BOOK THE FIRST (continued 2)

His week-ends he spent in more pleasing surroundings, for he had a cottage on the borders of Hampshire where he kept hens and grew cabbage-roses and on Sundays loafed in his garden, generally in his pajamas, to the scandal of the neighborhood. He had a whimsical turn of mind and named his cottage, "The Parthenon", and supported this conceit by decorating his arcadian groves with plaster reproductions of the great figures of mythology, such figures as Phidias and Polycletus and Praxiteles chiselled. He added to this a wooden pronaos which the local builder misguidedly surmised was intended for the entrance to a new cinema. When they discovered that the erection had no other purpose than to remind Moropulos of departed Hellenic splendors, the grief of the villagers was pathetic.

Here he was kept, reluctantly, tidy. He owned a small American car which supplied him the transportation he required, and made his country home accessible. It was Friday, the day he usually left town, but he had lingered on, hoping to see some tangible progress in the construction of the safe.

"You never seem to get any further," he complained. "You have been fiddling with that noisy lamp for two hours, and, so far as I can see, you've done nothing. How long will it be before anything happens?" and then before Sault could reply he went on: "Why don't you come to my little Athens, Sault? You prefer to stay in town. And you are a man of brains! Have you a girl here, eh?"

"No."

"Gee! What a time that fellow Ronnie must have! But they will catch him some day—a mad father or a lunatic fiancé, and ping! There will be Ronnie Morelle's brains on the floor, and the advocates pleading the unwritten law!"

"You seem to know a lot about him?"

Moropulos ran his fingers through his beard and grinned at the ceiling. "Yes—I can't know too much. We shall have trouble with him. Steppe laughs at the idea. He has him bound to his heel—is that the expression, no? Well, he has him like that! But how can you bind a liar or chain an eel? His very cowardice is a danger."

"What have you to be afraid of?" asked Sault. "So far as I can make out, you are carrying on an honest business. It must be, or the doctor wouldn't be in it." His tone was sharp and challenging. Moropulos had sufficient nous not to accept that kind of challenge.

"I can understand that you have papers that you wish to keep in such a way that nobody but yourselves can get at them. All businesses have their secrets."

"Quite so," agreed the Greek and yawned.

"Ronnie will pay," he said, "but I am anxious that I should not be asked to contribute to the bill. I have had a great deal of amusement watching him. The other night I was in the park. I go there because he goes. I know the paths he uses. And there came with him a most pretty young lady. She did not know him."

"You guessed that?"

"I know, because later, when she complained, she did not know his name. Ronnie!" he mused. "Now I tell you what I will undertake to do. I will make a list, accurate and precise, of all his love affairs. It will be well to know these, because there may come a day when it will be good to flourish a weapon in this young man's face. Such men marry rich women."

Sault was working and only muttered his reply. He was not then interested in Ronnie Morelle.

X

He stayed on in the house long after Moropulos had dragged himself to his room and had dressed for the journey. So absorbed was he in his task that the Greek left without his noticing. At seven o'clock he finished, put away his tools in a cupboard, threw a cloth over the safe, and went out, locking the door behind him.

Both Steppe and Moropulos had urged him to live in the house, but though he had few predilections that were not amenable to the necessities of his friends, Sault was firm on this point. He preferred the liberty which his lodgings gave him. Possibly he foresaw the difficulties which might arise if he lived entirely with the Greek. Moropulos had a vicious and an uncertain tongue; was tetchy on some points, grotesquely so, on the question of Greek decadence, although he had lived so long away from his native country that English was almost his mother tongue. Sault could be tactful, but he had a passion for truth, and the two qualities are often incompatible.

A bus carried him to the end of the street where he lodged, and he stopped at a store on the corner and bought a box of biscuits for Christina. She was secretary and reader to him, and he repaid her services with a library subscription and such delicacies as she asked him to get for her. The subscription was a godsend to the girl, and augmented, as it was, by an occasional volume which Evie was allowed to bring from the store library by virtue of her employment, her days were brightened and her dreams took a wider range than ever. The driving force of learning is imagination. By imagination was Christina educated.

Evie sometimes said that she did not understand one half of the words that Christina used. To Mrs. Colebrook her daughter was an insoluble enigma. She associated education with brain fever and ideas above your station, and whilst she was secretly proud of the invalid's learning, she regarded Christina's spinal trouble as being partly responsible for the abnormality. Mrs. Colebrook believed in dreams and premonitions and the sinister significance of broken picture wires. It was part of her creed that people who are not long for this world possess supernatural accomplishments. Therefore she eyed Christina's books askance, and looked upon the extra library subscription as being a wild flight in the face of Providence. She expressed that view privately to Ambrose Sault.

