BENSON
Benson gave a final and approving glance at the tea-table, filled a
silver cigarette box from a carton he took from the sideboard
cupboard, lit a tiny spirit lamp and drew back the velvet hangings a
little farther so that the scarlet geraniums in the window-boxes could
be seen with better effect. One casement window was open and a soft
breeze played with the silken curtains.
Clive Lowbridge strolled in as his valet-butler was at the window.
“That will do very nicely, Benson.”
He looked at his watch.
“Miss Carew is coming immediately after the matinée. You will see
that the car is ready to take her home?”
“Yes, my lord.” He paused by the door. “With reference to the young
man Holbrook, of whom your lordship spoke: he is an American, born in
Dayton, Ohio, and he was for some years on the staff of the London
_Dispatch-Herald_. He is now a junior partner in Pawter’s Publicity
Agency, being a relative of the principal shareholder. He lives in
Paddington and is unmarried. So far as I can ascertain, he has written
two books which were published in Boston, but he has no other
peculiarities.”
“Thank you, Benson. You have settled down to your new job?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“You like this a little better than working in a club?”
“Much better, my lord----” he hesitated.
“But it isn’t such a good job as you thought, eh? Well, mine isn’t
either, Benson. I thought I should be spreading myself in Park Lane.
My uncle left very little money.”
“I am not surprised, my lord. The late Lord Lowbridge was known to
me--I have never ventured to inform your lordship before. I used to
work at his club in the West End, and I saw a whole lot of him. He
spent money like water, and I’ve known him to lose as much as twenty
thousand pounds in one night at baccarat. The Glebe Club is noted for
high play. A very affable gentleman. So was his son, who died so
suddenly.”
“You knew my cousin too, did you?”
“Yes, my lord. Without wishing to alarm your lordship, there seems
something constitutionally wrong about the family. The Honourable John
died of heart failure, and you could have taken a lease of his life;
Lord Lowbridge, a good-living gentleman and as hard as nails, went off
in exactly the same way a year after--nobody would have dreamt that
his lordship was so near to death. And both were under the care of a
clever doctor--Dr. Laffin.”
“You know Dr. Laffin--was he a member of the Glebe?”
“Yes, my lord.”
A buzzer sounded in the hall, and he went, without unseemly hurry, to
admit Betty.
“How serious you look, Clive! Has anything happened?” she asked after
the greetings were over.
“No--no! Benson is a queer chap.”
“Benson--your servant?”
“Yes. I find that he knew my uncle, and I guess he knew Laffin too;
they were both members of the Glebe. That is where my relative
dissipated the family guilders. I shouldn’t be surprised if the doctor
hadn’t lost a considerable portion of his assets under the same
roof.”
She sighed as she settled down to pour the tea.
“Dr. Laffin has always been poor,” she said, “and yet he owns things
that are worth thousands of pounds. One day I went into the study
without knocking, and he had on his desk a most beautiful piece of
jewellery--a great golden clasp studded with diamonds. He was very
angry that I had seen it, and told me that it was only a worthless
replica of the Buckle of Isis. But I’m sure it was real.”
Clive bit his lip, and in his fine eyes was the shadow of trouble.
“When did you see this?” he asked.
“Over a year ago--about a fortnight after we had had the strangest
adventure in Devon. Do you remember my telling you about the monks who
stopped the car?”
He nodded.
“At least, I suppose they were monks,” she went on. “I don’t know
why, but I associated the gold clasp--and it was gold, Clive, in spite
of what the doctor said--with that meeting.”
“On the moor?”
She nodded.
“Yes: we were very poor at the time, and the doctor was short of ready
money, though he used to hint of a huge fortune which was coming to
him. I’m certain he could not have had the buckle before. I think they
gave it to him.”
Clive Lowbridge looked at her thoughtfully.
“I don’t understand him,” he said. “But he was good to me as a boy,
and I cannot quite share your dislike for him. For all the years of
tutorial work he gave me, he did not charge a penny.”
Betty could have pursued the subject, but refrained, understanding his
reluctance to speak against the man she hated. And she remembered, on
the way to the theatre, the circumstances that had made it necessary
for Clive’s mother to enlist the services of the family doctor as an
unpaid tutor. She had been left a widow with a microscopic income;
three lives had stood between her boy and the title, and the prospect
of his inheriting the mythical wealth of the Lowbridge estates was a
remote one.
She could never associate the doctor with generosity; there must have
been some _quid pro quo_.
