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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10575 ***
+
+THE PROFITEERS
+
+BY E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM
+
+1921
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The Marchioness of Amesbury was giving a garden party in the spacious but
+somewhat urban grounds of her mansion in Kensington. Perhaps because it
+was the first affair of its sort of the season, and perhaps, also,
+because Cecilia Amesbury had the knack of making friends in every walk of
+life, it was remarkably well attended. Two stockbrokers, Roger Kendrick
+and his friend Maurice White, who had escaped from the City a little
+earlier than usual, and had shared a taxicab up west, congratulated
+themselves upon having found a quiet and shady seat where iced drinks
+were procurable and the crush was not so great.
+
+"Anything doing in your market to-day?" Kendrick asked his younger
+associate.
+
+White made a little grimace.
+
+"B. & I., B. & I., all the time," he grumbled. "I'm sick of the name of
+the damned things. And to tell you the truth, Ken, when a client asks for
+my advice about them, I don't know what to say."
+
+Kendrick contemplated the tips of his patent boots. He was a
+well-looking, well-turned-out and well-to-do representative of the
+occupation which he, his father and grandfather had followed,--ten years
+older, perhaps, than his companion, but remarkably well-preserved. He had
+made money and kept it.
+
+"They say that Rockefeller's at the back of them," he remarked.
+
+"They may say what they like but who's to prove it?" his young companion
+argued. "They must have enormous backing, of course, but until they
+declare it, I'm not pushing the business. Look at the Board on their
+merits, Ken."
+
+Roger Kendrick nodded. Every one on the Stock Exchange was interested in
+B. & I.'s, and he settled himself down comfortably to hear what his
+companion had to say on the matter.
+
+"There's old Dreadnought Phipps," White continued. "Peter Phipps, to
+give him his right name. Well, has ever a man who aspires to be
+considered a financial giant had such a career? He was broken on the New
+York Stock Exchange, went to Montreal and made a million or so, back to
+New York, where he got in with the copper lot and no doubt made real
+money. Then he went for that wheat corner in Chicago. He got out of that
+with another fortune, though they say he sold his fellow directors. Now
+he turns up here, chairman of the B. & I., who must have bought fifty
+million pounds' worth of wheat already this year. Well, unless he's
+considerably out of his depth, he must have some one else's money to
+play with besides his own."
+
+"Let me see, who are the other directors?" Kendrick enquired.
+
+"Well, there's young Stanley Rees, Phipps' nephew, who came in for three
+hundred thousand pounds a few years ago," Maurice White answered; "old
+skinflint Martin, who may be worth half a million but certainly not more;
+and Dredlinton. Dredlinton's rabbit, of course. He hasn't got a bob.
+There's money enough amongst the rest for any ordinary business
+undertaking, if only one could understand what the mischief they were up
+to. They can't corner wheat in this country."
+
+"I wonder," Kendrick murmured. "The harvests last year were bad all over
+the world, you know, and this year, except in the States and Canada, they
+will be worse. With another fifty million it might be done."
+
+"But they're taking deliveries," White pointed out. "They have granaries
+all over the kingdom, subsidiary companies to do the dirty work of
+refusing to sell. Already they say that three quarters of the wheat of
+the country is in their hands, and mind you, they sell nothing. The price
+goes up and up, just the same as the price of their shares has risen.
+They buy but they never sell. Some of the big banks must be helping, of
+course, but I know one or two--one in particular---who decline to handle
+any business from them at all."
+
+"I should say their greatest risk was Government interference," Kendrick
+observed. "Gambling in foodstuffs ought to be forbidden."
+
+"It would take our Government a year to make up their minds what to do,"
+White scoffed, "and by that time these fellows would have sold out and be
+on to something else."
+
+"Well, it's too hot for shop," Kendrick yawned. "I think I shall cut work
+on Friday and have a long week-end at Sandwich."
+
+"I have a good mind to do the same," his companion declared. "And as to
+B. & I.'s there's money to be made out of them one way or the other, but
+I shall advise my clients not to touch them.--Hullo, we're discovered!
+Here's Sarah."
+
+The young lady in question, escorted by a pink-complexioned, somewhat
+bored-looking young man, who cheered up at the sight of the iced drinks,
+greeted the two friends with a smile. She was attired in the smartest of
+garden-party frocks, her brown eyes were clear and attractive, her
+complexion freckled but pleasant, her mouth humorous, a suggestion which
+was further carried out by her slightly retroussé nose. She seemed to
+bring with her an agreeable atmosphere of wholesome things.
+
+"You shall advise your clients not to touch what?" she enquired. "Are
+there any tips going?"
+
+Kendrick shook his head.
+
+"You stick to the tips your clients slip into your hand, my dear young
+lady," he advised, "and don't dabble in what you don't understand. The
+Stock Exchange is a den of thieves, and Maurice here and I are two of the
+worst examples."
+
+Miss Sarah Baldwin made a little grimace.
+
+"My clients are such a mean lot," she complained. "Now that they have got
+over the novelty of being driven in a taxicab by a woman, they are
+positively stingy. Even Jimmy here only gave me a sovereign for picking
+him up at St. James' Street, waiting twenty minutes at his tailor's, and
+bringing him on here. What is it that you're going to advise your clients
+to leave alone, please, Mr. White?"
+
+"British and Imperial Granaries."
+
+The young man--the Honourable James Wilshaw--suddenly dropped his
+eyeglass and assumed an anxious expression.
+
+"I say, what's wrong with them, White?" he demanded. "They're large
+holders of wheat, and wheat's going up all the time."
+
+"Wheat's going up because they're buying," was the dry comment. "Directly
+they leave off it will drop, and when it begins to drop, look out for a
+slump in B. & I.'s."
+
+The young man relapsed into a seat by Sarah's side and swung an
+immaculately trousered leg.
+
+"But look here, Maurice, my boy, why should they leave off buying, eh?"
+he enquired.
+
+"Because," the other explained, "there is a little more wheat in the
+world than the B. & I. have money for."
+
+"I can give you a further reason," Kendrick intervened, "for leaving B.
+& I.'s severely alone. There is at the present moment on his way to this
+country---if he is not already here, by the by--one of the shrewdest and
+finest speculators in the world, who is coming over on purpose to do
+what up to now our own men seem to have funked--fight the B. & I. tooth
+and nail."
+
+"Who's that, Ken?" Maurice White asked with interest. "Why haven't I
+heard about him before?"
+
+"Because," Kendrick replied, "he wrote and told me that he was coming
+and marked his letter 'Private,' so I thought that I had better keep it
+to myself. His boat was due in Liverpool several days ago, though, so I
+suppose that any one who is interested knows all about his coming by
+this time."
+
+"But his name?" Sarah demanded. "Why don't you tell us his name and all
+about him? I love American millionaires who do things in Wall Street
+and fight with billions. If he's really nice, he may take me off your
+hands, Jimmy."
+
+"I'd like to see him try," that young man growled, with unexpected
+fierceness.
+
+"Well, his name is John Philip Wingate," Kendrick told them. "He started
+life, I believe, as a journalist. Then he inherited a fortune and made
+another one on Wall Street, where I imagine he came across Dreadnought
+Phipps. What happened I don't exactly know," he went on ruminatively.
+"Phipps couldn't have squeezed him, or we should have heard about it, but
+somehow or other the two got at loggerheads, for it's common knowledge
+amongst their business connections--I don't know that they have any
+friends--that Wingate has sworn to break Phipps. There will be quite a
+commotion in the City when it gets about that Wingate is here or on his
+way over."
+
+"It's almost like a romance," Sarah declared, as she took the ice which
+her cavalier had brought her and settled down once more in her chair.
+"Tell me more about Mr. Wingate, please. Mr. Phipps I know, of course,
+and he doesn't seem in the least terrifying. Is Mr. Wingate like that or
+is he a dourer type?"
+
+"John Wingate," Kendrick said reflectively, "is a much younger man than
+Phipps---I should say that he wasn't more than thirty-five--and much
+better-looking. I must say that in a struggle I shouldn't know which to
+back. Wingate has sentiment and Phipps has none; conscience of which
+Phipps hasn't a shred, and a sense of honour with which Phipps was
+certainly never troubled. These points are all against him in a market
+duel, but on the other hand he has a bigger outlook than Phipps, he has
+nerves of steel and the grit of a hero. Did I tell you, by the by, that
+he went into the war as a private and came out a brigadier?"
+
+"Splendid!" Sarah murmured. "Now tell us where Peter Phipps comes in?"
+
+"Well," Kendrick continued, "Phipps attracts sympathy because of his
+lavish hospitality and apparent generosity, whilst Wingate is a man of
+many reserves and has few friends, either on this side or the other. Then
+Phipps, I should say, is the wealthier man, and in this present deal, at
+any rate, he has marvellous support, so that financially he must tower
+over Wingate. Then, too, I think he understands the tricks of the market
+better over here, and he has a very dangerous confederate in Skinflint
+Martin. What that old blackguard doesn't know of chicanery and crooked
+dealing, the devil himself couldn't make use of. If he's put his own
+money into B. & I., I should say that Phipps can't be broken. My advice
+to Wingate, at any rate, when we meet, will be to stand by for a time."
+
+The sound of approaching voices warned them that their seclusion was on
+the point of being broken into. Their hostess, an elderly lady of great
+social gifts and immense volubility, appeared, having for her escort a
+tall, well-groomed man of youthful middle-age, with the square jaw and
+humorous gleam in his grey eyes of the best trans-Atlantic type. Lady
+Amesbury beamed upon them all.
+
+"Just the people I was looking for!" she exclaimed. "I want you all to
+know my great friend, Mr. Wingate from New York."
+
+Every one was glad to meet Wingate, and Kendrick and he exchanged the
+greetings of old friends.
+
+"Now you have found some one whom you can talk to, my dear John," his
+hostess declared. "I shall consider you off my hands for the afternoon.
+Come and dine with me next Sunday night, and don't lose your heart to
+Sarah Baldwin. She's a capricious little minx, and, besides, she's
+engaged to Jimmy there, though heaven knows whether they'll ever get
+married.--There! I knew it! My own particular Bishop being lured into
+conversation with Hilda Sutton, who's just become a freethinker and can't
+talk of anything else. It will spoil the dear man's afternoon if she gets
+really started.--Good-by, all of you. Take care of Mr. Wingate."
+
+She hurried off, and the newcomer seated himself between Kendrick
+and Sarah.
+
+"We've just been hearing all about you, Mr. Wingate," Sarah began, "but
+I must say you're the last person we expected to see here. We imagined
+you dashing in a great motor-car from Liverpool to your office in the
+City, dictating letters, speaking into the telephone, and doing all
+sorts of violent things. I don't believe Mr. Kendrick told us the truth
+about you at all."
+
+Wingate smiled good-humouredly.
+
+"Tell me what Kendrick has been saying, and I will let you know whether
+it is the truth or not," he promised.
+
+"Well, he has just given us a thrilling picture of you," she went on,
+"coming over here armed cap-a-pie to do battle for the romance of money.
+Already we were picturing to ourselves poor Dreadnought Phipps, the
+first of your victims, seeking for an asylum in the Stock Exchange
+Almshouses; and the other desperado--what was his name? Skinflint
+Martin?--on his knees before you while you read him a moral lecture on
+the evils of speculation."
+
+Wingate's eyes twinkled.
+
+"From all of which I judge that you have been discussing the British and
+Imperial Granaries," he remarked.
+
+"Our dear young friend, Miss Baldwin," Kendrick said, "has a vivid
+imagination and a wonderful gift of picturesque similies. Still, I
+have just been telling them that one reason why I wouldn't touch B. &
+I.'s is because they have an idea over here that you are going to have
+a shy at them."
+
+"My attitude toward the company in question is certainly an unfriendly
+one," Wingate admitted. "I hate all speculations the basis of which is
+utterly selfish. Dealing in foodstuffs is one of them. But, Miss
+Baldwin," he went on, turning towards her, "why do we talk finance on
+such a wonderful afternoon, and so far away from the City? I really came
+over from the States to get an occasional cocktail, order some new
+clothes and see some plays. What theatres do you advise me to go to?"
+
+"I can tell you plenty," she answered, "which I should advise you to stay
+away from. It is quite easy to see, Mr. Wingate, that you have been away
+from London quite a long time. You are not in the least in touch with us.
+On the Stock Exchange they do little, nowadays, I am told, but invent
+stories which the members can tell only to other men's wives, and up in
+the west we do little else except talk finance. The money we used to lose
+at auction bridge now all goes to our brokers. We worry the lives out of
+our men friends by continually craving for tips."
+
+"Dear me," Wingate remarked, "I had no idea things were as bad as that."
+
+"Now what," Sarah asked ingratiatingly, "is your honest opinion about
+British and Imperial Granaries?"
+
+"If I gave it to you," Wingate replied, "my opinion would be the only
+honest thing about it."
+
+"Then couldn't one do some good by selling a bear of them?" she
+enquired sagely.
+
+"You would do yourself and every one else more good by not dealing in
+them at all," Wingate advised. "The whole thing is a terrible gamble."
+
+"When did you arrive?" Kendrick enquired. "Have you been in the
+City yet?"
+
+Wingate shook his head.
+
+"I have spent the last two days in the north of England," he replied. "I
+was rather interested in having a glance at conditions there. I only
+arrived in London last night."
+
+"But this morning?" Sarah asked him. "You don't mean to tell me that you
+had strength of mind enough to keep away from the City?"
+
+"I certainly do. I did not even telephone to my brokers. Kendrick here
+knows that, for he is one of the firm."
+
+"Then what did you do?" Sarah persisted, "I can't imagine you spending
+your first morning in idleness."
+
+"You might have called it idleness; I didn't," he answered, smiling. "I
+had my hair cut and my nails manicured; I was measured for four new suits
+of clothes, a certain number of shirts, and I bought some other
+indispensable trifles."
+
+"Dear me," Sarah murmured, "you aren't at all the sort of man I thought
+you were!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"You don't seem energetic. I should have thought, even if you weren't
+supposed to buy or sell, that you would have been all round the markets,
+enquiring about B. & I.'s this morning."
+
+"I read the papers instead," he replied. "One can learn a good deal from
+the papers."
+
+"You will find rather a partial Press where B. & I.'s are concerned,"
+Kendrick observed.
+
+"I have already noticed it," was the brief reply. "Still, even the Press
+must live, I suppose."
+
+"Cynic!" Sarah murmured.
+
+"Might one ask, without being impertinent," Maurice White enquired,
+addressing Wingate for the first time, "what is your real opinion
+concerning the directors of the B. & I.?"
+
+Wingate answered him deliberately.
+
+"I am scarcely a fair person to ask," he said, "because Peter Phipps is a
+personal enemy of mine. However, since you have asked the question, I
+should say that Phipps is utterly unscrupulous and possesses every
+qualification of a blackguard. Rees, his nephew, is completely under his
+thumb, occupying just the position he might be supposed to hold.
+Skinflint Martin ought to have died in penal servitude years ago, and as
+for Dredlinton--"
+
+Wingate was quick to scent disaster. He broke off abruptly in his
+sentence just as a tall, pale, beautifully gowned woman who had detached
+herself from a group close at hand turned towards them.
+
+"It is Lady Dredlinton," Kendrick whispered in his ear.
+
+"Then I will only say," Wingate concluded, "that Lord Dredlinton's
+commercial record scarcely entitles him to a seat on the Board of any
+progressive company."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Josephine Dredlinton, with a smile which gave to her face a singularly
+sweet expression, deprecated the disturbance which her coming had caused
+amongst the little company. The four men had risen to their feet.
+Kendrick was holding a chair for her. She apparently knew every one
+intimately except Wingate, and Sarah hastened to present him.
+
+"Mr. Wingate--the Countess of Dredlinton," she said. "Mr. Wingate has
+just arrived from New York, Josephine, and he wants to know which are the
+newest plays worth seeing and the latest mode in men's ties."
+
+A somewhat curious few seconds followed upon Sarah's few words of
+introduction. Wingate stood drawn to his fullest height, having the air
+of a man who, on the point of making his little conventional movement and
+speech, has felt the influence of some emotion in itself almost
+paralysing. His eyes searched the face of the woman before whom he
+stood, almost eagerly, as though he were conjuring up to himself pictures
+of her in some former state and trying to reconcile them with her present
+appearance. She, on her side, seemed to be realising some secret and
+indefinable pleasure. The lines of her beautiful mouth, too often,
+nowadays, weary and drooping, softened into a quiet, almost mysterious
+smile. Her eyes--very large and wonderful eyes they were--seemed to hold
+some other vision than the vision of this tall, forceful-looking man. It
+was a moment which no one, perhaps, except those two themselves realised.
+To the lookers-on it seemed only a meeting between two very distinguished
+and attractive-looking people, naturally interested in each other.
+
+"It is a great pleasure to meet Lady Dredlinton," Wingate said. "I hope
+that Miss Baldwin's remark will not prejudice me in your opinion. I am
+really not such a frivolous person as she would have you believe."
+
+"Even if you were," she rejoined, sinking into the chair which had been
+brought for her, "a little frivolity from men, nowadays, is rather in
+order, isn't it?"
+
+"It's all very well for those who can afford to indulge in it," Kendrick
+grumbled. "We can't earn our bread and butter now on the Stock Exchange.
+Even our friend Maurice here, who works as long as an hour and a half a
+day sometimes, declares that he can barely afford his new Rolls-Royce."
+
+"You men are so elusive about your prospects," Sarah declared. "I believe
+that Jimmy could afford to marry me to-morrow if he'd only make up his
+mind to it."
+
+"I'm ready to try, anyhow," the young man assured her promptly. "Girls
+nowadays talk so much rot about giving up their liberty."
+
+"Once a taxicab driver, always a taxicab driver," Sarah propounded. "Did
+you know that that was my profession, Mr. Wingate? If you do need
+anything in the shape of a comfortable conveyance while you are in town,
+will you remember me? I'll send you a card, if you like."
+
+"Don't, for heaven's sake, listen to that young woman," Kendrick begged.
+
+"Her cab's on its last legs," the Honourable Jimmy warned him, "three
+cylinders missing, and the fourth makes a noise like popcorn when you
+come to a gradient."
+
+"It isn't as though she could drive," Maurice White put in. "There isn't
+an insurance company in London will take her on as a risk."
+
+Sarah glanced from one to the other in well-assumed viciousness.
+
+"Don't I hate you all!" she exclaimed bitterly. "I can understand Jimmy,
+because he likes me to drive him all the time, but you others, who aren't
+regular clients at all, why you should butt in and try to spoil my
+chances, I can't think. Mr. Wingate is just my conception of the ideal
+fare--generous, affable, and with trans-Atlantic notions about tips. I
+shall send you my card, all the same, Mr. Wingate."
+
+"And I hope," Josephine said, "that Mr. Wingate will not take the
+slightest notice of all the rubbish these unkind people have been saying.
+Miss Baldwin drives me continually and has given me every satisfaction."
+
+"'Every satisfaction' I love," Sarah declared. "I shall have that
+framed."
+
+"Any chance of your taking me back to the Milan?" Wingate enquired.
+
+Sarah shook her head regretfully, glancing down at her muslin gown.
+
+"Can't you see I'm in my party clothes?" she said. "I did bring the old
+'bus down here, but I had a boy meet me and take it away. I'll send you
+my card and telephone number, Mr. Wingate. You can rely upon my
+punctuality and dispatch. Even my aunt here would give me a reference,
+if pressed," she added, as their hostess paused for a moment to whisper
+something in Josephine's ear.
+
+"Your driving's like your life, dear, much too fast for my liking." Lady
+Amesbury declared. "I hope things are better in your country, Mr.
+Wingate, but our young people go on anyhow now. Here's my niece drives a
+taxicab and is proud of it, my own daughter designs underclothes and
+sells them at a shop in Sloane Street to any one who comes along, and my
+boy, who ought to go into the Guards, prefers to go into Roger Kendrick's
+office. What are you going to start him at, Roger?"
+
+"A pound a week and his lunch money, probably," Kendrick replied.
+
+"I don't think he'll earn it," his fond mother said sadly. "However,
+that's your business. Don't forget you're dining with me Sunday night,
+John. I'll ask Josephine, too, if you succeed in making friends with
+her. She's a little difficult, but well worth knowing.--Dear me, I wish
+people would begin to go! I wonder whether they realise that it is
+nearly six o'clock."
+
+"I shan't stir a yard," Sarah declared, "until I have had another ice.
+Jimmy, run and fetch me one."
+
+"My family would be the last to help me out," Lady Amesbury grumbled.
+"I'm ashamed of the whole crowd of you round here. Roger, you and Mr.
+White are disgraceful, sitting and drinking whiskies and sodas and
+enjoying yourselves, when you ought to have been walking round the
+gardens being properly bored."
+
+"I came to enjoy myself and I have done so," Kendrick assured her. "To
+add to my satisfaction, I have met my biggest client--at least he is my
+biggest client when he feels like doing things."
+
+"Do you feel like doing things now, Mr. Wingate?" Sarah ventured.
+
+Maurice White held out his hands in horror.
+
+"My dear young lady," he exclaimed, "such questions are absolutely
+impossible! When a man comes on to a market, he comes on secretly. There
+are plenty of people who would give you a handsome cheque to hear Mr.
+Wingate's answer to that question."
+
+"Any one may hand over the cheque, then," Wingate interposed
+smilingly, "because my answer to Miss Baldwin is prompt and truthful.
+I do not know."
+
+"Of course," Lady Amesbury complained, "if you are going to introduce a
+commercial element into my party--well, why don't you and Maurice, Roger,
+go and dance about opposite one another, and tear up bits of paper, and
+pretend to be selling one another things?--Hooray, I can see some people
+beginning to move! I'll go and speed them off the premises."
+
+She hurried away. Sarah drew a sigh of relief.
+
+"Somehow or other," she confessed, "I always feel a sense of tranquility
+when my aunt has just departed."
+
+Josephine rose to her feet.
+
+"I think I shall go," she decided, "while the stock of taxicabs remains
+unexhausted."
+
+"If you will allow me," Wingate said, "I will find you one."
+
+Their farewells were a little casual. They were all, in a way, intimates.
+Only Kendrick touched Wingate on the shoulder.
+
+"Shall I see you in the City to-morrow?" he asked.
+
+"About eleven o'clock," Wingate suggested, "if that is not too early.
+There are a few things I want to talk to you about."
+
+"Where shall I send my card?" Sarah called out after him.
+
+"The Milan Hotel," he replied, "with terms, please."
+
+She made a little grimace.
+
+"Terms!" she repeated scornfully. "An American generally pays what he
+is asked."
+
+"On the contrary," Wingate retorted, "he pays for what he gets."
+
+"Your address?" Wingate asked, as he handed Josephine into a taxicab.
+
+"Dredlinton House, Grosvenor Square," she answered. "You mustn't let me
+take you out of your way, though."
+
+"Will you humour me?" he asked. "There is something I want to say to you,
+and I don't want to say it here. May we drive to Albert Gate and walk in
+the Park a little way? I can find you another taxi the other side."
+
+"I should like that very much," she answered.
+
+They spoke scarcely at all during their brief drive, or during the
+first part of their walk in the Park. Then he pointed to two chairs
+under a tree.
+
+"May we sit here?" he begged, leading the way.
+
+She followed, and they sat side by side. He took off his hat and laid it
+on the ground.
+
+"So one of the dreams of my life has been realised," he said quietly. "I
+have met Sister Josephine again."
+
+She was for a moment transformed. A delicate pink flush stole through
+the pallor of her cheeks, her tired eyes were lit with pleasure. She
+smiled at him.
+
+"I was wondering," she murmured. "You really hadn't forgotten, then?"
+
+"I remember," he told her, "as though it were yesterday, the first time I
+ever saw you. I was brought into Étaples. It wasn't much of a wound but
+it was painful. I remember seeing you in that white stone hall, in your
+cool Sister's dress. After the dust and horror of battle there seemed to
+be nothing in that wonderful hospital of yours but sunlight and white
+walls and soft voices. I watched your face as you listened to the details
+about my case--and I forgot the pain. In the morning you came to see how
+I was, and most mornings afterwards."
+
+"I am glad that you remember," she murmured.
+
+"I have forgotten nothing," he went on. "I think that those ten days of
+convalescence out in the gardens of your villa and down by the sea were
+the most wonderful days I ever spent."
+
+"I love to hear you say so," she confessed.
+
+"Out there," he continued, "the whole show was hideous from beginning to
+end, a ghastly, terrible drama, played out amongst all the accompaniments
+which make hell out of earth. And yet the thing gripped. The tragedy of
+Ypres came and I escaped from the hospital."
+
+"You were not fit to go. They all said that."
+
+"I couldn't help it," he answered. "The guns were there, calling, and
+one forgot. I've been back to England three times since then, and each
+time one thought was foremost in my mind--'shall I meet Sister
+Josephine?'"
+
+"But you never even made enquiries," she reminded him. "At my hospital I
+made it a strict rule that our names in civil life were never mentioned
+or divulged, but afterwards you could have found out."
+
+He touched her left hand very lightly, lingered for a moment on her
+fourth finger.
+
+"It was the ring," he said. "I knew that you were married, and
+somehow, knowing that, I desired to know no more. I suppose that
+sounds rather like a cry from Noah's Ark, but I couldn't help it. I
+just felt like that."
+
+"And now you probably know a good deal about me," she remarked, with a
+rather sad smile. "I have been married nine years. I gather that you know
+my husband by name and repute."
+
+"Your husband is associated with a man whom I have always considered my
+enemy," he said.
+
+"My husband's friends are not my friends," she rejoined, a little
+bitterly, "nor does he take me into his confidence as regards his
+business exploits."
+
+"Then what does it matter?" he asked. "I should never have sought you
+out, for the reason I have given you, but since we have met you will not
+refuse me your friendship? You will let me come and see you?"
+
+She laughed softly.
+
+"I shall be very unhappy if you do not. Come to-morrow afternoon to tea
+at five o'clock. There will be no one else there, and we can talk of
+those times on the beach at Étaples. You were rather a pessimist in
+those days."
+
+"It seems ages ago," he replied. "To-day, at any rate, I feel
+differently. I knew when I glanced at Lady Amesbury's card this morning
+that something was going to happen. I went to that stupid garden party
+all agog for adventure."
+
+"Am I the adventure?" she asked lightly.
+
+He made no immediate answer, turning his head, however, and studying her
+with a queer, impersonal deliberation. She was wearing a smoke-coloured
+muslin gown and a black hat with gracefully arranged feathers. For a
+moment the weariness had passed from her face and she was a very
+beautiful woman. Her features were delicately shaped, her eyes rather
+deep-set. She had a long, graceful neck, and resting upon her throat,
+fastened by a thin platinum chain, was a single sapphire. There was about
+her just that same delicate femininity, that exquisite aroma of
+womanliness and tender sexuality which had impressed him so much upon
+their first meeting. She was more wonderful even than his dreams, this
+rather tired woman of fashion whose coming had been so surprising. He
+would have answered her question lightly but he found it impossible. A
+great part of his success in life had been due to his inspiration. He
+knew perfectly well that she was to be the adventure of his life.
+
+"It is so restful here," she said presently, "and I can't tell you how
+much I have enjoyed our meeting, but alas!" she added, glancing at her
+watch, "you see the time--and I am dining out. We will walk to Hyde Park
+Corner and you must find me a cab."
+
+He rose to his feet at once and they strolled slowly along on the least
+frequented footpath.
+
+"I hope so much," she went on, "that my husband's connection with the man
+you dislike will not make any difference. You must meet him, of
+course--my husband, I mean. You will not like him and he will not
+understand you, but you need not see much of him. Our ways,
+unfortunately, have lain apart for some time."
+
+"You have your troubles," he said quietly. "I knew it when you first
+began to talk to me at Étaples."
+
+"I have my troubles," she admitted. "You will understand them when you
+know me better. Sometimes I think they are more than I can bear. Tonight
+I feel inclined to make light of them. It is a great thing to have
+friends. I have so few."
+
+"I am a little ambitious," he ventured. "I do not wish to take my place
+amongst the rank and file. I want to be something different to you in
+life--more than any one else. If affection and devotion count, I shall
+earn my place."
+
+Her eyes were filled with tears as she gave him her hand.
+
+"Indeed," she assured him, "you are there already. You have been there in
+my thoughts for so long. If you wish to keep your place, you will find
+very little competition. I am rather a dull woman these days, and I have
+very little to give."
+
+He smiled confidently as he stopped a taxicab and handed her in.
+
+"May I not be the judge of that?" he begged. "Giving depends upon the
+recipient, you know. You have given me more happiness within this last
+half-hour than I have had since we parted in France."
+
+Some instinct of her younger days brought happiness into her laugh, a
+provocative gleam into her soft eyes.
+
+"You are very easily satisfied," she murmured.
+
+He laughed back again, but though he opened his lips to speak, the words
+remained unsaid. Something warned him that here was a woman passing
+through something like a crisis in her life, and that a single false step
+on his part might be fatal. He stood hat in hand and watched the taxicab
+turn up Park Lane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+There was a little flutter of excitement in the offices of Messrs.
+Kendrick, Stone, Morgan and Company when, at a few minutes after eleven
+the following morning, Wingate descended from a taxicab, pushed open the
+swing doors of the large general office and enquired for Mr. Kendrick.
+Without a moment's delay he was shown into Roger Kendrick's private room,
+but the little thrill caused by his entrance did not at once pass away.
+It was like the visit of a general to Divisional Headquarters. Action of
+some sort seemed to be in the air. Ideas of big dealings already loomed
+large in the minds of the little army of clerks. Telephones were handled
+longingly. Those of the firm who were members of the Stock Exchange
+abandoned any work of a distracting nature and held themselves ready for
+a prompt rush across the street.
+
+Even Roger Kendrick, as he shook hands with his client, was conscious of
+a little thrill of expectation. Wingate was a man who brought with him
+almost a conscious sense of power. Carefully, but not overcarefully
+dressed, muscular, with a frame like steel, eyes keen and bright,
+carrying himself like a man who knows himself and his value, John Wingate
+would have appeared a formidable adversary in any game in which he chose
+to take a hand. Whatever his present intentions were, however, he seemed
+in no hurry to declare himself. The two men spoke for a few minutes on
+outside subjects. Wingate referred to the garden party of the afternoon
+before, led the conversation with some skill around to the subject of
+Josephine Dredlinton, and listened to what the other man had to say.
+
+"Every one is sorry for Lady Dredlinton," Kendrick pronounced. "Why she
+married Dredlinton is one of the mysteries of the world. I suppose it was
+the fatal mistake so many good women make--the reformer's passion.
+Dredlinton's rotten to the core, though. No one could reform him, could
+even influence him to good to any extent. He's such a wrong 'un, to tell
+you the truth, that I'm surprised Phipps put him on the Board. His name
+is long past doing any one any good."
+
+"Lady Dredlinton did not strike me as having altogether the air of an
+unhappy woman," Wingate observed tentatively.
+
+Kendrick shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"No fundamentally good woman is ever unhappy," he said, "or rather ever
+shows it. She is face to face all the time with the necessity of making
+the best of things for the sake of other people. Lady Dredlinton carries
+herself bravely, but the people who know her best never cease to feel
+sorry for her."
+
+"You have those figures I sent you a wireless for?" Wingate asked, a
+little abruptly.
+
+"I have them here," Kendrick replied, producing a little roll of papers
+from a drawer. "They want a little digesting, even by a man with a head
+for figures like yours. In some respects, these fellows seem to have had
+the most amazing luck. Unless we come to an understanding with Russia
+within the next month, of which there doesn't seem to me to be the
+slightest prospect, we shall get no wheat from there for at least
+another year."
+
+"And the harvests all over eastern Europe were shocking," Wingate said,
+half to himself.
+
+"It doesn't seem to me," Kendrick pointed out, "that more than driblets
+can be expected from anywhere, except, of course, the greatest source of
+all, Canada and the United States."
+
+"You've no indication of the Government's attitude, I suppose?"
+Wingate asked.
+
+"I don't suppose they have one," Kendrick answered, "upon that or any
+other subject. Of course, if all the wheat that's being stored in the
+country under the auspices of the B. & I. stood in their own name, the
+matter would appear in a different light, but they've been infernally
+clever with all these subsidiary companies. They own a majority of shares
+in each, without a doubt, but they conduct their transactions as though
+they were absolutely independent concerns."
+
+Wingate studied the figures in the document he was holding for some
+minutes in thoughtful silence. The telephone rang at Kendrick's elbow. He
+picked up the receiver and listened.
+
+"That Kendrick?" a voice enquired.
+
+"Speaking," Kendrick answered.
+
+"This is Peter Phipps, from right away opposite. Say, I am told that John
+Wingate of New York is a client of yours."
+
+Kendrick passed across the spare receiver to Wingate and paused for a
+moment whilst the latter held it to his ear.
+
+"He is," Kendrick admitted.
+
+"Well, I am given to understand that he is coming into the City to do
+business," Phipps continued. "If he is in any way disposed to be a
+seller, we are buyers of wheat for autumn delivery at market price,
+perhaps even a shade over."
+
+"Any quantity?" Kendrick enquired.
+
+"A hundred thousand--anything up to a million bushels, if Mr. Wingate
+feels like coming in big. Anyway, we're ready to talk business. Will you
+put it up to your client?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"Shall you be seeing him soon?"
+
+"This morning, probably."
+
+"Thought you might," the voice at the other end of the telephone
+observed, "as I saw him step into your office half an hour ago. Give him
+my compliments and say I hope we may make a deal together."
+
+"Certainly," Kendrick promised. "Good morning."
+
+The two men laid down their receivers. Kendrick's eyes twinkled.
+
+"Well, that fellow's a sport, anyway," he declared.
+
+"I suppose in one sense of the word he is," Wingate admitted. "So he
+wants me to sell him wheat, eh? It looks a good thing at these
+prices, Kendrick, doesn't it, and a normal harvest coming along on
+the other side?"
+
+"That's for you to say," was the cautious reply. "These big deals in
+commodities which have to be delivered on a certain date always seem to
+me a little out of the sphere of legitimate gambling."
+
+"At the same time," Wingate remarked, "the price of wheat to-day is
+scandalous. If the B. & I. forced it up any higher, I should think that
+the Government must intervene."
+
+"I shouldn't reckon upon it."
+
+"Naturally! I shouldn't enter into a gamble, taking that as a certainty.
+At the same time, I want to view the matter in all its bearings. I can't
+conceive any private firm being allowed to boost up the price of wheat to
+such an extent for purposes of speculation."
+
+"It would be devilish difficult," Kendrick pointed out, "to trace the
+whole thing to the B. & I."
+
+Wingate took a cigarette from the open box upon the office table, lit it
+and smoked for a moment thoughtfully.
+
+"Kendrick," he said, "I am a good friend and a good enemy; Peter Phipps
+is my enemy. We should probably shake hands if we met, we might even sit
+down at the same table, but we know the truth. Each of us in his heart
+desires nothing in the world so much as the ruin of the other."
+
+"What was the start of this feeling?" Kendrick asked.
+
+"A woman," Wingate replied shortly, "and that's all there is to be said
+about it, Kendrick. I shall hate Peter Phipps as long as I live, for the
+sake of the girl he ruined, and he will hate me because of the thrashing
+I gave him. Ever noticed the scar on his right cheek, Kendrick?"
+
+"Often," the stockbroker replied. "He told me it was done in a saloon
+fight out in the Far West."
+
+"I did it in the Far East," Wingate declared grimly, "as far east, at
+least, as the drawing-room of his Fifth Avenue house. He'll never lose
+that scar. He'll never lose his hatred of the man who gave it to him.--So
+he wants me to sell him wheat!"
+
+"It's a pretty dangerous thing to introduce feelings of this sort into
+business," Kendrick remarked.
+
+"You're right," Wingate admitted. "It makes one careful. I'm not selling
+any wheat to-day, Kendrick."
+
+"It will be a disappointment to the office," the other remarked.
+"Personally, I'm glad."
+
+"Oh, I'll keep your office busy," Wingate promised. "I'm not coming into
+the City for nothing, I can assure you. There are five commissions for
+you," he went on, drawing a sheet of paper from the rack and writing on
+it rapidly. "That will keep your office busy for a time. I'll give you a
+cheque for fifty thousand pounds. Don't ring me up unless you want more
+margin. Closing time prices are all I'm interested in, and I can get
+those on the tape anywhere."