"You have come at a propitious moment, Sault Effendi," said Christina solemnly as he came in. "I have just been taking my last look at the silvery Bosphorus. My husband, taking offense at a kiss I threw to the handsome young sultan as he rose beneath my latticed window, has decreed that tonight I am to be tied in a sack and thrown into the dark waters!"

"Good gracious," said Ambrose. "You have been in trouble today, Christina."

"Not very much. The journey was a lovely one. We went by way of Bergen—and thank you ever so much for that old Bradshaw you got for me. It was just the thing I wanted."

"Mr. Moropulos kindly gave it to me—yes—Bergen?"

"And then to Petrograd—the Czars were there, poor people—and then to Odessa, and down the Black Sea in—oh, I don't know. It was a silly journey today, Ambrose—I wasn't in the heart for a holiday."

"Is your back any worse?"

She shook her head. "No—it seems better. I nearly let myself dream about getting well. Do you think that other idea is possible? We can borrow a spinal carriage from the Institute but mother hasn't much time, and besides, I couldn't get down those narrow stairs without a lot of help. Yes—yes, yes! I know it is possible now. But the chariot, dear Ambrose?"

"I've got it!" he chuckled at her astonishment, "it will come tomorrow. It is rather like a motor-car for I have to find a garage for it. In this tiny house there is no room. But I got it—no, it didn't cost me a great deal. Dr. Merville told me where I could get one cheap. I put new tires on and the springs are grand. Christina, you will be—don't cry, Christina, please—you make me feel terrible!" His agitation had the effect of calming her.

"There must be something in this room that makes people weep," she gulped. "Ambrose—Evie is just worrying me to death."

"What is wrong?"

She shook her red head helplessly. "I don't know. She is changed—she is old. She's such a kid, too—such a kid! If that man hurts her," the knuckles of her clenched hand showed bone-white through the skin, "I'll ask you to do what you did for mother, Ambrose, give me strength for an hour—" her voice sank to a husky whisper, "and I'll kill him—kill him—"

Sault sat locking and unlocking his fingers, his eyes vacant. "She will not be hurt. I wish I were sure it was Ronald Morelle. Steppe has only to lift his finger—"

They heard the sound of Mrs. Colebrook's heavy feet on the stairs and Christina wondered why she was coming up. She had never interrupted their little talks before.

"Somebody to see you, Christina, and I'm sure it is too kind of you, miss, and please thank the doctor. I'll never be grateful enough for what he did—"

Ambrose Sault got up slowly to his feet as Beryl came into the room.

"I wonder if you really mind my coming—I am Beryl Merville."

"It is very good of you, Miss Merville," said Christina primly. She was ready to dislike her visitor; she hated the unknown people who called upon her, especially the people who brought jelly and fruit and last year's magazines. Their touching faith in the virtues of calves'-foot and fruit as a panacea for human ills, their automatic cheerfulness and mechanical good-humor, drove her wild. The church and its women had given up Christina ever since she had asked, in answer to the inevitable question: "Yes, there are some things I want; I'd like a box of perfumed cigarettes, some marron glace and a good English translation of 'Liaisons Dangereux'."

She loathed marron glace and scented tobacco was an abomination. Her chief regret was that the shocked inquirer had never heard of "Liaisons Dangereux". Christina only knew of its existence from a reference in a literary weekly which came her way.

Beryl sensed the hidden antagonism and the cause. "I really haven't come in a district visitor spirit," she said, "I'm not frightfully sorry for you and I haven't brought you oranges—"

"Grapes," corrected Christina. "They give you appendicitis—mother read that on the back page of 'Health Hints'. Sit down, Miss Merville. This is Mr. Sault." She nodded to Ambrose.

"Mr. Sault and I are old acquaintances," she said. She did not look at him. "I have to explain why I came at all. I know that you are not particularly enthusiastic about stray visitors—nobody is. But my father was talking about you at lunch today. He has never seen you, but Mr. Sault has spoken about you and, of course, he does know your mother. And father said: 'Why don't you go along and see her, Beryl?' I said, 'She would probably be very annoyed—but I'll take her that new long wordy novel that is so popular. I'm sure she'll hate it as much as I."

"If it is 'Let the World Go', I'm certain I shall," said Christina promptly, "but I'd love to read it. Let us sneer together." Beryl laughed and produced the book.