When, that night, Betty Carew strolled on to the stage of the Orpheum,
only the pilot lights were glowing in the battens, for Van Campe was
an economist, and there was urgent need for economy, as she was to
learn.
It was very cold and very miserable, and Betty wandered disconsolately
to the little peep-hole in the curtain and stared into the deserted
auditorium. There were seven people in the stalls, obviously “paper.”
The pit held a fringe of audience--the first two rows were hardly
filled, though the doors had been open for half an hour. The young
assistant stage-manager joined her.
“Looks lively, doesn’t it?” he asked bitterly.
“It isn’t very hopeful,” she said.
“It _is_ hopeful,” he said. “That is all we’ve got left--hope! A
musical comedy that hasn’t any music worth whistling, and not enough
comedy to raise a ha-ha from start to finish, naturally starts
handicapped. The notice goes up to-night--you’ve seen it?”
She nodded.
_The Girl from Fez_ had run for a fortnight. There had been seven
weeks’ rehearsal, and on the notice-board had appeared a typewritten
slip. She had seen “the notice” before, but at the end of a long and
successful run. Now this intimation that the play would be taken off
in two weeks’ time brought a little heartache. The last lines of the
notice were even more alarming:
“The provisional notice given to artistes on the first night will
operate as stated.”
“Does that include me, Mr. Tillett?” she asked.
“I’m afraid it does, Miss Carew,” said the manager. “The governor
knew he had a flivver before he read the criticisms in the morning
papers--he dashed in and got himself on the safe side. La Florette
isn’t a friend of yours, is she?”
Betty shook her head. La Florette, the thin-lipped French dancer, was
not in the cast. Van Campe seldom played her, but she sat by his side
at rehearsals, and in her strange French criticised and sneered and
laughed derisively, and told Van Campe how much better these things
were done in France; and Van Campe, who was her slave, cut and pruned,
until authors were in despair, and the cast in a state of mutiny.
“Well----”
The manager opened his mouth to speak, when the pass door connecting
the stage with the front of the house opened, and a fluffy figure
floated through; from the crown of her waved and henna’d hair to the
tips of her jewelled shoes she was a triumph of the human dollmaker’s
art.
She picked a dainty way through the débris of the stage, and stood
before the girl, surveying her through a pair of unnecessary
lorgnettes.
“Ah, you are Carew, yes? I wanted to speak to you. ’Ow do you do your
’air? It is not peroxide, no? I ’ave admire it. You are a bad actress,
and your voice, _mon Dieu!_ it is aw-ful, but your ’air is lovely! You
’ave puzzle me, so I promised Charles I would ask.”
“And now you have kept your promise, Miss Florette,” said Betty,
striving to tune out the anger from her voice.
“You tell me--no?”
“There is nothing to tell you. My hair is as the Lord made it.” Betty
smiled in spite of her annoyance.
La Florette shrugged her thin shoulders.
“But that is what you would call--a lie, eh?”
Betty’s eyes snapped fire.
“It is what you would call a lie too, I think,” she said, with
ominous calm; “for if you are not pure unadulterated Limehouse, I have
never met a lady from that district! Your broken English may sound
pretty to a Dutchman or a Greek, but, unfortunately, I speak the
language rather well, and I know that, beyond a smattering of
Montmarte argot, you are as ignorant of French as I am of Chinese!”
“Oh, I am, am I?”
La Florette, shocked out of her pose, dropped her hands to her hips,
and her shrill voice rose to a scream.
“I’ll teach you to insult an artiste of my standing, you--you chorus
girl! Limehouse, am I…?”
The flow of expletive which followed supplied the answer to her
question.
“… and I’ll have you fired out of this theatre, Miss, before you’re a
minute older. I’ve got an international reputation to keep up, I have!
I don’t allow no gutter-bred----”
Mr. Van Campe appeared, an agitated and rotund man, whose hands
flashed gay lights as he waved them in expostulation and protest.
“Put her understudy on,” he roared. “Pay her salary and throw her
out!”
Betty went up to her dressing-room, hot, angry, but triumphant. She
had prayed for the courage to say all that she had said to Florette.
She would go to De Fell--the urbane young manager, who had offered her
a part in his new production. She grew cheerful at the thought. It was
at that moment that her dresser knocked.
“Dr. Laffin, Miss,” she said.
Betty sighed heavily. Here was a shadow not so easily dispelled.