Captains Of Souls E-Book

Edgar Wallace

• Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 466

Beschreibung

Embark on a haunting journey with Edgar Wallace's "Captains of Souls," where the boundaries between reality and the supernatural blur. This gripping narrative follows the enigmatic Captain Yorke as he navigates through a world of hidden secrets, eerie occurrences, and a quest for redemption. Every page unravels a new layer of mystery and suspense, drawing readers into a thrilling and unforgettable adventure. Perfect for those who love a spine-chilling blend of intrigue and the supernatural.

Leseprobe

Captains Of Souls

Author: Edgar Wallace

Edited by: Seif Moawad

Copyright © 2024 by Al-Mashreq eBookstore

First UK edition: John Long Ltd., London, 1923

First US Edition: Small, Maynard & Co., Boston & New York, 1922

No part of this publication may be reproduced whole or in part in any form without the prior written permission of the author

All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Captains Of Souls

BOOK THE FIRST

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

BOOK THE SECOND

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

BOOK THE THIRD

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI

CHAPTER XLII

CHAPTER XLIII

BOOK THE FOURTH

CHAPTER XLIV

CHAPTER XLV

CHAPTER XLVI

CHAPTER XLVII

CHAPTER XLVIII

CHAPTER XLIX

CHAPTER L

CHAPTER LI

CHAPTER LII

CHAPTER LIII

CHAPTER LIV

CHAPTER LV

CHAPTER LVI

CHAPTER LVII

CHAPTER LVIII

CHAPTER LIX

Landmarks

The Council of Justice

Cover

BOOK THE FIRST

CHAPTER I

BERYL MERVILLE wrote:

“Dear Ronnie, We are back again from Italy, arriving this afternoon. Daddy thought you would be there to meet us, and I was so disappointed to find nobody but Mr. Steppe. Oh yes! I know that he is a most important person, and his importance was supported by his new car, such an impressive treasure, with a collapsible writing-table and cigar-lighter and library—actually a library in a cunning little locker under one of the seats. I just glanced at them. I am a little afraid of Mr. Steppe, yet he was kindness itself, and that bull voice of his, bellowing orders to porters, and chauffeurs, and railway policemen was comforting in a way. Daddy is a little plaintive on such occasions.

I thought he was looking unusually striking; Steppe I mean. People certainly do look at him, with his black, pointed beard and his bristling black eyebrows. You like him, don’t you? Perhaps I should, too, only—he is very magnetic, a commanding person, he frightens me, I repeat. And I have met another man; I don’t think you know him, he said he had never met you. Daddy knows him rather well, and so does Mr. Steppe. Such a queer man, Ronnie! He arrived after daddy had gone to his club, to collect some correspondence. The maid came, and told me there was a strange man in the hall who said Dr. Merville had sent for him; so I went down to see him. He made the queerest impression on me. You will be amused, but not flattered, when I confess that the moment I saw him, I thought of you! I had a sort of warm impulse toward him. I felt as though I were meeting you, as I wanted you to be. That sounds feeble, and lame, but employing my limited vocabulary to the best of my poor ability, I am striving to reduce my mad impression to words.

How mad it was, you’ll understand. For, Ronnie, he was a stoutish man of middle-age—no more like you than I am like Mr. Steppe! Yet when I saw this shabbily-dressed person—the knees of his trousers shone, and the laces of his untidy boots were dragging—I just gasped. He sat squarely in one of the hall chairs, a big rough hand on each knee, and he was staring in an absent-minded way at the wall. He didn’t even see me when I stood almost opposite to him. But his head, Ronnie! It was the head of a conqueror, one of those heroes of antiquity. You see their busts in the museums and wonder who they are. A broad eagle face, strangely dark, and on top a shock of grey-white hair brushed back into a mane. He had the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen in a man, and when they turned in my direction, and he got up from his chair, not awkwardly as I expected, but with the ease of an Augustus, there was within them so much loving kindness that I felt I could have cried. And please, Ronnie, do not tell me that I am neurotic and over-tired. I was just mad—nothing worse than that. I’m mad still, for I cannot get him out of my mind.