It seemed an appropriate moment for Ambrose to retire and he went out of the room quietly; he thought that neither of the girls saw him go, but he was mistaken. Christina Colebrook was sensitive to his every movement, and Beryl had really come to the house to see him.

On her way home she tried to arraign herself before the bar of intelligence, but it was not until she was alone in her room that night that she set forth the stark facts of her folly. She loved Ronald Morelle, loved him with an intensity which frightened her; loved him, although he was, according to all standards by which men are judged, despicable. He was a coward, a liar, a slave to his baser appetites. She had no doubt in her mind, when she faced the truth, that the stories which had been told of him were true. The East girl—the pretty parlormaid who had begun an action against him.

And yet there was something infinitely pathetic about Ronald Morelle, something that made her heart go out to him. Or was that a case of self-deception too? Was it not the beautiful animal she loved, the sleek, lithe tiger—alive and vital and remorseless? To all that was brain and spirit in her, he was loathsome. There were periods when she hated him and was bitterly contemptuous of herself. And in these periods came the soft voice of Ambrose Sault, whispering, insinuating. That was lunacy, too. He was old enough to be her father; was an illiterate workman, an ex-convict, a murderer; when her father had told her he had killed a man she was neither shocked nor surprised. She had guessed, from his brief reference to New Caledonia, that he had lived on that island under duress. He must have been convicted of some great crime; she could not imagine him in any mean or petty rôle. A coarse-handed workman, shabby of attire—it was madness to dream and dream of him as she did. And dreams, so Freud had said, were the expressions of wishes unfulfilled. What did she wish? She was prepared to answer the question frankly if any answer could be framed. But she had no ultimate wish. Her dreams of Ambrose Sault were unfinishable. Their ends ran into unfathomable darkness.

"I wonder if he is very fond of that red-haired girl?" she asked her mirror. Contemplating such a possibility she experienced a pang of jealousy and hated herself for it.

Jan Steppe came back from Paris on the eve of her birthday. He called at the house the next morning, before she was down, and interviewed Dr. Merville; when Beryl went in to breakfast, two little packages lay on her plate. The first was a diamond shawl pin.

"You are a dear, daddy!" She went round the table and kissed him. "It is beautiful and I wanted one badly."

She hurried back to her place. Perhaps Ronnie had remembered—?

She picked up the card that was enclosed and read it. "Mr. Steppe?"

Her father shot a quick glance at her. "Yes—bought it in Paris. He came in person to present it, but left when he found that you were not down—rather pretty." This was an inadequate description of the beautiful plaque that flashed and glittered from its velvet bed.

"It is lovely," she said, but without warmth. "Ought I accept—it is a very expensive present!"

"Why not? Steppe is a good friend of ours; besides, he likes you," said the doctor, not looking up from his plate. "He would be terribly hurt if you didn't take it—in fact, you cannot very well refuse."

She ran through her letters. There was a note from Ronnie, an invitation to a first night. He said nothing about her birthday.

"Oh, by the way, some flowers came. I told Dean to put them in your room. I have been puzzling my head to remember when I told him the date of your birthday. I suppose I must have done so, and, of course, he has the most colossal memory."

"Who, father?"

"Sault. He must have got up very early and gone to the market to get them. Very decent of him."

She went out of the room with an excuse and found her maid in the pantry. She had filled a big bowl with the roses. There were so many that only room for half of them had been found.

"The others I will put in the doctor's room, Miss," said the maid.

"Put them all in my room, every one of them," demanded Beryl.

She selected three and fastened them in her belt before she went back to the breakfast room. The doctor laughed.

"I've never seen you wearing flowers before—Sault would be awfully pleased."

This she knew. That was why she wore them.

XI

Evie Colebrook came home at an unusually early hour and the girl on the bed looked up in surprise.

"I heard mother talking to somebody, but I had no idea it was you, Evie. What is the matter—has your swain another engagement?"

"My swain, as you call him, is working tonight," said Evie, "and it is so hot that I thought I would come home and get into my pajamas."

"Mother has been talking about your eccentric tastes, with particular reference to pajamas," said Christina. "She thinks that pajamas are indelicate. In her young days girls weren't supposed to have legs."

"Father wore pajamas."

"Father also drank. Mother thinks that the pajamas had something to do with it. She also thinks that book reading was a contributary cause."

"What terrible jaw-breaking words you use, Christina. Father did read a lot, didn't he?"