+
+The stockbroker's eyes glistened as he looked through the list.
+
+"You're a good judge, Wingate," he said. "You'll make money on most
+of these."
+
+"I expect I shall," Wingate acknowledged. "Anyhow, it will keep you
+people busy and serve as a sort of visiting card here for me until--"
+
+"Until what?" Kendrick asked, breaking a short pause.
+
+"Until I can make up my mind how to deal with those fellows across the
+way. On paper it still looks a good thing to sell them wheat, you know.
+Peter Phipps has something up his sleeve for me, though. I've got to try
+and find out what it is."
+
+"You'll excuse me for a moment?" Kendrick begged. "I'm only a human
+being, and I can't hold a couple of million pounds' worth of business in
+my hand and not set it going. I'll be back directly."
+
+"Don't hurry on my account," Wingate replied. "I'm going to use your
+telephone, if I may."
+
+"Of course! You have a private line there. The others will be all buzzing
+away in a minute. I'll send Jenkins and Poore along to the House. What
+about lunch?"
+
+"To-morrow, one o'clock at the Milan," Wingate appointed. "I'm
+busy to-day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Wingate made his way from the City to Shaftesbury Avenue, where he
+entered a block of offices, studied the direction board on the wall for
+a few minutes, and finally took the lift to the fourth floor. Exactly
+opposite to him across the uncarpeted corridor was a door from which
+half the varnish had peeled off, on which was painted in white
+letters--MR. ANDREW SLATE. A knock on the panel resulted in an immediate
+invitation to enter. Wingate turned the handle, entered and closed the
+door behind him. The man who was the solitary occupant of the room half
+rose from behind his desk.
+
+"What can I do for you?" he asked.
+
+Wingate was in no hurry to reply. He took rapid stock of his surroundings
+and of the man who had confronted him. The room was small, none too clean
+and badly furnished. It reeked with the smell of tobacco, and
+notwithstanding the warmth of the June day, all the windows were tightly
+closed. Its occupant, a lank man with a smooth but wizened face, straight
+white hair and dark, piercing eyes, was in accord with his
+surroundings,--shabby, unkempt, with cigarette ash down the front of his
+coat, his collar none too clean, his tie awry.
+
+"Hm!" Wingate remarked, "Seems to me you're not taking care of yourself,
+Andrew. Do you mind if I open a window or two?"
+
+"My God, it's Wingate!" the tenant of the room exclaimed. "John Wingate!"
+
+Wingate, who had succeeded in opening the windows, came over and shook
+hands with the man whom he had come to visit.
+
+"How are you, Andrew?" he said. "What on earth's got you that you choose
+to live in an atmosphere like this!"
+
+Slate, who had recovered from his surprise, slipped dejectedly back into
+his place. Wingate had established himself with caution upon the only
+remaining chair.
+
+"I've had lung trouble over here," Slate explained, "This heavy
+atmosphere plays the devil with one's breathing. I guess you're right
+about the windows though. How did you find me out?"
+
+"Telephone directory, aided by my natural intelligence," Wingate replied.
+"What are you doing these days?"
+
+"Trying to run straight and finding it filthily difficult," the
+other answered.
+
+"What do you call yourself, anyway?" Wingate asked. "There's nothing
+except your name on the board downstairs."
+
+Slate nodded.
+
+"I'm the only one in the building," he said, "who isn't either a
+theatrical agent or a bookmaker. I've got just a small connection amongst
+the riffraff as a man who can be trusted to collect the necessary
+evidence in a divorce case, especially if there's a little collusion, or
+find a few false witnesses to help a thief with an alibi. Once or twice I
+have even gone so far as to introduce a receiver to a successful thief."
+
+"Hm!" Wingate observed. "You see all sorts of life."
+
+"I do indeed," Slate admitted. "What do you want with me? I can find you
+a murderer who's looking for a job, or a burglar who would take anything
+on where there was a reasonable chance of success, or half a dozen
+witnesses--a little tarnished, though, I'm afraid they may be--who would
+swear anything. Or I can find you several beautiful ladies--beautiful,
+that is to say, with the aid of one of the costumers up the street and a
+liberal supply of cosmetics--who will inveigle any young man you want
+dealt with into any sort of situation, provided he is fool enough and the
+pay is good. I'm an all-round man still, Wingate, but my nose is a
+little closer to the ground than it was."
+
+Wingate looked thoughtfully at the man whom he had come to visit,
+studying his appearance in every detail. Then he leaned across and laid
+his hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"Andrew," he said, "you and I have looked out at life once or twice and
+seen the big things. I guess there's no false shame between us. I can say
+what I want, can't I?"
+
+"I should say so," was the hearty reply. "Get right on with it, John.
+I've passed the blushing age."
+
+"It's like this," Wingate explained. "I've got a job for you. You can't
+do it like that. Walk to the door, will you?"
+
+"Damn it, I know you're going to look at my boots!" Slate declared, as he
+rose unwillingly and obeyed.
+
+"You've got it at once," Wingate acquiesced. "You're a smart fellow
+still, Slate, I see. Now listen. You can't do my job like that. Here's
+twenty pounds on account. I'm going to stroll around to the Milan
+Grillroom and take a table for luncheon. I shall expect you there in half
+an hour. You're in the neighbourhood for quick changes."
+
+Slate took the money and reached for his hat.
+
+"Come along, then. You take the lift down. I'll go by the stairs. I
+shan't be late, unless you'd like me to stop and have a shave and my
+hair trimmed."
+
+"Great idea," Wingate assented. "I'll make it three quarters. There
+really isn't any hurry. Say an hour, if you like. I'll be sitting
+down inside."
+
+The metamorphosis in Andrew Slate was complete. With his closely trimmed
+white hair, the dark growth gone from his chin, in a well-cut morning
+coat and trousers, a grey tie and fashionable collar, his appearance was
+entirely irreproachable. Wingate nodded his satisfaction as he approached
+the table.
+
+"Jolly well done, Andrew," he declared. "You certainly do pay for
+dressing, my boy. Now drink that cocktail up and we'll talk business."
+
+Andrew Slate's altered deportment would have delighted the author of
+"Sartor Resartus." With his modish and correct clothes, his self-respect
+seemed to have returned. He carried himself differently, there was a
+confident ring in his tone. He studied the menu which Wingate passed him,
+through a well-polished eyeglass, and one could well have believed that
+he was a distinguished and frequent patron of the place.
+
+"Well, what is it, Wingate?" he asked at last, when the business
+of ordering luncheon was concluded. "I only hope it's something I
+can tackle."
+
+"You can tackle it all right," his companion assured him encouragingly.
+"For a week or ten days you've nothing more to do than a little ordinary
+detective business. If I decide to carry out a scheme which is forming in
+my mind, it will be a more serious affair. Time enough for that, though.
+I should just like to ask you this. Can you find a few bullies of the Tom
+Grogan class, if necessary?"
+
+"Half a hundred, if you want them," Slate replied confidently. "When I
+first came over, Wingate, I can tell you I felt all at sea. It seemed to
+me that the police had got this city in the hollow of their hands, and
+that there was no chance at all for the man who couldn't rely on the law
+to do him justice. I soon found out my mistake. There's nothing I could
+get done in New York or Chicago which I couldn't get done here, and at a
+great deal less cost and trouble. You thought I was joking when I told
+you at my office that I could find you a murderer. I wasn't. I could find
+you half a dozen, if necessary."
+
+"We aren't going quite as far as that," he said. "Have you anything on at
+all at the present moment?"
+
+"Not a thing."
+
+"I want you altogether free," Wingate went on. "I'm talking business now
+because it's necessary. You're going to earn money with me, Andrew, and
+incidentally you are going to help me break the man whom I think that you
+hate almost as much as I do."
+
+"You don't mean Phipps--Dreadnought Phipps?" Slate exclaimed, suddenly
+laying down his knife and fork.
+
+"I do," Wingate answered. "We are up against each other once more, and,
+believe me, Slate, this is going to be the last time."
+
+There was a smouldering fire in Slate's fine eyes. Nevertheless, he
+seemed disturbed.
+
+"You're up against a big thing, Wingate," he said. "Peter Phipps has
+made good over here. They say that he's coining money in this new
+company of his."
+
+"I'm after his blood, all the same," Wingate replied. "We've had several
+tussles since--"
+
+Wingate hesitated.
+
+"Since you nearly beat the breath out of his body," Slate interrupted,
+with a little shiver.
+
+"Yes, we've had several tussles since then," Wingate repeated, "and we
+haven't hurt each other much. This time I think one of us is going under.
+Phipps wants to join issue with me in the City. I'm not so sure. I'm out
+to break him properly this time, and I am not going to rush in until I
+know the ropes."
+
+Slate emptied a glass of wine and leaned forward.
+
+"John," he said, relapsing once more into the familiarity of their early
+college days, "you couldn't have set me a job more to my heart than to
+have me help in brewing mischief for Peter Phipps. I'm your man, body and
+soul--you know that. But you've been a good friend to me--almost the only
+one I ever had--and I've got to put this up to you. Peter Phipps is as
+clever as the devil. He is up to every trick in this world, and a few
+that he probably borrowed from Satan himself. I'm not trying to put you
+off. I only want to say this. Go warily. Don't let him lure you on into
+risking too much on any one move. Always remember that he has something
+up his sleeve."
+
+"That's all right, Slate," he said. "I promise you I'll think out every
+move on the board. I shall risk nothing until I can see my way clear
+ahead. Meanwhile, you can work on this."
+
+He wrote a few sentences on a sheet of paper, which he folded up and
+passed across the table.
+
+"Don't open it now," he said. "Think it over and don't mind putting
+suggestions up to me if anything occurs to you. Call here to see me every
+morning at ten o'clock. I have a suite in the Court, number eighty-nine.
+You've done with business--you understand?"
+
+"Sure!" Slate answered. "Let's talk about that last game you and I were
+in against Princeton."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Josephine received her altogether unexpected visitor that afternoon with
+a certain amount of trepidation, mingled with considerable distaste. Mr.
+Peter Phipps' manner, however, went far towards disarming resentment. He
+was suave, restrained and exceedingly apologetic.
+
+"If I have taken a liberty in coming to see you, Lady Dredlinton, without
+a direct invitation, I am going to apologise right away," he said. "I
+don't get much of an opportunity of a chat with you while the others are
+all around, and I felt this afternoon like taking my chance of finding
+you at home."
+
+"I am always glad to see my husband's friends," Josephine replied a
+little stiffly. "As a matter of fact, however, I was surprised to see you
+because I left word that I was at home to only one caller."
+
+"Fortunate person!" Mr. Phipps declared with a sigh. "May I sit down?"
+
+"Certainly," was the somewhat cold assent. "If you really have anything
+to say to me, perhaps you had better let me know what it is at once."
+
+Peter Phipps was a man whose life had been spent in facing and
+overcoming difficulties, but as he took the chair to which Josephine
+had somewhat ungraciously pointed, he was compelled to admit to himself
+that he was confronted with a task which might well tax his astuteness
+to the utmost. To begin with he made use of one of his favourite
+weapons,--silence. He sat quite still, studying the situation, and in
+those few moments Josephine found herself studying him. He was tall, over
+six feet, with burly shoulders, a thickset body, and legs rather short
+for his height. He was clean-shaven, his hair was a sandy grey, his
+complexion florid, his eyes blue and piercing. His upper lip was long,
+and his mouth, when closed, rather resembled some sort of a trap. He was
+dressed with care, almost with distinction. But for his pronounced
+American accent, he would probably have been taken for a Scandinavian.
+
+"Did you come here to improve your acquaintance with the interior
+of my sitting room?" Josephine asked, a little irritated at last by
+his silence.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I should say not. I came, Lady Dredlinton, to talk to you about
+your husband."
+
+"Then if you will allow me to say so," Josephine replied, "you have come
+upon a very purposeless errand. I do not discuss my husband with any one,
+for reasons which I think we need not go into."
+
+Peter Phipps leaned forward in his chair. It was a favourite attitude of
+his, and one which had won him many successes.
+
+"See here, Lady Dredlinton," he began, "you don't like me. That's my
+misfortune, but it don't affect the matter as it stands at present
+between us. I have a kindly feeling for your husband, and I have--a
+feeling for you which I won't at present presume to refer to."
+
+"Perhaps," Josephine said calmly, "you had better not."
+
+"That feeling," Phipps went on, "has brought me here this afternoon. Your
+husband is not playing the game with us any more than he is with you."
+
+"What do you know--"
+
+"Let's cut that out, shall we," he interrupted, "Let's talk like a
+sensible man and woman. Do you want us to drop your husband out of the B.
+& I. Board?"
+
+"Nothing would give me greater pleasure," Josephine assured him. "I
+cannot imagine why you ever put him on."
+
+Peter Phipps was a little staggered.
+
+"Perhaps you don't know," he said, "that your husband's salary for doing
+nothing is four thousand pounds a year."
+
+"I suppose you think him worth that," Josephine answered coldly, "or you
+would not pay it."
+
+"He is worth nothing at all," Phipps declared bluntly. "I put him on the
+Board and I am paying him four thousand a year for a reason which I am
+surprised you have never guessed."
+
+"How on earth should I?" Josephine demanded. "I know nothing whatever
+about business. On the face of it, I should think you were mad."
+
+"We will leave the reason for Lord Dredlinton's appointment alone for the
+moment," Phipps continued. "I imagined that it would be gratifying to
+you. I imagined that the four thousand a year would be of some account in
+your housekeeping."
+
+"You were entirely wrong, then," Josephine replied. "Whatever Lord
+Dredlinton may draw from your company, he has kept. Not one penny of it
+has come to me, directly or indirectly."
+
+Phipps was staggered. He did not doubt for a second, however, that he was
+listening to the truth.
+
+"Say, this is the worst thing ever!" he declared. "Why, what do you
+suppose your husband does with the money?"
+
+"I have no idea, nor have I any interest."
+
+"Come, come!" Phipps murmured. "That's bad. Of course," he went on, his
+eyes narrowing a little as he watched his companion closely, as though
+to estimate the effect of his words, "of course, I knew that Lord
+Dredlinton had other interests in life besides his domestic ones, but I
+had no idea that he carried things to such a length."
+
+Josephine glanced at the clock.
+
+"Will you forgive my saying that up to the present you have not offered
+me any sufficient explanation as to the reason for your visit?"
+
+"I was coming to it," he assured her. "To tell you the truth, you've
+rather cut the ground away from under my feet, I was coming to tell you
+that Lord Dredlinton had drawn money from the company to which he was not
+entitled, besides having overdrawn his salary to a considerable extent.
+The cashier has pointed out to me serious irregularities. I came to you
+to know what I was to do."
+
+"I cannot conceive a person less able to advise you," she answered. "I
+have said before that my husband's connection with your company is one
+which I dislike extremely, and I should be delighted to hear that it
+was ended."
+
+"If it were ended at the present moment," Phipps said slowly, "it would,
+I fear, be under somewhat painful circumstances."
+
+"What do you mean?" Josephine demanded.
+
+"What I very much hate to put into plain words. Your husband has used
+money of the company's to which he has no right. I have been paying him
+four thousand a year, hoping that indirectly I was benefiting you. He has
+deceived me. I see no reason why I should spare him. The last money he
+drew from the company--his action in drawing it amounts to a criminal
+misdemeanour."
+
+"Do you mean that you will prosecute him?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Josephine for the first time showed signs of disturbance.
+
+"Is this what you came to tell me?" she asked.
+
+"In a sense, yes!"
+
+"What is the amount?"
+
+"The specific amount in question is a thousand pounds."
+
+"And do you want me to find it to save my husband from prison?"
+
+Mr. Phipps was shocked.
+
+"My dear lady," he protested, "you have utterly and entirely
+misunderstood me."
+
+"I am not so sure about that," she answered.
+
+"You have misunderstood me if you imagine for a moment that I came here
+to ask you to make up the amount of your husband's defalcations."
+
+"What did you come for, then?"
+
+"I came," Peter Phipps declared, "entirely out of consideration for you.
+I came to ask what you wished done, and to do it. I came to assure you
+of my sympathy; if you will accept it, my friendship; and if you will
+further honour me by accepting it, my help."
+
+"Just how do you propose to help me?" Josephine enquired.
+
+"Just in the way," he answered, "that a man to whom money is of no
+account may sometimes help a woman for whom he has a most profound, a
+most sincere, a most respectful admiration".
+
+"You came, in fact," Josephine said, "to place your bank account at my
+disposal?"
+
+"I would never have ventured," he protested, "to have put the matter
+so crudely. I came to express my admiration for you and my desire to
+help you."
+
+"And in return?"
+
+"I do not bargain. Lady Dredlinton," Phipps said slowly. "I must confess
+that if you could regard me with a little more toleration, if you would
+accept at any rate a measure of my friendship, would endeavour, may I
+say, to adopt a more sympathetic attitude with regard to me, it would
+give me the deepest pleasure."
+
+Josephine shook her head.
+
+"Mr. Phipps," she said, "you have the name of being a very hard-headed
+and shrewd business man. You come here offering my husband's honour and
+your banking account. I could not possibly accept these things from a
+person to whom I can make no return. If you will let me know the exact
+amount of my husband's defalcation, I will try and pay it."
+
+"You cannot believe," he exclaimed almost angrily, "that I came here to
+take your money?"
+
+"Did you come here believing that I was going to take yours?" she asked.
+
+Peter Phipps, who knew men through and through and had also a profound
+acquaintance with women of a certain class, was face to face for once
+with a type of which he knew little. The woman who could refuse his
+millions, offered in such a manner, for him could have no real existence.
+Somewhere or other he must have blundered, he told himself. Or perhaps
+she was clever; she was leading him on to more definite things?
+
+"I came here, Lady Dredlinton," he said, "prepared to offer, if you would
+accept it, everything I possess in the world in return for a little
+kindness."
+
+Phipps had not heard the knock at the door, though he saw the change in
+Josephine's face. She rose to her feet with a transfiguring smile.
+
+"How lucky I am," she exclaimed, "to have a witness to such a
+wonderful offer!"
+
+Wingate paused for a moment in his passage across the room. His
+outstretched hand fell to his side. The expression of eagerness with
+which he had approached Josephine disappeared from his face. He
+confronted Phipps, who had also risen to his feet, as a right-living man
+should confront his enemy. There was a second or two of tense silence,
+broken by Phipps, who was the first to recover himself.
+
+"Welcome to London, Mr. Wingate," he said. "I was hoping to see you this
+morning in the City. This is perhaps a more fortunate meeting."
+
+"You two know each other?" Josephine murmured.
+
+"We are old acquaintances," Wingate replied.
+
+"And business rivals," Phipps put in cheerfully. "A certain wholesome
+rivalry, Lady Dredlinton, is good for us all. In whatever camp I find
+myself, I generally find Mr. Wingate in the opposite one. I have an idea,
+in fact," he went on, "that we are on the point of recommencing our
+friendly rivalry."
+
+Josephine, who had been standing up for the last few moments,
+touched the bell.
+
+"You will keep your rivalry for the City, I trust," she said.
+
+It was just then that Phipps surprised a little glance flashed from
+Josephine to Wingate. He seemed suddenly to increase in size, to become
+more menacing, portentous. There was thunder upon his forehead. He
+seemed on the point of passionate speech. At that moment the butler
+opened the door and Josephine held out her hand.
+
+"It was very kind of you to call, Mr. Phipps. I will think over all that
+you have said, and discuss it--with my husband."
+
+Phipps had regained command of himself. He bowed low over her hand but
+could not keep the malice from his tone.
+
+"You could not have a better counsellor," he declared.
+
+Neither Josephine nor Wingate spoke a word until the door was finally
+closed after the unwelcome caller and they heard his heavy tread
+retreating down the hall. Then she sank back upon the couch and motioned
+him to sit by her side.
+
+"I suppose I am an idiot," she acknowledged, "but that man terrifies me."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"He is my husband's associate in business." Josephine said, "and
+apparently desires to take advantage of that fact. My husband is not a
+reliable person where money is concerned. He seems to have been behaving
+rather badly."
+
+"I am very sorry," Wingate murmured.
+
+She looked at him curiously.
+
+"Has anything happened?" she asked. "You seem distressed."
+
+Wingate shook his head. The shock of having met his enemy under such
+circumstances was beginning to pass.
+
+"Forgive me," he begged. "The fact of it is, the last person I expected
+to find here was Peter Phipps. I forgot that your husband was connected
+with his company."
+
+"You two are not friends?" she suggested.
+
+"We are bitter enemies," Wingate confessed, "and shall be till one of
+us goes down. We are a very terrible example of the evils of this age
+of restraint. In more primitive days we should have gone for one
+another's throats. One would have lived and the other died. It would
+have been, better."
+
+Josephine shivered.
+
+"Don't!" she implored. "You sound too much in earnest."
+
+"I am in earnest about that man," he replied gravely. "I beg you, Lady
+Dredlinton, as I hope to call myself your friend, not to trust him, not
+to encourage him to visit you, to keep him always at arm's length."
+
+"And I," she answered, holding out her hand, "as I hope and mean to
+be--as I _am_ your friend--promise that I will have no more to do with
+him than the barest courtesy demands. To tell you the truth, your coming
+this afternoon was a little inopportune. If you had been a single minute
+later, I honestly believe that he would have said unforgivable things."
+
+Wingate's eyes flashed.
+
+"If I could have heard him!" he muttered.
+
+"But, dear friend, you could have said nothing nor done anything," she
+reminded him soothingly. "Remember that although we are a little older
+friends than many people know of, we still have some distance to go in
+understanding."
+
+"I want to be your friend, and I want to be your friend quickly," he
+said doggedly.
+
+"No one in the world needs friends as I do," Josephine answered, "because
+I do not think that any one is more lonely."
+
+"You have changed," he told her, his eyes full of sympathy.
+
+"Since Étaples? Yes! Somehow or other, I was always able to keep cheerful
+there because there was always so much real misery around, and one felt
+that one was doing good in the world. Here I seem to be such a useless
+person, no good to anybody."
+
+"If you say things like that, I shall forget how far we have to travel,"
+he declared. "I need your friendship. I have come over here with rather
+a desperate purpose. I think I can say that I have never known fear, and
+yet sometimes I flinch when I think of the next few months. I want a real
+friend, Lady Dredlinton."
+
+She gave him her hand.
+
+"Josephine, if you please," she said, "and all the friendship you care to
+claim. There, see how rapidly we have progressed! You have been here
+barely a quarter of an hour and I have given you what really means a
+great deal to me."
+
+"I shall prize it," he assured her, "and I shall justify it."
+
+They began to talk of their first meeting, of the doctors and friends
+whom they had known together. The time slipped away. It was nearly seven
+o'clock when he rose to leave. Even then she seemed loath to let him go.
+
+"What are you doing this evening?" she enquired.
+
+"Nothing," he answered promptly.
+
+"Come back and dine here," she begged. "I warn you, no one is coming, but
+I think you had better meet Henry, and, to proceed to the more selfish
+part of it all, I rather dread a tête-á-tête dinner this evening. Will
+you be very good-natured and come?"
+
+He held her hands and looked into her eyes.
+
+"Josephine," he asked, "do you think it needs any good nature on my
+part?"
+
+She met his gaze frankly enough at first, smiling gratefully at his ready
+acceptance. And then a curious change came. She felt her heart begin to
+beat faster, the strange intrusion of a new element into her life and
+thoughts and being. It was shining out of her eyes, something which made
+her a little afraid yet ridiculously light-hearted. Suddenly she felt the
+colour burning in her cheeks. She withdrew her hands, lost her presence
+of mind, and found it again at the sound of the servant's approaching
+footsteps.
+
+"About eight o'clock, then," she said. "A dinner coat will do unless you
+are going on somewhere. Henry will be so glad to meet you."
+
+"It will give me great pleasure to meet Lord Dredlinton," Wingate
+murmured, as he made his farewell bow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Dredlinton House, before which Wingate presented himself punctually at
+eight o'clock that evening, had a sombre, almost a deserted appearance.
+The great bell which he pealed seemed to ring through empty spaces. His
+footsteps echoed strangely in the lofty white stone hall as he followed
+the butler into a small anteroom, from which, however, he was rescued a
+few minutes later by Josephine's maid.
+
+"Her ladyship will be glad if you will come to the boudoir," she invited.
+"Dinner is to be served there. If monsieur will follow me."
+
+Wingate passed up the famous staircase, around which was a little
+semicircle of closed doors, and was ushered into a small apartment on the
+first floor, through the shielded windows of which he caught glimpses of
+green trees. The room was like a little fairy chamber, decorated in white
+and the faintest shade of mauve. In the center, a white and gold round
+table was prepared for the service of dinner, some wonderful cut glass
+and a little bunch of mauve sweet peas its only decoration.
+
+"Her ladyship will be down in a moment," the maid announced, as she
+lowered the blind a little more to keep out the last gleam of sunlight.
+"If monsieur will be seated."
+
+Wingate ignored the silent invitation of the voluptuous little settee
+with its pile of cushions. He stood instead upon the hearth rug, gazing
+around him. The room, in its way, was a revelation. Josephine, ever since
+their first meeting at Étaples, had always seemed to him to carry with
+her a faint suggestion of sadness, which everything in this little
+apartment seemed to contradict. The silverpoint etchings upon the wall
+were of the school of Hellieu, delicate but daring, exquisite in
+workmanship and design, the last word in the expression of modern life
+and love. A study of Psyche, in white marble, fascinated him with its
+wonderful outline and sense of arrested motion. The atmosphere appeared
+to him intensely feminine and yet strange. He realised suddenly that it
+contained no knick-knacks,--nothing, in short, but books and flowers.
+Perhaps his greatest surprise, however, came at the opening of the door.
+It seemed at first that he was confronted by a stranger. The woman who
+entered in a perfectly white gown of some clinging material, with a
+single row of pearls around her neck, with ringless fingers and plainly
+coiled hair, seemed like the ghost of her own girlhood. It was only when
+she smiled, a smile which, curiously enough, seemed to bring back
+something of that aging sadness into her face, that he found himself able
+to readjust his tangled impressions. Then he realised that she was no
+longer a girl, that she was indeed a woman, beautiful, graceful, serious,
+with all the charm of her greater physical and spiritual maturity.
+
+"Please don't think," she begged, as she sank into the settee by which he
+was standing, "that I have inveigled you here under false pretences.
+Henry took the trouble to ring me up from the City this morning to say
+that he should be dining at home--such an unusual event that I took it
+for granted it meant a tête-à-tête.--I don't quite know why I treat you
+with such an extraordinary amount of confidence," she went on, "but I
+feel that I must and it helps me so much. A tête-à-tête dinner with my
+husband would have been insupportable. I should have had to telephone to
+Sarah Baldwin if you had not been available. Sarah would probably have
+been engaged, and then I should have had to have gone to bed with a
+headache."
+
+"You don't imagine," he asked, smiling, "that I am disappointed at your
+husband's absence?"
+
+"I hope not," she answered, raising her eyes to his for a moment.
+
+"Let me imitate your adorable frankness," he begged. "I hope your
+husband's absence this evening is not because he objects to meeting me?"
+
+"Of course not," she replied wonderingly. "Why on earth should he object
+to meeting you?"
+
+"You probably don't know," Wingate replied, "that I am in a sort of way
+the declared enemy of the British and Imperial Granaries--Phipps' latest
+escapade--of which your husband is a director."
+
+"I am sure that would not have made the slightest difference," she
+replied. "As a matter of fact, he had no idea that you were coming this
+evening--I had no opportunity of telling him. A servant rang up from the
+club, half an hour ago, to say that he would not be home. Come, here is
+dinner. Will you sit there?" she invited, indicating the chair which a
+trim parlour maid was holding. "I hope you can eat quite simple things.
+One scarcely knows what to order, this hot weather."
+
+Wingate took his place, and the conversation merged into those indefinite
+channels necessitated by the presence of servants. The dinner, simple
+though it was, was perfect,--iced consomme, a lobster mayonnaise, cold
+cutlets and asparagus. Presently the little movable sideboard, with its
+dainty collection of cold dishes and salads, was wheeled outside by the
+solitary maid who waited upon them, and nothing was left upon the table
+but a delicately-shaped Venetian decanter of _Château Yquem_, liqueurs in
+tiny bottles, the coffee served in a jug of beaten copper, and an ivory
+box of cigarettes. With the closing of the door, a different atmosphere
+seemed immediately created. They smiled into one another's eyes in mutual
+appreciation.
+
+"I was dying to send Laura away," she confessed. "Why do servants get on
+one's nerves so when one wants to talk? I don't think I ever noticed it
+before so much."
+
+"Nor I," he admitted. "Now we are alone there is a sort of luxury in
+thinking that one may open any one of those subjects I want so much to
+discuss with you, and perhaps a greater luxury still is the lingering,
+the feeling that unless one chooses one need say nothing and yet be
+understood."
+
+"Sympathetic person!" she sighed. "Tell me, by the by, did you notice an
+air of desertion in the lower part of the house?"
+
+"There seemed to be echoes," he admitted. "I noticed it more this
+afternoon."
+
+"The whole of the rooms downstairs were fitted up as a small hospital
+during the last year of the war," she explained. "It was after I had a
+slight breakdown and was sent back from Étaples. Some of our patients
+stayed on for months afterwards, and we have never had the place put to
+rights yet. One or two rooms are quite sufficient for us in these days."
+
+"It seems to be a wing by itself that remains empty," Wingate ruminated.
+
+"The house might have been built for the purpose we put it to," she said.
+"The rooms we turned into a hospital are quite cut off from the rest of
+the place. If ever you murder Peter Phipps and want a hiding place, I
+shall be able to provide you with one!"
+
+He was looking unusually thoughtful. It was evident that he was pursuing
+some train of reflection suggested by her words. At the mention of
+Phipps' name, however, he came back to earth.
+
+"I think I should rather like to murder Phipps," he confessed. "The worst
+of it is the laws are so ridiculously undiscriminating. One would have
+to pay the same penalty for murdering him as for getting rid of an
+ordinary human being."
+
+"Queer how I share your hatred of that person," she murmured.
+
+"Was he trying to make love to you this afternoon?" Wingate asked
+bluntly.
+
+"He was just too clever," she replied, "to put it into plain words. His
+instinct told him what the result would be, so he decided to wait a
+little longer, although just towards the end he nearly gave himself
+away. As a matter of fact," she went on, "he was rather tediously
+melodramatic. My husband, it seems, is in disgrace with the company--has
+overdrawn, or helped himself to money, or something of the sort. I rather
+fancy that I am cast for the role of self-sacrificing wife, who saves her
+husband from prison by little acts of kindness to his wronged partner.
+Somehow or other, I don't think the role suits me. I am a very
+hard-hearted woman, I suppose, but I don't believe I should lift up my
+little finger to save Henry from prison. Besides, I hate the British and
+Imperial Granaries."
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"I hate the principle of gambling in commodities that are necessary for
+the poor," she answered. "I don't pretend to be a philanthropist, or
+charitable, or anything of that sort. I am wrapped up in my own life and
+its unhappiness. At the same time, I would never receive as a friend any
+one who indulged in that sort of speculation."
+
+He looked at her thoughtfully, for once without that absorbing personal
+interest which had sprung up like a flame in his life. He felt that
+underneath her words lay real earnestness, real purpose.
+
+"Tell me," he asked, a little abruptly, "if I started a crusade
+against the British and Imperial, outside the Stock Exchange
+altogether, if I embarked in a crude and illegal scheme to break them
+up, would you help me?"
+
+"To the fullest extent of my power," she answered eagerly. "Tell me about
+it at once, please?"
+
+"Not for a few days," he replied. "I have to think out many details, to
+get my tools together, and then to decide whether I should have a
+reasonable chance of success."
+
+"Promise me that I shall help?" she insisted.
+
+"I promise that you shall have the opportunity."
+
+She rose from her chair and settled down in a corner of the settee.
+With a little half-conscious gesture she invited him to take the place
+by her side.
+
+"Do you know," she said, "that you are making life much more
+endurable for me?"
+
+"You should never believe it unendurable," he told her firmly.
+"Whatever one has suffered, and however dreary the present, there is
+always the future."
+
+"I wonder," she murmured. "In this life or the next?"
+
+"In this one," he answered.
+
+"Are you, by the by, a believer in anything beyond?" she went on.
+
+"A struggling one," he replied. "I have wanted so much to believe that I
+think I have at times almost succeeded."
+
+"I believe," she said reflectively, "but I cannot analyse my belief. I am
+most content when I keep my brain shut off from it and consider it as an
+instinct. I try to tell myself that the power which is responsible for
+the sorrows of this world must provide compensation. Even history can
+show us that this has always been the case. Yesterday," she continued, "I
+went to a spiritual séance. I found nothing. I shall go to the next thing
+of the sort which any one suggests. I am like the hypochondriac with his
+list of patent medicines. I try them all, but my heart still aches."
+
+"I think," he admitted, "that _au fond_ I have, like most men, a strong
+leaven of materialism in me. I have had my disappointments in life. I
+want my compensations here, in the same world where I have suffered."
+
+"Why should we not try to believe, like La Fontaine," she questioned,
+"that sorrow and unhappiness are akin to disease, a mental instead of a
+physical scourge--that it must pass just as inevitably?"
+
+"It is a comfortable philosophy," he confessed. "Could you adopt it?"
+
+"In my blackest moments I should have scoffed at the idea," she replied.
+"One thing I know quite well, though, is unchanging," she continued, her
+face losing all the gentle softness which a moment before he had found so
+fascinating, so reminiscent of those sad, sleepy-eyed women immortalised
+by the masters of the Renaissance. "That is my hatred of everything and
+everybody connected with my present life."
+
+"Everybody?" he murmured.
+
+She stretched out her hand impulsively. He held it in his with a tender,
+caressing clasp. There seemed to be no need of words. The moment was in
+its way so wonderful that neither of them heard the opening of the door.
+It was only the surprised exclamation of the man who had entered which
+brought them back to a very sordid present.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"I fear" the newcomer remarked, as he softly closed the door behind him,
+"that I am an intruder. Perhaps, Josephine, I may be favoured with an
+introduction to this gentleman? He is a stranger to me, so far as I
+remember. An old friend of yours, I presume?"
+
+He advanced a step or two farther into the room, a slim,
+effeminate-looking person of barely medium height, dressed with the
+utmost care, of apparently no more than middle age but with crow's-feet
+about his eyes and sagging pockets of flesh underneath them. His closely
+trimmed, sandy moustache was streaked with grey, his eyes were a little
+bloodshot, he had the shrinking manner of one who suffers from habitual
+nervousness. Josephine, after her first start of surprise, watched him
+with coldly questioning eyes.
+
+"I hope you have dined, Henry," she said. "A waiter rang up from
+somewhere to say you would not be home."
+
+"A message which I do not doubt left you inconsolable," he observed,
+with a little curl of his lips. "Do not distress yourself, I pray. I have
+dined at the club, and I have only come home to change. I am on my way to
+a party. I would not have intruded if your maid had shown her usual
+discretion."
+
+Josephine ignored the insolent innuendo.
+
+"You do not know my husband, I think, Mr. Wingate," she said,--"Mr. John
+Wingate--Lord Dredlinton."
+
+The newcomer's manner underwent a sudden change.
+
+"What, John Wingate from New York?" he exclaimed.
+
+Wingate assented briefly. Lord Dredlinton advanced at once with
+outstretched hand. All the amiability which he could muster at a moment's
+notice was diffused into his tone and manner.
+
+"My dear sir," he said, "I am delighted to meet you. I have just been
+dining with our mutual friend, Peter Phipps, and your name was the last
+mentioned. I, in fact, accepted a commission to find you out and convey a
+message from Phipps. There is a little matter in which you are both
+indirectly interested which he wants to discuss."
+
+Wingate had risen to his feet. By the side of the slighter man, his
+height and appearance seemed almost imposing.
+
+"To be quite frank with you, Lord Dredlinton," he said, as he returned
+the newcomer's greeting without enthusiasm, "I cannot imagine any subject
+in which I could share an interest with Mr. Phipps."