His name is Ambrose Sault, and he is associated with daddy and Mr. Steppe, though I think that he is really attached to that horrid Greek person to whom daddy introduced me—Moropulos. What sort of work he does for Moropulos I have not discovered. There is always a great deal of mystery about Mr. Moropulos, and Mr. Steppe’s business schemes. Sometimes I am very uncomfortable—which is a very mild way of describing my feelings—about daddy… and things. Ronnie, you have some kind of business dealings with father. What is it all about? I should so like to discover. It is to do with companies and corporations, isn’t it? I know Mr. Steppe is a great financier, but I don’t quite know how financiers work. I suppose I ought not to be curious, but it worries me—no, bothers is a better word, sometimes.

Come and see me soon, Ronnie. I promise you I won’t… you know. I’ve never forgiven myself for hurting you so. It was such a horrid story… I blame myself for listening, and hate myself for telling you. But the girl’s brother was so earnest, and so terribly upset, and the girl herself was so wickedly circumstantial. You have forgiven me? It was my first experience of blackmailers, and I ought to have known you better and liked you better than to believe that you would be such a brute… and she was such a common girl, too… ”

She stopped writing and looked round. “Come in.” The maid was straightening her face as she entered. “That gentleman, miss, Mr. Sault, has called.”

Beryl tapped her lips with the feathered pen holder. “Did you tell him that the doctor was out?”

“Yes, miss. He asked if you were in. I told him I’d go and see.” Something about the visitor had amused the girl, for the corners of her lips twitched.

“Why are you laughing, Dean?” Beryl’s manner was unusually cold and her grave eyes reproving. For no reason that she could assign, she felt called upon to defend this man, against the ridicule which she perceived in the maid’s attitude.

“Oh, miss, he was so strange! He said: ‘Perhaps she will see me’. ‘Do you mean Miss Merville?’ says I. ‘Merville!’ he says in a queer way, ‘of course, Beryl Merville’, and then he said something to himself. It sounded like ‘how pitiful’. I don’t think he is quite all there, miss.”

“Show him up, please,” said Beryl quietly. She recognized the futility of argument. Dean and her type found in the contemplation of harmless lunacy a subject for merriment… and Dean was the best maid she had had for years. She sat waiting for the man, uncertain… Why did she want to see him? She was not really curious by nature, and the crude manners of the class to which he belonged usually rubbed her raw. The foulness of their speech, the ugliness of their ideals and their lives; the gibberish—almost an unknown language to her—of the cockney man and woman, all these things grated. Perhaps she was neurotic after all; Ronnie was quite sure of his judgement in most matters affecting her.

Ambrose Sault, standing in the doorway, hat in hand, saw her bite her lower lip reflectively. She looked round with a start of surprise, and, seeing him, got up. He was a coloured man! She had not realized this before, and she was unaccountably hurt; just coloured, and yet his eyes were grey!

“I hope I haven’t disturbed you, mademoiselle,” he said. His voice was very soft and very sweet. Mademoiselle? A Creole… a Madagascan… an Octoroon? From one of the French foreign territories perhaps. He spoke English without an accent, but the ‘mademoiselle’ had come so naturally to his lips.

“You are French, Mr. Sault… your name, of course… ” She smiled at him questioningly and wondered why she troubled to ask questions at all.

“No, mademoiselle.” He shook his great head, and the mask of a face did not relax. “I am from Barbadoes, but I have lived in Port de France, that is, in Martinique, for many years. I was also in Noumea, in New Caledonia, that is also French.” There was an awkward silence here. Yet he was not embarrassed and displayed no incertitude of his position. Her dilemma came from the fact that she judged men by her experience and acquaintance with them, and the empirical method fails before the unusual… Ambrose Sault was that.

“My father will be home very soon, Mr. Sault. Won’t you please sit down?”