"Father was a student. He studied, amongst other things, race horses. Do you know who father was?" Evie stared at her expectantly.

"He was a carpenter, wasn't he?"

"He was the youngest son of the youngest son of a lord. Take that look off your face, Evie; there is no possibility of our being the rightful heiresses of the old Hall. But it is true; he had a coat of arms."

"Then why did he marry mother?"

"Why do people marry anybody?" demanded Christina. "Why did grandfather marry grandmother? Besides, why shouldn't he have married mother? He was only a cabinet maker when he met her. She has told me so. And his father was a parson, and his mother the Honorable Mrs. Colebrook, the daughter of Lord Fanshelm. There is blue blood in your veins, Evie."

"But really, Christina," Evie's voice was eager and her eyes bright, "you are not fooling; is it true? It makes such an awful difference—"

Christina groaned. "My God, what have I said?" she asked dramatically.

"But really, Christina?"

"You are related so distantly to nobility that you can hardly see it without a telescope," said Christina, "I thought you knew. Mother used always to be talking about it at one time. My dear, what difference does it make?"

Evie was silent.

"A man doesn't love a girl any more because she has a fifth cousin in the House of Lords; he doesn't love her any less because her mother takes in laundry, and if her lowly origin stands in the way of his marriage, and he finds that really she is the great grandaughter of a princess, he cannot obliterate her intermediate relations."

"What's 'intermediate'?"

"Well, mother and father, and the parson who got into trouble through drinking, and his wife who ran away with a groom."

Evie drew a long sigh.

"Where is your swain?" she asked. "I don't like that word 'swain,' it sounds so much like 'swine'."

"I hope you will never see the resemblance any clearer," said Christina. "My swain is working, too. I shouldn't take off that petticoat, if I were you, Evie; he may come in and you can see your knickers through that dressing-gown."

"Christina!"

"I hate mentioning knickers to a pure-minded girl," said Christina, fanning herself with a paper, "but sisters have no secrets from one another. Ambrose, if that is who you mean, is very busy these days."

"Do you call him Ambrose to his face?" asked Evie curiously, and her sister snorted.

"Would you call Julius Cæsar 'Bill' or 'Juley' to his face; of course not. But I can't think of him as Ambrose Sault, Esquire, can I?"

"I don't understand him," said Evie. "He seems so dull and quiet."

"I'll get him to jazz with you the next time you're home early," said Christina sardonically.

"Don't be so silly. Naturally he isn't very lively being so old."

"Old! He is lively enough to carry me downstairs as though I were a pillow and wheel me for hours at a time in that glorious chariot he got for me! And he is old enough—but what is the good of talking to you, Evie?"

Presently her irritation passed and she laughed. "Tell me the news of the great world, Evie; what startling happenings have there been in Knightsbridge?"

"I can tell you something about Mr. Sault you don't know," Evie was piqued into saying. "He has been in prison." Christina turned on her side with a wince of pain.

"Say that again."

"He has been in prison." A long pause.

"I hoped he had," Christina said at last. "I believe in imprisonment as an essential part of a man's education—who told you?"

"I'm not going to say."

"Ronald Morelle—aha!" She pointed an accusing finger at the dumbfounded Evie.

"I know your guilty secret! The 'Ronnie' you babble about in your sleep is Ronnie Morelle!"

"Wh—what makes you—it isn't true—it is a damned lie—!"

"Don't be profane, Evie. That is the worst of druggists' shops, you pick up such awful language. Mother says you can't work amongst pills without getting ideas in your head."

"I never talk in my sleep—and I don't know Ronnie Morelle—who is he?"

Evie's ignorance was badly assumed. Christina became very thoughtful. She lay with her hand under her cheek, her gray eyes searching her sister's face.

"Would Ronnie be impressed by your distant relationship with nobility?" she asked quietly. "Would it make such an awful difference if he knew about the coat of arms in father's Bible? I don't think it would. If it did, he isn't worth worrying about. What is he?"

"Didn't Mr. Sault tell you?" asked Evie hotly. "He seems to spend his time gossiping about people who are a million times better than him—"

"Than he," murmured Christina, her eyes closed.

"He is a nasty scandal-mongering old man! I hate him!"

"He didn't say that Ronnie had been in prison," Christina's voice was gentle. "All that he said was that the only 'Ronnie' he knew was Ronald Morelle. He did not even describe him or give him a character."

"How absurd, Christina! As if old Sault could give Mr. Morelle 'a character'! One is a gentleman and the other is an old fossil!"