+
+Lord Dredlinton was politely surprised.
+
+"Is that so? Peter Phipps is an awfully good fellow."
+
+"Mr. Phipps is a director of the British and Imperial Granaries,
+Limited," Wingate said quietly.
+
+"So am I," Lord Dredlinton announced, with a bland smile.
+
+"I am aware of it," was the curt reply.
+
+"You don't approve of our company?"
+
+"I do not."
+
+Lord Dredlinton shrugged his shoulders. He lit a cigarette and dismissed
+the subject.
+
+"Well, well," he continued amiably, "there is no need for us to quarrel,
+I hope. We all look at things differently in this world, and,
+fortunately, the matter which I want to discuss with you lies right
+outside the operations of the B. & I. When can you give me a few moments
+of your time, Mr. Wingate? Will you call around at our offices, Number
+13 Throgmorton Street, next Tuesday morning at, say? eleven-thirty?"
+
+Wingate was a little perplexed.
+
+"I don't want to waste your time, Lord Dredlinton," he said. "Can't you
+give me some idea as to the nature of this business?"
+
+"To tell you the truth, I can't," the other confided. "It's more Phipps'
+affair than mine. I'll promise, though, that we won't keep you for longer
+than ten minutes."
+
+"I will come then." Wingate acquiesced a little doubtfully. "I must warn
+you, however, that between Phipps and myself there is a quarrel of
+ancient standing. We meet as acquaintances because the conventions of the
+world make anything else ridiculous. One of my objects in coming to this
+side is to consider whether I can find any reasonable means of attacking
+the very disgraceful trust with which you and he are associated."
+
+Lord Dredlinton remained entirely unruffled. He shrugged his shoulders
+with an air of protest.
+
+"You are a little severe, Mr. Wingate," he said, "but I promise you that
+Phipps shall keep his temper and that I will not be drawn into a quarrel.
+I am very pleased to see you here. My wife's friends are always mine.--If
+you will excuse me, I will go and change my clothes now. I have been
+inveigled into the last word of our present-day frivolities--a theatrical
+supper party."
+
+He turned away, with an enigmatic smile at his wife and a ceremonious
+bow to Wingate, and closed the door behind him carefully. They heard his
+retreating footsteps on the stairs; then Wingate resumed his seat by
+Josephine's side.
+
+"Do you mind?" he asked.
+
+"Not a scrap," she replied. "Besides, it has given Henry such immense
+pleasure. I am quite sure that he never believed it possible that I
+should be found holding another man's hand. Or," she went on, with a
+little grimace, "that any other man would want to hold it."
+
+"It is possible," Wingate said deliberately, "that your husband may have
+further surprises of that nature in store for him."
+
+She laughed. "Is that a threat?"
+
+"If you like to regard it as such. You will find out before long that I
+am a terribly persistent person."
+
+"I wonder," she remarked thoughtfully, "what could have made him so
+extraordinarily agreeable to you."
+
+"To tell you the truth, I was surprised," Wingate replied. "And Peter
+Phipps, too! What can they want with me down at Throgmorton Street? They
+can't imagine that they can hustle me into the market?"
+
+"Henry was very much in earnest," she told him.
+
+Wingate's face darkened for a moment.
+
+"They couldn't suspect--No, that wouldn't be possible!"
+
+"Suspect what?"
+
+"That my enmity to the B. & I.," he went on, in a low tone, "is beginning
+to take definite shape."
+
+"Just what do you mean by that?" she asked.
+
+"I have just the glimmerings of a scheme," he told her. "It will
+be something entirely unexpected, and it will mean a certain
+amount of risk."
+
+"Don't forget that you have promised to let me help," she reminded him.
+
+"If I strike," he said, "it will be at the directors. Your husband will
+suffer with the rest."
+
+"That would not affect my attitude in the least," she assured him. "As I
+think you must have gathered, there is no manner of sympathy between my
+husband and myself."
+
+"I am glad to hear you say so," he declared bluntly. "If there had been,
+I should have felt it my duty to advise you to use all your influence to
+get him to resign from the Board."
+
+"As bad as that?"
+
+"As bad as that," he answered.
+
+"You can't tell me anything about your scheme yet?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"How is it," she asked, "that they have been allowed to operate in wheat
+to this enormous extent?"
+
+"Well, for one thing," he told her, "the company has been planned and
+worked out with simply diabolical cleverness. They are inside the law all
+the time, and they manage to keep there. Their agents are so camouflaged
+that you can't tell for whom they are buying. Then they command an
+immense capital."
+
+"The others must have found it, then," she observed. "My husband is
+almost without means."
+
+"Phipps has supporters," Wingate said thoughtfully. "They'll carry on
+this combine until the last moment, until a Government commission, or
+something of the sort, looks like intervening. Then they'll probably let
+a dozen of their subsidiary companies go smash, and Peter Phipps,
+Skinflint Martin and Rees will be multimillionaires. Incidentally, the
+whole of their enormous profits will have come from the working classes."
+
+"However visionary it is, I want to know about your scheme," she
+persisted.
+
+"I cannot make up my mind to bring you into it," he declared doubtfully.
+"It is practically a one-man show, and it is--well, a little primitive."
+
+"Do you think I mind that?" she asked eagerly. "The only point worth
+considering is, could I help? You know in your heart that you could not
+make me afraid."
+
+"I shall take you into my confidence, at any rate," he promised, "and you
+shall decide afterwards. I warn you, you will think that I have drunk
+deep of the Bowery melodrama."
+
+"I shall mind nothing," she laughed as she assured him. "When do
+we begin?"
+
+Wingate was thoughtful for a moment or two. They both heard the opening
+of a heavy door down below, the hailing of a taxi by the butler, and
+Dredlinton's voice in the street.
+
+"Is that your husband going?" he enquired.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Then I am going to make a most singular request," he said. "I am going
+to ask you whether you would show me over the portion of the house which
+you used as a hospital."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Wingate returned to his rooms at the Milan about eleven o'clock that
+evening, to find Roger Kendrick, Maurice White and the Honourable Jimmy
+Wilshaw stretched out in his most comfortable chairs, drinking whiskies
+and sodas and smoking cigarettes.
+
+"Welcome!" he exclaimed, smiling upon them from the threshold. "Are you
+all here? Is there any one I forgot to invite?"
+
+"The man's tone is inhospitable," the Honourable Jimmy murmured, showing
+no inclination to rise.
+
+"I decline to apologise," Kendrick said. "The fact of it is, we're here
+for your good, Wingate. We are here to see that you do not die of ennui
+and loneliness in this stony-hearted city."
+
+"In other words," Maurice White chimed in, "we are here to take you to
+the great supper-party."
+
+"Well, I'm glad to hear about it," Wingate declared, giving his coat and
+hat to the valet who had followed him in. "Why don't you fellows sit
+down and have a drink?"
+
+"My dear fellow," Kendrick sighed, "sarcasm does not become you. We are
+all drinking--your whisky. Also, I believe, smoking your cigarettes. Your
+servant--admirable fellow, that--absolutely forced them upon us--wouldn't
+take 'no.' And indeed, why should we refuse? We have come to offer you
+rivers of champagne, cigars of abnormal length, and the lips of the
+fairest houris in London. In other words, Sir Frederick Houstley, steel
+magnate of Sheffield, is giving a supper party to the world, and our
+instructions are to convey you there by force or persuasion, drunk or
+sober, sleepy or wide awake."
+
+"I accept your cordial invitation," Wingate said, mixing himself a whisky
+and soda. "At what time does the fight commence?"
+
+"Forthwith," Kendrick announced. "We sally forth from here to the
+Arcadian Rooms, situated in this building. Afterwards we make merry.
+John, my boy," he went on, "you have the air of a man who has drunk deep
+already to-night of the waters of happiness. Exactly where did you dine?"
+
+"In Utopia," Wingate answered. "According to you, I am to sup in
+fairyland."
+
+"But breakfast," the Honourable Jimmy put in,--"a man ought to be
+dashed careful where he breakfasts. A man is known by his breakfast
+companions, what?"
+
+"Young fellow," Wingate asked, "where is Sarah?"
+
+"Have no fear," was the blissful reply. "Sarah is coming to the supper.
+She's filling her old 'bus up with peaches from the Gaiety. Not being
+allowed to sit inside with any of them, I was sent on ahead."
+
+"You dog!" Maurice White exclaimed.
+
+"Dog yourself," was the prompt retort. "Opportunity is a fine thing.
+Sometimes I have a gruesome fear that Sarah does not altogether
+trust me."
+
+Kendrick, who had been straightening his tie before the glass, now
+swung around.
+
+"This way to the lift, boys," he said. "Time we put in an appearance."
+
+The reception room of the Arcadian suite was already fairly well crowded.
+Wingate shook hands with his host, a cheery, theatrical-loving soul, and
+was presented to many other people. Where he was not introduced he found
+a pleasing absence of formality, which facilitated conversation and
+rapidly widened his circle of acquaintances. Kendrick came over and
+slapped him on the back.
+
+"Wingate, my lad," he exclaimed, "you're going some! You're the bright
+boy of the party. Whom are you taking into supper?"
+
+"Me!" said a rather shrill but not unmusical voice from Wingate's side.
+"Introduce us, please, Mr. Kendrick. We have been making furtive
+conversation for the last five minutes."
+
+"It is a great occasion," Kendrick declared. "I present Mr. John Wingate,
+America's greatest financier, most successful soldier, and absolutely
+inevitable President, to Miss Flossie Lane, England's greatest musical
+comedy artist."
+
+Miss Lane grabbed Wingate's arm.
+
+"Let's go in to supper," she suggested. "All the best places will be
+taken if we don't hurry."
+
+"One word," Kendrick begged, relapsing for a moment into his ordinary
+manner as he touched Wingate on the shoulder. "Dredlinton is here, rather
+drunk and very quarrelsome. I heard him telling some one about having
+found you dining alone with his wife to-night. Phipps was listening. Look
+at him, as black as a thundercloud! Keep your head if Dredlinton gets
+troublesome."
+
+Wingate nodded and was promptly led away. They found places about
+half-way down the great horseshoe table, laden with flowers and every
+sort of cold delicacy. There were champagne bottles at every other
+place, a small crowd of waiters, eager to justify their existence,--a
+rollicking, Bohemian crowd, the _jeunesse dorée_ of London, and all the
+talent and beauty of the musical comedy stage. It was a side of life with
+which Wingate was somewhat unfamiliar. Nevertheless, his feet that night
+were resting upon the clouds. Any form of life was sweet to him. The new
+joy in his heart warmed his pulses, lightened his tongue, unlocked a new
+geniality. He was disposed to talk with everybody. The young lady by his
+side, however, had other views.
+
+"Do you like our show, Mr. Wingate?" she asked. "Or perhaps you don't go
+to musical comedies? I am in 'Lady Diana,' you know."
+
+"One of the very first things I am going to see," Wingate replied, "but
+as a matter of fact, I only arrived from America a few days ago. I hear
+that you are a great success."
+
+It took the young lady very nearly a quarter of an hour to explain how
+greatly the play might be improved and strengthened by the allotment to
+her of a few more songs and another dance, and she also recounted the
+argument she had had with the stage manager as to her absence from the
+stage during the greater part of Act Two.
+
+"I am not vain," she concluded, with engaging frankness, "but on the
+other hand I am not foolish, and I know quite well that many people--a
+great part of the audience, in fact--come because they see my name upon
+the boards, and I have numberless complaints because I am only on for
+such a short time in what should be the most important act of the play. I
+tell them it's nothing to do with me, but as long as my name is displayed
+outside the theatre and I know how they feel about it, I feel a certain
+responsibility. Now you are a very clever man, and a man of the world,
+Mr. Wingate. What do you think about it?"
+
+"I think that you are quite right," he declared, with satisfactory
+emphasis.
+
+"You don't know Mr. Maken, our manager, I suppose?" she enquired.
+
+Wingate shook his head.
+
+"As a matter of fact," he confessed, "I know very few theatrical people."
+
+"What a pity you're not fond of the stage!" she sighed, with a world of
+regret in her very blue eyes. "You might have a theatre of your own, and
+a leading lady, and all the rest of it."
+
+"It sounds rather fascinating," he admitted, "under certain
+circumstances. All the same, I don't think I should like to make a
+business of what is such a great pleasure."
+
+"I thought, with American men," she said archly, "that their business
+was their pleasure."
+
+"To a certain extent, I suppose," he admitted, "but then, you see, I am
+half English. My mother was English although she was married in America,
+and I was born there."
+
+"How did you manage about serving?" she enquired.
+
+"I gave both a turn," he explained. "I turned out for England first and
+then for America."
+
+"How splendid of you!" she murmured, raising her fine eyes admiringly and
+then dropping them in a most effective manner. "But wasn't it a shocking
+waste of time and lives! Just fancy, in all those years, how many
+undeveloped geniuses must have been killed without ever having had their
+chance! How miserably upside down the whole world was, too! Four years
+and more during which a supper party, except at a private house, was an
+impossibility!"
+
+"I suppose," Wingate admitted, a little staggered, "that taken from that
+point of view the war was an unfortunate infliction."
+
+"And after all," the young lady went on, "here we are at the end of it
+very much as though it had never happened. Do you think they will be able
+to stop wars in the future?"
+
+"I don't know," he confessed. "I suppose international differences must
+be settled somehow or other. Personally, I think a wrestling match, or
+something of that sort--"
+
+"Now you're making fun of me," she interrupted reproachfully. "I see you
+don't want to talk about serious things. Do you admire Miss Orford?" she
+asked, indicating another musical comedy lady who was seated opposite,
+and who had shown occasional signs of a desire to join in the
+conversation.
+
+Wingate took his cue from his questioner's tone and glance.
+
+"A little too thin," he hazarded.
+
+"Molly is almost painfully thin," his companion conceded, with apparent
+reluctance, "and I think she makes up far more than she need."
+
+"Bad for the complexion in time, I suppose," he observed.
+
+"I don't know. Molly's been doing it for a great many years. She
+understudies me, you know, at the theatre. Would you like me to send you
+word if ever I'm unable to play?"
+
+"Quite unnecessary," he replied, with the proper amount of warmth. "I
+should be far too brokenhearted to attend if you were not there. Besides,
+is Miss Orford clever?"
+
+"Don't ask me," her friend sighed. "She doesn't even do me the
+compliment of imitating me. Tell me, don't you love supping here?"
+
+"Under present circumstances," he agreed.
+
+"I love it, too," she murmured, with an answering flash of the eyes. "I
+am not sure," she went on, "that I care about these large parties,
+although I always like to come when Sir Frederick asks me. He is such a
+dear, isn't he?"
+
+"He is a capital host," Wingate assented.
+
+"I am so fond of really interesting conversation," the young lady further
+confided. "I love to have a man who really amounts to something tell me
+about his life and work."
+
+"Mr. Peter Phipps, for instance?" he suggested. "Didn't I see you
+lunching here with him the other day?"
+
+She looked across the table, towards where Phipps was sitting hand in
+hand with a young lady in blue, and apparently being very entertaining.
+Miss Flossie caught a glimpse of Wingate's expression.
+
+"You don't like Mr. Phipps," she said. "You don't think I ought to lunch
+with him."
+
+"I shouldn't if I were a young lady like you, whose choice must be
+unlimited," Wingate replied.
+
+"How do you know that it is unlimited?" she demanded. "Perhaps just the
+people whom I would like to lunch with don't ask me."
+
+"They need encouragement," he suggested.
+
+She laughed into his eyes.
+
+"Do you know anything about the men who need encouragement?" she
+asked demurely.
+
+He avoided the point and made some casual remark about the changes in
+London during the last few years. She sighed sorrowfully.
+
+"It has changed for no one so much as me," she murmured. "The war--"
+
+"You lost friends, I suppose?" he ventured.
+
+She closed her eyes.
+
+"Don't!" she whispered. "I never speak of it," she went on, twisting a
+ring around her fingers nervously, "I don't like it mentioned, but I was
+really engaged to young Lord Fanleighton."
+
+He murmured a little word of sympathy, and their conversation was
+momentarily interrupted as she leaned forward to answer an enquiry from
+her host. Wingate turned to Sarah, who was seated at his other side.
+
+"How dare you neglect me so shamefully!" she asked.
+
+"Let me make amends," he pleaded.
+
+"I am glad you feel penitent, at any rate. I expect Miss Flossie Lane has
+asked you what you think of her friend, Miss Orford, and told you that
+she was engaged to Lord Fanleighton."
+
+"What a hearing!" he murmured.
+
+"Don't be silly," she replied. "I couldn't hear a word, but I know her
+stock in trade."
+
+There was a little stir at the farther end of the table. Lord Dredlinton
+had left his place and was standing behind Phipps, with his hands upon
+his shoulders. He seemed to be shouting something in his ear. At that
+moment he recognised Wingate. He staggered up the farther side of the
+table towards him, butting into a waiter on the way and pausing for a
+moment to curse him, Flossie jogged Wingate's elbow.
+
+"What fun!" she whispered. "Here's Lord Dredlinton, absolutely blotto!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Wingate from the first had a prescience of disagreeable things. There was
+malice in Dredlinton's pallid face, the ugly twist of his lips and the
+light in his bloodshot eyes. He paused opposite to them, and leaning his
+hands on the back of the nearest chair, spoke across the table.
+
+"Hullo, Flossie!" he exclaimed. "How are you, old dear? How are
+you, Wingate?"
+
+Wingate replied with cold civility, Flossie with a careless nod.
+
+"I do hope," she whispered to her companion, glancing into the mirror
+which she had just drawn from her bag, "that Lord Dredlinton isn't going
+to be foolish. He does embarrass me so sometimes."
+
+"I say," Dredlinton went on, "what are you doing here, Wingate? I didn't
+know this sort of thing was in your line."
+
+Wingate raised his eyebrows but made no response. Dredlinton shook his
+head reproachfully at Miss Lane.
+
+"Flossie," he continued, "you ought to know better. Besides, you will
+waste your time. Mr. Wingate's taste in women is of a very--superior
+order. Doesn't care about your sort at all. He likes saints. That's
+right, isn't it, Wingate?"
+
+"You seem to know," was the cool reply.
+
+"Not 't tall sure," Dredlinton went on, balancing himself with
+difficulty, "that your new conquest would altogether approve of this, you
+know. Wingate, let me tell you that Flossie is a very dangerous young
+lady--destroys the peace of everybody--can't sleep myself for thinking of
+her. Not your sort at all, Wingate. We know your sort, don't we, eh?"
+
+Wingate remained contemptuously silent. Kendrick rose from his place and
+laid his hand on Dredlinton's shoulder.
+
+"Come and sit down, Dredlinton," he said shortly. "You're making an idiot
+of yourself."
+
+"Go to hell!" the other replied truculently. "Who are you? Just that
+man's broker, that's all. Want to sell wheat, Wingate, or buy it, eh?"
+
+Wingate looked at him steadily.
+
+"You're drunk," he said. "I should advise you to get a friend to take
+you home."
+
+"Drunk, am I?" Dredlinton shouted. "What if I am? I'm a better man drunk
+than you are sober--although she may not think so, eh?"
+
+Wingate looked at him from underneath level brows.
+
+"I should advise you not to mention any names here," he said.
+
+"I like that!" the other scoffed. "Not to mention any names, eh? He'll
+forbid me next to talk about my own wife."
+
+"You'd be a cur if you did," Wingate told him.
+
+A little spot of colour burned in Dredlinton's cheeks. For a moment he
+showed his teeth. But for Kendrick's restraining arm, he seemed as though
+he would have thrown himself across the table. Then, with a great effort,
+he regained command of himself.
+
+"So you won't sell wheat and you won't buy wheat, Mr. American!" he
+jeered. "I know what you would like to buy, though--and, damn it all,
+there's old Dreadnought Phipps down there--he's a bidder, too--ain't you,
+Phipps, old boy? What you see in her, either of you, I don't know! She's
+no use to me."
+
+Phipps rose in his place. Sir Frederick Houstley left his chair and came
+round to Dredlinton.
+
+"Lord Dredlinton," he said, "I think you had better leave."
+
+"I'll leave when I damned well please!" was the quick reply. "Don't you
+lose your wool, old Freddy. This is going to be a joke. You listen. I
+tell you what I'll do. I'm a poor man--devilish poor--and it takes a lot
+of money to enjoy oneself, nowadays. You're all in this. Sit tight and
+listen. We'll have an auction."
+
+Wingate rose slowly to his feet, pushed his chair back and stood behind
+it. Flossie gripped him by the wrist.
+
+"Don't take any notice of him, please, Mr. Wingate," she implored, in an
+agonised whisper. "For my sake, don't! He's dangerous when he's like
+this. I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you."
+
+"Look here, Dredlinton," Sir Frederick expostulated, "you are spoiling my
+party. You don't want to quarrel with me, do you?"
+
+"Quarrel with you, Freddy?" Dredlinton replied, patting him on the back
+affectionately. "Not I! I'm too fond of you, old dear. You give too nice
+parties. Always the right sort of people--except for that bounder over
+there," he went on, nodding his head towards Wingate.
+
+"Then sit down and don't make an ass of yourself," his host begged.
+"You're spoiling every one's enjoyment, making a disturbance like this."
+
+"Spoiling their enjoyment be hanged!" Dredlinton scoffed. "Tell you what,
+I'm going to make the party go. I'm going to have a bit of fun. What
+about an auction, eh?---an auction with two bidders only--both
+millionaires--one's a pal and the other isn't. Both want the same
+thing--happens to be mine. Damn! I never thought it was worth anything,
+but here goes. What'll you bid, Phipps?"
+
+Phipps apprised the situation and decided upon his rôle. He had a very
+correct intuition as to what was likely to happen.
+
+"Sit down and don't be an ass, Dredlinton," he laughed. "Don't take the
+fellow seriously," he went on, speaking generally. "He's all right as
+long as you let him alone. You're all right, aren't you, Dredlinton?"
+
+"Right as rain," was the confident reply. "But let's hear your bid, if
+you're going to make one."
+
+"Bid? You've got nothing to sell," Phipps declared good humouredly, with
+a covert glance towards Wingate. "What are you getting rid of, eh? Your
+household goods?"
+
+"Come on, Phipps," Dredlinton persisted. "You're not going to fade away
+like that. You've given me the straight tip. You were the only man in the
+running. Clear course. No jealousy. Up to you to step in and win. You've
+got a rival, I tell you. You'll have to bid or lose her. Open your mouth
+wide, man. Start it with ten thou."
+
+"Sit down, you blithering jackass!" Phipps roared. "Give him a drink,
+some one, and keep him quiet."
+
+"Don't want a drink," Dredlinton replied, shaking himself free from
+Kendrick's grasp. "Want to keep my head clear. Big deal, this. May
+reestablish the fortunes of a fallen family. Gad, it's a night for all
+you outsiders to remember, this!" he went on, glancing insolently around
+the table. "Don't often have the chance of seeing a nobleman selling his
+household treasures. Come on, Wingate. Phipps is shy about starting.
+Let's have your bid. What about ten thou, eh?"
+
+Wingate came slowly around the table. His eyes never left Dredlinton.
+Dredlinton, too, watched him like a cat, watched him drawing nearer
+and nearer.
+
+"What, do you want to whisper your bid?" he jeered. "Out with it like a
+man! This is a unique opportunity. Heaven knows when you may get the
+chance again! Shall we say twenty thou, Wingate? A peeress and a saint!
+Gad, they aren't to be picked up every day!"
+
+"What on earth is he trying to sell?" Flossie demanded.
+
+Dredlinton turned with an evil grin. He had at least the courage of a
+drunken man, for he took no account of Wingate towering over him.
+
+"Don't you know?" he cried out. "Doesn't every one understand?"
+
+"Stop!" Wingate ordered.
+
+"And why the hell should I stop for you?" Dredlinton shouted. "If Flossie
+wants to know, here's the truth. It's the least cherished of all my
+household goods. It's my wife."
+
+Of what happened during the next few seconds, or rather of the manner of
+its happening, few people were able to render a coherent account. All
+that they remembered was a most amazing spectacle,--the spectacle of
+Wingate walking quietly to the door with Dredlinton in his arms, kicking
+and shouting smothered profanities, but absolutely powerless to free
+himself. The door was opened by a waiter, and Wingate passed into the
+corridor. A _maître d'hôtel,_ with presence of mind, hurried up to him.
+
+"Have you an empty room with a key?" Wingate asked.
+
+The man led the way and pushed open the door of a small apartment used on
+busy occasions for a service room. Wingate thrust in his struggling
+burden and locked the door.
+
+"Strong panels?" he enquired, pausing for a moment to listen to the blows
+directed upon them.
+
+The head waiter smiled.
+
+"They're more than one man can break through, sir," he assured him.
+
+Wingate made his way back to the supper party. Half of the guests were on
+their feet. He met Sir Frederick near the door.
+
+"Sorry, Sir Frederick, if I am in any way responsible for this little
+disturbance," he said, as he made his way towards his place. "I think if
+I were you, I should give this key to one of the commissionaires a little
+later on. Lord Dredlinton is quite safe for the present."
+
+Sir Frederick patted him on the shoulder.
+
+"Most unprovoked attack," he declared. "Delighted to have made your
+acquaintance, Mr. Wingate, you treated him exactly as he deserved."
+
+Wingate resumed his place and held out his glass to the waiter. Then he
+raised it to his lips. The glass was full to the brim but his fingers
+were perfectly steady. He looked down the table towards Phipps, whose
+expression was noncommittal, and gently disemburdened himself of
+Flossie's arm, which had stolen through his.
+
+"I think you are the most wonderful man I ever met," she confided.
+
+"You're a brick," Sarah whispered in his ear. "Come and see me off the
+premises, there's a dear. Jimmy won't be ready for hours yet and I want
+to get home."
+
+Wingate rose at once, made his adieux and accompanied Sarah to the door,
+followed by a reproachful glance from Flossie. The former took his arm
+and held it tightly as they passed along the corridor.
+
+"I think that you are the dearest man I ever knew, Mr. Wingate," she
+said, "just as I think that Josephine is the dearest woman, and I hope
+more than anything in the world--well, you know what I hope."
+
+"I think I do," Wingate replied. "Thank you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Andrew Slate, a very personable man in his spring clothes of grey tweed,
+took up his hat and prepared to depart. Half-past twelve had just struck
+by Wingate's clock, and the two men had been together since ten.
+
+"You're a wonderful person, Wingate," Slate said, with a note of genuine
+admiration in his tone. "I don't believe there's another man breathing
+who would have had the courage to plan a coup like this."
+
+Wingate shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"The men who dig deep into life," he replied, as he shook hands, "are the
+men who take risks. I was never meant to be one of those who scratch
+about on the surface."
+
+A note was slipped into his letter box as he let Slate out. He noticed
+the coronet on the envelope and opened it eagerly. A glance at the
+signature brought him disappointment. He read it slowly, with a hard
+smile upon his lips:
+
+My dear Mr. Wingate,
+
+I am writing to express to you my sincere and heartfelt regret for last
+night's unfortunate incident. I can do no more nor any less than to
+confess in plain words that I was drunk. It is a humiliating confession,
+but it happens to be the truth. Will you accept this apology in the
+spirit in which it is tendered, and wipe out the whole incident from your
+memory? I venture to hope and believe that you are sportsman enough to
+accede to my request.
+
+Yours regretfully.
+
+DREDLINTON.
+
+Wingate was conscious of a feeling of disappointment as he threw the note
+upon the table. Open warfare was, after all, so much better. An _amende_
+so complete left him with no alternative save acquiescence. Even while he
+was coming to this somewhat unwelcome decision, the telephone bell rang.
+He took off the receiver and was instantly galvanised into attention. It
+was Josephine speaking.
+
+"Is that Mr. Wingate?" she asked.
+
+"It is," he admitted. "Good morning--Josephine!"
+
+"Quite right," she answered composedly. "That is how I like to have you
+call me. I am speaking for my husband. He is here by my side at the
+present moment."
+
+"The mischief he is!" Wingate said. "Well?"
+
+"My husband has desired me to intercede with you," Josephine
+continued, "to beg your acceptance of the apology which he has sent you
+this morning."
+
+"No further word need be spoken upon the subject," Wingate replied. "Your
+husband has explained that he was drunk and has tendered his apology. I
+accept it."
+
+There was a brief pause. Josephine was obviously repeating Wingate's
+decision to her husband. Then she spoke again.
+
+"My husband desires me to thank you," she said. "He desires me to hope
+that you will continue to visit at the house, and that you will not allow
+anything he may have said to interfere between our friendship."
+
+"Nothing that he has said or could say could interfere with that,"
+Wingate assured her,--"at least that is my point of view."
+
+"And mine!"
+
+"Shall I see you to-day?" he asked.
+
+"I hope so," she answered. "Perhaps after luncheon--"
+
+There was a sound as though the receiver had been taken from her fingers.
+Dredlinton himself spoke.
+
+"Look here, Wingate, this is Dredlinton speaking," he said. "You won't
+let this little affair make any difference to your call upon us on
+Tuesday morning?"
+
+"Certainly not," Wingate replied. "I was thinking of writing you about
+that, though. I don't see any object in my coming. I think you had better
+let me off that visit."
+
+"My dear fellow," Dredlinton pleaded, "if you don't come, Phipps will
+think it is because of last night's affair and I shall get it in the
+neck. I'm in disgrace enough already. Do, for heaven's sake, oblige me,
+there's a good chap."
+
+Wingate hesitated for a moment.
+
+"Very well," he assented, "I will go. Is that all?"
+
+"That's all, thanks."
+
+"I should like to speak to your wife again," Wingate said.
+
+"Sorry, she's just gone out," was the rather malicious reply. "I'd have
+kept her for you, if I'd known. So long!"
+
+A knocking at the door,--a rather low, suggestive knocking. Wingate knew
+that it was an impossibility, but he nevertheless hastened to throw it
+open. Miss Flossie Lane stood there, very becomingly dressed in a
+tailor-made costume of covert coating. She wore a hat with yellow
+buttercups, and she had shown a certain reticence as regards cosmetics
+which amounted to a tacit acknowledgment of his prejudices.
+
+"Miss Lane!" he exclaimed.
+
+She looked at him with wide-open eyes.
+
+"But you were expecting me, weren't you?" she asked. "I remembered your
+inviting me quite well, but I couldn't remember where you said, so I
+thought I'd better come and fetch you. I haven't done wrong, have I?"
+
+"Most certainly not," Wingate replied. "Come in, please. I'll ring for a
+cocktail and send the man down into the restaurant to engage a table."
+
+She sank into an easy-chair and looked around her, while Wingate did as
+he had suggested. The sitting room, filled with trophies of curiously
+mixed characteristics--a Chinese idol squatting in one corner, some West
+African weapons above it, two very fine moose heads over a quaintly
+shaped fireplace, and a row of choice Japanese prints over the
+bookcase--was a very masculine but eminently habitable apartment. Miss
+Lane looked around her and approved.
+
+"This is quite the nicest flat in the Court," she declared, "and I've
+been in so many of them. How did you find time to furnish it like this? I
+thought that you'd only just arrived from America."
+
+"I come to London often enough to keep this little suite here," he
+explained. "I had it even through the war. Sometimes I lend it to a
+friend. I am one of those domestic people," he added with a smile, "who
+like to have a home of some sort to come to at the end of a journey."
+
+"You're much too nice to live alone," she ventured.
+
+"Well, you see, your sex has decreed that I shall up to the present," he
+remarked. "Here come the cocktails. I hope that yours won't be too dry.
+Where will you lunch--the restaurant or the grillroom?"
+
+"The grillroom," she decided, after a moment's reflection. "We can go and
+sit out in the foyer afterwards and have our coffee."
+
+The cocktails and Wingate's choice of a table were alike approved.
+Wingate himself, as soon as he had recovered from the bland assurance
+with which his guest had manufactured her invitation, devoted himself
+with a somewhat hard light in his eyes to the task of entertaining her.
+The whole gamut of her attractions was let loose for his benefit. He
+represented to her the one desirable thing, difficult of attainment,
+perhaps, but worth the effort. Soft glances and words hinting at
+tenderness, sighs and half-spoken appeals were all made to serve their
+obvious purpose. If Wingate's responses were a little artificial, he
+still made no attempt to hurry through the meal. He seemed perfectly
+content to consider the attractions which his companion heaped into the
+shop window of her being. Once she almost amused him, and he found
+himself for a few seconds contemplating her with some glimmering of the
+thought which she was so anxious to instil into his brain. After all, a
+companion like this was soothing, made no demands, filled a pleasant
+enough place in the broken ways of life, provided one had no other
+aspirations. And then the thought passed from him,--forever.
+
+They took their coffee and liqueurs in the foyer. Flossie, perfectly
+satisfied with her companion and her progress with him, chattered gaily
+away with scarcely a pause, and Wingate, after his first resentment at
+her coming had passed, found a certain relief in sitting and listening to
+her equable flow of nonsense. By and by, however, she came very near
+annoying him.
+
+"You know Lady Dredlinton very well, don't you Mr. Wingate?" she asked, a
+little abruptly.
+
+His answer was marked with a warning note of stiffness.
+
+"Lady Dredlinton," he repeated. "I know her, certainly. I was at her
+hospital at Étaples."
+
+"Every one says that she is charming," the young lady continued, with a
+side glance at him. "Pity she can't keep that wicked husband of hers a
+little more under control. You know, Mr. Wingate," she confided, "he has
+asked me to supper four or five times but I have never cared about going
+with him quite alone. A girl has to be so careful in my position. Don't
+you agree with me?"
+
+"I suppose so," he answered indifferently.
+
+"Dear old 'Dredful,' as Lord Fanleighton used to call him, can be very
+amusing sometimes, but he hasn't the best reputation, and of course he's
+terrible when he's drunk, as he was last night. I do so like nice men,"
+she sighed, "and there are scarcely any left. One seems to have lost all
+one's friends in the war," she went on reminiscently, her large blue eyes
+veiled with sadness. "It makes one feel very lonely sometimes."
+
+Wingate scarcely heard her. His eyes were fixed upon the two men walking
+up the carpeted way from the restaurant. One was Peter Phipps, the other
+Lord Dredlinton. Flossie Lane, seeking to discover the cause of her
+companion's abstraction, glanced in the same direction and recognised
+them at once.
+
+"Why here is Lord Dredlinton!" she exclaimed. "And Mr. Peter Phipps!
+He is rather a dear person, Mr. Phipps, you know, although you don't
+like him."
+
+"Is he!" Wingate observed grimly.
+
+"They are coming to speak to us," the young lady went on, shaking her
+skirts a little and glancing into the mirror which she had just drawn
+from her bag. "What a bother!"
+
+Lord Dredlinton, more dignified than usual but if possible still more
+unpleasant, threaded his way between the chairs and paused before the
+two, followed, a few spaces behind, by Phipps.
+
+"Hullo, Flossie!" the former exclaimed. "How are you, Wingate? You got
+my letter?"
+
+"I received your letter and also your telephone message," Wingate
+replied stiffly. "So far as I am concerned, the matter, as I told you,
+is at an end."
+
+"That's all right, then.--Flossie," Dredlinton continued, looking
+reproachfully at the young woman whose hand he was still holding, "I told
+you last night that you ought to know better. You should confine your
+attentions to the black sheep of the world, like me. Dear me!" he went
+on, standing a little on one side so as not to conceal Wingate. "My wife,
+apparently, has been lunching here. Wingate, shall we form a screen in
+front of you, or are you content to be toppled from your pedestal?"
+
+Wingate met the ill-natured sneer indifferently. He even smiled as
+Phipps, standing on the outside of the little circle, also altered his
+position. It was clearly the intention of both that Josephine should
+realise the situation. Attracted by a gesture from her husband, she
+glanced across at them. For a single moment she half hesitated. There was
+a queer look in her eyes, a look of surprise mingled even with pain. Then
+she flashed a brilliant smile upon Wingate, ignored her husband and
+Phipps, and passed on.
+
+"Cut!" Lord Dredlinton exclaimed, with mock dismay. "Cut, my friend
+Phipps! Me, her husband, and you, her dear friend! Really, it's a most
+uncomfortable thing to have a disapproving wife going about to the same
+restaurants and places. Let us go and sulk in a corner, Phipps, and
+leave this little comedy here to develop. Farewell, faithless Flossie!