As he chose a chair with some deliberation it occurred to her that she would find a difficulty in explaining to the fastidious Dr. Merville why she had invited this man to await him in the drawing-room. Strangely enough, she herself felt the capacity of entertaining and being entertained by the visitor, and she had no such spasm of dismay as had come to her, when other, and more presentable visitors, had settled themselves for a lengthy call. This fact puzzled her. Ambrose Sault was… an artisan perhaps, a messenger, more likely. The shabbiness of his raiment and the carelessness of his attire suggested some menial position. One waistcoat button had been fastened into the wrong buttonhole; the result was a little grotesque. “Have you been working very long with my father?” she asked.

“No… not a very long time,” he said. “Moropulos and Steppe know him better than I.” He checked himself. She knew that he would not talk any more about his associates, and the enigma which their companionship presented would remain unsolved, so far as he could give a solution. ‘Moropulos’—‘Steppe’? He spoke as an equal. Even Ronnie was deferential to Mr. Steppe, and was in awe of him. Her father made no attempt to hide his nervousness in the presence of that formidable person. Yet this man could dispense with the title. It was not bravado on his part, the conscious impertinence of an underling desirous of asserting his equality. Obviously he thought of Mr. Steppe as “Steppe’. What would he call her father? No occasion arose, but she was certain he would have been ‘Merville’ and no more.

Sault’s eyes were settled on her, absorbing her; yet his gaze lacked offence, being without hostility, or notable admiration. She had a ridiculous sensibility of praise. So he might have looked upon Naples from the sea, or upon the fields of narcissi above Les Avants, or the breathtaking loveliness of the hills of Monticattini in the blue afterlight of sunset. She could not meet his eyes… yet was without discomfort. The praise of his conspection was not human. She laughed, artificially, she thought, and reached out for a book that lay on the table. “We have just returned from Italy,” she said. “Do you know Italy at all, Mr. Sault?”

“I do not know Italy,” he said, and took the book she held to him. “That is rather a wonderful account of Lombardy and its history,” she said. “Perhaps you would like to read it?” He turned the leaves idly and smiled at her. She had never seen a man smile so sweetly.

“I cannot read,” he said simply. She did not understand his meaning for a while, thinking that his eyesight was failing.

“Perhaps you would care to take it home.”

He shook his head and the book came back to her. “I cannot read,” he said, without shame, “or write—at least I cannot write words. Figures, yes, figures are easy; somebody told me—he was a Professor of English, I think, at one of the Universities—that it was astonishing that I could work out mathematical problems and employ all the signs and symbols of trigonometry and algebra without being able to write. I wish I could read. When I pass a bookshop I feel like an armless man who is starving within hands’ reach of salvation. I know a great deal, and I pay a man to read to me—Livy and Prescott and Green and, of course, Bacon—I know them all. Writing does not worry me… I have no friends.”

If he had spoken apologetically, if he had displayed the least aggression, she might have classified and held him in a place. But he spoke of his shortcomings as he might have spoken of his grey hair: as a phenomenon beyond his ordering.

She was thunderstruck; possibly he was so used to shocking people from this cause that he did not appear to observe the effect he had produced.

He was so completely content with this, the first contact with his dream—woman, that he was almost incapable of receiving any other impression. Her hair was fairer than he had thought, her nose thinner, and the moulding of her delicate face was more spiritual. The lips redder and fuller, the rounded chin less firm. And her eyes… He wished she would turn her head so that he could be sure of their colour. They were big, set wide apart, there was depth in them and a something upon which he yearned. The figure of her he knew by heart. Straight and tall, and most gracious. A patrician; he thought of her as that. And Oriental. He had pictured her as a great lady at Constantine’s court; he set her upon the marble terrace of a decent villa on the hills above Chrysopolis; a woman of an illustrious order.

