve noon, and at nine in the
evening, and meet me there, and I’ll give you the news. Start to do
that to-night. And now I’m off, and you’d better do your shopping and
smarten up.”
So Miss Guyner returned to Bloomsbury, and Mr. Werrick went out to
expend some of his hundred pounds, and he bought himself two good and
quiet suits, and a complete furnishing of linen and small articles. He
amused himself for the rest of the day in sober and innocent fashion,
but he contrived to walk down Norfolk Street and to view Abbotsbury
House from the outside. And after dining quietly at an unpretentious
café, he set out for Cyrano’s Restaurant, and in Oxford Street was
seen by an American-looking person who immediately took such interest
in him that he turned and followed him. The interest increased; the
American-looking person followed Mr. Werrick to the very trysting-place
and, having watched him enter, entered after him.