+Wingate," he concluded, shaking his head gravely, "you have
+disappointed me."
+
+They passed on. The young lady tossed her head angrily.
+
+"There are times," she announced, "when I hate Lord Dredlinton. I don't
+know any one who can say such horrid things without being actually rude.
+I'm sure his wife looks much too good for him," she added generously.
+
+Wingate's nerves were all on edge. He glanced at his watch and rose
+regretfully to his feet.
+
+"I am afraid," he said, as he led the way towards the exit, "that I must
+go back to work. Thank you so much for coming and taking pity upon a
+lonely man, Miss Lane."
+
+"You can have all that sort of pity you like," she whispered.
+
+"Then I shall certainly make demands upon it," he assured her, as they
+parted at the door.
+
+He found himself presently back in the cool and pleasantly austere
+surroundings of his sitting room and threw himself into an easy-chair
+drawn up in front of the wide-flung windows. A strong breeze, against
+which a flight of seagulls leaned, was stirring the trees in the
+Embankment Gardens and ruffling the surface of the water. The pall of
+smoke eastward seemed here and there cloven by a wind-swept avenue of
+clearer spaces. He felt a sudden and passionate distaste for his recent
+environment,--the faint perfume which had crept out from the girl's hair
+and face as she had leaned towards him, the brushing of her clothes
+against his, the daring exposure of silk stocking, the continual
+flirtatious appeal of her eyes and lips. He felt himself in revolt
+against even that faint instinct of toleration which her prettiness and
+at times subtle advances had kindled in him. He let his thoughts rest
+upon the more wonderful things which smouldered in his brain and leaped
+like fire through his veins when he dared to think of them. The room
+seemed suddenly purified, made fit for her presence.
+
+"I am sure that Mr. Wingate will see me if he is alone," he heard a
+familiar voice say.
+
+He sprang to his feet, realising in those few moments into what paradise
+his thoughts had been climbing, and greeted Lady Dredlinton.
+
+Josephine accepted the easy-chair which he wheeled up for her and glanced
+around the room critically.
+
+"Just what I expected," she murmured. "A nice healthy man's room, without
+too much furniture, and with plenty of books. You are wondering why I
+came, of course."
+
+"I am too content with the good fortune which brought you to find time
+for wonder," he replied.
+
+"You'll laugh at me when I tell you," she warned him.
+
+"You needn't tell me at all unless you like. You are here. That is
+enough for me."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I am putting myself in the confessional," she declared. "I was leaving
+the place with a disagreeable taste in my mouth. At the last moment, even
+as I was stepping into a taxicab, I turned back. I went instead to the
+desk and boldly asked for the number of your suite. I want that taste
+removed, please."
+
+"Tell me how I can do it in the quickest possible manner," he begged.
+
+She turned and looked at him, enquiringly at first, then with a
+delightful little smile which relieved all the tenseness of her
+expression.
+
+"By assuring me that you are not going to emulate, in however innocent a
+fashion, my husband's exploits in the musical comedy world."
+
+He leaned over her chair, took her hands in his and looked into her eyes.
+
+"Honestly," he asked, "do you need any assurance?"
+
+"That is the funny part of it," she laughed. "Since I am here, since I
+have seen you, I don't feel that I do, but downstairs I had quite a
+horrid little pain."
+
+"You will never have occasion to feel it again," he told her. "I met Miss
+Flossie Lane last night for the first time at the supper party to which
+Roger Kendrick took me. I was placed next to her, and somehow or other
+she seems to have convinced herself that I invited her to lunch to-day."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"To be perfectly honest I can't remember having done anything of the
+sort. However, what was I to do?"
+
+"What you did, of course. That is finished. Now tell me about that supper
+party. What happened? Was Dredlinton really rude to you?"
+
+"Your husband was drunk," Wingate answered. "He was rude to everybody."
+
+"And what was the end of it?"
+
+"I carried him out of the room and locked him up," he told her.
+
+She laughed softly.
+
+"I can see you doing it," she declared. "Are you as strong as you look,
+Mr. John Wingate?"
+
+"I am certainly strong enough to carry you away and lock you up if you
+don't call me John," he replied.
+
+"John, then," she said. "I don't mind calling you John. I like it. How
+fortunate," she went on lazily, "that we really did get to know one
+another well in those days at Étaples. It saves one from all those
+twinges one feels about sudden friendships, for you know, after all, in a
+way, nothing at Étaples counted. You were just the most charming of my
+patients, and the most interesting, but still a patient. Here, you simply
+walk into my life and take me by storm. You make a very foolish woman of
+me. If I had to say to myself, 'Why, I have known him less than a week!'
+it would hurt my pride horribly."
+
+"Blessed little bit of shell that found a temporary shelter in my arm!"
+he exclaimed. "All the same, I feel just as you do. Out there, for all
+your graciousness, you were something sacred, something far away."
+
+"And here?" she whispered.
+
+"Shall I tell you?" he asked, with a sudden fire in his eyes.
+
+"For heaven's sake, no!" she begged, thrusting out her hands. "I'm afraid
+to think--afraid of actual thoughts. Don't let us give form to anything.
+Let me be content to just feel this new warmth in my life."
+
+She leaned back in her chair with a contented sigh. A little tug came
+snorting up the river. Even the roar of the traffic over Waterloo Bridge
+seemed muffled and disintegrated by the breeze which swept on its way
+through the rustling lime trees.
+
+"You are wonderfully situated here," she went on. "I don't believe it
+is London at all. It rests me more than any place I have been in for
+a long time, and yet--at the same time--I think that it is going to
+make me sad."
+
+"Sad? But why?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"Because it seems like one of the stopping places--where one steps off
+to think, you know. I don't want to think. I have had nine such miserable
+years. All through the war there was one's work, one's hospital, the
+excitement of the gigantic struggle. And now everything seems flat. One
+struggles on without incentive. One lives without hope."
+
+"We weren't meant to do that," he protested.
+
+"Only those of us who have thrown our lives away," she went on wearily.
+"You see, I thought Henry was different. I thought he only wanted a
+little understanding, a little kindness. I made a mistake."
+
+"Life is too wonderful a thing," he insisted, "to lose the glory of it
+for one mistake."
+
+"I am on the rocks," she sighed, "now and always. If I were made like
+your little luncheon friend, it might be different. I suppose I should
+spread my wings and settle down upon another planet. But I can't. I am
+differently made. I am not proud of it. I wish I weren't. It wouldn't all
+seem so hard then, I am still young, you know, really," she added, with a
+note of rebellion in her tone.
+
+"How young?"
+
+"Thirty-one."
+
+"Nowadays, that is youth," he declared confidently, "and youth
+means hope."
+
+"Sometimes," she admitted a little listlessly, "I have dared to feel
+hope. I have felt it more than ever since you came. I don't know why, but
+there it is."
+
+He turned his head and looked at her, appraisingly yet with reverence. No
+measure of despair could alter the fact that she was a very beautiful
+woman. Her slimness never lost its meed of elegance. The pallor of her
+cheeks, which might have seemed like an inheritance of fragility, was
+counteracted by the softness of her skin and the healthy colour of her
+curving lips. She bore his scrutiny so impersonally, with such sweet and
+challenging interest, that he persisted in it. Her brown hair was almost
+troublesome in its prodigality. There were little curls about her neck
+which defied restraint. Her cool muslin gown, even to his untutored
+perceptions, revealed a distinction which the first dressmaker in London
+had endorsed. She spoke the words of lifelessness, yet she possessed
+everything which men desire.
+
+"The tragedy with you," he pronounced, "is the absence of affection in
+your life."
+
+"Do you think that I haven't the power for caring?" she asked quietly.
+
+"I think that you have had no one to care for," he answered. "I think
+there has been no one to care for you in the way you wanted--but those
+days are over."
+
+For the first time she showed some signs of that faint and growing
+uneasiness in his presence which brought with it a peculiar and nameless
+joy. Her eyes failed to meet the challenge of his. She glanced at the
+clock and changed the subject abruptly.
+
+"Do you know that I have been here all this time," she reminded him, "and
+we have not said a word about our campaign."
+
+"There is a great deal connected with it, or rather my side of it," he
+declared, "which I shall never tell you."
+
+"You trust me?" she asked a little timidly, "You don't think that I
+should betray you to my husband?"
+
+He laughed the idea to scorn.
+
+"It isn't that," he assured her. "The machinery I have knocked into shape
+is crude in its way, but the lives and liberty of those underneath depend
+upon its workings."
+
+"It sounds mysterious," she confessed.
+
+"If you say that it is to be an alliance, Josephine," he decided, "it
+shall be. I need your help enormously, but you must make up your mind,
+before you say the last word, to run a certain measure of risk."
+
+"What risk is there for me to run?" she asked, with a smile of
+confidence. "What measure of unhappiness could be crowded into my life
+which is not already there? I insist upon it--John--that you accept me as
+an ally without any more hesitation."
+
+He bent and kissed her hands.
+
+"This, then, is final," he said. "Within the next twenty-four hours you
+will be ready if necessary?"
+
+"I am ready now--any time--always," she promised him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+"My dears," Lady Amesbury said, as she stood surrounded by her guests on
+the hearth rug of her drawing-room, "you know what my Sunday night dinner
+parties are--all sorts and plenty of them, and never a dull man or a
+plain woman if I can help it. To-night I've got a new man. He's not much
+to look at, but they tell me he's a multimillionaire and making all the
+poor people of the country miserable. He's doing something about making
+bread dearer. I never did understand these things."
+
+"Heavens, you don't mean Peter Phipps!" Sarah exclaimed.
+
+"His very name," her aunt declared. "How did you guess it, my dear? Here
+he is. Be quiet, all of you, and watch Grover announce him. He's such a
+snob--Grover. He hates a Mister, anyhow, and 'Peter Phipps' will
+dislocate his tongue."
+
+Lady Amesbury was disappointed. Grover had marched with the times, and
+the presence of a millionaire made itself felt. His announcement was
+sonorous and respectful. Mr. Peter Phipps made his bow to his hostess
+under completely auspicious circumstances.
+
+"So kind of you not to forget, Mr. Phipps," she murmured. "My Sunday
+parties are always _viva voce_ invitations, and what between not
+remembering whom I've asked, and not knowing whether those I've asked
+will remember, I generally find it horribly difficult to arrange the
+places. We are all right tonight, though. Only two missing. Who are
+they, Sarah?"
+
+"Josephine and Mr. Wingate," Sarah replied, with a covert glance
+at Phipps.
+
+"Of course! And thank goodness, here they are! Together, too! If there's
+anything I love, it's to start one of my dinners with a scandal.
+Josephine, did you bring Mr. Wingate or did he bring you?"
+
+Josephine laughed. Then she saw Phipps standing in the background and she
+raised her voice a little.
+
+"Mr. Wingate called for me," she explained. "Taxis are so scarce in our
+part of the world on Sunday nights, and when one does happen to know a
+man who makes enough money on Friday to buy a fleet of motor-cars on
+Saturday--"
+
+"My doing," Kendrick interrupted. "I'm his broker. Did you buy the
+Rolls-Royce, Wingate?"
+
+"I brought it away with me, chauffeur and all."
+
+"The most delightful car I ever rode in," Josephine pronounced.
+
+Phipps manoeuvred his way to her side. There was a frown on his forehead
+as he leaned towards her.
+
+"So a Rolls-Royce is your favourite make of car, Lady Dredlinton,"
+he remarked.
+
+"Absolutely! I can't conceive of anything more comfortable. Mr. Wingate
+has promised to let me try it in the country next week."
+
+"So my Wolseley is to be scrapped?" Phipps asked, under his breath.
+
+She looked at him pleasantly enough but with a dangerous light in her
+eyes.
+
+"Have you a Wolseley?" she murmured. "Oh, yes, I remember! You offered to
+send it around to take me shopping."
+
+"I sent it around three mornings," he replied. "You did not use it once.
+You did not even open the note I left inside."
+
+"I am not very fond of using other people's cars," she said.
+
+"It need not be another person's car unless you like," he muttered.
+
+She looked at him for a moment thoughtfully. Phipps was a man of brass,
+without sensitiveness or sensibility. Nevertheless, he flushed a little.
+Just then dinner was announced and Lady Amesbury bustled once more into
+the midst of her guests.
+
+"My dears," she told them all, "I've forgotten who takes anybody down!
+Scrap along as you are, and you'll find the cards in your places
+downstairs. Pick up any one you like. Not you, sir," she added, turning
+to Wingate. "You're going to take me. I want to hear all the latest New
+York gossip. And--lean down, please--are you really trying to flirt with
+Josephine Dredlinton? Don't disturb her unless you're in earnest. She's
+got a horrible husband."
+
+"I admire Lady Dredlinton more than any woman I know," Wingate answered.
+"One does not flirt with the woman one really cares for."
+
+"Hoity-toity!" Lady Amesbury exclaimed. "That's the real divorce-court
+tone. There was a young man---I don't know how many years ago--who used
+to talk like that to me at the time Amesbury was Ambassador at Madrid and
+took up with that Lola de Mendoza woman. Neither affair came to anything,
+though. Amesbury got tired of Spain, and my young man married a rich
+grocer's daughter. Still, I recognise the tone. Here we all are. Now you
+play a sort of hunt-the-slipper game, looking for your places, all of
+you. I know mine, thank God! Now let's pray to Heaven the soup's hot!
+And don't any one talk to me while I'm eating it. The present generation
+are shocking soup eaters."
+
+Wingate found Josephine on his other side and was happy. Phipps was just
+across the table. His hostess proceeded to give the latter some of her
+attention.
+
+"Mr. Phipps," she said, "they tell me you've taken that scoundrel of a
+nephew of mine--Dredlinton--into your business, whatever it is. He won't
+do you any good, you know."
+
+"I'm very sorry to hear that," Phipps replied. "He seemed to me rather a
+brainy person for his order."
+
+"One for me," Lady Amesbury chuckled. "I don't care. If I chose to come
+on the Stock Exchange, I've got brains enough to ruin most of you. But I
+don't choose. I like to hear of the rest of you tearing yourselves to
+pieces, though. If you could keep Dredlinton out of mischief for a year,
+Mr. Phipps, I'd think you were the most wonderful man I ever met. He's a
+bad lot, but I tolerate him because I love his wife."
+
+Phipps scowled across the table to where Wingate's head was nearly
+touching Josephine's.
+
+"Lady Dredlinton seems to be achieving great popularity in every
+direction," he said sourly.
+
+"And a jolly good thing, too," Lady Amesbury declared. "If ever a woman
+earned the right to kick the traces away for a bit, Josephine has. Don't
+you mind anything I say, my dear," she added, as Josephine looked up at
+the sound of her name. "You settle down to a nice comfortable flirtation,
+if you want to. You owe it to yourself, all right, and then there's some
+coming to you. And I'm your husband's aunt who tells you that."
+
+"I'm not at all sure," Phipps observed, "that you don't underrate your
+nephew's ability."
+
+"The only thing I know about his ability," was the blunt reply, "is
+his ability to borrow a few hundreds from any one fool enough to lend
+it to him, and then invent excuses for not paying it back. He's good
+at that, if you like. Still, don't let me set you against him, Mr.
+Phipps. Every shilling he gets out of you and your company is so much
+saved to the family."
+
+Lady Amesbury, who, notwithstanding her apparent inconsequence, had a
+keen eye for her guests, directed her conversation for a time into
+another channel, and finally changed places with Sarah in order to come
+into closer touch with a spiritualist from Sweden, who was on the lookout
+for a medium. Sarah turned appealingly toward Wingate.
+
+"Jimmy and I want to be taken to the theatre to-morrow night," she
+announced. "He doesn't get any money till Wednesday, and I haven't
+earned enough this week to pay my garage bill."
+
+"I'll take you both," Wingate promised quickly, "if Lady Dredlinton will
+make a fourth."
+
+"Delightful," Josephine assented.
+
+"I have a box at the Opera," Phipps announced, leaning forward. "Give me
+the pleasure of entertaining you all."
+
+Josephine shook her head.
+
+"Tannhãuser! I am sorry, Mr. Phipps, but I couldn't possibly stand it.
+Ask us another time, won't you? To-morrow night," she went on, turning to
+Wingate, "let us be absolutely frivolous. A revue, I think."
+
+"And dinner first at the Milan," Wingate insisted.
+
+"And supper afterwards and a dance at Ciro's," Sarah put in. "I must tell
+Jimmy the glad tidings."
+
+Peter Phipps made his adieux to Lady Amesbury early and drove in his
+electric coupé first to Romano's, then to the Milan and finally to
+Ciro's. Here he found Dredlinton, seated in a corner by himself, a little
+sulky at the dancing proclivities of the young lady whom he had brought.
+He greeted Phipps with some surprise.
+
+"Hullo, Dreadnought!" he exclaimed. "What's wrong with my garrulous
+aunt? Has the party broken up early or weren't you a success?"
+
+"I wasn't a success," Phipps confessed grimly. "Look here, Dredlinton,
+are you sober enough to talk horse common sense?"
+
+"Sober? My God, can you tell me how any one can get a drink here!" was
+the injured reply. "I was just off somewhere else. One bottle of
+champagne, if you please, between two of us, and the liqueur brandies
+were served with the soup. Call this--a Christian country!"
+
+"Then if you're sober, and for once you seem to be," Phipps said, "just
+listen to me. Listen hard, mind, and don't interrupt. Have you ever
+wondered why I put you on the Board of the B.& I.?"
+
+"My title, I suppose--and social position."
+
+"Rot!" Phipps answered scornfully. "Your title and your social position
+aren't worth a damn to me. I put you on because of your wife."
+
+Dredlinton stared at him.
+
+"Why, you didn't even know her!"
+
+"Never mind. I knew her to look at. I wanted to know her. Now I do know
+her, and it hasn't done me much good."
+
+Dredlinton sat a little more erect in his place. Behind his cynical
+exterior, his evil brain had begun to work.
+
+"Look here, Phipps," he said, "I don't care about this conversation. If
+a man happens to admire another man's wife, her husband is scarcely the
+proper confidant."
+
+"Oh, yes, I know your theory!" Phipps scoffed. "You're willing enough to
+hide your head in the sand and take the goods the gods send you. That
+doesn't suit me. I happen to need your help."
+
+"My help?" Dredlinton repeated. "The poor little spider to help the
+mighty Phipps! You're not finding difficulties in the way of your
+suit, are you?"
+
+"If I do, it will be the worse for you," was the gruff reply. "As
+you're going on now, Dredlinton, it will be your wife, and your wife
+alone, who'll keep you out of jail before many weeks are past. How
+about that cheque to Farnham and Company last week? Farnham's say they
+never got it, but I hear it's come back through the bank with a queer
+endorsement upon it."
+
+Dredlinton caught at the tablecloth. The malicious gleam in his eyes gave
+way to a look of positive fear.
+
+"I can't remember--anything here--without any books," he muttered.
+"Tell me what it is you want, Phipps? I am ready to do any thing--you
+know that."
+
+"Your wife's friendship with this fellow Wingate has got to be nipped in
+the bud," Phipps declared.
+
+"Yes, but how?" Dredlinton demanded. "Josephine and I aren't anything to
+one another any more--you know that. She goes her own way."
+
+"She lives in your house," Phipps said. "You remain her husband nominally
+and you have therefore a certain amount of authority. You must forbid her
+to receive Wingate."
+
+"I'll forbid her, all right," Dredlinton assented, "but I won't guarantee
+that she'll obey."
+
+"Then you must give orders to the servants," Phipps insisted. "I don't
+need to suggest to you, Dredlinton," he went on, "what means you should
+use to make your wife obey you, but there are means, and if you're not
+the man to realise them, I'm very much surprised in you. I will begin
+with a concrete case. Your wife, together with that fellow Wilshaw and
+Miss Baldwin, have accepted an invitation from Wingate to dine and go to
+a theatre to-morrow night. You must see that your wife does not go."
+
+"Very well," Dredlinton promised, "I'll manage it somehow."
+
+"See that you do," Phipps enjoined earnestly. "Your wife is one of those
+misguided women with a strong sense of duty. Unless you behave like a
+damn fool, you can reestablish some measure of control over her. Do so.
+There are certain circumstances," he went on, his face wrinkled a little
+with emotion, his voice deep and earnest, "there are certain
+circumstances, Dredlinton, under which I might be inclined to behave
+towards you with great generosity. I leave you to guess what those
+circumstances are. I will show you the way later on."
+
+Dredlinton felt hope stir once more through his shocked and terrified
+senses. He lit a cigarette with fingers which had ceased to tremble,
+leaned a little back in his place and stared at his companion curiously.
+
+"Phipps," he asked, "what the devil do you and this fellow Wingate see
+in my wife?"
+
+"What a man like you would never look for," was the harsh reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+"Throw your coat down anywhere, Miss Baldwin," Wingate invited, as he
+ushered that young lady into his rooms soon after eleven o'clock on the
+following evening. "Now what can I give you? There are some sandwiches
+here--ham and pâté-de-foie-gras, I think. Whisky and soda or some hock?"
+
+"A pâté sandwich and some plain soda water, please," Sarah replied,
+taking off the long motoring coat which concealed her evening clothes. "I
+have been fined for everything except disorderly driving--daren't risk
+that. Thanks!" she went on. "What ripping sandwiches! And quite a good
+play, wasn't it?"
+
+"I am glad you enjoyed it."
+
+"It was a swindle Josephine not turning up," Sarah continued, as she
+stretched herself out in Wingate's easy-chair. "Domestic ructions again,
+I suppose. How I do hate that husband of hers!"
+
+"It was disappointing," he admitted.
+
+There was a brief pause, during which Sarah finished her sandwiches and
+lit a cigarette.
+
+"Wilshaw seems to be having a little trouble with the outside porter,"
+her host remarked presently.
+
+"It must cost him at least half a sovereign every time I leave the cab,"
+Sarah sighed.
+
+"How much do you make a week out of your driving, if it isn't too
+personal a question?" he enquired.
+
+"It depends upon how much Jimmy's got."
+
+"Is he your only client, then?"
+
+"He very seldom gives me a chance of another. Once or twice I've refused
+to be engaged by the day, but he sends his man around to the garage and I
+find him sitting in the cab when I arrive."
+
+Wingate laughed softly. She looked up at him with twinkling eyes.
+
+"I believe you're making fun of my profession," she complained.
+
+"Not at all, but I was wondering whether it wouldn't be cheaper for you
+to marry Jimmy, as you call him."
+
+"We have spoken about it once or twice," she admitted. "The worst of it
+is, I don't think the cab would support two."
+
+"Is Wilshaw so badly off?"
+
+"His money is tied up until he is twenty-eight," Sarah explained. "I
+think that his father must have known how he was going to turn out.
+Jimmy promised that he would never anticipate it, and the dear old thing
+keeps his word. We shall be married on his twenty-eighth birthday, all
+right, unless his mother does the decent thing before."
+
+"Has she money?" Wingate asked.
+
+"Plenty--but she hasn't much confidence in Jimmy. I think she shows signs
+of wavering lately, though. Perhaps his latest idea--he's going into the
+City to-morrow, you know--may bring her around.--Mr. Wingate!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You're rather a dear old thing, you know," she said, "although you're
+so serious."
+
+"And you're quite nice," he admitted, "although you're such an
+incorrigible little flirt."
+
+"How do you know?" she laughed. "You never give me a chance of showing
+what I can do in that direction."
+
+"Too old, my dear young lady," her host lamented, as he mixed himself a
+whisky and soda.
+
+"Rubbish!" she scoffed. "Too much in love with some one else, I believe."
+
+"These are too strenuous days for that sort of thing," he rejoined,
+"except for children like you and Mr. Wilshaw."
+
+"I don't know so much about that," she objected. "The world has never
+gone so queerly that people haven't remembered to go on loving and be
+made love to. Look at the war marriages."
+
+"Yes--and the war divorces," he reminded her.
+
+"Brute!" she exclaimed, with a little grimace.
+
+"Why 'brute'?" he protested. "You can't deny them. Some of these
+marriages were genuine enough, of course. Others were simply the result
+of a sort of amorous hysteria. Affected every one in those days just
+like a germ."
+
+"John Wingate!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Don't try to be cynical."
+
+"I'm not."
+
+"You are," she persisted. "There isn't a man breathing who has a more
+wonderful capacity for caring than you. You hide your feelings from most
+people. Are you very angry with me for having guessed? I have, you know."
+
+Wingate paused in the act of lighting a cigarette.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I think I have a sort of second sight in such matters, especially as
+regards people in whom I am interested," Sarah continued, "and if there
+is one woman in the world whom I really adore, and for whom I am heartily
+sorry, it is Josephine Dredlinton."
+
+"She has a rotten time," was Wingate's terse comment.
+
+"Very few people know how rotten," Sarah went on. "She has lost nearly
+all her own relations in the war, her husband has spent the greater part
+of her fortune, flaunted his affairs with various actresses in the face
+of all London, shilly-shallied through the war as a recruiting officer,
+or on any odd job that kept him safely at home, and now he openly
+associates with a little company of men in the City who are out to make
+money any old way they can get hold of it."
+
+"Lord Dredlinton is a bad lot," Wingate acquiesced.
+
+"And Josephine is an angel," Sarah declared warmly. "If I were a man--"
+
+"Well, you're not," he interrupted.
+
+"If I were a man," she went on, laying her hand upon his, "I wouldn't let
+Josephine live out these best days of her life in sorrow. I wouldn't have
+her insulted and peered at, every hour of her life. I wouldn't see her
+living in torture, when all the time she has such a wonderful capacity
+for life and love. Do you know what I'd do, Mr. Wingate?"
+
+"What would you do?" he asked.
+
+"I'd take her away! I wouldn't care about anybody else or anything. If
+the world didn't approve, I'd make a little world of my own and put her
+in it. You're quite strong enough."
+
+He looked through the walls of the room, for a minute.
+
+"Yes, I am strong enough," he agreed, "but is she?"
+
+"Why do you doubt her?" Sarah demanded. "What has she in her present life
+to lose, compared with what she gains from you--what she wants more than
+anything else in the world--love?"
+
+He made no answer. The girl's words had thrilled him. Then the door swung
+open and Jimmy appeared, very pink and white, very immaculate, and
+looking rather more helpless than usual.
+
+"I say, Sarah," he exclaimed, "it's no use! There's a most infernal block
+down in the courtyard. Chap wanted me to push the taxi out into the
+street. It's cost me all the loose change I've got to stop his sending
+for a policeman. We'll have to do a scoot."
+
+Sarah sighed as her host arranged her cloak around her.
+
+"Sorry we couldn't have stayed a little longer," she said. "Mr. Wingate
+was just getting most interesting."
+
+"You'll have a drink before you go, Wilshaw?" Wingate insisted.
+"Say when."
+
+The young man accepted the whisky and soda and promptly disposed of it.
+
+"Thanks, old chap! Frightfully sorry to rush away like this, but that
+fellow downstairs means business."
+
+"Good night, Mr. Wingate," Sarah said, holding out her hand, "and
+thanks ever so much for the evening. You don't think I'm a forward
+little minx, do you?"
+
+"I think you're a sensible little dear," he assured her, "far too good
+for Jimmy."
+
+"Sorry I accepted your hospitality, if that's how you're feeling," Jimmy
+grunted. "By the by, you haven't a few cigarettes, have you, for me to
+smoke while Sarah tries to get me safely home?"
+
+Wingate held out the box.
+
+"Fill your case," he invited; "your pockets, too, if you like. Don't
+forget, both of you, luncheon at one-thirty to-morrow in the restaurant.
+Good night!"
+
+He stood with the door open, watching them go down the corridor. Then he
+came slowly back into his room. Once more the telephone bell began to
+ring. He picked up the receiver. The indifference of his opening
+monosyllable vanished in a second. Something amazing crept into his face.
+
+"Who?--Lady Dredlinton?" he exclaimed.
+
+"But where are you?--Downstairs?--Yes--Yes--Why, of course.--Here?--You
+mean that you are coming here, up to my room?--I don't quite
+understand.--Yes, of course.--One moment, please. Come up by the east
+lift unless you want to meet Sarah Baldwin and Wilshaw. They have this
+moment left me. The hall porter will show you."
+
+Wingate laid down the receiver, glanced for a moment at the clock,
+hurried to the door, pushed back and secured the latch. Then he came back
+into the room and stood listening.
+
+In the end she came quite suddenly. The door had opened and closed
+before he heard even the swish of her skirts. She stood there looking at
+him a little appealingly. She was dressed in dark travelling clothes and
+she carried a heavy dressing case in her hand. He sprang forward and
+took it from her.
+
+"My dear friend," she exclaimed, with an attempt at levity, "don't look
+so tragic! There is a very simple explanation of this extraordinary
+visit, as you will soon find."
+
+"It needs no explanation," he declared.
+
+"Oh, yes, it does, of course," she continued. "I simply want you to
+intercede with the authorities here, so that I do not have to go and
+stand at that terrible counter. There is a continental train just in, and
+the place is crowded."
+
+"You wish to stay here for the night?"
+
+"Mayn't I? I have always heard that it was such a charming hotel, and I
+must stay somewhere."
+
+"There is some trouble?" he asked slowly.
+
+"There is always trouble," she replied, with a shrug of the shoulders.
+"To-night seems to me as though it may be the climax. You won't be
+horrified if I sit down and smoke one of your cigarettes? And may I
+remind you that your attitude is not entirely hospitable?"
+
+Wingate had recovered from his first stupor. His eyes were very bright,
+he was filled with the sense of wonderful happenings.
+
+"Oh, I'll be as hospitable as you like," he assured her. "You shan't have
+any cause to reproach me so far as that is concerned. This easy-chair,
+please. It is by far the most comfortable one. And now some cushions," he
+added, slipping them behind her. "The cigarettes are here, and I have
+some excellent hock. Just half a glass? Good! Miss Baldwin has been
+praising my sandwiches. You'll have one, won't you?"
+
+She sighed with content, almost with happiness. The strained look had
+gone from her face. She took off her hat and he laid it upon the table.
+
+"You are very good, very kind indeed," she murmured. "And yet not so
+kind as I would like to be."
+
+He came and stood by her side. She was eating one of the sandwiches and
+had already tasted the wine. Somehow, he knew quite well that she had had
+no dinner.
+
+"I want you to understand," he began, "that you are free to tell me what
+has happened to-night or not--just as you please. Don't feel obliged to
+explain, I'll be quite frank, I am a curious person as regards you. I
+want to know--everything. I should like to know how it was that you were
+unable to come to dinner or join us at the theatre to-night. I should
+like to know what has brought you out of your house to an hotel at
+midnight--but don't tell me unless you want to."
+
+"I do want to," she assured him. "I want to tell you everything. I
+think--somehow I almost feel that you have the right to know."
+
+"Cultivate that feeling," he begged her. "I like it."
+
+She smiled, a wan little smile that passed very soon. Her face grew sad
+again. She was thinking.
+
+"I dare say you can guess," she began presently, "something of what my
+daily life is like when my husband is in town. It is little less than
+torture, especially since he became mixed up with Mr. Phipps, that
+horrible person Martin, and their friends."
+
+"Abominable!" Wingate muttered.
+
+"He is all the while trying to induce me to receive their women friends,"
+she continued. "I need not tell you that I have refused, as I always
+should refuse."
+
+"Naturally!"
+
+"To-night, however," she went on, "he has surpassed himself. First of all
+he telephoned to say that he was bringing home friends for dinner, and if
+I had any other engagement he requested me to cancel it. As you know, I
+did so. Notwithstanding his message, he did not arrive at the house until
+eleven o'clock, barely an hour ago."
+
+"And kept you waiting all that time?"
+
+"That is nothing. Let me explain something before I conclude. Before the
+war I had an Austrian maid, a woman whom I turned out of the house, and
+whom my husband at that time did not dare to ask me to reinstate. He had
+not then spent quite the whole of my fortune. Besides an undoubted
+intrigue with my husband, I heard afterwards that she only escaped
+imprisonment as a spy by leaving the country hurriedly just before war
+was declared. Tonight, my husband, having kept me waiting three hours
+while he dined with her in Soho, brought her back to the house,
+announcing that he had engaged her as his secretary."
+
+"Damn the fellow!" Wingate muttered.
+
+"Naturally," she continued, "I declined to sleep under the same roof. The
+woman remained--and here am I."
+
+"You are here," he repeated. "Thank God for that!"
+
+"It was perhaps imprudent of me," she sighed, "to choose this hotel, but
+I had a curious feeling of weakness. I felt that I must see some one to
+whom I could tell what had happened--some friend--before I slept. Perhaps
+my nerves are going. So I came to you. Did I do wrong?"
+
+"The wrong would be if ever you left me," he declared passionately.
+
+She patted his hand. "Dear friend!"
+
+"The room I will arrange for in a minute or two," he promised. "That is
+quite easy. But to-morrow--what then?"
+
+"I shall telephone home," she replied. "If that woman is still in the
+house, I shall go down into the country, and from there I shall write my
+lawyers and apply for a separation."
+
+"So those are your plans," he remarked calmly.
+
+"Yes. Can you suggest anything better?"
+
+"I can suggest something a thousand times better."
+
+She hesitated for a moment. Perhaps she was conscious of a certain
+alteration in his deportment, the ring of his last words, the slight but
+unusual air of emotional fervour with which he seemed somehow to have
+become endowed. A woman of curiously strong virginal instincts, she
+realised, perhaps for the first time, the approach of a great change in
+Wingate's attitude towards her. Yet she could not keep from her lips the
+words which must bring his avowal.
+
+"What do you mean?" she faltered.
+
+"That you end it all," he advised firmly, "that you take your courage in
+both hands, that you do not return to your husband at all."
+
+"Not return," she repeated, her eyes held by his.
+
+"That you come to me," he went on, bending over the side of her chair.
+"Needless, wonderful words, but I love you. You were the first woman in
+my life. You will be the last. I have been silent, as you know. I have
+waited for something like this, and I think the time has come."
+
+"The time can never come," she cried despairingly.
+
+"The time has come at least for me to tell you that I love you more than
+any woman on earth," he declared, "that I want to take care of you, to
+take you into my life, to build a wall of passionate devotion around you,
+to keep you free from every trouble and every harm."
+
+"Ah, dear friend, if it were but possible!" she murmured, holding his
+hands tightly.
+
+"But it is possible," he insisted. "All that we need is courage. You owe
+nothing to your husband. You can leave him without remorse or a moment's
+shame. Your life just now is wasted,--a precious human life. I want you,
+Josephine. God knows how I want you!"
+
+"You have my friendship--even my love. There, I have said it!" she
+repeated, with a little sob, "my love."
+
+His arms were suddenly around her. She shrank back in her chair. Her
+terrified eyes invited and yet reproached him.
+
+"Remember--oh, please remember!" she cried.
+
+"What can I remember except one thing?" he whispered.
+
+She held him away from her.
+
+"You talk as though everything were possible between us. How can that be?
+I have no joy in my husband, nor he in me--but I am married. We are not
+in America."
+
+He rose to his feet, a strong man trembling in every limb. He stood
+before her, trying to talk reasonably, trying to plead his cause behind
+the shelter of reasonable words.
+
+"Let me tell you," he began, "why our divorce laws are so different
+from yours. We believe that the worst breach of the Seventh Commandment
+is the sin of an unloving kiss, the unwillingly given arms of a
+shuddering wife, striving to keep the canons of the prayer book and
+besmirching thereby her life with evil. We believe, on the other hand,
+that there is no sin in love."
+
+"If you and I were alone in the world!"
+
+"If you are thinking of your friends," he pleaded, "they are more likely
+to be proud of the woman who had the courage to break away from a
+debasing union. Every one realises--what your husband is. He has been
+unfaithful not only to you but to every friend he has ever had."
+
+"Do I not know it!" she moaned. "Isn't the pain of it there in my heart,
+hour by hour!"
+
+His reasonableness was deserting him. Again he was the lover, begging for
+his rights.
+
+"Wipe him out of your mind, sweetheart," he begged. "I'll buy you from
+him, if you like, or fight him for you, or steal you--I don't care which.
+Anything sooner than let you go."
+
+"I don't want to go," she confessed, afraid of her own words, shivering
+with the meaning of them.