She could never suspect that he thought of her at all as a distinct personality. She could not guess that he knew her as well as his own right hand; that, day after day, he had waited in the Row, a shabby and inconspicuous figure amongst the smart loungers; waited for the benison of her presence. She had not seen him in Devon in the spring… he had been there. Living on the rain-soaked grass of Tapper Downs to watch her walking with her father; sitting amidst gorse on the steep slope of the cliff, she was unconscious of his guardianship, reading in her chair on the smooth beach.

“How curious, I nearly said ‘sad’. But you do not feel very sad about it, Mr. Sault, do you?”

Amused, he shook his head. “It would be irritating,” he said, “if I were sorry for myself. But I am never that. Half the unhappiness of life comes from the vanity of self-pity. It is the mother of all bitterness. Do you realize that? You cannot feel bitter without feeling sorry for yourself.”

She nodded. “You miss a great deal—but you know that. Poetry? I suppose you have that read to you?”

Ambrose Sault laughed softly. “Yes—poetry.”

“Out of the dark which covers me,

Black as a pit from Pole to Pole,

I thank whatever gods there be,

For my unconquerable soul.”

“That poem and Theocrite, and only two lines of Theocrite are the beginning and the end of my poetical leanings. I attend lectures, of course. Lectures on English, on architecture, music, history—especially history—oh, a hundred subjects. And mathematics. You can get those in the extension classes, only, unfortunately, I cannot qualify for admission to the classes themselves.”

“Have you never tried to—to… ”

“Read and write? Yes. My room is packed with little books and big books. A-b, ab; c-a-t, cat; and copy-books. But I just can’t. I can write the letters of the alphabet, a few of them that are necessary for mathematical calculations, very well; but I cannot go any further. I seem to slip into a fog, a sort of impenetrable wall of thick mist, that confuses and baffles me. I know that c-a-t is ‘cat’, but when I see ‘cat’ written it is a meaningless combination of straight and curved lines. It is sheerly physical—the doctors have a word for it… I cannot remember what it is for the moment, I just can’t read… ”

Dr. Merville came in at that moment, a thin, colourless man, myopic, irritable, chronically worried. He entered the drawing-room hurriedly. Beryl thought he must have run upstairs. His frowning, dissatisfied glance was toward Sault; the girl he ignored. “Hello, Sault—had no idea you were here. Will you come into my study?” He was breathless, and Beryl knew by the signs that he was angry about something. It occurred to her instantly that he was annoyed with her for entertaining the untidy visitor. The study was next door to the drawing-room, and he walked out with a beckoning jerk of his chin.

“I am glad to have met you, mademoiselle.” Ambrose Sault was not to be hurried. Returning to the open doorway, Dr. Merville, clucking his impatience, witnessed the leisurely leave-taking. The study door had scarcely closed on the visitor before it opened again and her father returned. “Why the deuce did you ask that fellow up, Beryl? He could have very well waited in the servants’ hall—or in the breakfast-room, or anywhere. Suppose—somebody had called!”

“I thought he was a friend of Mr. Steppe’s,” she said calmly. “You know such extraordinary people. What is he?”

“Who, Sault? Well, he is… ” Dr. Merville was not immediately prepared to define the position of his visitor. “In a sense, he is an employee of Moropulos—picked him up in his travels. He is an anarchist.”

She stared. “A what?”

“Well, not exactly an anarchist… communist… anyway, he has quaint views on—things. Believes in the equality of the human race. An extraordinary fellow, a dreamer, got a crazy idea of raising a million to found a college, that’s what he calls it, The Mother College… can’t stop now, darling, but please don’t make a fuss of him. He is just a little difficult as it is. I will tell you about him some day.”

He bustled out of the room and the study door closed with a thud. Beryl Merville considered Ambrose Sault for a very long time before she turned to her writing-table where the unfinished letter to Ronald Morelle invited a conclusion.

CHAPTER II

“WELL, Sault, why have you come? Anything wrong?”

Beryl would have thought Dr. Merville’s manner strangely mild and conciliatory after his show of antagonism toward the visitor.