"Old age is honorable," said Christina tolerantly, "the arrogance of you babies!"

"You're half in love with him!"

"Wholly," nodded Christina. "I love his mind and his soul. I am incapable of any other kind of love. I never want a man to draw my flaming head to his shoulder and whisper, that until he met me, the world was a desert, and food didn't taste good. It is because Ambrose Sault never paws me or holds my hand or kisses me on the brow in the manner of a father who hopes to be something closer, that I love him. And I shall love him through eternity. When I am dead and he is dead. And I want nothing more than this. If he were to die tomorrow, I should not grieve because his flesh means nothing to me. The thing he gives me is everlasting. That is where I am better off than you, Evie. You have nothing but what you give yourself. You think he gives you these wonderful memories which keep you awake at nights. You think it is his love for you that thrills you. It isn't that, Evie. Your love is the love of the martyr who finds an ecstatic joy in his suffering."

Groping toward understanding, Evie seized this illustration. "God loves the martyr—it isn't one-sided," she quavered and Christina nodded.

"That is true, or it may be true. Does your god love you?"

"It is blasphemous to—to talk of Ronnie as God."

"God with a small 'g'."

"It is blasphemous anyhow. Ronnie does love me. He hasn't silly and conventional ideas about—about love as most people have. He is much broader-minded, but he does love me. I know it. A girl knows when a man loves her."

"That is one of the things she doesn't know," interrupted Christina. "She knows when he wants her, but she doesn't know how continually he will want her. He is unconventional, too? And broad-minded? The broad-minded are usually people who take a generous view of their own shortcomings. Is he one of those unconventional souls who think that marriage is a barbarous ceremony?"

"Who told you that?" Evie was breathless from surprise.

"It isn't an unique view—broad-minded men often try to get narrow-minded girls to see that standpoint."

"You're cynical—I hate cynical people," said Evie, throwing herself on her bed, "and you have all your ideas of life out of books, and the rotten people who come in here moaning about their troubles. You can't believe writers—not some writers—there are some, of course, that give just a true picture of life—not in books, but in articles in the newspapers. They just seem to know what people are thinking and feeling, and express themselves wonderfully."

"Ah—so Ronnie writes for the newspapers, does he?"

Evie's indignant retort was checked by a knock on the door.

"That is Mr. Sault—can he come in?"

"I suppose so," answered Evie grudgingly. She got off the bed and tied her dressing-gown more tightly. "I don't really show my legs through this kimono do I, Christina?"

"Not unless you want to—come in!"

Ambrose Sault looked tired. "Just looked in before I went to my room," he said. "Good evening, Evie."

"Good evening, Mr. Sault."

Evie's dressing-gown was wrapped so tightly as to give her a mummified appearance.

"I saw the osteopath today and I've arranged for him to come and talk to you tomorrow," said Ambrose, sitting on the edge of the bed at the inviting gesture of Christina's hand.

"I will parley with him," she nodded. "I don't believe that he will make a scrap of difference. I've seen all sorts of doctors and specialists. Mother has a list of them—she is very proud of it."

"I'm only hoping that this man may do you some good," said Ambrose, rubbing his chin meditatively. "I have seen some wonderful cures—in America. Even Dr. Merville believes in them. He says that if you build a sky-scraper and the steel frame isn't true, you cannot expect the doors to shut or the windows to open. I'm sorry I am so late, but the osteopath was dining out, and I had to wait until he came back. He hurt his ankle too, and that took time. I had to give him a rubbing. He is the best man in London. Dr. Duncan More."

She did not take her eyes from his face. Evie noticed this and discounted Christina's earlier assertion.

"Will it cost a lot of money?" asked Christina.

"Not much, in fact very little. The first examination is free. He doesn't really examine you, you know. He will just feel your back, through your clothes. I asked him that, because I know how you dislike examinations. And if he doesn't think that you can be treated, and that there is a chance of making you better, he won't bother you any more."

"I don't believe in these quack doctors," said Evie decidedly. "They promise all sorts of cures and they only take your money. We have a lot of those kind of remedies at the store, but Mr. Donker, the manager, says that they are all fakes—don't tell me that an osteopath isn't a medicine. I know that. He's a sort of doctor, but I'll bet you he doesn't do any good."

"Cheer up, Job!" said Christina. "Faith is something. I suppose you mean well, but if I took any notice of you I'd give up the struggle now."

"I don't want to depress you, you're very unkind, Christina! But I don't think you ought to be too hopeful. It would be such an awful—what's the word, come-down for you."