+
+"You never shall," he continued, his voice gaining strength with his
+rising hopes. "You've opened my lips and you must hear what is in my
+heart. You are the one love of my life. My hours and days are empty, I
+want you always by my side."
+
+The love of him swept her away. Her head had fallen back, she saw his
+face through the mist.
+
+"Go on, go on," she begged.
+
+"I want you as I have wanted nothing else in life--not only for my own
+sake, for yours. I want to chase all those lines of sorrow away from
+your face."
+
+"My poor, tired face," she faltered.
+
+"Tired?" he repeated. "It's the most beautiful face on earth."
+
+The smile which suddenly transformed her quivering mouth made it
+indeed seem so.
+
+"You are so foolish, dear, but go on," she pleaded.
+
+"I want to see you grow younger and lighter-hearted. I want you to
+realise day by day that something beautiful is stealing into your life. I
+want you to feel what real love is--tender, passionate, lover's love."
+
+"My dear, my dear!" she cried. "I do not dare to think of these things,
+yet they sound so wonderful."
+
+"Leave the daring to me, sweetheart," he answered. "You shall have
+nothing to do but rest after these horrible days, rest and care for me
+a little."
+
+"Oh, I do care!" she exclaimed, with sudden passion. "That is what makes
+it all so wonderful."
+
+"You love me? Tell me so once more?" he begged.
+
+"Dear, I love you. You must have known it or you couldn't have said these
+things. And I thought I was going to die without knowing what love was."
+
+"Never fear that again," he cried joyfully. "You shall know what it is
+every hour of the day. You shall know what it is to feel yourself
+surrounded by it, to feel it encompass you on every side. You shall know
+what it is to have some one think for you, live for you, make sweet
+places for your footsteps in life."
+
+Her eyes shone. The years had fallen away. She rose tremblingly to her
+feet, her arms stole around his neck.
+
+"John, you dear, wonderful lover," she whispered, "why, it has come
+already! I am forgetting everything. I am happy!"
+
+The clock on Wingate's mantelpiece struck one. He drew himself gently
+away from the marvel of those soft entwining arms, stooped and kissed
+Josephine's fingers reverently.
+
+"Dear," he said, "let me begin to take up my new responsibilities. We
+must arrange for your stay here."
+
+She laughed happily, rose, and with a woman's instinct stood before the
+mirror, patting her hair.
+
+"I don't recognise myself," she murmured. "Is this what love
+brings, John?"
+
+He stood for a moment by her side.
+
+"Love?" he repeated. "Why, you haven't begun yet to realise what it
+means--what it will bring to you."
+
+Once more she set her hands upon his shoulders. Her eyes, which a moment
+before had looked so longingly into his, drooped for a moment.
+
+"Dear," she begged, "you won't ever be sorry, will you, and--does this
+sound selfish, I wonder?--you won't mind waiting?"
+
+He smiled down at her.
+
+"I shall never be sorry," he declared firmly. "I shall always bless
+this night and the impulse that brought you here. And as to waiting,"
+he went on, "well, I have had four years of waiting without any
+particular hope, even of seeing you again. I think that with hope I can
+hold out a little longer."
+
+He went over to the telephone and spoke for a few moments. Then he laid
+down the receiver and returned.
+
+"A boy is bringing up the key of your room at once," he announced. "You
+will be in the south block, a long way off, but the rooms there are
+comfortable."
+
+"Thank you, John dear," she said, smiling.
+
+"Just one thing more," he continued. "I want you to remember that this
+miserable, tangled skein of unhappiness which you have called life is
+finished and done with. From to-night you belong to me. I must see you
+to-morrow--if possible at Dredlinton House--and we can work out some
+plans then. But you are to worry about nothing. Remember that I am here,
+and I love you.--Good night!"
+
+Once more she rested for a moment in his arms. The seconds sped by.
+Then he took a quick step backwards, and they both stared at the door.
+It was closed now, but the slam of it a moment before had sounded like
+a pistol shot.
+
+"Who was that?" she asked in a terrified whisper.
+
+"That idiot of a boy with the key, I expect," he replied. "Wait, dear."
+
+He hurried outside, through the little hall and into the corridor. There
+was no one in sight, not even the sound of footsteps to be heard. He
+listened for a moment and then returned.
+
+"Who was it?" she repeated.
+
+"Nobody!"
+
+"But some one must have looked in--have seen us!"
+
+"It may have been the outside door," he suggested.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"The door was closed. I closed it behind me."
+
+"You mustn't worry, dear," he insisted. "In all probability some one did
+look into the room by mistake, but it is very doubtful whether they would
+know who we were. It may have been Sparks, my man, or the night valet,
+seeing a light here. Remember what I told you a few minutes ago--there is
+no trouble now which shall come near you."
+
+She smiled, already reassured.
+
+"Of course, I am rather absurd," she said, "but then look at me! It
+is past one o'clock, and here am I in your rooms, with that terrible
+dressing case on the table, and without a hat, and still looking, I
+am afraid," she concluded, with a final glance into the glass, "a
+little tumbled."
+
+"You look," he told her fondly, "like a girl who has just realised for
+the first time in her life that she is loved."
+
+"How strange," she laughed happily,--"because that is exactly how I
+feel!"
+
+There was a knock at the door. A page entered, swinging a key in his
+hand.
+
+"Key of 440 for the lady, sir," he announced.
+
+"Quite right, my boy. Listen. Did you meet any one in the corridor?"
+
+"No one, sir."
+
+"You haven't been in here before without knocking, have you?"
+
+"No, sir," was the prompt reply. "I came straight up in the lift."
+
+Wingate turned to Josephine with a little shrug of the shoulders.
+
+"The mystery, then, is insoluble," he declared cheerfully, "but
+remember this, sweetheart," he added, as the boy stepped discreetly
+outside, "in small things as well as large, the troubles of this world
+for you are ended."
+
+"You don't know how wonderful it sounds to hear words like that," she
+sighed, as they stood hand in hand. "I shan't seem very selfish, John,
+shall I, if I ask for a little time to realise all this? I feel that
+everything I have and am ought to be yours at this moment, because you
+have made me so happy, because my heart is so full of gratitude. But,
+alas, I have my weaknesses! I am a very proud woman. Sometimes I am
+afraid I have been a little censorious--as regards others!"
+
+He stooped and kissed her fingers.
+
+"If you knew what it felt like," he whispered, as he held open the door
+for her, "to have something to wait for! And whether you realise it or
+not, you are with me--from now on--always--my inspiration--my daily
+happiness."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Peter Phipps, sitting in his private office, might have served as the
+very prototype of a genial, shrewd and successful business man. The
+apartment was plainly and handsomely furnished. Although, only a few
+yards away, was a private exchange and an operator who controlled many
+private wires, a single telephone only stood upon his desk. The documents
+which cumbered it were arranged in methodical little heaps. His manager
+stood by his side, with a long slip of paper in his hand. The two men had
+been studying it together.
+
+"A very excellently prepared document, Harrison," his employer declared
+graciously, as he leaned back in his chair with the tips of his fingers
+pressed together. "Capitally prepared and very lucid. A good many million
+bushels, that. We are creeping up, Harrison--creeping up."
+
+Mr. Harrison bowed in recognition of his master's words of
+commendation. He was a worn-looking, negative person, with a waxlike
+complexion, a furtive manner, and a marvellous head for the figures
+with which he juggled.
+
+"The totals are enormous, sir," he admitted, "and you may take it that
+they are absolutely correct. They represent our holdings as revised after
+the receipt of this morning's mail. I should like to point out, too, sir,
+that they have increased out of all proportion to outside shipments,
+during the last four days."
+
+Phipps touched the _Times_ with his forefinger.
+
+"Did you notice, Harrison," he asked, "that our shares touched a hundred
+and eighty last night on the street?"
+
+"I was advised of it, sir," was the quiet reply.
+
+"My fellow directors and I," Phipps continued, "are highly gratified with
+the services of our staff during this period of stress. You might let
+them know that in the counting house. We shall shortly take some
+opportunity of showing our appreciation."
+
+"You are very kind indeed, sir," the manager acknowledged, without change
+of countenance. "I am sorry to have to report that Mr. Roberts wishes to
+leave us."
+
+"Roberts? One of our best buyers!" Phipps exclaimed. "Dear me, how's
+that? Can't we meet him, Harrison? Is it a matter of salary?"
+
+"I am afraid not, sir."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Mr. Roberts has leanings towards socialism, sir. He seems to think that
+the energies of our company tend to increase the distress which exists in
+the north."
+
+The great man leaned back in his chair.
+
+"God bless my soul!" he exclaimed. "What on earth has that to do with
+Roberts? He isn't the conscience of the firm. He draws a matter of a
+thousand a year for doing as he is told."
+
+"I tried to argue with him on those lines, sir," Harrison replied. "I am
+sorry to say I found him obdurate."
+
+"He can be replaced, I suppose?" Phipps shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"With some difficulty, sir," Harrison felt compelled to admit. "There
+is, as I dare say you are aware, sir, a certain feeling against us in
+the various Exchanges. The best men are warned against accepting
+employment with us."
+
+"We pay higher salaries than any one else in the trade."
+
+"The business methods of the company towards its employees," the manager
+acknowledged, "have always been excellent. Still, there is a feeling."
+
+The chairman of the B. & I. sighed.
+
+"We will pursue the subject later, Harrison," he said. "In the meantime,
+promote some one else on the staff, if necessary. Do your best to fill
+Roberts' place adequately."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+Dredlinton lounged into the office a few minutes later. Phipps welcomed
+him without any particular enthusiasm, but promptly dismissed the typist
+to whom he had been dictating.
+
+"It happens that you are just the man I want to see," he declared.
+"Sit down."
+
+Dredlinton sank a little wearily into an easy-chair, after a glance of
+disappointment at the retreating figure.
+
+"Can't think why you always have such damned ugly girls about you,
+Phipps," he yawned. "Gives me the creeps to look at them."
+
+Peter Phipps smiled as he drew a box of cigars from his desk.
+
+"Then I will tell you the reason, my friend," he said. "For pleasure
+there is no one who appreciates beauty more than I do. For business
+I have a similar passion for efficiency. The two are never confused
+in my mind."
+
+"Regular paragon, aren't you!" Dredlinton murmured. "Why did you want to
+see me, by the by?"
+
+"What happened last night?" Phipps asked a little abruptly.
+
+"I obeyed orders," Dredlinton told him. "I told her ladyship that I
+should be home to dinner and probably bring some friends. I was a little
+late but she waited."
+
+Phipps smiled maliciously.
+
+"She didn't dine with Wingate, then, or go to the theatre?"
+
+"She did not," Dredlinton replied. "I put the kibosh on it, according
+to orders."
+
+Peter Phipps pushed the cigars across the desk towards his companion.
+
+"Try one of these before you enter upon the labours of the day," he
+invited, "and just see what you think of these figures."
+
+Dredlinton glanced at the papers carelessly at first and then with
+genuine interest. They were certainly sufficiently surprising to rouse
+him for a moment from his apathy.
+
+"Marvellous!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Marvellous indeed," his Chief assented. "Now listen to me, Dredlinton.
+Why are you sitting there, looking like a whipped dog? Why can't you wear
+a more cheerful face? If it's Farnham's cheque you are worrying about,
+here it is," he added, drawing an oblong slip of paper from the
+pigeonhole of his desk, tearing it in two, and throwing it into the
+waste-paper basket. "A year ago, you told me that the one thing in the
+world you needed was money. Well, aren't you getting it? You have only to
+run straight with us here, and to work in my interests in another quarter
+that you know of, and your fortune is made. Cheer up and look as though
+you realised it."
+
+Dredlinton crossed and uncrossed his legs nervously. His eyes were
+bloodshot and his eyelids puffy. Notwithstanding careful grooming, he had
+the air of a man running fast to seed.
+
+"I am nervous this morning, Phipps," he confided. "Had a bad night. Every
+one I've come across, too, lately, seems to be cursing the B. & I."
+
+"Let them curse," was the equable reply. "We can afford to hear a few
+harsh words when we are making money on such a scale."
+
+"Yes, but how long is it going to last?" Dredlinton asked fretfully. "Did
+you see the questions that were asked in the House yesterday?"
+
+Phipps leaned back in his chair and laughed quietly.
+
+"Questions? Yes! Who cares about them? Believe me, Dredlinton, our
+Government has one golden rule. It never interferes with private
+enterprise. I don't know whether you realise it, but since the war there
+is more elasticity about trading methods than there was before. The worst
+that could happen to us might be that they appointed a commission to
+investigate our business methods. Well, they'd find it uncommonly hard to
+get at the bottom of them, and by the time they were in a position to
+make a report, the whole thing would be over."
+
+"It's making us damned unpopular," Dredlinton grumbled.
+
+"For the moment," the other agreed, "but remember this. There was never
+such a thing as an unpopular millionaire known in history, so long as he
+chose to spend his money."
+
+Dredlinton drew a letter from his pocket and handed it across the table.
+
+"Read that," he invited. "It's the fifth I've had within the last
+two days."
+
+Phipps glanced at the beginning and the end, and threw it
+carelessly back.
+
+"Pooh! A threatening letter!" he exclaimed. "Why, I had a dozen of those
+this morning. My secretary is making a scrapbook of them."
+
+"That one of mine seems pretty definite, doesn't it?" Dredlinton remarked
+nervously.
+
+"Some of mine were uncommonly plain-spoken," Phipps acknowledged, "but
+what's the odds? You're not a coward, Dredlinton; neither am I. Neither
+is Skinflint Martin, nor Stanley. Chuck letters like that on the fire, as
+they have, and keep cheerful. The streets of London are the safest place
+in the world. No cable from your friend in New York yet?"
+
+"Not a word," Dredlinton answered. "I expected it last night. You haven't
+forgotten that Wingate's due here this morning--that is, if he keeps his
+appointment?"
+
+"Forgotten it? Not likely!" Phipps replied. "I was going to talk to you
+about that. We must have those shares. The fact of it is the Universal
+Line has played us false, the only shipping company which has. They
+promised to advise us of all proposed wheat cargoes, and they haven't
+kept their word. If my information is correct, and I expect confirmation
+of it at any moment in the cable I arranged to have sent to you, they
+have eleven steamers being loaded this very week. It's a last effort on
+the part of the Liverpool ring to break us."
+
+"What'll happen if Wingate won't sell?" Dredlinton enquired.
+
+"I never face disagreeable possibilities before the necessity arrives,"
+was the calm reply. "Wingate is certain to sell. He won't have an idea
+why we want to buy, and I shall give him twenty thousand pounds profit."
+
+"You'll find him a difficult customer," Dredlinton declared. "As you
+know, he hates us like poison."
+
+"He may do that," Phipps acknowledged. "I've given him cause to in my
+life, and hope to again. But after all, he's a shrewd fellow. He's made
+money on the Stock Exchange this last week, and he's had the sense not to
+run up against us. He's not likely to refuse a clear twenty thousand
+pounds' profit on some shares he's not particularly interested in."
+
+Dredlinton knocked the ash from his cigar. He leaned over towards his
+companion.
+
+"Look here, Phipps," he said, "you can never reckon exactly on what a
+fellow like Wingate will do or what he won't do. It is just possible I
+may be able to help in this matter."
+
+"Good man!" the other exclaimed. "How?"
+
+Dredlinton hesitated for a moment. There was a particularly ugly smile
+upon his lips.
+
+"Let us put it in this way," he said. "Supposing you fail altogether
+with Wingate?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Supposing you then pass him on to me and I succeed in getting him to
+sell the shares? What about it?"
+
+"It will be worth a thousand pounds to you," Phipps declared.
+
+"Two!"
+
+Phipps shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I don't bargain," he said, "but two let it be--that is, of course, on
+condition that I have previously failed."
+
+Dredlinton's dull eyes glittered. The slight contraction of his lips did
+nothing to improve his appearance.
+
+"I shall do my best," he promised.
+
+There was a knock at the door. A clerk from outside presented himself. As
+he held the door for a moment ajar, a wave of tangled sounds swept into
+the room,--the metallic clash of a score of typewriters, the shouting and
+bargaining of eager customers, the tinkle of telephones in the long
+series of cubicles.
+
+"Mr. Wingate is here to see you, sir," the young man announced.
+
+"You can show him in," Peter Phipps directed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Phipps received his visitor with a genial smile and outstretched hand.
+
+"Delighted to see you, Mr. Wingate," he said heartily. "Take a chair,
+please. I do not know whether you smoke in the mornings, but these
+Cabanas," he added, opening the box, "are extraordinarily mild and I
+think quite pleasant."
+
+Wingate refused both the chair and the cigars and appeared not to notice
+the outstretched hand.
+
+"You will forgive my reminding you, Mr. Phipps," he remarked drily, "that
+my visit this morning is not one of good-will. I should not be here at
+all except for Lord Dredlinton's assurance that the business on which you
+desired to see me has nothing whatever to do with the British and
+Imperial Granaries."
+
+"Nothing in the world, Mr. Wingate," was the prompt declaration. "We
+would very much rather receive you here as a friend, but we will, if you
+choose, respect your prejudices and come to the point at once."
+
+"In one moment."
+
+"You have something to say first?"
+
+"I have," Wingate replied gravely. "I should not willingly have sought
+you out. I do not, as a matter of fact, consider that any director of the
+British and Imperial Granaries deserves even a word of warning. But since
+I am here, I am going to offer it."
+
+"Of warning?" Dredlinton muttered, glancing up nervously.
+
+"Precisely," Wingate assented. "You, Mr. Phipps, and Lord Dredlinton,
+and your fellow directors, have inaugurated and are carrying on a
+business, or enterprise, whichever you choose to call it, founded upon
+an utterly immoral and brutal basis. Your operations in the course of a
+few months have raised to a ridiculous price the staple food of the
+poorer classes, at a time when distress and suffering are already
+amongst them. I have spent a considerable portion of my time since I
+arrived in England studying this matter, and this is the conclusion at
+which I have arrived."
+
+"My dear Mr. Wingate, one moment," Phipps intervened. "The magnitude of
+our operations in wheat has been immensely exaggerated. We are not
+abnormally large holders. There are a dozen firms in the market, buying."
+
+"Those dozen firms," was the swift reply, "are agents of yours."
+
+"That is a statement which you cannot possibly substantiate," Phipps
+declared irritably. "It is simply Stock Exchange gossip."
+
+"For once, then," Wingate went on, "Stock Exchange gossip is the truth."
+
+"My dear Mr. Wingate," Phipps expostulated, "if you will discuss this
+matter, I beg that you will do so as a business man and not as a
+sentimentalist. Yon know perfectly well that as long as the principles of
+barter exist, there must be a loser and a gainer."
+
+"The ordinary principles of barter," Wingate contended, "do not apply to
+material from which the people's food is made. I speak to you as man to
+man. You have started an enterprise of which I and others declare
+ourselves the avowed enemies. I am here to warn you, both of you," he
+added, including Lord Dredlinton with a sweep of his hand, "directors of
+the British and Imperial Granaries, that unless you release and compel
+your agents to release such stocks of wheat as will bring bread down to a
+reasonable price, you stand in personal danger. Is that clear enough?"
+
+"Clear enough," Dredlinton muttered, "but what the mischief does it
+all mean?"
+
+"You threaten us?" Phipps asked calmly.
+
+"I do indeed," Wingate assented. "I threaten you. I threaten you. Peter
+Phipps, you, Lord Dredlinton, and I threaten your absent directors. I
+came over here prepared for something in the nature of a financial duel.
+I came prepared to match my millions and my brain against yours. I find
+no inducement to do so. The struggle is uninspiring. My efforts would
+only prolong it. Quicker means must be found to deal with you."
+
+"You are misled as to your facts, Mr. Wingate," Phipps expostulated. "I
+can assure you that we are conducting a perfectly legitimate undertaking.
+We have kept all the time well within the law."
+
+"You may be within the law of the moment," was the stern reply, "but
+morally you are worse than the most outrageous bucket-shop keepers of
+Wall Street. Legislation may be slow and Parliament hampered by
+precedent, but the people have never wanted champions when they have a
+righteous cause. I tell you that you cannot carry this thing through.
+Better disgorge your profits and sell while you have a chance."
+
+Dredlinton tapped a cigarette against his desk and lit it.
+
+"My dear fellow," he said, "you really ought to go into Parliament. Such
+eloquence is rather wasted in a City office."
+
+"I rather imagined that it would be," Wingate assented. "At the same
+time, I warned you that if I came I should speak my mind."
+
+Phipps did his best for peace. This was his enemy with whom he was now
+face to face, but the final issue was not yet. He spoke suavely and
+persuasively.
+
+"Come, come," he said, "Wingate, you have changed since you and I fought
+our battles in New York and Chicago. To-day you seem to be representing
+a very worthy but misguided class of the community--the sentimentalists.
+They are invariably trying to alter by legislation conditions which are
+automatic. It is true that our operations over here may temporarily make
+bread dearer, but on the other hand we may be facing the other way within
+a month. We may be sellers of wheat, and the loaf then will be cheaper
+than it ever has been. I am an Englishman, and it is not my desire to add
+to the sufferings of my fellow countrymen."
+
+"You don't care a damn about any one's sufferings," Wingate retorted, "so
+long as you can make money out of them."
+
+Phipps for once looked a little taken aback.
+
+"My dear sir," he protested, "your trans-Atlantic bluntness is somewhat
+disconcerting. However, you must admit that we have heard you patiently.
+Let us now, if you are willing, discuss for a minute or two the real
+object of your visit."
+
+"I have delivered my warning," Wingate remarked. "I am only sorry that
+you will not take me more seriously. I am now at your service."
+
+"In plain words, then, I want to purchase your holding in the Universal
+Steamship Company, a holding amounting, I believe, to one million, two
+hundred and fifty thousand dollars."
+
+Wingate effectually concealed a genuine surprise.
+
+"You seem remarkably well informed as to my investments," he observed.
+
+"Not as to your investments generally," Phipps replied, "but as to your
+holding of Universal stock. In this stock it is my desire to secure a
+controlling interest."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Phipps hesitated for a moment. Then he replied with much apparent
+frankness.
+
+"I could invent a dozen reasons. I prefer to tell you the truth and to
+base my offer upon existing conditions."
+
+"The truth will be very interesting," Wingate murmured, with a note of
+faint sarcasm in his tone.
+
+"Here are my cards, then, laid upon the table," Phipps continued,
+rapping the place in front of him with the back of his hand. "An Asiatic
+Power has offered me an immense commission if I can arrange the sale to
+them of the Atlantic fleet of the Universal Line."
+
+"For what purpose?"
+
+"Trading purposes between Japan and China," Phipps explained. "The
+quickest way of bringing about the sale and earning my commission is for
+me to acquire a controlling interest in the company. I have already a
+certain number of shares. The possession of yours will give me control.
+The shares to-day stand at a dollar and an eighth. That would make your
+holding, Mr. Wingate, worth, say, one million, four hundred thousand
+dollars. I am going to offer you a premium on the top of that, say one
+million, six hundred thousand dollars at today's rate of exchange."
+
+"For trading purposes between Japan and China," Wingate reflected.
+
+"That is the scheme," Phipps assented.
+
+Wingate indulged in a few moments' reflection. He had no particular
+interest in the Universal Steamship Company--a company trading between
+San Francisco and Japan--and from all that he could remember of their
+position and prospects, the price was a generous one. Nevertheless, he
+was conscious of a curious disinclination to part with his shares. The
+very fact that he knew he was being watched with a certain amount of
+anxiety stiffened his impulse to retain them.
+
+"A very fair offer, Mr. Phipps, I have no doubt," he said at last. "On
+the other hand, I am not a seller."
+
+"Not a seller? Not at a quarter premium?"
+
+"Nor a half," Wingate replied, "nor, as a matter of fact, a hundred per
+cent. premium. You see, I don't trust you, Phipps. You may have told me
+the truth. You may not. I shall hold my shares for the present."
+
+"Mr. Wingate," Phipps exclaimed incredulously, "you astonish me!"
+
+"Very likely," was the unconcerned reply. "I won't say that I may not
+change my mind a little later on, if you are still a buyer. Before I did
+anything, however, I should have a few enquiries to make. If this
+concludes our business, Mr. Phipps--"
+
+Dredlinton waved a nervous hand towards him.
+
+"One moment, please," he begged, "I have just a few words to say to
+Mr. Wingate."
+
+The latter glanced at the clock.
+
+"I hope you will say them as quickly as possible," he enjoined. "I have a
+busy morning."
+
+Dredlinton leaned over Phipps' chair. There was a sinister meaning in
+his hoarse whisper.
+
+"Leave me alone with him for a moment," he suggested. "Perhaps I may be
+able to earn that two thousand pounds."
+
+Phipps rose at once from his chair and made his way towards the door.
+
+"Lord Dredlinton wishes to have a word with you, Mr. Wingate," he said.
+"I shall be on the premises, in case by any fortunate chance you should
+decide to change your mind."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Dredlinton sank into Phipps' vacated chair and leaned back with his hands
+in his trousers pockets. He had the air of a man fortified by a certain
+amount of bravado,--stimulated by some evil purpose.
+
+"So you don't want to sell those shares, Mr. Wingate?"
+
+"I have decided not to," was the calm reply.
+
+"Any particular reason?"
+
+"None," Wingate acknowledged, "except that I am not very anxious to have
+any business relations with Mr. Phipps."
+
+"And for the sake of that prejudice," Dredlinton observed, "you can
+afford to refuse such a profit as he offered you?"
+
+"I have other reasons for not wishing to sell," Wingate declared. "I have
+a very high opinion of Mr. Phipps' judgment as a business man. If the
+shares are worth so much as that to him, they are probably worth the same
+amount for me to keep."
+
+Lord Dredlinton shook his head.
+
+"Quite a fallacy, Wingate," he pronounced. "Phipps, as a matter of fact,
+is offering you considerably more than the shares are worth, because with
+their help he means to bring off a big thing."
+
+"If he relies upon my shares," was the indifferent reply, "I am afraid
+the big thing won't come off."
+
+"You won't sell, then?"
+
+"No!"
+
+Lord Dredlinton glanced for a moment at his finger nails. He seemed
+wrapped in abstract thought.
+
+"I wonder if I could induce you to change your mind," he said.
+
+"I am quite sure that you could not."
+
+"Still, I am going to try. You are a great admirer of my wife, I believe,
+Mr. Wingate?"
+
+Wingate frowned slightly.
+
+"I prefer not to discuss Lady Dredlinton with you," he said curtly.
+
+"Still, you won't mind going so far as to say that you are an admirer of
+hers?" the latter persisted.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You are probably her confidant in the unfortunate differences which have
+arisen between us?"
+
+"If I were, I should not consider it my business to inform you."
+
+"Your sympathy is without doubt on her side?"
+
+Wingate changed his attitude.
+
+"Look here," he said, "this subject is not of my choosing. I should have
+preferred to avoid it. Since you press me, however, I haven't the
+faintest hesitation in saying that I look upon your wife as one of the
+sweetest and best women I ever knew, married, unfortunately, to a person
+utterly unworthy of her."
+
+Dredlinton started in his place. A little streak of colour flushed up
+to his eyes.
+
+"What the devil do you mean by that?"
+
+"Look here," Wingate expostulated, "you can't threaten me, Dredlinton.
+You asked for what you got. Why not save time and explain why you have
+dragged your wife's name into this business?"
+
+Dredlinton, in his peculiar way, was angry. His speech was a little
+broken, his eyes glittered.
+
+"Explain? My God, I will! You are one of those damned frauds, Wingate,
+who pose as a purist and don't hesitate to make capital out of the
+harmless differences which sometimes arise between husband and wife. You
+sympathise with Lady Dredlinton, eh?"
+
+"I should sympathise with any woman who was your wife," Wingate assured
+him, his own temper rising.
+
+Dredlinton leaned a little forward. He spoke with a vicious
+distinctness.
+
+"You sympathise with her to such an extent that you lure her to your
+rooms at midnight and send her back when you've--"
+
+Dredlinton's courage oozed out before he had finished his speech. Wingate
+had swung around towards his companion, and there was something
+terrifying in his attitude.
+
+"You scoundrel!" he exclaimed.
+
+Dredlinton drew a little farther back and kept his finger upon the bell.
+
+"Look here," he said viciously, "you may as well drop those heroics. I am
+not talking at random. My wife was seen in your arms, in your rooms at
+the Milan Court, with her dressing case on the table, last night, by
+little Flossie Lane, your latest conquest in the musical comedy world.
+She spent the night at the Milan."
+
+"It's a lie!" Wingate declared, with cold fury. "How the devil could
+Flossie Lane see anything of the sort? She was nowhere near my rooms."
+
+"Oh, yes, she was!" Dredlinton assured him. "She just looked in--one look
+was quite enough. Didn't you hear the door slam?"
+
+"My God!" Wingate muttered, with a sudden instinct of recollection.
+
+"Perhaps you wonder why she came?" the other continued. "I will tell
+you. I followed my wife to the Milan--I thought it might be worth while.
+I saw her enter the lift and come up to your room. While I was hesitating
+as to what to do, I met Flossie. Devilish clever idea of mine! I
+determined to kill two birds with one stone. I told her you'd been
+enquiring for her--that you were alone in your rooms and would like to
+see her. She went up like a two-year-old. Jove, you ought to have seen
+her face when she came down!"
+
+"You cad!" Wingate exclaimed. "Your wife simply came to beg my
+intervention with the management to secure her a room in the--"
+
+"Chuck it!" Dredlinton interrupted. "You're a man of the world. You know
+very well that I can get a divorce, and I'm going to have it--if I want
+it. I am meeting Flossie Lane at midday at my solicitor's. What have you
+got to say about that?"
+
+"That if you keep your word it will be a very happy release for your
+wife," Wingate replied drily.
+
+Dredlinton leaned across the desk. There was an almost satyrlike grin
+upon his face.
+
+"You are a fool," he said. "My wife wants to get rid of me--you and
+she have talked that over, I have no doubt--but not this way. She is a
+proud woman, Wingate. The one desire of her life is to be free, but
+you can take this from me--if I bring my suit and gain my decree on
+the evidence I shall put before the court---don't forget Flossie Lane,
+will you?--she'll never raise her head again. That is what I am going
+to do, unless--"
+
+He paused.
+
+"Unless what?" Wingate demanded.
+
+"Unless you sell those shares to Peter Phipps."
+
+Wingate was silent for a few moments. He studied his companion
+appraisingly.
+
+"Dredlinton," he said at last, "I did you an injustice."
+
+"I am glad that you are beginning to appreciate the fact," the other
+replied, with some dignity. "I welcome your confession."
+
+"I looked upon you," Wingate continued, "as only an ordinary, weak sort
+of scoundrel. I find you one of the filthiest blackguards who ever
+crawled upon the earth."
+
+Dredlinton scowled for a moment and then laughed in a hard, unnatural
+sort of way.
+
+"I can't lose my temper with you, Wingate--upon my word, I can't. You are
+so delightfully crude and refreshing. Your style, however, is a little
+more suited to your own country, don't you think--the Far West and that
+sort of thing. Shall I draft a little agreement that you will sell the
+shares to Phipps? Just a line or two will be sufficient."
+
+Wingate made no reply. He walked across to the frosted window and gazed
+out of the upper panes up to the sky. Presently he returned.
+
+"Where is your wife?" he asked.
+
+"She telephoned from the Milan this morning, discovered that the young
+lady to whom she had such unfounded objections had left, and returned in
+a taxi just before I started for the office."
+
+"Supposing I sell these shares?"
+
+"Then," Dredlinton promised, "I shall endeavour to forget the incident
+of last night. Further than that, I might indeed be tempted, if it
+were made worth my while, to provide my wife with a more honourable
+mode of escape."
+
+"You're wonderful," Wingate declared, nodding his head quickly. "What are
+you going to get for blackmailing me into selling those shares?"
+
+"Two thousand pounds."
+
+"Get along and earn it, then."
+
+Dredlinton wrote in silence for several moments. Then he read the
+document over to himself.
+
+"'I, John Wingate--all my shares in the Universal Steamship Company, and
+accept herewith as a deposit.' There, Mr. Wingate, I think you will find
+that correct. Phipps shall write you a cheque Immediately."
+
+He touched the bell. Phipps entered almost at the same moment.
+
+"I am pleased to tell you," Dredlinton announced, "that I have induced
+Mr. Wingate to see reason. He will sell the shares."
+
+"My congratulations!" Phipps ventured, with a broad smile. "Mr. Wingate
+has made a most wise and acceptable decision."
+
+"Will you make out a cheque for ten thousand pounds as a deposit?"
+Dredlinton continued. "Mr. Wingate will then sign the agreement I have
+drawn up on the lines of the memorandum you left on the desk."
+
+"With pleasure," was the brisk reply.
+
+Wingate took up a pen, glanced through the agreement, and was on the
+point of signing his name when a startled exclamation from the man by his
+side caused him to glance up. The door had been opened. Harrison was
+standing there, looking a little worried. His tone was almost apologetic.
+
+"The Countess of Dredlinton," he announced.
+
+The arrival of Josephine affected very differently the three men, to whom
+her coming was equally surprising. Her husband, after an exclamation
+which savoured of profanity, stared at her with a doubtful and malicious
+frown upon his forehead. With Wingate she exchanged one swift glance of
+mutual understanding. Phipps, after his first start of surprise, welcomed
+her with the utmost respect and cordiality.
+
+"My dear Lady Dredlinton," he declared, "this is charming of you! I had
+really given up hoping that you would ever honour us with your presence."
+
+"You can chuck all that, Phipps," Dredlinton interrupted curtly. "My wife
+hasn't come here to bandy civilities. What do you want, madam?" he
+demanded, moving a step nearer to her.
+
+She held a slip of paper in her hand and unfolded it before their eyes.
+
+"My husband," she said, "has justly surmised that I have not come here in
+any spirit of friendliness, I have come to let Mr. Wingate know the
+contents of this cable, which arrived soon after my husband left the
+house this morning. The message was in code, but, as Mr. Wingate's name
+appeared, I have taken the trouble to transcribe it."
+
+"That's more than you could do, my lady," Dredlinton snarled.
+
+"I can assure you that you are mistaken," was the calm reply. "You forget
+that you were not quite yourself last night, and that you left the B. &
+I. code book on the study table. Please listen, Mr. Wingate."
+
+All the apparent good humour had faded from Phipps' face. He struck the
+table with his fist.
+
+"Dredlinton," he insisted, "you must use your authority. That message is
+a private one. It must not be read."
+
+Wingate moved to Josephine's side.
+
+"Must not?" he repeated under his breath.
+
+"It is a private message from a correspondent in New York, who is a
+personal friend of Lord Dredlinton's," Phipps declared. "It is of no
+concern to any one except ourselves. Dredlinton, you must make your wife
+understand--"
+
+"Understand?" Dredlinton broke in. "Give me that message, madam."
+
+He snatched at it. Wingate leaned over and swung him on one side. For a
+single moment Phipps, too, seemed about to attempt force. Then, with an
+ugly little laugh, he recovered himself.
+
+"My dear Lady Dredlinton, let me reason with you," he begged. "On this
+occasion Mr. Wingate is in opposition to our interests, your husband's
+and mine. You cannot--"
+
+"Let Lady Dredlinton read the cable," Wingate interposed.
+
+It was done before any further interference was possible. Wingate stood
+at her side, grim and threatening. The words had left her lips before
+either of the other men could shout her down.
+
+"It is a night message from New York," she said. "Listen: 'Confirm eleven
+steamers Universal Line withdrawn Japan trade loading secretly huge wheat
+cargo for Liverpool. Confirm John Wingate, Milan Court, holds controlling
+influence. Advise buy his shares any price.'"
+
+There was a moment's intense silence. Dredlinton opened his lips and
+closed them again. Phipps was exhibiting remarkable self-control. His
+tone, as he addressed Wingate, was grave but almost natural.
+
+"Under these circumstances, do you wish to repudiate your bargain?" he
+asked. "We must at least know where we are."
+
+Wingate turned to Josephine.