Sault had seated himself on the edge of a low chesterfield under the curtained window. “Moropulos is worried about some people who called at his bureau today. They came to ask him about a letter that had been sent to him from South Africa by the assistant manager of the Brakfontein Diamond Mine.”

Merville was standing by the library-table, in the centre of the room. The hand that played with the leaves of a magazine was trembling ever so slightly. “What has happened… how did they know… who were they?” he demanded shakily.

“I think it was the managing director—the American gentleman. He was very angry. They discovered that the manager had been receiving money from London soon after he made his report. Moropulos told me that the shares had dropped thirty points since yesterday morning. Mr. Divverly said that Moropulos and his gang—those were the words, I think—had bribed the manager to keep back the report that the mine was played out. I suppose he did. I know very little about stocks and shares.”

Dr. Merville was biting his knuckles, a weak and vacillating man; Sault had no doubts as to this, and it hurt him every time he realized that this invertebrate creature was Beryl Merville’s father. How and why had he come into the strange confederation?

“I can do nothing.” The doctor was fretful, his voice jerky; he fixed and removed his pince-nez and fixed them again. “Nothing! I do not know why these people make inquiries. There was nothing dishonest in selling stock which you know will fall… it is a part of the process of speculation, isn’t it, Sault? All the big houses work on secret information received or bought. If—if Moropulos or Steppe care to buy information, that is nobody’s affair… ”

“There may be an inquiry on the Stock Exchange,” said Sault calmly. “Moropulos asked me to tell you that. The Johannesburg committee have taken up the matter and have called for information. You see, the manager has confessed.”

“Confessed!” gasped the doctor, and went white.

“So Mr. Divverly says. He had told the directors that Moropulos had the information a month before the directors.”

The doctor sat down heavily on the nearest chair. “I don’t see—that it affects us,” he protested feebly; “there is no offence in getting a tip about a failing property, is there, Sault?”

“I don’t know. Moropulos says it is conspiracy. They can prove it if… ”

“If?”

“If they find the letters which the manager wrote. Moropulos has them in his desk.”

Merville sprang up. “Then they must be destroyed!” he cried violently. “It is madness to keep them… I had no idea—of course he must burn them. Go back and tell him to do this, Sault.”

Ambrose Sault put his hand into the fold of his shabby jacket and brought out a bundle of documents. “They are here,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Moropulos says that you must keep them. They may get a warrant to search his house.”

“Keep them—I?” Merville almost screamed. “Moropulos is a fool—burn them!”

Sault shook his head. “Steppe says ‘no’. They may be useful later. You must keep them, doctor. It is Steppe’s wish. To-morrow I will start working on the safe.”

Dr. Merville took the papers from the outstretched hand and looked round helplessly. There was a steel box on his desk. He took out his key, looked again and more dubiously at the packet of letters, and dropped them into the box. “What is this safe, Sault? I know that you are a devilish clever fellow with your hands, and Moropulos mentioned something about a safe. You are not making it?”

Sault nodded, and there was a gleam in his fine eyes.

“But why? Moropulos has a safe and Steppe must possess dozens. Why not buy another, if he must have a special place for these wretched things?”

“You cannot buy the safe that I shall make,” said the dark man quietly. “It has taken me a year to invent the dial… eh? Yes. Combination. They are easy, but not this one. A word will open it, any other word, any other combination of letters, and there will be nothing to find.”

The doctor frowned. “You mean if any other person—the police, for example—try to open the safe, the contents are destroyed?”

Sault nodded.

“How?”

The visitor, his business at an end, rose. “That is simple, a twist of the hand, unless the combination is true, releases a quart of acid, any of the corrosive acids will serve.”

Merville bent his head in thought. Presently he saw a flaw in the invention. “Suppose they don’t touch the lock?” he asked. “Suppose they burn out the side of the safe—it can be done, I believe—what then?”

Ambrose Sault gave that soft laugh of his. “The sides will be hollow, and filled, from the inside of the safe, with water pumped in at a pressure. Cut through the safe, and the water escapes and releases a plunger that brings about the same result—the contents of the safe are destroyed.”

