THE BLANK CHEQUE
Left alone to her own reflections, and with the sure consciousness that
the castle in Spain which she had recently been building had fallen
into dust and fragments about her ears, Mrs. Walsingham, on Carsdale’s
departure, immediately set to work to consider her position. She knew
that everything had gone wrong, that the pleasant and easy-going
present had vanished like a morning’s dream. It had seemed to her, for
at any rate a few days, that all was going well with her. She meant
to marry young Richard; what was more, she had made up her mind that
she would be a good wife and would take care of him and his money; she
would even manage Carsdale in respect to the last matter. It would be
very easy, in her opinion, to live a godly and sober life when you were
married to an equable-tempered young man who had twenty thousand a year
at his command, and she proposed to live up to the standard of high
respectability. And now, without warning, all that fair prospect had
vanished, been blotted out, and she was faced with the naked and ugly
fact that once more she would have to fight for her own hand. And for
the space of two minutes she heartily cursed the dead Sandy Kinahan and
the living Sidney Werrick and the evil fortune that had brought matters
to this untimely pass.
The most serious factor in the sum of Mrs. Walsingham’s difficulties
was, of course, the man who by the laws of England was her husband.
She allowed herself to remember certain previous incidents of her
life. She remembered a boy-and-girl marriage, and a whirl of gaiety and
excitement afterwards as long as Sydney Werrick’s money lasted; then
a period of adventure which was always exciting but seldom pleasant.
She remembered a shifty and daring time in New York, in which John
Carsdale played a considerable part, and from which she and Carsdale
escaped by the skin of their teeth, leaving Werrick to fall into the
hands of justice and to find an asylum in Sing Sing. They had heard
of him afterwards as having drifted West, and Sandy Kinahan’s news of
his death had filled them both with joy, for Sydney Werrick alive,
was always a menace and a danger, and all the more so because he had
a quiet and subtle way of doing ugly things. Mrs. Walsingham had an
attack of cold perspiration as she thought of her legal lord and
master as he might be if an ugly fit took him, and he felt inclined
to turn nasty over the remembrance of the New York affair, and her
first instinct was to rise and flee, the middle of the night though it
was. She fought that impulse down, but the mere knowledge that Sydney
Werrick was alive, that he was there in London, that he was once more
in touch with her and her world, was quite enough to keep her out of
bed and to make her reckon things up with unusual care. After all, she
informed herself, self-preservation is the first law of well-regulated
nature.
In that moment of cool calculation Mrs. Walsingham calmly blotted out
everybody and everything but herself from her world. She dismissed
Werrick, and Carsdale, and Richard Shrewsbury--the one and only
question was--what was she herself to do in order to safeguard herself?
And upon that followed the no less important question--what was she to
do it on? In other words, how did she stand financially.
There was little difficulty in arriving at an answer to that
question--women of the Sylvie Walsingham type always know how their
private ledger shows itself. She knew what she could command. She
had about three hundred pounds in ready cash lying at her bank; she
possessed jewellery which was possibly worth another six or seven
hundred. She had the diamond necklace, and she was very well assured
that any jeweller would give her at least nine or ten thousand pounds
for it. And she had a blank cheque, which Richard Shrewsbury had
forced upon her only two days before, commanding her to fill it up for
whatever sum she liked in order to fit herself out for the wedding,
which was not to be long delayed. She knew that when he had given her
carte blanche in the matter of filling up the cheque he had meant a few
hundreds of pounds, or a thousand pounds, and even something more. But
there was the cheque, with his bold signature at its foot--and, so far,
she had made no use of it. In that cheque lay vast potentialities.
She was still considering these matters, still planning, scheming,
debating, when she rose next morning. She had been thinking of them
half through what had remained of the night, but she rose at her
usual hour and set off for Norfolk Street according to her accustomed
routine, carrying the diamond necklace with her and depositing it at
her banker’s on the way. And she went through the day’s business calmly
and methodically, though the planning and scheming was going on in her
mind all the time. The more she thought, the more she was resolved to
consider herself and to be free.
Carsdale did not come to the office that day until nearly noon. When
they were alone, she looked an eager, if silent, inquiry. Carsdale
nodded reassuringly.
“It’s all right,” he said. “He quite understands that he is not to
interfere until I want him. You can make your mind easy--he won’t come
here, and he won’t interfere with you. Of course, I’ve had to square
him with liberal promises, and to give him cash to be going on with.
But you’re all right.”
“Where is he?” she asked.
“Left him at my place,” answered Carsdale, carelessly. “With a hundred
pounds in his pockets--to fit himself out with. I tell you, there’s no
need to worry. Sydney is all right for the present.”
Mrs. Walsingham shook her head.
“You forget,” she said, “that he saw that necklace last night. He would
have a very good idea of its value. And if his cupidity is aroused----”
“He fully understands that there’s a bigger game on than that,”
interrupted Carsdale, “and he’ll wait. By the by, where is the
necklace?”
“At my bank,” she replied.
“Good,” said Carsdale. “Now, don’t worry. Let’s see--is the youngster
coming in this morning?”
“He comes in any time, as you know,” she replied. “He may be in--I
don’t know.”
“I want to see him if he does come,” said Carsdale. “Don’t let him go
until I’ve seen him.”
On that day, however, Richard did not come to Abbotsbury House until
after five o’clock. When he arrived he looked surprised and mystified,
and he threw a note on Mrs. Walsingham’s desk.