"Reaction," said Sault and Christina together and they laughed.

Sault went soon after and Evie felt that a dignified protest was called for.

"There is no reason why you should make me look like a fool before Sault," she said hurt. "Nobody would be happier than I should be if you got well. You know that. I'm not so sure that Mr. Sault is sincere—"

"What?"

Christina leaned upon her arm and her eyes were blazing.

"You can say that he is old and ugly, if you like, and shabby and—anything. But don't dare to say that, Evie—don't dare to say that he isn't sincere!"

Evie lay awake for a long time that night. Christina was certainly a strange girl—and when she said she did not love Sault, she was not speaking the truth. That was just how she had felt, when Christina had hinted that Ronnie was not sincere. Only she had been too much of a a lady to lose her temper. About old Sault, too! What did he do for a living? She must ask Christina.

XII

Mr. Jan Steppe sat astride of a chair, his elbows on the back-rest, his saturnine face clouded with doubt.

"It certainly looks like a very ordinary safe to me, Sault. Do you mean to say that an expert could not get inside without disturbing the apparatus, huh?"

"Impossible," replied Sault. "I have filled the top chamber with water and I have tried at least a thousand combinations and every time I put the combination wrong, the safe has been flooded."

He twisted the dials on the face of the unpretentious repository, until he brought five letters, one under the other, in line with an arrow engraved on the safe door. He was a long time doing this and Steppe and the Greek watched hm.

"Now!" said Sault.

He turned the handle and the door swung open. The contents were two or three old newspapers and they were intact.

"What is the code word?" Steppe peered forward. "Huh—why did you choose that word, Sault?"

"It is one of the very few words I can spell. Besides which, each letter is different."

"It is not an inappropriate word," said Moropulos amused, "and one easy to remember. I intend pasting a notice on the safe, Steppe, explaining frankly that unless the code word is used, and if any other combination of letters is tried, indeed, if the handle is turned, whilst the dial is set at any other word than the code word, the contents of the safe are destroyed. This may act as a deterrent to promiscuous burglars."

Steppe fingered his stubbly beard. "That will be telling people that we have something in the safe that we want to keep hidden, huh?" he said dubiously, "a fool idea!"

"Everybody has something in his safe that he wants to keep hidden," said the other coolly.

"Now let me try—shut the door, Sault, that is right." Steppe got out of the chair to spin the dials. "Now we will suppose that I am some unauthorized person trying to find a way of opening the safe. So!"

He turned the handle.

"Open it."

Sault worked at the dials and presently the door swung open. The newspapers were saturated and an inch of water at the bottom of the safe splashed out and into a bath-tub that Sault had put ready.

"How about cutting into the safe? Suppose I am a burglar, huh? I burn out the lock or the side, and don't touch the combination?"

"I have left a hole in one side of the safe," said Sault, and pointed to a rubber plug that had been rammed into a small aperture.

With a pair of pincers he pulled this out and a stream of water spurted forth and was mostly caught in the can he held.

"That has the same effect," he explained. "The water is pumped at a pressure into the hollow walls of the safe. The door is also hollow. When the water runs out, a float drops and releases the contents of the upper chamber. In the case of the door, the float operates the same spring that floods the safe when the handle is turned."

Steppe scratched his head. "Perfect," he said. "You have experimented with the acid?"

Sault nodded. "Both with sulphuric and hydrochloric," he said. "I think hydrochloric is the better."

Steppe turned to the Greek. "You had better keep it here," he said, and then: "Will it be ready today? I want to get those Brakpan letters out of the way. I needn't tell you, Sault, that the code word must be known only to us three, huh? I don't mind your knowing—but, you, Moropulos! You have got to cut out absinthe—d'ye hear? Cut it out—right out!" His growl became a roar that shook the room and Moropulos quailed.

"It is cut out," he said sulkily. "I am confining my boozing to the 'Parthenon'. I've got to have some amusement."

"You have it, if all I hear is true," said Steppe grimly. "Give Sault a hundred, Moropulos. It is worth it. What do you do with your money, Sault? You don't spend it on fine clothes, huh?"

"He goes about doing good," said Moropulos, with a good-natured sneer. "I met him in Kensington Gardens the other day, wheeling an interesting invalid. Who was she, Sault?"

"My landlady's daughter," replied the other shortly.

"No business of yours, anyhow," growled Steppe. "You've met Miss Merville, huh? Nice lady?"