“You are a strange creature—the strangest I have met. I don’t understand you,” Merville shook his head. “I hope you will hurry with that safe.” As Sault was at the door he asked: “Where did Moropulos find you, Sault?”

The man turned. “He found me in the sea,” he said. “Moropulos was trading in those days. He had a sloop—pearl smuggling, I think. I thought he had told you. I never make any secret about it.”

“In the sea—for heaven’s sake, what do you mean? Where?”

“Ten miles off the Isle of Pines. I got away from Noumea in a boat. Noumea is the capital of New Caledonia. I and three Canaques—they were under sentence for cannibalism. We ran into a cyclone and swamped, just as we were trying to make the sloop which was standing in to the lee of the island. Moropulos took me on board and the natives; when he found that I was a convict—”

“A convict… a French convict!”

Sault was leaning easily, his cheek against the hand that gripped the edge of the open door. He nodded. “I thought he had told you. Of course he would have taken me back to Noumea for the reward, only he had a cargo on board which he did not want the French to see. I found afterwards that when we called at the Loyalty Island he tried to sell me back, but couldn’t get a price.” He smiled broadly as at a very pleasant recollection. “Moropulos would sell me now,” he said, “only I am useful.”

“But why… why were you imprisoned?” asked Merville, awe-stricken at the tremendous revelation.

“I killed a man,” said Sault. “Good night, doctor.”

CHAPTER III

IT was a Monday morning and a bank holiday. A few regular habitues of the park, to whom the word ‘holiday’ had no especial significance, had overlooked the fact and took their cantering exercise a little self-consciously under admiring eyes of the people who seldom saw people riding on horseback for the pleasure of it. The day was fine and warm, the hawthorn trees were thickly frosted with their cerise and white blossoms; stiff crocuses flamed in every bed, and the banners of the daffodils fluttered in the light breeze that blew half-heartedly across the wide green spaces. On every path the holiday-makers struggled, small mothers laden with large babies; shop-boys in garments secretly modelled on the supermen they served; girls from the stores in their bargain-price finery; young men with and without hats, the waitresses of closed tea-shops, and here and there a pompous member of the bourgeoisie conscious of his superiority to the crowd with which, in his condescension, he mingled.

There is one shady place which faces Park Lane—a stretch of wooded lawn where garden-chairs are set six deep. Behind this phalanx there is an irregular fringe of seats, usually in couples, and greatly in request during the darker hours. In the early morning, before the energies of the promenaders are exhausted, the spot is deserted. But two young people occupied chairs this morning. There was nothing in the appearance of the girl that would have made the companionship seem incongruous. In her tailored costume, the unobtrusive hat and the simplicity of the toilette, she might as well have been the youngest daughter of a duke, or a work-girl with a judgement in dress. Her clothes would not be ‘priced’ by the most expert of woman critics, and even stockings and shoes, the last hope of the appraiser, would have baffled.

No two glandes would have been required to put the man in his class. If he was a thought dandified, it was the dandification of a gentleman. He looked what he was, a man of leisure; the type which is to be found in the Guards, or the smartest regiment of cavalry. Yet Ronald Morelle was no soldier. He had served during the war, but had seen none of its devastations. He hated the violence of battle and despised the vulgarity of a noisy patriotism. His knowledge of Italian had secured him a quasi-diplomatic appointment, nominally at Italian headquarters, actually in Rome. He had used every influence that could be employed, pulled every string that could be pulled, to keep him from the disorder of the front line, and fortune had favoured him to an extraordinary extent. On the very day he received instructions to report to the regiment with which he had trained, the armistice was signed… he saw the last line of trenches which the British had prepared, but never occupied, south of Amiens, saw them from the train that carried him home, and thought that they looked beastly uncomfortable.