+
+"The matter," he decided, "is not in my hands. Lady Dredlinton," he went
+on, "the person who opened the door of my sitting room last night was
+Miss Flossie Lane, a musical comedy actress sent there by your husband,
+who had followed you to the Milan. Your husband imagines that because you
+were in my apartments at such an unusual hour, he has cause for a
+divorce. That I do not believe, but, to save proceedings which might be
+distasteful to you, I was prepared to sell Mr. Phipps my shares in the
+Universal Line, imagining it to be an ordinary business transaction. The
+cable which you have just read has revealed the true reason why Phipps
+desires to acquire those shares. The arrival of that wheat will force
+down prices, for a time, at any rate. It may even drive this accursed
+company into seeking some other field of speculation. What shall I do?"
+
+She smiled at him over her husband's head. She did not hesitate even for
+a second. Her tone was proud and insistent.
+
+"You must of course keep your shares," she declared. "As regards the
+other matter, my husband can do as he thinks well."
+
+Wingate's eyes flashed his thanks. He drew a little sigh of relief
+and deliberately tore in halves the agreement which he had been
+holding. Dredlinton leaned over the desk, snatched at the telephone
+receiver, threw himself into his chair, and, glared first at Wingate
+and then at his wife.
+
+"My God, then," he exclaimed furiously, "I'll keep my word!--Mayfair
+67.--I'll drag you through the dust, my lady," he went on. "You shall be
+the heroine of one of those squalid divorce cases you've spoken of so
+scornfully. You shall crawl through life a divorcee, made an honest woman
+through the generosity of an American adventurer!--67, Mayfair, I said."
+
+Phipps shook his head sorrowfully.
+
+"My friend," he said, "this is useless bluster. Put down the telephone.
+Let us talk the matter out squarely. Your methods are a little too
+melodramatic."
+
+"Go to hell!" Dredlinton shouted. "You are too much out for compromises,
+Phipps. There are times when one must strike.--Exchange! I say, Exchange!
+Why the devil can't you give me Mayfair 67?--What's that?--An urgent
+call?--Well, go on, then. Out with it.--Who's speaking? Mr. Stanley Rees'
+servant?--Yes, yes! I'm Lord Dredlinton. Get on with it."
+
+There was a moment of intense silence. Dredlinton was listening,
+indifferently at first, then as though spellbound, his lips a little
+parted, his cheeks colourless, his eyes filled with a strange terror.
+Presently he laid down the receiver, although he failed to replace it. He
+turned very slowly around, and his eyes, still filled with a haunting
+fear, sought Wingate's.
+
+"Stanley has disappeared!" he gasped. "He had one of those letters last
+night. It lies on his table now, his servant says. There was a noise in
+his room at four o'clock this morning. When they called him---he had
+gone! No one has seen or heard of him since!"
+
+"Stanley disappeared?" Phipps repeated in a dazed tone.
+
+"There's been foul play!" Dredlinton cried hoarsely. "His servant is
+sure of it!"
+
+Wingate picked up his hat and stick and moved towards the door. From the
+threshold he looked back, waiting whilst Josephine joined him.
+
+"Youth," he said calmly, "must be served. Stanley Rees was, I believe,
+the youngest director on the Board of the British and Imperial Granaries.
+Now, if you like, Mr. Phipps, I'll come on to your market. I'm a seller
+of a hundred thousand bushels of wheat at to-day's price."
+
+"Go to hell!" Phipps shouted, his face black with rage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Roger Kendrick was in and disengaged when Wingate called upon him, a few
+minutes later. He welcomed his visitor cordially.
+
+"That was a pretty good list you gave me the other day, Wingate," he
+remarked, "You've made money. You're making it still."
+
+"Good!" Wingate commented, with a nod of satisfaction. "I dare say I
+shall need it all. Close up everything, Kendrick."
+
+"The devil! One or two of your things are going strong, you know."
+
+"Take profits and close up," Wingate directed. "I've another
+commission for you."
+
+"One moment, then."
+
+Kendrick hurried into the outer office and gave some brief instructions.
+His client picked up the tape and studied it until his return.
+
+"How are things in the House?" Wingate enquired, as he resumed his seat.
+
+"Uneasy," Kendrick replied. "B. & I.'s are the chief feature. They
+show signs of weakness, owing to the questions in the House of
+Commons last night."
+
+"I'm a bear on B. & I.'s," Wingate declared. "What are they to-day?"
+
+"They opened at five and a quarter. Half-an-hour ago they were being
+offered at five and an eighth."
+
+"Very well," Wingate replied, "sell."
+
+"How many?"
+
+"No limit. Simply sell."
+
+The broker was a little startled.
+
+"Do you know anything?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing definite. I've been studying their methods for some time. What
+they've been trying to do practically is to corner wheat. No one has ever
+succeeded in doing it yet. I don't think they will. My belief is that
+they are coming to the end of their tether, and there is still a large
+shipment of wheat which will be afloat next week."
+
+Kendrick answered an enquiry through the telephone and leaned back in
+his chair.
+
+"Wingate," he said, "I'm not sure that I actually agree with you about
+the B. & I. They have a wonderful system of subsidiary companies, and
+their holdings of wheat throughout the country are enormous,--all bought,
+mind you, at much below to-day's price. If they were to realise to-day,
+they'd realise an enormous profit. Personally, it seems to me that
+they've made their money and they can realise practically when they like.
+The price of wheat can't slump sufficiently to put them in Queer Street."
+
+"The price of wheat is coming down, though, and coming down within the
+next ten days," Wingate pronounced.
+
+Kendrick stretched out his hand towards the cigarettes and passed the box
+across to his friend.
+
+"Why do you think so?" he asked bluntly. "According to accounts, the
+harvests all over the world are disastrous. There is less wheat being
+shipped here than ever before in the world's history. I can conceive that
+we may have reached the top, and that the price may decline a few points
+from now onwards, but even that would make very little difference. I
+can't see the slightest chance of any material fall in wheat."
+
+"I can," Wingate replied. "Don't worry, Ken. No need to dash into the
+business like a Chicago booster. Just go at it quietly but
+unwaveringly. I suppose a good many of the B. & I. commissions are
+still open, and there's bound to be a little buying elsewhere, but I'm
+a seller of wheat, too, wherever there's any business doing. Wheat's
+coming down; so are the B. & I. shares. I'm not giving you verbal
+orders. Here's your warrant."
+
+He drew a sheet of note paper towards him and wrote a few lines upon it.
+Kendrick blotted and laid a paper weight upon it.
+
+"That's one of the biggest things I've ever taken on for a client,
+Wingate," he said. "You won't mind if I venture upon one last word?"
+
+"Not I," was the cheerful reply. "Go right ahead."
+
+"You're sure that Phipps hasn't drawn you into this? He's a perfect devil
+for cunning, that man, and he's simply been waiting for your coming. I
+think it was the disappointment of his life when you first came down to
+the City and left him alone. You've shown wonderful restraint, old chap.
+You're sure you haven't been goaded into this?"
+
+Wingate smiled.
+
+"Don't you worry about me, Ken," he begged. "Of course, in a manner of
+speaking, this is a duel between Phipps and myself, and if you were to
+ask my advice which to back, I don't know that I should care to take the
+responsibility of giving it. At the same time, I'm out to break Phipps
+and I rather think this time I'm going to do it.--Come along to the
+Milan, later on, and lunch. Lady Amesbury and Sarah Baldwin and a few
+others are coming."
+
+"Lady Dredlinton, by any chance?" Kendrick asked.
+
+"Lady Dredlinton, certainly."
+
+"I'll turn up soon after one. And, Wingate."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Don't think I'm a croaker, but I know Peter Phipps. There isn't a man on
+this earth I'd fear more as an enemy. He's unscrupulous, untrustworthy,
+and an unflinching hater. You and he are hard up against one another, I
+know, and I suppose you realise that your growing friendship with
+Josephine Dredlinton is simply hell for him."
+
+"I imagine you know that his attentions to her have been entirely
+unwelcome," Wingate said calmly.
+
+"I will answer for it that she has never encouraged him for a moment,"
+Kendrick assented, "yet Phipps is one of those men who never take 'no'
+for an answer, who simply don't know what it is to despair of a thing.
+I've been watching that ménage for the last twelve months, and I've
+watched Peter Phipps fighting his grim battle. I think I was one of the
+party when he first met her. Since then, though the fellow has any amount
+of tact, his pursuit of her must have been a persecution. He put
+Dredlinton on the Board of the B. & I., solely to buy his way into the
+household. He sent him home one day in a new car--a present to his wife.
+She has never ridden in it and she made her husband return it."
+
+"I know," Wingate muttered. "I've heard a little of this, and seen it,
+too."
+
+"Well, there you are," Kendrick concluded. "You know Phipps. You know
+what it must seem like to him to have another man step in, just as he may
+have been flattering himself that he was gaining ground. He hated you
+before. He'd give his soul, if he had one to break you now."
+
+"He'll do what he can, Ken," said Wingate, with a smile, as he left the
+office, "but you may take it that the odds are a trifle on us.--Not later
+than one-thirty, then."
+
+"There is no doubt," he remarked a moment later, as he stepped into his
+car, where Josephine was waiting for him, "that we are at war."
+
+She laughed quietly. The excitement of those last few minutes in the
+offices of the British and Imperial Granaries had acted like a stimulant.
+She had lost entirely her tense and depressed air. The colour of her eyes
+was newly discovered in the light that played there.
+
+"You couldn't have fired the first shot in more dramatic fashion," she
+declared. "Even Mr. Phipps lost his nerve for a moment, and I thought
+that Henry was going to collapse altogether. I wonder what they are
+doing now."
+
+"Ringing up Scotland Yard, or on their way there, I should think,"
+Wingate replied.
+
+She shivered for a moment.
+
+"You are not afraid of the police, are you?" she asked.
+
+"I don't think we need be," he replied cheerfully, "unless we have bad
+luck. Of course, I have had professional advice as to all the details.
+The thing has been thought out step by step, almost scientifically. Slate
+is a marvellous fellow, and I think he has gathered up every loose end.
+Makes one realise how easy crime would be if one went into it unflurried
+and with a clear conscience.--Tell me, by the by, was it by accident that
+you opened that cable this morning?"
+
+"Not entirely," she confessed. "I was in the library this morning talking
+to Grant, my new butler."
+
+"Satisfactory, I trust?" Wingate murmured.
+
+"A paragon," she replied, with a little gleam in her eyes. "Well, on
+Henry's desk was the rough draft of a cable, torn into pieces, and on one
+of them, larger than the rest, I couldn't help seeing your name. It
+looked as though Henry had been sending a cable in which you were somehow
+concerned. While I was there, the reply came, so I decided to open and
+decode it. Directly I realised what it was about, I brought it straight
+to the office, hoping to catch you there."
+
+"You are a most amazing woman," he declared.
+
+She leaned a little towards him.
+
+"And you are a most likable man," she murmured.
+
+Wingate's luncheon party had been arranged for some days, and was being
+given, in fact, at the suggestion of Lady Amesbury herself.
+
+"I am a perfectly shameless person," she declared, as she took her seat
+by Wingate's side at the round table in the middle of the restaurant. "I
+invited myself to this party. I always do. The last three times our dear
+host has been over to England, as soon as I have enquired after his
+health and his business, and whether the right woman has turned up yet, I
+ask him when he's going to take me to lunch at the Milan. I do love
+lunching in a restaurant," she confided to Kendrick, who sat at her other
+side, "and nearly all my friends prefer their stodgy dining rooms."
+
+"Have you heard the news, aunt?" Sarah asked across the table.
+
+"About that silly little Mrs. Liddiard Green, do you mean, and Jack
+Fulton? I hear they were seen in Paris together last week."
+
+"Pooh! Who cares about Mrs. Liddiard Green!" Sarah scoffed. "I mean the
+news about Jimmy. The dear boy's gone into the City."
+
+"God bless my soul!" Lady Amesbury exclaimed. "How much has he got to
+lose?"
+
+"He isn't going to lose anything," Sarah replied. "Mr. Maurice White has
+taken him into his office, and he's going to have a commission on the
+business he does. This is his first morning. He must be busy or he'd have
+been here before now. Jimmy's never late for meals."
+
+"Hm!" Lady Amesbury grunted. "I expect he has to stay and mind the office
+while Mr. White gets his lunch."
+
+"Considering," Sarah rejoined with dignity, "that there are seventeen
+other clerks, besides office boys and typists, and Jimmy has a room to
+himself, that doesn't seem likely. I expect he's doing a big deal for
+somebody or other."
+
+"Thank God it isn't me!" her aunt declared. "I love Jimmy--every one
+does--but he wasn't born for business."
+
+"We shall see," Sarah observed. "My own opinion of Jimmy is that his
+mental gifts are generally underrated."
+
+"You're not prejudiced, by any chance, are you?" Kendrick asked,
+smiling.
+
+"That is my dispassionate opinion," Sarah pronounced, "and I don't want
+any peevish remarks from you, Roger Kendrick. You're jealous because you
+let Mr. White get in ahead of you and secure Jimmy. It was only three
+days ago that we agreed he should go into the City. He was perfectly
+sweet about it, too. He was playing for the M.C.C. to-morrow, and polo at
+Ranelagh on Saturday."
+
+"Is he giving them both up?" Kendrick enquired.
+
+"He's giving up the cricket, of course, unless he finds that it happens
+to be a slack day in the City," Sarah replied. "As for the polo, well, no
+one works on Saturday afternoon, do they?"
+
+"How is my friend, Mr. Peter Phipps?" Lady Amesbury demanded. "The big
+man who looked like a professional millionaire? Is he making a man of
+that bad husband of yours, Josephine?"
+
+"They spend a good deal of time together," Josephine replied. "I don't
+think he'll ever succeed in making a business man out of Henry, though,
+any more than Mr. White will out of Jimmy."
+
+A familiar form approached the table. Sarah welcomed him with a wave of
+her hand. The Honourable Jimmy greeted Lady Amesbury and his host,
+nodded to every one else, and took the vacant place which had been left
+for him. He seemed fatigued.
+
+"Can I have a cocktail, Mr. Wingate?" he begged, summoning a waiter. "A
+double Martini, please. Big things doing in the City," he confided.
+
+"Have you had to work very hard, dear?" Sarah asked sympathetically.
+
+"Absolutely feverish rush ever since I got there," he declared. "Don't
+know how long my nerves will stand it. Telephones ringing, men rushing
+out of the office without their hats, and bumping into you without saying
+'by your leave' or 'beg your pardon,' or any little civility of that
+sort, and good old Maurice, with his hair standing up on end, shouting
+into two telephones at the same time, and dictating a letter to one of
+the peachiest little bits of fluff I've seen outside the front rows for I
+don't know how long."
+
+"Jimmy," Sarah said sternly, "I'm not sure that the City is going to suit
+you. You don't have to dictate letters to her, do you?"
+
+"No such luck," Jimmy sighed. "She is the Chief's own particular
+property. Does a thousand words a minute and knits a jumper at the
+same time."
+
+"Whom do you dictate your letters to?" Sarah demanded.
+
+"To tell you the truth," Jimmy answered, falling on his cocktail, "I
+haven't had any to write yet."
+
+"What has your work been?" Lady Amesbury asked.
+
+"Kind of superintending," the young man explained, "looking on at
+everything--getting the hang of it, you know."
+
+"Are the other men there nice?" Sarah enquired.
+
+"Well, we don't seem to have had much time for conversation yet," Jimmy
+replied, attacking his caviar like a man anxious to make up for lost
+time. "I heard one chap tell another that I'd come to give tone to the
+establishment, which seemed to me a pleasant and friendly way of
+looking at it."
+
+"You didn't have any commissions yourself?" Sarah went on.
+
+"Well, not exactly," Jimmy confessed. "About half an hour before I
+left, a lunatic with perspiration streaming down his face, and no hat,
+threw himself into my room. 'I'll buy B. & I.'s,' he shouted. 'I'll buy
+B. & I.'s!'"
+
+"What did you do?" Wingate enquired with interest.
+
+"I told him I hadn't got any," was the injured reply. "He went cut like a
+streak of damp lightning. I heard him kicking up an awful hullaballoo in
+the next office."
+
+"Jimmy," Sarah said reproachfully, "that might have been your first
+client. You ought to have made a business of finding him some B. & I.'s."
+
+"There might have been some in a drawer or somewhere," Lady Amesbury
+suggested.
+
+"Distinct lack of enterprise," Kendrick put in. "You should have thrown
+yourself on the telephone and asked me if I'd got a few."
+
+"Never thought of it," Jimmy confessed. "Live and learn. First day and
+all that sort of thing, you know. I tell you what," he went on, "all the
+excitement and that gives you an appetite for your food."
+
+The manager of the restaurant, on his way through the room, recognised
+Wingate and came to pay his respects.
+
+"Did you hear about the little trouble over in the Court, Mr. Wingate?"
+he enquired.
+
+"No, I haven't heard anything," Wingate replied.
+
+They all leaned a little forward. The manager included them in his
+confidence.
+
+"The young gentleman you probably know, Mr. Wingate," he said,--"has the
+suite just underneath yours--Mr. Stanley Rees, his name is--disappeared
+last night."
+
+"Disappeared?" Lady Amesbury repeated.
+
+"Stanley Rees?" Kendrick exclaimed.
+
+The manager nodded.
+
+"A very pleasant young gentleman," he continued, "wealthy, too. He is a
+nephew of Mr. Peter Phipps, Chairman of the Directors of the British and
+Imperial Granaries. It seems he dressed for dinner, came down to the bar
+to have a cocktail, leaving his coat and hat and scarf up in his room,
+and telling his valet that he would return for them in ten minutes. He
+hasn't been seen or heard of since."
+
+"Sounds like the 'Arabian Nights,'" Jimmy declared. "Probably found he
+was a bit late for his grub and went on without his coat and hat."
+
+"What about not coming back all night, sir?" the manager asked.
+
+"Lads will be lads," Jimmy answered sententiously.
+
+The manager showed an entire lack of sympathy with his attitude.
+
+"Mr. Stanley Rees," he said, "is a remarkably well-conducted, quiet
+young gentleman, very popular here amongst the domestics, and noted for
+keeping very early hours. He was engaged to dine out at Hampstead with
+some friends, who telephoned for him several times during the evening.
+He was also supping here with a gentleman who arrived and waited an
+hour for him."
+
+"Was he in good health?" Wingate enquired casually.
+
+"Excellent, I should say, sir," the manager replied. "He was a young
+gentleman who took remarkably good care of himself."
+
+"I know the sort," Jimmy said complacently, watching his glass being
+filled. "A whisky and soda when the doctor orders it, and ginger ale with
+his luncheon."
+
+The manager was called away. Kendrick had become thoughtful.
+
+"Queer thing," he remarked, "that young Rees should have disappeared just
+as the B. & I. have become a feature on 'Change. He was Phipps'
+right-hand man in financial matters."
+
+"Disappearances in London seem a little out of date," Wingate remarked,
+as he scrutinised the dish which the _maître d'hôtel_ had brought for his
+inspection. "The missing person generally turns up and curses the
+scaremongers.--Lady Amesbury, this Maryland chicken is one of our
+favourite New York dishes. Kendrick, have some more wine. Wilshaw, your
+appetite has soon flagged."
+
+"All the same," Kendrick mused, "it's a dashed queer thing about
+Stanley Rees."
+
+After his guests had departed, Wingate had a few minutes alone with
+Josephine.
+
+"I hate letting you go back to that house," he admitted.
+
+She laughed softly.
+
+"Why, my dear," she said, "think how necessary it is. For the first time,
+in my life I am absolutely looking forward to it. I never thought that I
+should live to associate romance with that ugly, brown-stone building."
+
+"If there's the slightest hitch, you'll let me hear, won't you?" he
+begged. "The telephone is on to my room, and anything that happens
+unforeseen--remember this, Josephine--is a complete surprise to you.
+Everything is arranged so that you are not implicated in any way."
+
+"Pooh!" she scoffed. "Nothing will happen. You are invincible, John. You
+will conquer with these men as you have with poor me."
+
+"You have no regrets?" he asked, as they moved through the hall on
+the way out.
+
+"I regret nothing," she answered fervently. "I never shall."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Wingate, after several strenuous hours spent in Slate's office,
+returned to his rooms late that night, to find Peter Phipps awaiting
+him. There was something vaguely threatening about the bulky figure of
+the man standing gloomily upon the hearth rug, all the spurious good
+nature gone from his face, his brows knitted, his cheeks hanging a
+little and unusually pale. Wingate paused on the threshold of the room
+and his hand crept into his pocket. Phipps seemed to notice the gesture
+and shook his head.
+
+"Nothing quite so crude, Wingate," he said. "I know an enemy when I see
+one, but I wasn't thinking of getting rid of you that way."
+
+"I have found it necessary," Wingate remarked slowly, "to be prepared for
+all sorts of tricks when I am up against anybody as conscienceless as
+you. I don't want you here, Phipps. I didn't ask you to come and see me.
+I've nothing to discuss with you."
+
+"There are times," Phipps replied, "when the issue which cannot be
+fought out to the end with arms can be joined in the council chamber. I
+have come to know your terms."
+
+Wingate shook his head.
+
+"I don't understand. It is too soon for this sort of thing. You are not
+beaten yet."
+
+"I am tired," his visitor muttered. "May I sit down?"
+
+"You are an unwelcome guest," Wingate replied coldly, "but sit if you
+will. Then say what you have to say and go."
+
+Phipps sank into an easy-chair. It was obvious that he was telling the
+truth so far as regarded his fatigue. He seemed to have aged ten years.
+
+"I have been down below in Stanley's rooms," he explained, "been through
+his papers. It's true what the inspector fellow reports. There isn't a
+scrap of evidence of any complication in his life. There isn't a shadow
+of doubt in my mind as to the cause of his disappearance."
+
+"Indeed!" Wingate murmured.
+
+"It's a villainous plot, engineered by you!" Phipps continued, his
+voice shaking. "I'm fond of the boy. That's why I've come to you. Name
+your terms."
+
+Wingate indulged in a curious bout of silence. He took a pipe from a
+rack, filled it leisurely with tobacco, lit it and smoked for several
+moments. Then he turned towards his unwelcome companion.
+
+"I am debarred by a promise made to myself," he said coldly, "from
+offering you any form of hospitality. If you wish to smoke, I shall not
+interfere."
+
+Phipps shook his head.
+
+"I have not smoked all the evening," he confessed, "I cannot. You are
+right when you say that we are not beaten, but I like to look ahead. I
+want to know your terms."
+
+"You are anxious about your nephew?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"And why do you connect me with his disappearance?"
+
+Phipps gave a little weary gesture.
+
+"I am so sick of words," he said.
+
+"We will argue the matter, then," conceded Wingate, "from your point of
+view. Supposing that your nephew has been abducted and is held at the
+present moment as a hostage. It would be, without doubt, by some person
+or persons who resented the brutality, the dishonesty, the foul
+commercial methods of the company with which he was connected. An
+amendment of those methods might produce his release."
+
+"And that amendment?"
+
+Wingate picked up a newspaper and glanced at it, pulled a heavy gold
+pencil from his chain and made a few calculations.
+
+"Your operations in wheat," he said, "have brought the loaf which should
+cost the working man a matter of sevenpence up to two shillings. You seem
+to have dabbled in a good many other products, too, the price of which
+you have forced up into the clouds,--just those products which are
+necessary to the working man. But we will leave those alone, if you were
+to sell wheat at forty-five per cent less than to-day's price, I should
+think it extremely likely that Stanley Rees would be able to dine with
+you to-morrow night."
+
+"You are talking like a madman," Phipps declared. "It would mean ruin."
+
+"How sad!" Wingate murmured. "All the same, I do not think that you will
+see your nephew again until you have sold wheat."
+
+"You admit that you are responsible, then?" Phipps growled.
+
+"I admit nothing of the sort. I am simply speculating as to the possible
+cause of his disappearance. If I had anything to do with it, those would
+be my terms. To-morrow they might be the same; perhaps the next day.
+But," he went on, with a sudden almost fierce break in his voice, "the
+day after would probably be too late. There are a great many hungry
+people in the north. There are a great many who are starving. There is
+one in London who is beginning to feel the pangs."
+
+"You are ill-treating him!" Phipps cried passionately. "I shall go to
+Scotland Yard myself! I shall tell them what you have said. I shall
+denounce you!"
+
+"My dear fellow," Wingate scoffed, "you have done that already. You have
+induced those very excellent upholders of English law and liberty to set
+a plain-clothes man to following me about. I can assure you that he has
+had a very pleasant and a very busy evening."
+
+Phipps rose to his feet.
+
+"Wingate," he exclaimed, "curse you!"
+
+"A very natural sentiment. I hope that you may repeat it a good many
+times before the end comes."
+
+"You are a conspirator--a criminal!" Phipps continued, his voice shaking
+with excitement. "You are breaking the laws of the country. I shall see
+that you are in gaol before the week is out!"
+
+"A good deal of what you say is true," Wingate admitted, "with the
+possible exception of the latter part. Believe me, Peter Phipps, you are
+a great deal more likely to see the inside of a prison than I am. You
+will be a poor man presently and poor men of your type are desperate."
+
+Phipps remained perfectly silent for several moments.
+
+"Wingate, you are a hard enemy," he said at last. "Will you treat?"
+
+"I have named the price."
+
+"You are a fool!" Phipps almost shouted. "Do you know," he went on,
+striking the table with his clenched fist, "that what you suggest would
+cost five million pounds?"
+
+"You and your friends can stand it," was the unruffled reply. "If not,
+your brokers can share the loss."
+
+"That means you make a bankrupt of me?" Phipps demanded hoarsely.
+
+"Why not?" Wingate replied. "It's been a long duel between us, Phipps,
+and I mean this to be the final bout."
+
+Phipps moved his position a little uneasily. He was keeping himself under
+control, but the veins were standing out upon his forehead, his frame
+seemed tense with passion.
+
+"Tell me, Wingate, is it still the girl?"
+
+Wingate looked across at him. His face and tone were alike relentless,
+his eyes shone like points of steel.
+
+"You did ill to remind me of that, Phipps," he said. "However, I will
+answer your question. It is still the girl."
+
+"She was nothing to you," Phipps muttered sullenly.
+
+"One can't make your class of reptile understand these things," Wingate
+declared scornfully. "She came to me in New York with a letter from her
+father, my old tutor, who had died out in the Adirondacks without a
+shilling in the world. He sent the girl to me and asked me to put her in
+the way of earning her own living. It was a sacred charge, that, and I
+accepted it willingly. The only trouble was that I was leaving for Europe
+the next day. I put a thousand dollars in the bank for her, found her a
+comfortable home with respectable people, and then considered in what
+office I could place her during my absence. I had the misfortune to meet
+you that morning. Time was short. Every one knew that your office was
+conducted on sound business lines. I told you her story and you took her.
+I hadn't an idea that a man alive could be such a villain as you turned
+out to be."
+
+"You'd be a fine fellow, Wingate," Phipps said, with a touch of his old
+cynicism, "if you weren't always sheering off towards the melodramatic.
+The girl wanted to see life, she attracted me, and I showed it to her.
+I'd have done the right thing by her if she hadn't behaved like an
+hysterical idiot."
+
+"The girl's death lies at your door, and you know it," Wingate replied.
+"It has taken me a good many years to pay my debt to the dead. I did my
+best to kill you, but without a weapon you were a hard man to shake the
+last spark of life out of.--There, I am tired of this. I have let you
+talk. I have answered your useless questions. Be so good as to leave me."
+
+The shadow of impending disaster seemed to have found its way into
+Phipps' bones. He seemed to have lost alike his courage and his dignity.
+
+"Look here," he said, "the rest of the things which lie between us we can
+fight out, but I want my nephew. What will his return cost me in hard
+cash between you and me?"
+
+"The cost of bringing wheat down to its normal figure," Wingate answered.
+
+"I couldn't do it if I would," Phipps argued. "There's Skinflint
+Martin--he won't part with a bushel. I'm not alone in this. Come, I have
+my cheque book in my pocket. You can fight the B. & I. to the death, if
+you will--commercially, politically, anyhow--but I want my nephew."
+
+Wingate threw open the door.
+
+"There was a girl once," he reminded him, "my ward, who drowned herself.
+To hell with your nephew, Phipps!"
+
+Passion for a moment made once more a man of Phipps. His eyes blazed.
+
+"And to hell with you!--Hypocrite!--Adulterer!" he shouted.
+
+Wingate's fist missed the point of his adversary's chin by less than a
+thought. Phipps went staggering back through the open door into the
+corridor and stood leaning against the wall, half dazed, his hand to his
+cheek. Wingate looked at him contemptuously for a moment, every nerve in
+his body aching for the fight. Then he remembered.
+
+"Get home to your kennel, Phipps," he ordered.
+
+Then he slammed the door and locked it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+"Another strange face," Sarah remarked, looking after the butler who had
+just brought in the coffee. "I thought you were one of those women,
+Josephine, who always kept their servants."
+
+"I do, as a rule," was the quiet reply, "only sometimes Henry
+intervenes. If there is one thing that the modern servant dislikes, it
+is sarcasm, and sarcasm is Henry's favourite weapon when he wants to be
+really disagreeable. Generally speaking, I think a servant would rather
+be sworn at."
+
+"You seem to have made a clean sweep this time."
+
+Josephine stirred her coffee thoughtfully.
+
+"Henry has been having one of his bad weeks," she said. "He has been
+absolutely impossible to every one. He threatened to give every servant
+in the house notice, the other day, because his bell wasn't answered, so
+I took him at his word. We've no one left except the cook, and she
+declined to go. She has been with us ever since we were married. All the
+same, I wouldn't have had any one but you and Jimmy to dinner to-night.
+I wasn't at all sure how things would turn out. Besides, it isn't every
+one I'd care to ask into this dungeon of a room."
+
+"I was wondering why we were here, Josephine," Sarah remarked, looking
+around her. "It used to be one of your hospital rooms, surely?"
+
+Josephine nodded.
+
+"The other rooms want turning out, dear. I knew you wouldn't mind."
+
+There are women as well as men who have learnt the art of a sociable
+silence. Josephine and Sarah finished their cigarettes and their coffee
+in a condition of reflective ease. Then Sarah stood up and straightened
+her hair in front of the mirror.
+
+"Josephine," she announced, "I am going to marry Jimmy."
+
+"You have really made up your minds at last, then?" her hostess enquired,
+with interest.
+
+"My dear," Sarah declared, "we've come to the conclusion that we
+can't afford to remain single any longer. We are both spending far
+too much money."
+
+"I am sure I wish you luck," Josephine said earnestly. "I am very fond
+of Jimmy."
+
+"He is rather a dear."
+
+"I wonder how you'll like settling down. It will be a very different
+life for you."
+
+"Of course," Sarah admitted with a sigh, "I hate giving up my
+profession, but there is a sort of monotony about it when Jimmy insists
+upon being my only fare."
+
+"Is this the reason why Jimmy is making his great debut as a man of
+affairs?" Josephine asked.
+
+"Not exactly," Sarah replied. "As a matter of fact, that was rather a
+bluff. His mother is so afraid of his starting in some business where
+they'll get him to put some money in, that she has agreed to allow him a
+couple of thousand a year until he comes in for his property, on
+condition that he clears out of the City altogether."
+
+"That seems quite decent of her. Where are you going to live?"
+
+"In the bailiff's cottage on the Longmere estate, which will come to
+Jimmy some day. Jimmy is going to take an interest in farming. So long as
+it isn't his own farm, his mother thinks that won't hurt."
+
+Josephine laughed softly.
+
+"A bright old lady, his mother, I should think."
+
+"Well, she has had the good sense to realise at last that I am the only
+person likely to keep Jimmy out of mischief. He is such a booby
+sometimes, and yet, somehow or other, you know, Josephine, I've never
+wanted to marry anybody else. I don't understand why, but there it is."
+
+"That's the right feeling, dear, so long as you're sure," Josephine
+declared cheerfully.
+
+Sarah rose suddenly to her feet, crossed the little space between them,
+and crouched on the floor by her friend's chair.
+
+"You've been such a brick to me, dear," she declared, looking up at her
+fondly, "and I feel a perfect beast being so happy all the time."
+
+Josephine let her fingers rest on the strands of soft, wavy hair.
+
+"Don't be absurd, Sarah," she remonstrated. "Besides, things haven't been
+quite so bad with me lately."
+
+"You look different, somehow," her guest admitted, "as though you were
+taking a little more interest in life. I've seen quite a wonderful light
+in your eyes, now and then."
+
+"Ridiculous!"
+
+"It isn't ridiculous, and I'm delighted about it," Sarah went on. "You
+must know, dear, that I am not quite an idiot, and I am too fond of you
+not to notice any change."
+
+"There is just one thing which does make a real change in a woman's
+life," Josephine declared, her voice trembling for a moment, "and that is
+when she finds that it really makes a difference to some one whether
+she's miserable or not."
+
+Sarah nodded appreciatively.
+
+"I know you think I am only a shallow, outrageous little flirt sometimes,
+Josephine," she said, "but I am not. I do know what you mean. Only I
+don't think you help yourself to as much happiness from that knowledge as
+you ought to, as you have a right to."
+
+"What do you mean?" Josephine demanded half fearfully.
+
+"Just what I say. I think he is simply splendid, and if any one cared for
+me as much as he does for you, I'd--"
+
+She stopped short and looked towards the door. Jimmy was peering in, and
+behind him Lord Dredlinton.
+
+"Eh? what's that, Sarah?" the former demanded. "You'd what?"
+
+Sarah rose to her feet and resumed her place in her chair.
+
+"I was trying to pull Josephine down from the clouds," she remarked.
+
+Lord Dredlinton smiled across at her. There was an unpleasant
+significance in his tone, as he answered, "Oh, it can be done, my dear
+young lady." He paused and looked at her disagreeably, "but I am not
+sure that you are the right person to do it."
+
+The shadow had fallen once more upon Josephine's face. She had become
+cold and indifferent. She ignored her husband's words. Lord Dredlinton
+was looking around him in disgust.
+
+"What on earth are we in this mausoleum for?" he demanded.
+
+"Domestic reasons," Josephine answered, with her finger upon the bell.
+"Have you men had your coffee?"
+
+"We had it in the dining room," Jimmy assured her.
+
+"I can't think why you hurried so," Sarah grumbled. "How dared you only
+stay away a quarter of an hour, Jimmy! You know I love to have a gossip
+with Josephine."
+
+"Couldn't stick being parted from you any longer, my dear," the young man
+replied complacently.
+
+Sarah made a grimace.
+
+"To be perfectly candid," Lord Dredlinton intervened, throwing away his
+cigar and lighting a cigarette, "I am afraid it was my fault that we
+came in so soon. Poor sort of host, eh, Jimmy? Fact is, I'm nervous
+to-night. Every damned newspaper I've picked up seems to be launching
+thunderbolts at the B. & I. And now this is the third day and there's
+no news of Stanley."
+
+"Every one seems to know about his disappearance," Jimmy remarked. "They
+were all talking about it at the club to-day."
+
+"What do they say?" Lord Dredlinton asked eagerly. "They all leave off
+talking about it when I am round."
+
+"Blooming mystery," the young man pronounced. "That's the conclusion
+every one seems to arrive at. A chap I know, whose chauffeur pals up with
+Rees' valet, told me that he's been having heaps of threatening letters
+from fellows who'd got the knock over the B. & I. He seemed to think
+they'd done him in."
+
+Dredlinton shivered nervously.
+
+"It's perfectly abominable," he declared. "Here we are supposed to have
+the finest police system in the world, and yet a man can disappear from
+his rooms in the very centre of London, and no one has even a clue as to
+what has become of him."
+
+"Looks bad," Jimmy acknowledged.
+
+"I don't understand much about business affairs," Sarah remarked, "but
+the B. & I. case does seem to be a remarkably unpopular undertaking."
+
+Dredlinton kicked a footstool out of his way, frowning angrily.
+
+"The B. & I. is only an ordinary business concern," he insisted. "We
+have a right to make money if we are clever enough to do it. We speculate
+in lots of other things besides wheat, and we have our losses to face as
+well as our profits. I believe that fellow Wingate is at the bottom of
+all this agitation. Just like those confounded Americans. Why can't they
+mind their own business!"
+
+"It isn't very long," Josephine remarked drily, "since we were rather
+glad that America didn't mind her own business."