"Yes, a very nice lady," said Sault steadily. He pushed back his long gray hair from his forehead.

"Pretty, huh?"

Sault nodded and was glad when his employer had departed.

"Steppe is gone on that girl," said Moropulos. "He'd have brained you, if you had said she wasn't pretty!"

"He wouldn't have brained me," said Sault quietly.

"I suppose he wouldn't. Even Steppe would have thought twice about lifting his hand to you. He's a brute though, I saw him smash a man in the face once for calling him a liar—at a directors' meeting. It was an hour before the poor devil knew what had happened. Yes, she is pretty. I see her riding some mornings, a young Diana—delicious. I'd give a lot to be in Steppe's shoes."

"Why?"

Moropulos rolled a cigarette with extraordinary rapidity and lit it. "Why? Well, if he wants her, he'll have her. Steppe is that kind. I don't suppose the doctor would have much to say in the matter. Or she, either."

Sault picked up an iron bar from the table. It was one of four that he had brought for the purpose of strengthening the safe, and it was nearly an inch in diameter.

"I think she would have something to say," he said, weighing the bar on the palms of his hands.

And then, to the Greek's amazement, he bent the steel into a V. He used no apparent effort; the bar just changed its shape in his hands as though it had been made of lead.

"Why did you do that?" he gasped.

"I don't know," said Ambrose Sault, and with a jerk brought the steel almost straight.

"Phew!"

Moropulos took the bar from his hand.

"I shouldn't like to annoy you seriously," he said. He did not speak of Beryl again.

XIII

Evie Colebrook had found a note awaiting her at the store on the morning of the day she came home early. It consisted of a few words scrawled on a plain card, and had neither address nor signature:

"Dearest girl: I shall not be able to see you tonight. I have a long article to write and shall probably be working through the night, when your dear and precious eyes are closed in sleep. Your lover."

She had the card under her pillow when she slept.

"Are you sure you aren't too busy," said Beryl when she came down, a radiant figure, to the waiting Ronnie. "Now that you have taken up a literary career, I picture you as being rushed every hour of the day."

"Sarcasm is wasted on me," Ronnie displayed his beautiful teeth. "Unflattering though it be, I admit to a slump in my literary stock. I have had no commissions for a week."

"And I'm not taking you away from any of those beautiful friends of yours?"

"Beryl!" he murmured reproachfully. "You know that I have no friends—if by friends you mean girl friends."

"It is my mad jealousy which makes me ask these questions," she said quizzically, "come along, Ronnie, we will be late."

What the play was about, Beryl never quite remembered. Ronnie, sitting in the shade of the curtains, was more interested in his companion. It was strange that he had known her ever since she was a child and he a schoolboy, and yet had never received a true impression of her beauty. He watched her through the first act, the tilt of her chin, the quick smile.

"Beryl, you ought to be painted," he said in the first interval. "I mean by a portrait painter. You look so perfectly splendid that I couldn't take my eyes off you."

The color came slowly and, in the dim light of the box, a man who had not been looking for this evidence of her pleasure, would have seen nothing.

"That is a little less subtle than the usual brand of flattery you practice, isn't it, Ronnie? Or is your artlessness really an art that conceals art?"

"I'm not flattering you—I simply speak as I feel. I never realized your loveliness until tonight." She straightened up and laughed.

"You think I'm crude—I suppose I am. You do not say that I am keeping my hand in, though you probably think so. I admit I have had all sorts of flirtations, in fact, I have been rather a blackguard in that way, and of course I've said nice things to girls—buttered them and played to their vanity. But if I were trying to make love to you, I should be a little more subtle, as you say. I should imply my compliments. It is just because my—my spasm is unpremeditated that I find myself at a loss for words. There is no sense in my making love to you, anyway, supposing that you would allow me. I can't marry—I simply won't marry until I have enough money and I haven't nearly enough. If in four years' time the money doesn't come—well then, I'll risk being a pauper, but the girl will have to know."

She said nothing. Here was an unexpected side to his character. He had some plan of life and a code of sorts. If she had been better acquainted with that life of his, which she so far suspected, she would have grown alert when Ronnie unmasked his way of retreat. She was surprised at his virtuous reluctance to make a woman share his comparative poverty—she should have been suspicious when he fixed a time limit to his bachelorhood. It was not like Ronnie to plan so far in advance, that she knew; it might have occurred to her that he was definitely excusing the postponement of marriage. As it was, she was seeing him in a more favorable light. Ronnie desired that she should. His instinct in these matters was uncannily accurate.