“I’ve been out trying a new car most of the day,” he said, as he
dropped into a chair, “but I called in at Berkeley Square as I came
along, and found that from Burgoyne--Kedgin says he scribbled it in a
big hurry just before he rushed off to catch the afternoon train for
Paris. Read it--I don’t understand.”
Mrs. Walsingham read the note which Burgoyne had hastily scrawled on a
half-sheet of note-paper.
“DEAR DICK,” it ran, “I am off to Paris at a moment’s notice--most
important business. I may want you to run over, and if so, will wire
you to-morrow before noon--in that case you can catch the 2.20 at
Charing Cross. Expect wire about noon in any case.
“In haste, yours affectly.,
“R. B.”
“What does it all mean?” said Richard. “I don’t know of any important
business in Paris about which Burgoyne could want me, unless, indeed,
it’s something about his company--I know he has some French people
interested in it, though I’m shot if I know what use I can be in a
business matter. What do you make of it, Sylvie?”
Mrs. Walsingham secretly made of it that Burgoyne’s note was highly
convenient to herself. She wanted Richard Shrewsbury out of the way for
a few days, and she had been cudgelling her brains all the afternoon
as to how she could get rid of him--here, wonderful to relate, was the
very means she had wished for.
“Of course you’ll go if he sends for you?” she said, folding up the
note.
“Oh, I suppose so, of course,” he answered, half unwillingly. “Though,
don’t you know, I was going to take you down to Brighton in this new
car to-morrow.”
“That can wait,” she said. “There will be plenty of time for trips to
Brighton, later. Of course, I know what Captain Burgoyne wants. He has
gone over to Paris to meet the people he mentioned to you as being
interested in his South American company, and he no doubt feels that
it will give him moral support if you’re at the back of him in his
interviews with them. That’s it.”
“Oh, is that it?” said Richard, innocently. “Oh, well, of course, I’ll
go--it’ll be rather fun, as I’ve never been in Paris. But I should have
thought Carsdale would have been much more likely.”
At that moment Carsdale, bustling and busy, put his head into the room.
“Hullo, Shrewsbury!” he said. “That’s lucky--I just want you--some
papers to sign--mere formalities.”
“All right,” said Richard. “Look here”--and he tossed Carsdale the note
which Mrs. Walsingham had just read. “Sylvie says Burgoyne probably
wants me to give him moral support with the Frenchmen,” he said,
laughing. “Don’t you think you’d do better?”
Carsdale read the note at a glance. He, too, was glad to have Richard
out of the way for a while. He gave Mrs. Walsingham a glance, and saw
that the same thought was in her mind.
“By no means,” he said. “You must go yourself if he sends for you. The
probability is that Burgoyne wants to be able to introduce you to some
French capitalists as a friend of his who is about to invest largely
in his South American company. Oh, you must go, Shrewsbury, of course.
Just come into my room and sign those papers, will you?”
Richard, who never asked any why or wherefore of Carsdale, followed his
man of business obediently and dashed off his signature at the foot of
the documents which Carsdale placed before him. He never read anything
that he signed, never asked questions about anything; his faith in
Carsdale was complete and absolute. Now, as he pushed the papers away
from him, he began to talk about the new car, which was waiting at the
door; he induced Carsdale to go down to see it; finally, he whirled
Mrs. Walsingham away in it, to dine at an idyllic country hotel which
he had recently discovered in Surrey, and Carsdale watched them depart,
and laughed as he hastened back to his office.
“That note of Burgoyne’s is a piece of sheer good luck!” he said to
himself. “I only hope he’ll send for the youngster.”
By noon the next day Carsdale knew that his hope was fulfilled. Richard
turned up at the office with an intimation that he was off to Paris by
the two-twenty from Charing Cross. He carried Mrs. Walsingham off to
lunch with him, and, meeting Carsdale on the steps, assured him that he
should be back within forty-eight hours. Carsdale laughed and clapped
him on the shoulder.
“You’ll be an ass, Shrewsbury, if you don’t stay at any rate a week
while you are there,” he said. “I shan’t expect you for a week.”
“Of course, he’ll stop a week,” said Mrs. Walsingham. And a little
later, when she and Richard were lunching in a private room at the
hotel, she checked a tendency to sentiment on his part by telling him
that he was silly in wishing to hasten back: he and Captain Burgoyne,
she said, would easily find plenty wherewith to occupy and amuse
themselves in Paris for a week, or for a fortnight, if they were so
minded.
“I wish you were going with me!” said Richard.
“I wish I were, but I’m not, so there’s an end of it,” she answered,
quietly. And she remained in the same quiet mood during their
leave-taking; and when she had seen the train move away from the
platform, and had gracefully waved her hand in reply to Richard’s
generous gesticulations, she turned and walked away to the motor-car,
which awaited her pleasure, as unconcernedly as if she had just said
farewell to a favourite dog or cat which was being shipped to the
Antipodes. For always before her was the consciousness of her present
perilous situation, and the fear of what might happen if Sydney Werrick
suddenly took into his head to play the part of the bad man.
She calmly reviewed the whole state of things that night, and she
resolved on her line of conduct for the next day. She consulted a
Bradshaw with great care and attention; she made some shorthand notes
in her little private memorandum book. And in the privacy of her own
room, securely locked in for the night, she took Richard Shrewsbury’s
blank cheque from her secret drawer, and laying it on her desk, filled
it in with a steady hand for the sum of fifteen thousand pounds.
That night Mrs. Walsingham went to bed and slept long and well.