+
+"Bosh!" her husband scoffed. "If English people are to be bullied and
+their liberty interfered with in this manner, we might as well have lost
+the war and become a German Colony."
+
+"Don't agree with you, sir," Jimmy declared, with most unusual
+seriousness. "I don't like the way you are talking, and I'm dead off the
+B. & I. myself. I'd cut my connection with it, if I were you. Been
+looking for trouble for a long time--and, great Scot, I believe they're
+going to get it!"
+
+"Damned rubbish!" Lord Dredlinton muttered angrily.
+
+"Heavens! Jimmy's in earnest!" Sarah exclaimed, rising. "I am sure it's
+time we went. We are overdue at his mother's, and one of my cylinders
+is missing. Come on, Jimmy.--Good-by, Josephine dear! You'll forgive
+us if we hurry off? I did tell you we had to go directly after dinner,
+didn't I?"
+
+"You did, dear," Josephine assented, walking towards the door with her
+friend. "Come in and see me again soon."
+
+There was the sound of voices in the hall. Lord Dredlinton started
+eagerly.
+
+"That's the fellow from Scotland Yard, I hope," he said. "Promised to
+come round to-night. Perhaps they've news of Stanley."
+
+The door was thrown open, and the new butler ushered in a tall, thin man
+dressed in morning clothes of somewhat severe cut.
+
+"Inspector Shields, my lord," he announced.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Lord Dredlinton's impatience was almost feverish. One would have imagined
+that Stanley Rees had been one of his dearest friends, instead of a young
+man whom he rather disliked.
+
+"Come in. Inspector," he invited. "Come in. Glad to see you. Any news?"
+
+"None whatever, my lord," was the laconic reply.
+
+Dredlinton's face fell. He looked at his visitor, speechless for a
+moment. The inspector gravely saluted Josephine and accepted the chair to
+which she waved him.
+
+"Upon my word," Dredlinton declared, "this is most unsatisfactory! Most
+disappointing!"
+
+"I was afraid that you might find it so," the inspector assented.
+
+Josephine turned in her chair and contemplated the latter with some
+interest. He was quietly dressed in well-cut but unobtrusive clothes. His
+long, narrow face had features of sensibility. His hair was grizzled a
+little at the temples. His composure seemed part of the man, passive and
+imperturbable.
+
+"Isn't a disappearance of this sort rather unusual?" she enquired.
+
+"Most unusual, your ladyship," the man admitted. "I scarcely remember a
+similar case."
+
+"'Unusual' seems to me a mild word!" Dredlinton exclaimed angrily. "Here
+is a well-known young man, with friends in every circle of life and
+engagements at every hour, a partner in an important commercial
+undertaking, who is absolutely removed from his rooms in one of the
+best-known hotels in London, and at the end of three days the police are
+powerless to find out what has become of him!"
+
+"Up to the present, my lord," the inspector confessed, "we certainly
+have no clue."
+
+"But, dash it all, you must have some idea as to what has become of him?"
+his questioner insisted. "Young men don't disappear through the windows
+of the Milan Bar, do they?"
+
+"If you assure us, my lord, that we may rule out any idea of a voluntary
+disappearance--"
+
+"Voluntary disappearance be damned!" Dredlinton interrupted. "Don't let
+me hear any more of such rubbish! I can assure you that such a
+supposition is absolutely out of the question."
+
+"Then in that case, my lord, I may put it to you that Mr. Rees'
+disappearance is due to the action of no ordinary criminal or
+blackmailer, but is part of a much more deeply laid scheme."
+
+"Exactly what do you mean?" was the almost fierce demand.
+
+"It appears that Mr. Rees," the inspector went on, speaking with some
+emphasis, "is connected with an undertaking which during the last few
+weeks has provoked a wave of anger and disgust throughout the country."
+
+"Are you referring to the British and Imperial Granaries, Limited?" his
+interlocutor enquired.
+
+"That, I believe, is the name of the company."
+
+Lord Dredlinton's anxiety visibly increased. He was standing underneath
+the suspended globe of the electric light, his fingers nervously pulling
+to pieces the cigarette which he had been smoking. There was a look of
+fear in his weak eyes. Josephine surveyed him thoughtfully. The coward in
+him had flared up, and there was no room for any other characteristic.
+Fear was written in his face, trembled in his tone, betrayed itself in
+his gestures.
+
+"But, dash it all," he expostulated, "there are other directors! I am one
+myself. Don't you see how serious this all is? If Rees can be spirited
+away and no one be able to lift up a finger to help him, what about the
+rest of us?"
+
+"It was in my mind to warn your lordship," Shields observed.
+
+Dredlinton's fear merged into fury,--a blind and nerveless passion.
+
+"But this is outrageous!" he exclaimed, striking the table with his fist.
+"Do you mean to say that you can come here to me from Scotland Yard--to
+me, a peer of England, living in the heart of London--and tell me that a
+friend and a business connection of mine has been kidnapped and
+practically warn me against the same fate? What on earth do we pay our
+police for? What sort of a country are we living in? Are you all
+nincompoops?"
+
+"We remain what we are, notwithstanding your lordship's opinion," the
+inspector answered, with a shade of sarcasm in his level tone. "I may add
+that I am not the only one engaged in this Investigation, and I can only
+do my duty according to the best of my ability."
+
+"You've done nothing--nothing at all!" Dredlinton protested angrily.
+"Added to that, you actually come here and warn me that I, too, may be
+the victim of a plot, against the ringleaders of which you seem to be
+helpless. The British and Imperial Granaries is a perfectly legitimate
+company doing a perfectly legitimate business. We're not out for our
+health--who is in the City? If we can make money out of wheat, it's our
+business and nobody else's."
+
+The inspector was a little weary, but he continued without any sign of
+impatience.
+
+"I know nothing about the British and Imperial Granaries, my lord," he
+said. "My time is too fully occupied to take any interest in outside
+affairs. In the course of time," he went on, "we shall inevitably get to
+the bottom of this very cleverly engineered conspiracy. Crime of every
+sort is detected sooner or later, except in the case, say, of a
+single-handed murder, or an offence of that nature. In the present
+instance, there is evidence that a very large number of persons were
+concerned, and detection finally becomes, therefore, a certainty. In the
+meantime, however, I thought it as well to pass you a word of warning."
+
+"Warning, indeed!" Dredlinton muttered. "I won't move out of the house
+without a bodyguard. If any one dares to interfere with me, I'll--I'll
+shoot them! What happens to a man, Inspector, if he shoots another in
+self-defence, eh?"
+
+"It depends upon the circumstances, my lord," was the cautious reply.
+"The law in England requires self-defence to be very clearly
+established."
+
+Dredlinton moved to the sideboard, poured himself out a liqueur and
+drank it off.
+
+"Will you take something. Inspector?" he asked, turning around.
+
+"I thank your lordship, no!"
+
+Dredlinton thrust his hands into his pockets and returned to his seat.
+
+"I don't want to lose my temper," he said,--"I am perfectly cool, as you
+see, Inspector---but put yourself in my position now. Don't you think
+it's enough to make a man furious to have an official from Scotland Yard
+come into his house here in the heart of London and warn him that he is
+in danger of being kidnapped?"
+
+"I don't think that I went quite so far as that," the inspector objected,
+"nor do I in any way suggest that, sooner or later, the people who are
+responsible for Mr. Rees' disappearance will not be brought to justice.
+But I considered it my duty to point out to you that the directors of
+your company appear to have excited a feeling throughout the whole of
+England, which might well bring you enemies wholly unconnected with the
+ordinary criminal classes. That is where our difficulty lies."
+
+Lord Dredlinton had the air of a man argued into reasonableness.
+
+"I see, Inspector. I quite understand," he declared. "But listen to me. I
+shall throw myself upon your protection. In Mr. Rees' absence, it is of
+vital importance, during the next few days, that nothing should happen to
+Mr. Phipps, Mr. Martin or myself. You must have us all shadowed. You must
+see that I am not lost sight of for a moment. Here is a little earnest of
+what is to come," he went on, drawing out his pocketbook and passing a
+folded note over towards his visitor, "and remember, Mr. Phipps has
+offered five hundred pounds for the discovery of the person who is
+responsible for his nephew's disappearance."
+
+Shields made no movement towards the money. He shook his head gently.
+
+"I shall be glad to take the reward, my lord, if I am fortunate enough to
+earn it," he said, rising to his feet. "Until then I do not require
+payment for my services."
+
+Dredlinton replaced the note in his pocket.
+
+"Just as you like, of course, Inspector. I only meant it as a little
+incentive. And I want you to remember this--do rub it into your Chief--I
+have already called to see him twice, and it doesn't seem to me that the
+authorities are looking upon our position seriously enough. We have a
+right to the utmost protection the law can give us, and further, I must
+insist upon it that every effort is made to discover Mr. Rees before it
+is too late."
+
+The butler stood on the threshold. He had entered in response to Lord
+Dredlinton's ring, with the perfect silence and promptitude of the best
+of his class. His master stared at him for a moment uneasily. The man's
+appearance, grave and respectable though he was, seemed to have
+startled him.
+
+"Show the inspector out," he directed. "Good night, Mr. Shields."
+
+The man bowed to Josephine.
+
+"Good night, my lord!"
+
+Dredlinton stared at the closed door. Then he turned around with a little
+gesture of anger.
+
+"Every damned thing that happens, nowadays, seems designed to irritate
+me!" he exclaimed. "That man Shields is nothing but a poopstick!"
+
+"I differ from you entirely," Josephine declared. "I thought that he
+seemed a very intelligent person, with unusual powers of self-restraint."
+
+"Shows what your judgment is worth! I can't think what Scotland Yard are
+about, to put the greatest lout they have in the service on to an
+important business like this. And what the mischief are we always
+changing servants for? There were two new men at dinner, and that butler
+of yours gives me the creeps. What on earth has become of Jacob?"
+
+"You told Jacob yourself to go to hell, a few days ago," Josephine
+reminded him. "You can scarcely expect any self-respecting butler to
+stand your continual abuse."
+
+"Or a self-respecting wife, eh?" he sneered.
+
+Josephine regarded him coldly.
+
+"One's servants," she remarked, "have an advantage. Jacob has found a
+better place."
+
+"Precisely what you'd like to do yourself, eh?"
+
+"Precisely what I intend to do before long."
+
+"Well, then, why don't you do it?" he demanded brutally. "You think that
+everything I said the other day was bluff, eh, and that Stanley Rees'
+disappearance has driven everything else out of my head? Well, you're
+wrong, madam. As soon as this infernal business is done with, I am going
+to pay a visit to my lawyers."
+
+"For once," she said, with a faint smile, "you will take my good wishes
+with you."
+
+"You mean," he exclaimed, moving from his place and standing before her
+with his hands in his pockets, "that you want to get rid of me, eh?"
+
+She met his scowling gaze fearlessly.
+
+"Of course I do. I don't think that any woman could have lived with you
+as long as I have and not want to get rid of you. On the other hand, as
+you know--as in your heart you know perfectly well," she went on, "I have
+remained a faithful wife to you, and it is not my intention to have you
+take advantage of a situation for which you were entirely responsible.
+You will have to remember, Henry, that the reason for my leaving your
+house in the middle of the night will scarcely help your case."
+
+Dredlinton stood and glared at his wife, his eyes narrowing, his mean
+little mouth curled.
+
+"Josephine," he cried, "I don't care a damn about your leaving my house,
+then or at any time, but the more I think of it, the stranger it seems to
+me that this friend of yours, Wingate, should come to the office and
+threaten me for my connection with the B. & I., and at the moment of
+leaving offer to sell wheat. I am getting a little suspicious about your
+friend, my lady. I have given them the tip at Scotland Yard and I only
+hope they take advantage of it."
+
+"Why single out Mr. Wingate?" she asked, "He certainly is not alone in
+his antipathy to your company."
+
+"Don't I know that?" Dredlinton exclaimed angrily. "Don't I get a dozen
+threatening letters a day? Men take me on one side and reason with me in
+the club. I had a Cabinet Minister at the office this afternoon. I begin
+to get the cold shoulder wherever I turn, but, damn it all, don't you
+understand that we must have money?"
+
+Josephine regarded him with a cold lack of sympathy in her face.
+
+"I understand that you have had about a hundred thousand pounds of mine,"
+she remarked.
+
+"Like your generosity, my dear, to remind me of it," he sneered. "To you
+it seems, I suppose, a great deal of money. To me--well, I am not sure
+that it was fair compensation for what I have never had."
+
+"What you have never had, you never deserved, Henry."
+
+He flung himself towards the door.
+
+"Josephine," he said, looking back, "do you know you are one of the few
+women in the world I can't even talk to? You freeze me up every time I
+try. I wonder whether the man who is so anxious to stand in my shoes--"
+
+She was suddenly erect, her eyes flaming. He shuffled out and slammed the
+door after him with a little nervous laugh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Josephine was herself again within a few moments of her husband's
+departure. She stood perfectly still for some time, as though listening
+to his departing footsteps. Then she crossed the room and pressed the
+bell twice. Once more she listened. The change in her expression was
+wonderful. She was expectant, eager, thrilled with the contemplation of
+some imminent happening. Her vigil came suddenly to an end, as the door
+was opened and closed again a little abruptly. It was no servant who had
+obeyed her summons; it was Wingate who entered, unannounced and alone.
+
+"Everything goes well?" he asked, as he advanced rapidly into the room.
+
+"Absolutely!"
+
+"Good! Where is your husband now?"
+
+"Gone to his den to have a drink, I expect," she replied. "He is in a
+terrible state of nerves already."
+
+"I am afraid he will be worse before we've done with him," Wingate
+remarked a little grimly. "Josephine, just one moment!"
+
+She was in his arms and forgetfulness enfolded them. He felt the soft
+cling of her body, the warm sweetness of her lips. It was she who
+disengaged herself.
+
+"I am terrified of Henry coming back," she admitted, as she moved
+reluctantly away. "He is in one of his most hateful moods to-night.
+Better than anything in the world he would love to make a scene."
+
+"He shall have all the opportunity he wants presently," Wingate observed.
+
+The door was opened with the soft abruptness of one who has approached it
+noiselessly by design. Dredlinton stood upon the threshold, blinking a
+little as he gazed into the room. He recognized Wingate with a start of
+amazement.
+
+"Wingate?" he exclaimed. "Why the mischief didn't any one tell me you
+were here?"
+
+"Mr. Wingate called to see me," Josephine replied.
+
+There was an ugly curl upon Dredlinton's lips. He opened his mouth and
+closed it again. Then his truculent attitude suddenly vanished without
+the slightest warning. He became an entirely altered person.
+
+"Look here, Wingate," he confessed, "on thinking it over, I believe I've
+been making rather an idiot of myself. Josephine," he went on, turning to
+his wife, "be so kind as to leave us alone for a short time."
+
+He opened the door. Josephine hesitated for a moment, then, in response
+to a barely noticeable gesture from Wingate, she left the room. Her
+husband closed the door carefully behind her. His attitude, as he turned
+once more towards the other man, was distinctly conciliatory.
+
+"Wingate," he invited, "sit down, won't you, and smoke a cigar with me.
+Let us have a reasonable chat together, I am perfectly convinced that
+there is nothing for us to quarrel about."
+
+"Since when have you come to that conclusion, Lord Dredlinton?" Wingate
+asked, without abandoning his somewhat uncompromising attitude.
+
+"Since our interview at the office."
+
+"You mean when you tried to blackmail me into selling my shipping
+shares?"
+
+Dredlinton frowned.
+
+"'Blackmail' is not a word to be used between gentlemen," he protested.
+"Look here, can't you behave like a decent fellow--an ordinary human
+being, you know? You are not exactly my sort, but I am sure you're a man
+of honour, I haven't any objection to your friendship with my wife--none
+in the world."
+
+"The sentiments which I entertain for your wife, Lord Dredlinton,"
+Wingate declared, "are not sentiments of friendship."
+
+Dredlinton paused in the act of lighting a cigar.
+
+"What's that?" he exclaimed. "You mean that, after all, you've humbugged
+me, both of you?"
+
+"Not in the way you seem to imagine. This much, however, is true, and it
+is just as well that you should know it. I love your wife and I intend to
+take her from you, in her time and mine."
+
+Dredlinton lit his cigar and threw himself back into his chair.
+
+"Well, you don't mince matters," he muttered.
+
+"I see no reason why I should," was the calm reply.
+
+"After all," Dredlinton observed, with a cynical turn of the lips, "I see
+no reason why I should object. Josephine's been no wife of mine for
+years. Perhaps you have a fancy for your love affairs wrapped up in a
+little ice frosting."
+
+Wingate's eyes flashed.
+
+"That'll do," he advised, with ominous calm.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"We will not discuss your wife."
+
+Dredlinton shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"As you will. Assist me, then, in my office of host. What or whom shall
+we discuss? Choose your own subject."
+
+"The disappearance of Stanley Rees, if you like," was the
+unexpected reply.
+
+Dredlinton stared at his visitor. Symptoms of panic were beginning to
+reassert themselves.
+
+"You admit, then, that you were concerned in that?"
+
+"Concerned in it?" Wingate repeated. "I think I can venture a little
+further than that."
+
+"What do you mean?" was the startled query.
+
+"I mean that I was and am entirely responsible for it."
+
+Dredlinton's cigar fell from his fingers. For the moment he forgot to
+pick it up. Then he stooped and with shaking fingers threw it into the
+grate. When he confronted Wingate again, his face was deadly pale. He
+seemed, indeed, on the point of collapse.
+
+"Why have you done this?" he faltered. "Tell me what you mean, man, when
+you say that you were responsible for his disappearance?"
+
+"You are curious? Perhaps a little superstitious, a little nervous about
+yourself, eh?"
+
+"What the devil have you done with Stanley Rees?" Dredlinton demanded.
+
+Wingate smiled.
+
+"Rees," he said, "as I reminded you, is the youngest of the British and
+Imperial directors. Let me see, next to him would come Phipps, I suppose.
+Martin, as you may have heard, left for Paris this morning--ostensibly. I
+have an idea myself that his destination is South America."
+
+"Martin gone?" the other gasped.
+
+"Without a doubt. I think he saw trouble ahead. By the by, have you heard
+anything of Phipps lately? Why not ring up and enquire about his health?"
+
+Dredlinton stared a little wildly at the speaker. Then he hurried to the
+telephone, snatched up the receiver and talked into it, his eyes all the
+time fixed upon Wingate in a sort of frightened stare.
+
+"Mayfair 365," he demanded. "Quick, please! An urgent call! Yes? Who's
+that? Yes, yes! Browning--Mr. Phipps' secretary. I understand. Where's
+Mr. Phipps?--_What_?"
+
+Dredlinton drew away from the telephone for a moment. He dabbed his
+forehead with his handkerchief. He looked like a man on the verge
+of collapse.
+
+"Something unusual seems to have happened," Wingate remarked softly.
+
+Dredlinton was listening once more to the voice at the other end of the
+telephone.
+
+"You've tried his club? Eh? And the restaurant where he was to have
+dined? What do you say? Kept them waiting and never turned up? You've
+rung up the police?--What do they say?--Doing their best?--My God!"
+
+The receiver slipped from his nerveless fingers. He turned around to face
+Wingate, crouching over the table, his arms resting upon it, his eyes
+blood-shot, a slave to abject fear.
+
+"Peter Phipps has disappeared!" he gasped weakly.
+
+The atmosphere of the room seemed to have completely changed during the
+last few minutes. Wingate was no longer the conventional and casual
+caller. His face had hardened, his eyes were brighter, his manner
+ominous. He was the modern figure of Fate, playing for a desperate stake
+with cold and deadly earnestness. Dredlinton was simply panic-stricken.
+He was white to the lips; his eyes were filled with the frightened gleam
+of the trapped animal; he shook and twitched in a paroxysm of nervous
+collapse. He seemed terrified yet fascinated by the strange metamorphosis
+in his visitor.
+
+"This is your doing?" he cried.
+
+"It is my doing," Wingate admitted, with his eyes still fixed upon the
+other's face.
+
+Dredlinton stumbled to the fireplace, found the bell and pressed it
+violently. A gleam of reassurance came to him.
+
+"My servants shall hear you repeat that!" he exclaimed. "I will have them
+all in to witness your confession. You are pleading guilty to a crime! I
+shall send out for the police! I shall hand you over from here!"
+
+"Not a bad idea," Wingate acknowledged. "By the by, though," he added, a
+moment or two later, "your servants don't seem in a great hurry to answer
+that bell."
+
+Dredlinton pressed it more violently than ever. By listening intently
+both men could hear its faraway summons. But nothing happened. The house
+itself seemed empty. There was not even the sound of a footfall.
+
+"You will really have to change your servants," Wingate continued. "Fancy
+not answering a bell! They must hear it pealing away. Still, you have the
+telephone. Why not ring up Scotland Yard direct?"
+
+Dredlinton, dazed now with terror, took his fingers from the bell and
+snatched up the telephone receiver. All the time his eyes were riveted
+upon his companion's, their weak depths filled with a nameless horror.
+
+"Quick!" he shouted down the receiver. "Scotland Yard! Put me straight
+through to Scotland Yard!--Can you hear me, Exchange? I am Lord
+Dredlinton, 1887 Mayfair. If I am cut off, ring through to Scotland
+Yard yourself. Tell them I am in danger of my life! Tell them to rush
+here at once!"
+
+"Yes, they had better hurry," Wingate said tersely.
+
+Dredlinton pulled down the hook of the receiver desperately.
+
+"Can't you hear me, Exchange?" he shouted. "Quick! This is urgent!"
+
+"Really," Wingate remarked, "the telephone people seem almost as
+negligent as your servants."
+
+The receiver slipped from the hysterical man's fingers. He collapsed into
+a chair and leaned across the table.
+
+"What does it mean?" he demanded hoarsely. "No one will answer the bell.
+I seem to be speaking through the telephone to a dead world."
+
+"If you really want some one, I dare say I can help you," Wingate
+replied. "The telephone was disconnected by my orders, as soon as you had
+spoken to Phipps' rooms. But--now you are only wasting your time."
+
+Dredlinton had rushed to the door, shaken the handle violently, only to
+find it locked. He pommelled with his fists upon the panels.
+
+"Come, come," his companion expostulated, "there is really no need for
+such extremes. You want something, perhaps? Allow me."
+
+Wingate crossed the room, rang the bell three times quickly, and stood in
+an easy attitude upon the hearth rug, with his hands behind his back.
+
+"Let us see," he said, "whether that has any effect or not."
+
+"Is this your house or mine?" Dredlinton demanded.
+
+"Your house," was the laconic reply, "but my servants."
+
+From outside was heard the sound of a turning key. The door was opened.
+Grant, the new butler, made his appearance,--a thin, determined-looking
+man, with white hair and keen dark eyes, who bore a striking resemblance
+to Mr. Andrew Slate.
+
+"His lordship wants the whisky and soda brought in here, Grant," Wingate
+told him, "and--wait just a moment.--You seem very much distressed about
+the disappearance of your friends, Lord Dredlinton. Would you like to
+see them?"
+
+"What? See Stanley Rees and Peter Phipps now?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"You are talking nonsense!" Dredlinton shouted. "You may know where they
+are--I should think it is very likely that you do--but you aren't going
+to persuade me that you've got them here in my house--that you can turn
+them loose when you choose to say the word!"
+
+Wingate glanced across at the butler, who nodded understandingly and
+withdrew. Dredlinton intercepted the look and shook his fist.
+
+"You've been tampering with my servants, damn you!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Well, they haven't been yours very long, have they?" Wingate
+reminded him.
+
+"So this is all part of a plot!" Dredlinton continued, with increasing
+apprehension. "They are in your pay, are they? It was only this morning I
+noticed all these new faces around me.--God help us!"
+
+The words seemed to melt away from his lips. The door had been flung
+open, and a queer little procession entered. First of all came Grant,
+followed by a footman leading Peter Phipps by the arm. Phipps' hands were
+tied together. A gag in the form of a respirator covered his mouth. Cords
+which had apparently only just been unknotted were around each leg. He
+had the expression, of a man completely dazed. After him came another of
+the footmen leading Stanley Rees, who was in similar straits. The latter,
+however, perhaps by reason of his longer detention, showed none of the
+passivity of his companion. He struggled violently, even in the few yards
+between the door and the centre of the room, Wingate motioned to a third
+footman, who had followed behind.
+
+"Pull out that round table," he directed. "Place three chairs around
+it.--So!--Sit down, Phipps. Sit down, Rees."
+
+They obeyed, Rees only after a further useless struggle. Dredlinton, who
+had been speechless for the last few seconds, gazed with horror-stricken
+eyes at the third chair. Wingate smiled at him grimly.
+
+"That third chair, Dredlinton," he announced, "is for you."
+
+The terrified man made an ineffectual dash for the door.
+
+"You mean to make a prisoner of me in my own house?" he shouted, as he
+found himself in the clutches of one of the footmen. "What fool's game
+is this? You know you can't keep it up, Wingate. You'll be transported,
+man. Come, confess it's a joke. Tell that man to take these damned
+cords away."
+
+"It is a joke," Wingate assured him gravely, "but it may need a very
+peculiar sense of humour to appreciate it. However, you need not fear.
+Your life is not threatened.--Now, Dickenson, the loaf."
+
+The third man stepped back to the door and, from the hands of another
+servant who was waiting there, took an ordinary cottage loaf of bread.
+The three men now were seated around the table, bound to their chairs and
+gagged. In the middle of the table, just beyond their reach, Wingate,
+leaning over them, placed the loaf of bread.
+
+"I am now," he announced, standing a little back, "going to tell Grant to
+release your gags. You will probably all try shouting. I can assure you
+that it is quite hopeless. This room looks out, as you know, upon a
+courtyard. The street is on the other side of the house. Every person
+under this roof is in my employ. There is no earthly chance of your being
+heard by any one. Still, if it pleases you to shout, shout!--Now, Grant!"
+
+The man unfastened the gags,--first Phipps', then Rees', and finally
+Dredlinton's. Curiously enough, not one of the three men raised their
+voices. Wingate's words seemed to have impressed them. Phipps drew one
+or two deep breaths, Stanley Rees rubbed his mouth on his sleeve.
+Dredlinton was the only one who broke into anything approaching
+violent speech.
+
+"My God, Wingate," he exclaimed, "if you think I'll ever forget this,
+you're mistaken! I'll see you in prison for it, whatever it costs me!"
+
+"The after-consequences of this little melodrama," Phipps interposed,
+with grim fury, "certainly present something of a problem, I have
+wondered, during the last hour or so, whether you can be perfectly sane,
+Wingate. What good can you expect to do by this brigandage?"
+
+"The very word 'brigandage'," Wingate observed, with a smile, "suggests
+my answer--ransom."
+
+"But you can't want money?" Phipps protested.
+
+"You know what I want," was the stern rejoinder. "You and I have already
+discussed it when you came to see me about that young man."
+
+Phipps laughed uneasily.
+
+"I remember some preposterous suggestion about selling wheat," he
+admitted. "If you think, however, that you can alter our entire business
+principles by a piece of foolery like this, you are making the mistake of
+your life."
+
+"We are wasting time," Wingate declared a little shortly. "It is better
+that we have a complete understanding. Get this into your head," he went
+on, drawing a long, ugly-looking pistol from his trousers pocket, and
+displaying it. "This is the finest automatic pistol in the world, and I
+am one of the best marksmen in the American Army. I shall leave you, for
+the present, ungagged, but if rescue comes to you by any efforts of your
+own, I give you my word of honour as an American gentleman that I shall
+shoot the three of you and be proud of my night's work."
+
+"And swing for it afterwards," Dredlinton threatened. "The man's mad!"
+
+"The man is in earnest," Phipps growled. "That much, at least, I think we
+can grant him. What is the meaning of that piece of mummery, Wingate?" he
+added, pointing to the loaf of bread. "What are your terms? You must
+state them, sooner or later. Let us have them now."
+
+"Agreed," Wingate replied. "The costs of that loaf is, I believe, to be
+exact, one and tenpence ha'penny--one and tenpence ha'penny to poor
+people whose staple food it is. When you sign an authority to sell wheat
+in sufficient bulk to bring the cost down to sixpence, you can have the
+loaf and go as soon as the sale is finished. You will find here," he went
+on, laying a document upon the table, "a calculation which may help you.
+Your approximate holdings of wheat may be exaggerated a trifle, although
+these lists came from some one in your own office, but I think you will
+find that the figures there will be of assistance to you when you decide
+to give the word."
+
+"Let me get this clearly into my head," Phipps begged, after a moment's
+amazed silence, "without the possibility of any mistake. You mean that we
+are to sell wheat at about sixty per cent, less than the present market
+value--in many cases sixty per cent. less than we gave for it?"
+
+"That, I imagine, will be about the position," Wingate admitted.
+
+"The man is a fool!" Rees snarled. "It would mean ruin."
+
+Wingate remained impassive.
+
+"The British and Imperial Granaries, Limited," he said, "has been
+responsible for the ruin of a good many people. It is time now that the
+pendulum swung the other way.--Come, make up your minds."
+
+"What if we refuse?" Dredlinton asked.
+
+"You will be made a little more secure," Wingate explained, "your gags
+fastened, and your arms corded to the backs of the chairs."
+
+"But for how long?"
+
+"Until you give the word."
+
+"And supposing we never give the word?" Stanley Rees demanded.
+
+"Then you sit there," Wingate replied, "until you die."
+
+Dredlinton glanced covertly across at Phipps, and, finding no
+inspiration there, turned to Wingate. The light of an evil imagining
+shone in his eyes.
+
+"This is a matter which we ought to discuss in private conference," he
+said slowly. "What do you think, Phipps?"
+
+"I agree--"
+
+"I am afraid," Wingate interrupted suavely, "that Mr. Phipps' views
+will not affect the situation. You three gentlemen are my treasured
+and honoured guests. I shall not desert you--as a matter of fact, I
+shall scarcely leave you, except upon your own business--until your
+decision is made."
+
+"Guests be damned!" Dredlinton exclaimed. "It's my house--not yours!"
+
+"Mine for a short time by appropriation," Wingate answered, with a
+faint smile.
+
+"Supposing," Rees suggested, "we were induced to knuckle under, to become
+the victims of your damned blackmailing scheme, surely then one of us
+would be allowed to go down to the City on parole, eh?"
+
+Wingate shook his head.
+
+"I regret to say that I should not feel justified in letting one of you
+out of my sight. In the event of your seeing reason, the telephone will
+be at your disposal, and a verbal message by its means could be confirmed
+by all three of you. I imagine that your office would sell on such
+instructions."
+
+Phipps, who had been sitting during the last few minutes in a state
+almost of torpor, began to show signs of his old vigorous self. He shook
+his head firmly.
+
+"This is a matter which need not be discussed," he declared. "You have
+taken our breath away, Wingate. Your amazing assurance has made it
+difficult for us to answer you coherently. I am only now beginning to
+realise that you are in earnest in this idiotic piece of melodrama, but
+if you are--so are we.--You can starve us or shoot us or suffocate us,
+but we shall not sell wheat.--By God, we shan't!"
+
+The man seemed for a moment to swell,--his eyes to flash fire. Wingate
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I accept your defiance," he announced. "Let us commence our tryst."
+
+Dredlinton struck the table with his fist, Phipps' brave words seemed to
+have struck an alien note of fear in his fellow prisoner.
+
+"I will not submit!" he exclaimed. "My health will not stand
+it!--Phipps!--Rees!"
+
+There was meaning in his eyes as well as in his tone, a meaning which
+Phipps put brutally into words.
+
+"It's no good, Dredlinton," he warned him. "We are going to stick it out,
+and you've got to stick it out with us. But," he added, glaring at
+Wingate, "remember this. Only half an hour before I was taken, Scotland
+Yard rang up to tell me that they thought they had a clue as to Stanley's
+disappearance. You risk five years' penal servitude by this freak."
+
+"I am content," was the cool reply.
+
+"But I am not!" Dredlinton shouted, straining at his cords. "I resign!
+I resign from the Board! Do you hear that, Wingate? I chuck it! Set me
+free!"
+
+"The proper moment for your resignation from the Board of the British and
+Imperial Granaries," Wingate told him sternly, "was a matter of six
+months ago. You are a little too late, Dredlinton. Better make up your
+mind to stick it out with your friends."
+
+Dredlinton groaned. There was all the malice of hatred in his eyes, a
+note of despair in his exclamation.
+
+"They are strong men, those two," he muttered. "They can stand more than
+I can. I demand my freedom."
+
+Wingate threw himself into an easy-chair.
+
+"Endurance," he observed, "is largely a matter of nerves. You must make
+this a test. If you fail, well, your release always rests with your two
+friends. I am sure they will not see you suffer unduly."
+
+Phipps leaned a little across the table.
+
+"We shall suffer," he said hoarsely, "but it will be for hours. With you,
+Wingate, it will be a matter of years! Our turn will come when we visit
+you in prison. Damn you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+In the Board room of the British and Imperial Granaries, Limited, were
+four vacant chairs and four unoccupied desks, each of the latter piled
+with a mass of letters. Outside was disquietude, in the street almost a
+riot. Callers were compelled to form themselves into a queue,--and left
+with scanty comfort. Wingate, by what seemed to be special favour, was
+passed through the little throng and ushered by Harrison himself into the
+deserted Board room.
+
+"So you have no news of any of your directors, Harrison?" the
+former observed.
+
+"None whatever, sir."
+
+The two men exchanged long and in a way searching glances. Harrison was,
+as always, the lank and cadaverous nonentity, the man of negative
+suspicions and infinite reserves. His eyes were fixed upon the carpet. He
+was a study in passivity.
+
+"What happens to the business, eh--to your big operations?"
+Wingate enquired.
+
+"The business suffers to some extent, of course," Harrison admitted.
+
+"Your banking arrangements?"
+
+"I have limited powers of signature. So far the bank has been lenient."
+
+"I see," Wingate ruminated,--and waited.
+
+"The general policy of the firm is, as you are aware, to buy," Harrison
+continued thoughtfully. "That policy has naturally been suspended during
+the last forty-eight hours. There are rumours, too, of a large shipment
+of wheat from an unexpected source, by some steamers which we had failed
+to take account of. Prices are dropping every hour."
+
+"Materially?"
+
+The confidential clerk shook his head.
+
+"Only by points and fractions. The market is never sure of our
+principals. Sometimes when they have bought, most largely they have
+remained inactive for a few days beforehand, on purpose to depress
+prices."
+
+"Do people believe in--their disappearance?"
+
+"Not down here--in the City, I mean," Harrison replied grimly. "To be
+frank with you, the market suspects a plant."
+
+"Let me," Wingate suggested, "give you my impression as to the
+disappearance of three of your directors."
+
+"It would be very interesting," Harrison murmured, his eyes following the
+hopeless efforts of a huge fly to escape through the closed window.
+
+"I picture them to myself," his visitor went on, "as indulging in a
+secret tour through the north of England---a tour undertaken in order
+that they may realise personally whether their tactics have really
+produced the suffering and distress reported."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"I picture them convinced. I ask myself what would be their natural
+course of action. Without a doubt, they would sell wheat."
+
+"Sell wheat" Harrison repeated. "Yes!"
+
+"They would be in a hurry," Wingate continued. "They would not wish to
+waste a moment. They would probably telephone their instructions."
+
+From the great office outside came the hum of many voices, the shrill
+summons of many telephones, a continued knocking and shouting at the
+locked door. To all these sounds Harrison remained stoically indifferent.
+He was studying once more the pattern of the carpet.
+
+"Telephone," he repeated thoughtfully.
+
+"It would be sufficient, if you recognized the voice?"
+
+"Confirmation--from a fellow director, I might have to ask for,"
+Harrison decided.
+
+"Nothing else?"
+
+"Nothing!"
+
+"And how long would it take you to sell, say--"
+
+"I should prefer not to have quantities mentioned," Harrison
+interrupted. "When we start to sell in a dozen places, the thing is
+beyond exact calculation. The brake can be put on if necessary."
+
+"I understand," Wingate replied---"but I should think it probable, if the
+truth dawns upon our friends--that no brake will be necessary.--As
+regards your own affairs, Harrison?"
+
+"I received your letter last night, sir."
+
+"You found its contents satisfactory?"
+
+"I found them generous, sir."