"It was worth coming out with you, if only to hear your views on matrimony," was all the comment she made.

"I don't know—" he looked gloomily into the auditorium, "in many ways I have been regretting it. That doesn't sound gallant, but I am not in a mood for nice speeches—you think I am? I did not mean to be nice when I said that you were lovely, any more than I wish to be nice to Titian when I praise his pictures. Beryl, I've been fond of you for years. I suppose I've been in love with you, though I've never wanted to be. That is the truth. I've recognized just how unfair it would be, to chain a woman like you to a rake—I'm not sparing myself—like me. God knows whether I could be constant. In my heart I know that if I had you, there could be no other woman in the world for me—an intimate knowledge of my own character makes me skeptical."

Beryl was spared the necessity for replying. The curtain went up on the second act just then. She knew he was looking at her, and turned in her chair to hide her face. Her heart was beating tumultuously. She was trembling. She was a fool—a fool. He meant nothing—he was a liar; lied as readily as other men spoke the truth. That frankness of his was assumed—he was acting. Versed in the weaknesses of women, he had chosen the only approach that would storm her citadel. She told herself these truths, her reason battling in a last desperate stand against his attack. And yet—why should he not be sincere? For the first time he had admitted the unpleasant charges which hitherto he had denied. He surely could not expect to make her love him more by the confession of his infidelities?

If he had followed up his talk, had made any attempt to carry on the conversation from the point where he left it, she would have been invincible. But he did not. When the curtain went down again, he was more cheerful and was seemingly interested only in the people he recognized in the stalls. He asked her if she would mind if he left her. He wanted to smoke and to meet some men he knew.

She assented and was disappointed. They had a long wait between these two acts, and as he had returned to the box after a shorter interval than she had expected, there was plenty of time, had he so wished, to have resumed his conversation. He showed no such desire, and it was she who began it.

"You puzzle me, Ronnie. I can't see—if you loved me, how you could do some of the things you have done. You won't be so commonplace as to tell me that you wanted to keep me out of your mind and that that form of amusement helped you to forget me."

"No," he admitted, "but, Beryl dear, need we discuss it? I don't know why I spoke to you as I did. I felt like it."

"But I am going to discuss it," she insisted. "I want my mind set in order. It is overthrown for the moment. What prevented you from keeping me as a friend all this time—a real close friend, if you loved me? Oh, Ronnie, I do want to be fair to you even at the risk of being shameless, as I am now. Why could you not have asked me? Even if it meant waiting?"

He looked down at the floor. "I have some sense of decency left," he said in a low voice. And then the curtain went up.

Beryl looked at her program. The play had four acts; there was another interval. He did not leave her this time; nor did he wait for her to begin.

"I'm going to be straight with you, Beryl," he said, "I want you—I adore you. But I cannot commit you to an engagement which may adversely affect your father and incidentally myself. I am being brutally selfish and mercenary, but I am going to say what I think. You'll be amused and perhaps horrified when I tell you that Steppe is very keen on you."

She was neither amused nor horrified; but on the other hand, if Ronnie Morelle realized that in his invention he had accidentally hit upon the truth, he would not have been amused and most certainly terror would have struck him dumb. If Beryl had only said what she was of a mind to say, that she had learned from her father that Steppe was in love with her, she might have silenced him. But she said nothing. Ronnie's explanation seemed natural—knowing Ronnie.

"I'd sooner see you dead than married to him," he said vehemently, "but none of us can say that now. We are in a very tight place. Steppe could ruin your father with a gesture—he could very seriously inconvenience me." Here he was much in earnest, and the girl, with a cold feeling at her heart, knew he spoke the truth.

"But that time will pass. We shall weather the storm which is shrieking round our ears—you don't read the financial papers—you're wise. You see what might happen, Beryl?"

Beryl nodded. She was ridiculously happy.

"A great play, don't you think so, Miss Merville?" It was Sir John Maxton who had pushed through the crowd in the vestibule.

"Splendid," she said.

"Ronnie, did you like it?"

"I never heard a word," said Ronnie, and somehow that statement was so consonant with his new honesty that it confirmed her in a faith which was as novel.

The car carried them through the crowded circus and into the quietude of Piccadilly.

"Oh, Ronnie—I am so happy—"

His arm slipped round her and his lips pressed fiercely against her red mouth.

* * * * *

"Why can't you sleep?" asked the drowsy Christina, as the girl lit her candle for the second time.

"I don't know—I'm having such beastly dreams," said Evie fretfully.