+
+Wingate took up his hat and stick a moment or so later.
+
+"My visit here," he remarked, "might easily be misconstrued. Would it be
+possible for me to leave without fighting my way through that mob?"
+
+Harrison led the way through an inner room to a door opening out upon a
+passage. Dark buildings frowned down upon them from either side. The
+place was a curious little oasis from the noonday heat. In the distance
+was a narrow vista of passing men and vehicles. Harrison stood there with
+the handle of the door in his hand. There was no farewell between him and
+his departing visitor, no sign of intelligence in his inscrutable face.
+
+"Presuming that the disappearance of Mr. Phipps, Mr. Rees and Lord
+Dredlinton is accounted for by this supposed journey to the North,"
+he ventured, "when should you imagine that they might be communicating
+with me?"
+
+"About dawn to-morrow," Wingate replied. "You will be here."
+
+"I never leave," was the quiet answer. "About dawn to-morrow?"
+
+"Or before."
+
+Josephine asked the same question in a different manner when Wingate
+entered her little sitting room a few hours later.
+
+"They are obstinate?" she enquired curiously.
+
+He sipped the tea which she had handed to him.
+
+"Very," he admitted, "yet, after all, why not? If we succeed, it is, at
+any rate, the end of their private fortunes, of Phipps' ambitions and
+your husband's dreams of wealth."
+
+"So much the better," she declared sadly. "More money with Henry has only
+meant a greater eagerness to get rid of it."
+
+A companionship which had no need of words seemed to have sprung up
+between them. They sat together for some minutes without speech, minutes
+during which the deep silence which reigned throughout the house seemed
+curiously accentuated. Josephine shivered.
+
+"I shall never know what happiness is," she declared, "until I have left
+this house--never to return!"
+
+"That will not be long," he reminded her gravely.
+
+She placed her hand on his.
+
+"It is full of the ghosts of my sorrows," she went on. "I have known
+misery here."
+
+"And I one evening of happiness," he said, smiling.
+
+Her eyes glowed for a moment, but she was disturbed, tremulous, agitated.
+
+"I listen for footsteps in the streets," she confessed. "I am afraid!"
+
+"Needlessly," he assured her. "I know for a fact that Shields is off
+the scent."
+
+"But he is not a fool," she answered hastily.
+
+Wingate's smile was full of confidence.
+
+"Dear," he said, "I do not believe that you have anything to fear. There
+have been no loose ends left. Behind your front door is safety."
+
+"The man Shields--I only saw him for a few minutes, but he impressed me,"
+she sighed.
+
+"Shields is, without doubt, a capable person," Wingate admitted, "but he
+could only succeed in this case by blind guessing. Stanley Rees was
+brought into this house through the mews, without observation from any
+living person. Phipps, when he received that supposed message from you,
+was only too anxious to come the same way. They left their respective
+abodes for here in a secrecy which they themselves encouraged, for Rees
+imagined that your husband had urgent need of him, and Phipps was ass
+enough to believe that your summons meant what he wished it to mean.
+There has been no leakage of information anywhere.--Honestly, Josephine,
+I think that you may banish your fears."
+
+"A woman's fears only, dear," she admitted, as she gave him her hands.
+"Why did nature make my sex pessimists and yours optimists, I wonder? I
+would so much rather look towards the sun."
+
+"Soon," he promised her with a smile, "I shall dominate your subconscious
+mind. You shall see the colours of life through my eyes. You will find
+your long-delayed happiness."
+
+The tears which stood in her eyes were of unalloyed content,--the drama
+so close at hand was forgotten. Their hands remained clasped for a
+moment. Then he left her.
+
+Back into that room with its strange mystery of shadows, its odour of
+mingled tragedy and absurdity. Grant rose from a high-backed chair
+guarding the table, as Wingate approached. The latter glanced towards the
+three men crouching around the table. Their white faces gleamed weirdly
+against the background of shaded light. There were black lines under
+Dredlinton's eyes. He made a gurgling effort at speech,--his muttered
+words were only partly coherent.
+
+"I resign! I resign!"
+
+Wingate shook his head.
+
+"I am afraid, Lord Dredlinton," he said, "that you are in the hands of
+your fellow directors. One may not be released without the others.
+Directly you can induce Mr. Phipps and Mr. Rees to see reason, you
+will all three be restored to liberty. Until then I am afraid that you
+must share the inevitable inconveniences connected with your enforced
+stay here."
+
+Phipps lurched towards him with a furious gesture. Wingate only smiled as
+he threw himself into his easy-chair.
+
+"Wheat is falling very slowly," he announced. "Every one is waiting for
+the B. & I. to sell.--You can go now, Grant," he added, "I will take up
+the watch myself."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Wingate, notwithstanding his iron nerve, awoke with a start, in the grey
+of the following morning, to find his heart pounding against his ribs
+and a chill sense of horror stealing into his brain. Nothing had
+happened or was happening except that one cry,--the low, awful cry of a
+man in agony. He sat up, switched on the electric light by his side and
+gazed at the round table, his fingers clenched around the butt of his
+pistol. Dredlinton, from whom had come the sound, had fallen with his
+head and shoulders upon the table. His face was invisible, only there
+crept from his hidden lips a faint repetition of the cry,--the hideous
+sob, it might have been, as of a spirit descending into hell. Then there
+was silence. Phipps was sitting bolt upright, his eyes wide open,
+motionless but breathing heavily. He seemed to be in a state of coma,
+neither wholly asleep nor wholly conscious. Rees was leaning as far back
+in his chair as his cords permitted. His patch of high colour had gone;
+there was an ugly twist to his mouth, a livid tinge in his complexion,
+but nevertheless he slept. Wingate rose to his feet and watched. Phipps
+seemed keyed up to suffering. Dredlinton showed no sign. Their gaoler
+strolled up to the table.
+
+"There is the bread there, Phipps," he said, "a breakfast tray outside
+and some coffee. How goes it?"
+
+Phipps turned his leaden face. His eyes glowed dully.
+
+"Go to hell!" he muttered.
+
+Wingate returned to his place, lit and smoked a pipe and dozed off again.
+When he opened his eyes, the sunlight was streaming in through a chink in
+the closed curtains. He looked towards the table. Dredlinton had not
+moved; Rees was crying quietly, like a child. An unhealthy-looking
+perspiration had broken out on Phipps' face.
+
+"Really," Wingate remarked, "you are all giving yourselves an unnecessary
+amount of suffering."
+
+Phipps spoke the fateful words after two ineffectual efforts. His
+syllables sounded hard and detached.
+
+"We give in," he faltered. "We sell."
+
+"Capital!" Wingate exclaimed, rising promptly to his feet. "Come! In ten
+minutes you shall be drinking coffee or wine--whichever you fancy. We
+will hurry this little affair through."
+
+He crossed the room, opened a cupboard and brought a telephone
+instrument to the table.
+
+"City 1000," he began.--"Yes!--British and Imperial--Right! Mr. Harrison
+there?--Ask him to come to the 'phone, please.--Harrison? Good! Wait a
+moment. Mr. Phipps will speak to you."
+
+Wingate held the telephone before the half-unconscious man. Phipps swayed
+towards it.
+
+"Yes? That Harrison?--Mr. Phipps.--No, it's quite all right. We've been
+away, Mr. Rees and I. We've decided--"
+
+He reeled a little in his chair. Wingate poured some brandy from his
+flask into the little metal cup and held it out. Phipps drank it
+greedily.
+
+"Go on now."
+
+"We have decided," Phipps continued, "to sell wheat--to sell, you
+understand? You are to telephone Liverpool, Manchester, Lincoln, Glasgow,
+Bristol and Cardiff. Establish the price of sixty shillings.--Yes, that's
+right--sixty shillings.--What is that you say?--You want
+confirmation?--Mr. Rees will speak."
+
+Wingate passed the telephone to the next man; also his flask, which he
+held for a moment to his lips. Rees gurgled greedily. His voice sounded
+strained, however, and cracked.
+
+"Mr. Rees speaking, Harrison.--Yes, we are back. We'll be around at the
+office later on. You got Mr. Phipps' message?--We've made up our minds to
+sell wheat--sell it. What the devil does it matter to you why? We are
+selling it to save--"
+
+Wingate's pistol had stolen from his pocket. Rees glared at it for a
+moment and then went on.
+
+"To save an injunction from the Government. We have private information.
+They have determined to find our dealings in wheat illegal.--Yes, Mr.
+Phipps meant what he said--sixty shillings.--Use all our long-distance
+wires. How long will it take you?--A quarter of an hour?--Eh?"
+
+Wingate held the instrument away for a moment.
+
+"You will have your breakfast," he promised, "immediately the
+reply comes."
+
+"A quarter of an hour?" Rees went on. "Nonsense! Try and do it in five
+minutes.--Yes, our whole stock. When you've got the message through, ring
+us up.--Where are we? Why, at Lord Dredlinton's house. Don't be longer
+than you can help. Put a different person on each line.--What's that?"
+
+Rees turned his head.
+
+"He wants to know again," he said, "how much to sell. Let me say half our
+stock. That will be sufficient to ruin us. It will bring the price of
+that damned loaf of yours--"
+
+"The whole stock," Wingate interrupted, "every bushel."
+
+"Sell the whole stock," Rees repeated wearily.
+
+Wingate replaced the telephone upon a distant table. Then he mixed a
+little brandy and water in two glasses, broke off a piece of bread, set
+it before the two men and rang the bell. It was answered in an incredibly
+short space of time.
+
+"Grant," he directed, "bring in the breakfast trays in ten minutes."
+
+The man disappeared as silently as he had come. Wingate cut the knots and
+released the hands of his two prisoners. Their fingers were numb and
+helpless, however. Rees picked up the bread with his teeth from the
+table. Phipps tried but failed. Wingate held the tumbler of brandy and
+water once more to his lips.
+
+"Here, take this," he invited. "You'll find the circulation come back all
+right directly."
+
+"Aren't you going to give him anything?" Phipps asked, moving his head
+towards Dredlinton.
+
+"He is asleep," Wingate answered. "Better leave him alone until breakfast
+is ready."
+
+The telephone bell tinkled. Wingate brought back the instrument and held
+out a receiver each to Phipps and his nephew.
+
+"Harrison speaking. Your messages have all gone through on the trunk
+lines, sir. The sales have begun already, and the whole market is in a
+state of collapse. If you are coming down, I should advise you, sir, to
+come in by the back entrance. There'll be a riot here when the news
+gets about."
+
+Wingate removed the telephone once more.
+
+"And now," he suggested, "you would like a wash, perhaps? Or first we'd
+better wake Dredlinton."
+
+He leaned over and touched the crouching form upon the shoulder. There
+was no response.
+
+"Dredlinton," he said firmly, "wake up. Your vigil is over."
+
+Again there was no response. Wingate leaned over and lifted him up bodily
+by both shoulders. Rees went off into a fit of idiotic laughter. Phipps
+stretched out his hands before his eyes. It was a terrible sight upon
+which they looked,--Dredlinton's face like a piece of marble, white to
+the lips, the eyes open and staring, the unmistakable finger of Death
+written across it.
+
+"He's gone!" Rees choked. "He's gone!"
+
+Phipps suddenly found vigour once more in his arm. He struck the table.
+There was a note of triumph in his brazen tone.
+
+"My God, Wingate," he cried, "you've killed him! You'll swing for this
+job, after all!"
+
+There followed a few moments of tense and awestruck silence. Then an
+evil smile parted Rees' lips, and he looked at Wingate with triumphant
+malice.
+
+"This is murder!" he exclaimed.
+
+"So your excellent uncle has already intimated," Wingate replied. "I am
+sorry that it has happened, of course. As for the consequences, however,
+I do not fear them."
+
+He crossed the room and rang the bell. Once more a servant in plain
+clothes made his appearance with phenomenal quickness.
+
+"Send to her ladyship's room," Wingate directed, "and enquire the name
+and address of Lord Dredlinton's doctor. Let him be fetched here at once.
+Tell two of the others to come down. Lord Dredlinton must be carried into
+his bedroom."
+
+The man had scarcely left the room before the door was opened again and
+Grant himself appeared. This time he closed the door behind him and came
+a little way towards Wingate.
+
+"Inspector Shields is here, sir," he announced in an agitated whisper.
+
+Wingate stood for a moment as though turned to stone.
+
+"Inspector Shields?" he repeated. "What does he want?"
+
+"He wants to see Lord Dredlinton. I explained that it was an
+inconvenient time, but he insisted upon waiting."
+
+Wingate hesitated for a moment, deep in thought. The two exhausted men
+chuckled hideously.
+
+"Some playing cards," Wingate directed, suddenly breaking into speech.
+"Open that sideboard, Grant. Bring out the sandwiches and biscuits and
+fruit. That's right. And some glasses. Open the champagne quickly.
+Cigars, too. Here--shut the door. We must have a moment or two at this.
+You understand, Grant---a debauch!"
+
+The two moved about like lightning. In an incredibly short time, the room
+presented a strange appearance. The table before which the three men had
+kept their weary vigil was littered all over with playing cards, cigar
+ash, fragments of broken wine glasses. A half-empty bottle of champagne
+stood on the floor. Two empty ones, their contents emptied into some
+bowls of flowers, lay on their sides. Another pack of cards was scattered
+upon the carpet. A chair was overturned. There was every indication of a
+late-night sitting and a debauch. Last of all, Grant and Wingate between
+them carried the body of Lord Dredlinton behind the screen and laid it
+upon the sofa. Then the latter stood back and surveyed his work.
+
+"That will do," he said. "Wait one moment, Grant, before you show the
+inspector in. I have a word to say first to my two friends here."
+
+Phipps scowled across the table, heavy-eyed and sullen. There were black
+lines under his eyes, in which the gleam of hunger still lurked. His
+hands were gripping a chunk of the bread which he had torn away from the
+loaf, but which he had seemed to eat with difficulty.
+
+"Your friends may have something to say to you," he muttered. "If you
+think to stop our tongues, you're wrong--wrong, I tell you. The game's up
+for you, Wingate. The wires that are ruining us this morning will be
+telling of your arrest to-night, eh?"
+
+"You may be right," Wingate answered coolly, "but I doubt it. Listen. Do
+you believe that I am a man who keeps his word?"
+
+"Go on," Phipps muttered.
+
+"You are quite right in all that you have been saying, up to a certain
+point. Tell the truth and I am done for, but you pay the price, both
+of you. Under those circumstances, will it be worth your while to tell
+the truth?"
+
+"What do you mean?" Rees demanded.
+
+Phipps made a movement to rise.
+
+"I am faint," he cried. "Give me some wine."
+
+Wingate filled two tumblers with champagne and gave one to each. The
+effect upon Phipps was remarkable. The colour came back into his cheeks,
+his tone gathered strength.
+
+"What do you mean?" he echoed, "Worth our while?--Why the devil don't
+they bring the man in? You'll see!"
+
+"Inspector Shields will no doubt insist upon coming in," Wingate replied.
+"I gather from his visit that he is on the right track at last. But
+listen. If I am going to be arrested on a charge of abduction and
+manslaughter, as seems exceedingly probable, I am not going to leave my
+job half done. An English jury may call it murder if I shoot you two as
+you sit. I'll risk that. If I am going to get into trouble for one of
+you, I'll make sure of the lot."
+
+His voice carried conviction. The two men stared at him. Rees, who had
+been gnawing at a crust of bread, swallowed thickly, drained his glass
+and staggered to his feet.
+
+"You wouldn't dare!" he scoffed.
+
+"You underestimate my courage," Wingate assured them with a smile. "See,
+I will speak to you words which I swear are as true as any to which you
+have ever listened. I hear the footsteps of the inspector. If you fail
+for a single second to corroborate the story which I shall tell him, I
+shall shoot you both and possibly myself. Look at me, both of you. You
+know I have the courage to do it. You know I _shall_ do it.--That's all."
+
+There was a knock at the door. Grant opened it and stood on one side.
+
+"Inspector Shields has called," he announced. "I thought you might like
+to have a word with him, sir."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+The inspector blinked for a moment. The appearance of the room, with its
+closely drawn curtains and air of dissipation, was certainly strange.
+Wingate advanced to meet him.
+
+"You called to see Lord Dredlinton, I believe, Inspector," he began. "My
+name is Wingate. I am friend of the family."
+
+"I understood that Lord Dredlinton was here," the inspector announced,
+looking around.
+
+"I am sorry to say," Wingate informed him gravely, "that a very terrible
+thing has happened. Lord Dredlinton died suddenly in this room, only a
+few minutes ago. His body is upon the sofa there."
+
+The imperturbability of the inspector was not proof against such an
+amazing statement.
+
+"Good God!" he exclaimed. "Was he ill?"
+
+"Not that we know of," Wingate replied. "The doctor, who is on his way
+here, will doubtless be able to inform us upon that point, I have always
+understood that his heart was scarcely sound."
+
+The inspector, as he stepped forward towards the couch, with Wingate a
+yard or two in front of him, for the first time recognised the two men
+who sat at the table, looking at him so strangely. Rees' hands were in
+his pockets, his tie had come undone, his hair was ruffled. He had all
+the appearance of a man recovering from a wild debauch. Phipps'
+waistcoat was unbuttoned, and his eyes, in the gathering light, were
+streaked with blood.
+
+"Mr. Rees!" the inspector exclaimed. "And Mr. Phipps! Here? Why, I've a
+dozen men all over the country looking for you two gentlemen!"
+
+There was a dead silence. Wingate's hand had stolen into his pocket, in
+which there was a little bulge, Rees seemed about to speak, then checked
+himself. He glanced towards Phipps,--Phipps, whose hands were clasped
+together as though he were in pain.
+
+"The wanderers returned," Wingate explained, with a smile. "Lord
+Dredlinton, as you know. Inspector, has been very much worried by the
+supposed disappearance of his fellow directors. They turned up here last
+night unexpectedly. It seems that they have been all the time up in the
+North of England, making some investigations connected with the energies
+of their company. Their sudden return was naturally a great relief to
+Lord Dredlinton. We all celebrated---perhaps a little too well. Since
+then I am afraid we must also plead guilty," Wingate went on, "to a
+rather wild night, which has ended, as you see, in tragedy."
+
+The inspector bent down and examined Lord Dredlinton's body.
+
+"The doctor is on his way here," Wingate continued. "He will inform us,
+no doubt, as to the cause of death. Lord Dredlinton looked very exhausted
+many times during the night--or rather the morning--"
+
+"I am to understand," Shields interrupted quietly, "that, overjoyed
+by the return of his friends, Lord Dredlinton, Mr. Phipps, Mr. Rees
+and yourself indulged forthwith in a debauch? A great deal of wine
+was drunk?"
+
+"A great deal," Wingate admitted.
+
+"Supper, I see, has been served here," the inspector went on, "and you
+have played cards."
+
+"Poker," Wingate assented. "Lord Dredlinton preferred bridge but we
+rather overruled him."
+
+Shields turned towards the two men, who had been silent listeners. In his
+face there seemed to be some desire for corroboration.
+
+"You two gentlemen were present when Lord Dredlinton died?" he asked.
+
+"We were," Phipps replied, after a moment's hesitation.
+
+"We believed that it was a faint," Rees observed. "Even now it seems
+impossible to believe that he is dead."
+
+"Dead!--My God!" Phipps repeated, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
+
+"Nothing else transpired during the evening," the inspector continued,
+"likely to have proved a shock to his lordship?"
+
+"Nothing," Phipps declared hoarsely. "We must have been playing for a
+great many hours."
+
+"I am a strong man," Rees added, "and the youngest of the party, but I
+too--feel faint."
+
+"It seems a little strange, Mr. Wingate," Shields remarked, turning
+towards him, "that you yourself show not the slightest signs of fatigue."
+
+Wingate smiled grimly.
+
+"I neither drink nor smoke to excess," he explained, "and as a rule I
+keep regular hours. Perhaps that is why, if I choose to sit up all night,
+I am able to stand it."
+
+There was a knock at the door and Grant presented himself. To all
+appearance he was, as ever, the perfect butler. It was only Wingate who
+saw that quick, questioning look, the hovering of his hand about his
+pocket; who knew that, if necessary, there was no risk which this man
+would not run.
+
+"The doctor has arrived, sir," he announced.
+
+"You had better show him in," Wingate replied. "And, Grant."
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"It would be as well, I think, to let her ladyship be informed that Lord
+Dredlinton is ill--very ill."
+
+The man bowed and stood on one side as the doctor entered. The latter
+paused for a moment in astonishment as he looked upon the scene. Then he
+moved towards one of the windows and threw it up.
+
+"If Lord Dredlinton has been sitting for long in an atmosphere like
+this," he observed drily, "it's enough to have killed him."
+
+He glanced around with an air of distaste at Phipps and Rees, at the
+debris of the presumed debauch, and stooped over the body stretched
+upon the sofa. His examination lasted barely a minute. Then he rose
+to his feet.
+
+"Lord Dredlinton is dead," he announced in a shocked tone.
+
+"I feared so," Wingate murmured.
+
+"Will you call in some servants?" the doctor went on. "I should like the
+body carried into his lordship's bedroom at once."
+
+Grant appeared, quickly followed by two of his subordinates. The
+melancholy little procession left the room, and Shields turned to
+follow it. As he reached the door, he hesitated and glanced around
+towards Wingate.
+
+"Mr. Wingate," he said, "I wish to hear what the doctor has to say
+concerning Lord Dredlinton's death, but I also wish to have another
+word with you before you leave the house. Can I rely upon your waiting
+here for me?"
+
+"I give you my word," Wingate promised.
+
+"I shall also require some explanation," the inspector continued, turning
+to Phipps--
+
+"Explanation be damned!" the latter interrupted furiously. "If you want
+to know the truth about the whole business--"
+
+He broke off suddenly. His eyes seemed fascinated by the slow entry of
+Wingate's hand to his pocket. He kicked a footstool sullenly on one side.
+The inspector, after waiting for a moment, turned away.
+
+"In due season," he concluded, "I shall require to hear the truth from
+both of you gentlemen. You seem to have given Scotland Yard a great deal
+of unnecessary trouble."
+
+The telephone bell began to ring as the door closed. Wingate took up the
+receiver, listened for a moment and passed the instrument over to
+Phipps. The latter presently replaced the receiver upon its hook with a
+little groan.
+
+"You've broken us," he announced grimly.
+
+"No news has ever given me greater pleasure." Wingate replied.
+
+Stanley Rees rose to his feet.
+
+"We are not prisoners any more, I suppose?" he asked sullenly. "I am
+going home."
+
+"There is nothing to detain you," Wingate replied politely, "unless you
+choose to take breakfast first."
+
+"We want no more of your hospitality," Phipps muttered. "You will hear of
+us again!"
+
+Wingate stood between them and the door.
+
+"Listen," he said. "You are going away, I can see, with one idea in your
+mind. You have held your peace during the last quarter of an hour,
+because you have known that your lives would be forfeit if you told the
+truth, but you are saying to yourselves now that from the shelter of
+other walls you can tell your story."
+
+There was a furtive look in Rees' eyes, a guilty twitch on his
+companion's mouth. Wingate smiled.
+
+"You cannot," he continued, "by the wildest stretch of imagination,
+believe that this has been a one-man job. The whole scheme of your
+conveyance into Dredlinton House and into this room has necessitated the
+employment of something like twenty men. The greater part of these, of
+course, have been paid by me. One or two are volunteers."
+
+"Volunteers?" Phipps exclaimed. "Do you mean that you could find men to
+do your dirty work for nothing?"
+
+"I found men," Wingate answered sternly, "and I could find many more--and
+without payment, too--who were willing to enter into any scheme directed
+against you and your company."
+
+"Are we to stand here," Phipps demanded, "whilst you preach us a sermon
+about our business methods?"
+
+"I am afraid, for your own sakes, you must hear what I have to say before
+you go," Wingate replied. "I will put it in as few words as possible. If
+you give the show away, besides making yourselves the laughingstocks of
+the world you may live for twenty-four hours if my people are unlucky,
+but I give you my word of honour, Phipps--and I will do you the credit of
+believing that you recognise truth when you come across it--that you will
+both of you be dead before the dawn of the second day."
+
+Phipps leaned against the back of a chair. He seemed to have aged ten
+years in the last few days.
+
+"You threaten us with the vengeance of some secret society?" he demanded.
+
+"Not so very secret, either," Wingate rejoined, "but if you want to know
+the truth, I will tell it you. The greatest problem which we had to
+face, in arranging this little escapade, was how we should keep you
+silent after your release. We could think of none but primitive means,
+and those primitive means are established. There are five men, each of
+them men who have been ruined by the operations of your company, who have
+sworn to take your lives if you should divulge the truth as to your
+detention here. They are men of their word and they will do it. That is
+the position, gentlemen. I will not detain you any longer."
+
+Phipps moistened his dry lips.
+
+"If," he said, "we decide to hold our peace about the happenings of the
+last few days, it will not be because of your threats."
+
+"So long as you hold your peace," Wingate replied drily, "I have no
+desire to question your motives. Believe me, though, silence, and silence
+alone, will preserve your lives."
+
+He opened the door and they passed out of the room, Phipps stumbling a
+little, as though blinded by the unexpected sunshine which streamed
+through the skylight in the hall. From the shadows beyond, Grant came
+suddenly into evidence.
+
+"Breakfast is served in the dining room," he announced respectfully.
+
+A flickering anger seemed suddenly to blaze up in Stanley Rees. He
+cast a furious glance at the man whose fingers had twisted their
+imprisoning cords.
+
+"Open the door," he snarled, "and let us get out of this damned house!"
+
+Almost before the front door had closed upon Phipps and his nephew.
+Inspector Shields descended the stairs, crossed the hall, made his way
+down the passage, and silently entered the room which had been the scene
+of the tragedy. Wingate was standing in the midst of the debris at the
+far end of the apartment, directing the operations of a servant whom he
+had summoned. Shields held up his hand.
+
+"Stop, please," he ordered quietly.
+
+The two men both looked around.
+
+"I was just having the room cleared up," Wingate explained.
+
+"Presently," was the curt reply. "Please send the man away. I want a
+word with you alone."
+
+The pseudo-servant lingered, his eyes fixed upon Wingate's face. He, too,
+was an underling of Grant's,--a keen, intelligent-looking man, with broad
+shoulders and a powerful face. Wingate nodded understandingly.
+
+"I will ring if I need you, John," he said quietly.
+
+The man left the room. Wingate sat upon the arm of an easy-chair. Shields
+stood looking meditatively about him, his hands thrust deep into his
+coat pockets.
+
+"What is the physician's report?" the former asked.
+
+The inspector seemed to come back from a brown study.
+
+"Ah! Upon Lord Dredlinton? A very good report from your point of view,
+Mr. Wingate. Lord Dredlinton's death was due to exhaustion, but the
+doctor certifies that he was suffering, and has been for some time, from
+advanced valvular disease of the heart."
+
+"He had not the appearance," Wingate observed, "of being a healthy man."
+
+"He certainly was not," Shields admitted. "On the other hand, with great
+care he might have lived for some time. The immediate cause of his death
+was the strain of--what shall we call it, Mr. Wingate--this orgy?"
+
+"An excellent word," Wingate agreed, his eyes fixed upon his companion.
+
+The inspector lifted one of the packs of cards which had been dashed upon
+the table and looked at them thoughtfully.
+
+"Poker," he murmured. "By the by, where are the chips?"
+
+"The chips?" Wingate repeated.
+
+"Poker is one of those games, I believe, which necessitates the use of
+counters or the handling of a great deal of money."
+
+Wingate shrugged his shoulders. He made no reply. Shields took up one of
+the bottles of champagne, held it to the light, poured out the remainder
+of its contents and gazed with an air of surprise at the froth which
+crept up the glass.
+
+"Dear me!" he exclaimed. "I do not know much about champagne, but it
+seems to me that this has not been opened very long. By the by, you all
+drank champagne?" he went on. "I see no trace of any spirits about."
+
+"It was one of Lord Dredlinton's hobbles," Wingate declared. "Spirits are
+very seldom served in this house."
+
+The Inspector nodded. He had crossed to the sideboard and was looking
+into the contents of a great bowl of flowers.
+
+"I never heard," he reflected, "that roses did well in champagne. Let me
+see," he proceeded, counting the empty bottles, "four bottles between
+four of you, the contents of at least two bottles here, and--dear me, the
+carnations, too!" he went on, peering into a further bowl. "Really, Mr.
+Wingate, your orgy scarcely seems to have been one of drink."
+
+"Perhaps it was not," was the resigned reply.
+
+The inspector sighed.
+
+"I have seldom," he pronounced, looking fixedly at his companion, "seen a
+more amateurish piece of work than the arrangement of this so-called
+debauch. It seems pitiable, Mr. Wingate, that a man with brains like
+yours should have sought to deceive in so puerile a fashion."
+
+"What is this leading up to?" Wingate demanded.
+
+The inspector drew a little pamphlet from his pocket and passed it
+across. Wingate took it into his hands, opened it and stared at it
+in surprise.
+
+"A list of Cunard sailings!" he exclaimed.
+
+"One of the safest of lines," said Shields, with a nod. "The
+_Agricola_ sails to-morrow morning. The boat train, I believe, leaves
+Euston at four."
+
+Wingate glanced from the sailing list to his companion. The inspector was
+making movements as though about to depart. Wingate himself was
+speechless.
+
+"The physician is able to certify," Shields went on, "that Lord
+Dredlinton's death is due to natural causes. There will therefore be no
+inquest. That being the case, it is not my business to make
+enquiries--unless I choose."
+
+A newsboy went shouting across the square. The two men heard distinctly
+his hoarse cry:
+
+"Great fall of wheat in every market! Cheap bread next week!"
+
+The eyes of the two men met. There was almost a smile upon Shields' thin
+lips as he turned towards the door.
+
+"And I do not choose," he concluded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Peter Phipps and his nephew dined together on the last night of the year
+at a well-chosen table at Giro's restaurant in Monte Carlo. There were
+long-necked and gold-foiled bottles upon the table and a menu which had
+commanded the respect of the _maître d'hôtel_ whose province it was to
+supply their wants. Nevertheless, neither of the two men had the
+appearance of being entirely satisfied with life.
+
+"Those figures from the Official Receiver," Phipps remarked, as he filled
+his glass with wine and passed the bottle across the table, "are scarcely
+what we had a right to expect, eh, Stanley?"
+
+"They are simply scandalous," Rees declared gloomily. "One does not
+speculate with one's own money. I should have thought that any one with
+the least knowledge of finance would understand that. This man seems to
+think he has a lien upon our private fortunes."
+
+"Not only that," Peter Phipps groaned, "but he's attaching as much as he
+can get hold of. And to think of that old devil, Skinflint Martin,
+scenting the trouble and getting off to Buenos Ayres! The best part of
+half a million he got off with. Pig!--Stanley, this may be our last
+season at Monte Carlo. We shall have to draw in. Every year it gets more
+difficult to make money."
+
+"One month more of the British and Imperial," Stanley Rees sighed, "and
+we should both have been millionaires."
+
+"And as it is," his uncle groaned, "I am beginning to get a little
+nervous about our hotel bill."
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+With a benedictory wave of his hand, an all-welcoming smile, and a
+backward progress which suggested distinction bordering upon royalty, the
+chief _maître d'hôtel_ ushered his distinguished patrons to the table
+which had been reserved for them. Josephine looked across the little sea
+of her favourite blue gentians and smiled at her husband.
+
+"You remember always," she murmured.
+
+Wingate, who was standing up until his guests were seated, flashed an
+answering smile. At his right hand was a French princess, who was
+Josephine's godmother; at his left Sarah, lately glorified to married
+estate. An English Cabinet Minister and an American diplomatist, with
+their wives, and Jimmy, completed the party. No one noticed the two men
+at the little table near the wall.
+
+"You are a magician," the Princess whispered to Wingate. "Never could I
+have believed that my dear Josephine would become young again. They speak
+of her already as the most beautiful woman on the Riviera, and with
+reason. I am proud of my godchild. And they tell me that you," she went
+on, "have done great things in the world of finance, as well as in the
+underworld of politics. Those are worlds, alas!" she added with a little
+sigh, "of which I know nothing."
+
+"They are worlds," Wingate replied, "which exist more on paper than
+anywhere else."
+
+"Is it true, Wingate," the Cabinet Minister asked him curiously, "that it
+was you who broke the British and Imperial Granaries?"
+
+"If there is such a thing," Wingate answered with a smile, "as a world of
+underground politics--the Princess herself coined the phrase--then I
+think I may claim that what passed between me and the directors of that
+company is secret history. As a matter of fact, though, I think I was to
+some extent responsible for smashing that horrible syndicate."
+
+"It ought never to have been allowed to flourish," the Minister
+pronounced. "Its charter was cunningly devised to cheat our laws, and it
+succeeded. After all, though, it is good to think that the days when
+such an institution could live for a moment have passed. Labour and the
+reconstructionists have joined hands in sane legislation. It is my belief
+that for the next few decades, at any rate, the British Empire and
+America--for the two move now hand in hand--are entering upon a period of
+world supremacy."
+
+The American diplomatist had something to say.
+
+"For that," he declared, "we may be thankful to those responsible for the
+destruction of militarism. Industrial triumphs were never possible under
+its shadow. An era of prosperity will also be an era of peace."
+
+"For how long, I wonder?" the Princess whispered "Human nature has shown
+remarkably little change through all the ages. Don't you think that some
+day soon one person will have what another covets, and the world will
+rock again to the clash of arms?"
+
+"We are all selfish," Josephine murmured. "Life closes in around us, and
+we are mostly concerned with what may happen in our own time. I think
+that for as long as we live, peace is assured."
+
+"I am sure I hope so," Sarah declared. "I should hate Jimmy to have to go
+and fight again."
+
+"What sort of a husband does he make?" Wingate enquired.
+
+"Wonderful!" Sarah acknowledged with emphasis. "He has developed gifts
+of which I had not the slightest apprehension. Of course, Josephine would
+scratch me if I ventured upon such a thing as comparison,-so I'll be
+content with saying that I think we are both very happy women."
+
+Josephine laughed gaily. The almost peachlike bloom of girlhood had come
+back to her cheeks. She wore a rope of pearls, her husband's wedding
+gift, which had belonged to an Empress, and her white gown was the _chef
+d'oeuvre_ of a great French artiste's most wonderful season. She looked
+across the table. How was it, she wondered, with a little glad thrill,
+that the eyes for which she sought seemed always waiting for hers.
+
+"We are very lucky women," she said simply.
+
+Phipps bit the end off his cigar a little savagely. He had been casting
+longing glances towards the table in the centre of the room, with its
+brilliant company.
+
+"So that is the end of my duel with Wingate," he muttered. "I wonder
+whether it would be worth while."
+
+"Whether what would be worth while?" his nephew asked.
+
+Phipps made no direct reply. He rose instead to his feet.
+
+"I am going back to my room at the hotel for a moment, Stanley, to fetch
+something," he confided. "Order some more of the Napoleon brandy. I shall
+perhaps need it when I come back."
+
+The young man nodded, and Peter Phipps started on his way to the door. He
+had to pass the table at which Wingate was presiding, and it chanced that
+Josephine, looking up, met his eyes. There was a moment's hesitation in
+her mind. Women are always merciful when happy. Josephine was very happy,
+and Peter Phipps showed signs in his bearing and in the lines upon his
+face that he was not the man of six months ago. She smiled very slightly
+and bowed, a greeting which Phipps returned with a smile which was almost
+of gratitude. The Cabinet Minister, who had met Phipps and remembered
+little of his history, followed Josephine's lead; also the American,
+who had known him in New York. Phipps was holding his head a little
+higher as he went out.
+
+In ten minutes he returned. He carried a small packet in his hand, which
+he laid down before his nephew.
+
+"Try one," he invited.
+
+Stanley Rees withdrew one of the long cigars from its paper covering.
+
+"Did you go all the way back to the hotel to fetch these?" he asked
+incredulously.
+
+Phipps shook his head.
+
+"I went to fetch my revolver," he said. "I meant to shoot Wingate. But
+did you see her, Stanley? She nodded to me--actually smiled!"
+
+"What of it?" the young man asked.
+
+"You're a fool," his uncle replied. "Pass the brandy."
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10575 ***