The girl by his side would not be alone in thinking him good-looking. He was that rarity, a perfectly-featured man. His skin was faultless; his straight nose, his deep-set brown eyes, his irreproachable mouth, were excellent. The hypercritical might cavil at the almost feminine chin. A small brown moustache was probably responsible for the illusion that he favoured the profession of arms. Evie Colebrook thought he was the most beautiful man in the world, and when he smiled, as he was smiling now, she dared not look at him. He was talking about looks, and she was deliciously flattered. “How ridiculous you are, Mr. Morelle,” she protested. “I suppose you have said that to thousands and thousands of girls?”

“Not quite so many, Evie,” he answered. “To be exact, I can’t remember having been so shamelessly complimentary to any girl before. You need not call me ‘Mr. Morelle’ unless you wish to—my friends call me ‘Ronnie’.”

She played with the handkerchief on her lap. “It seems so familiar. Honestly, Ronnie, aren’t you rather… what is the word? The book you lent me… a play?”

“A philanderer?” suggested the other. “My dear child, how silly you are. Of course I’m not. Very few people have impressed me as you have. It must have been Fate that took me into Burts—I never go into shops, but Francois—that’s my man—”

“I know him,” she nodded, “he often comes in. I used to wonder who he was.”

“He was out and I wanted… I forget what it was I wanted, even forget whether I bought it. I must have done, otherwise I should not have found myself staring over a pay-desk at the most lovely girl in all the world.”

She laughed, a gurgling laugh of sheer happiness, and looked at him swiftly before she dropped her eyes again. “I like to hear that,” she said softly. “It is so wonderful… that you like me, I mean. Because I’m nothing, really. And you, you’re a… well, gentleman. I know you hate the word, but you are. Miles and miles above me. Why, I live in a miserable little house in a horrible neighbourhood… full of thieves and terrible creatures who drink. And my mother does odd jobs for people. And I’m not very well educated… really. I can read and write, but I’m not half so clever as Christina, that is my sister. She’s an invalid and reads all day, and all night too, if I’d let her.”

He was watching her as she spoke. The play of colour in her pretty face, the rise and fall of her narrow chest, the curve of chin and the velvet smoothness of her throat… he marked them all with the eye of the gourmet who watches lambs frisking in the pasture and sees not the poetry and beauty of young life, but a likeable dish that will one day mature. “If you were a beggar-maid and I were a prince… ” he began.

“I’m not much better, am I?” she asked ruefully, “and you are a prince, to me, Ronnie… ” She was thinking.

“Yes?”

“How can anything come right for us? I don’t want to think about it, and I try ever so hard to keep it out of my thoughts, I’m so happy… meeting you… and loving you… and tomorrow never comes, but—”

“You mean how will this dear friendship end?” She nodded. “How would you like it to end?”

Evie Colebrook poked the ferrule of her sunshade into the grass and turned up a tuft of clover. “There is only one way it can ever end—happily,” she said in a low voice, “and that is well, you know, Ronnie.”

He laughed. “With you in a beautiful white dress and a beautiful white veil and a wreath of orange blossom round your glorious hair, and a priest in a surplice reading from a book; and people watching you as you go down the aisle and saying—well, you know what they say. I think a wedding is the most uninteresting function which Society affects.”

She said nothing, but continued prodding at the turf. “It can be done quietly,” she said at last.

Leaning toward her, he slipped his hand under her arm. “Evie, is love nothing?” he asked earnestly, “isn’t it the biggest thing? Which is the best, a wedding between two people who half hate one another, but are marrying because one wants money and the other a swagger wife, or an everlasting love-union between a man and a woman who are bound with bonds that cannot break?”

She sighed, the quick, double sigh of one half convinced. “You make me feel that I’m common and… and brainless, and, anyway, I don’t want to talk about it. Ronnie, I suppose you’re awfully busy this morning?” She looked wistfully at the big Rolls that was drawn up by the side of the road.

“I am rather,” he said, “I wish I weren’t. I’d love to drive you somewhere—anywhere so long as you were by my side, little fairy. When shall I see you again?”

“On Sunday?” she asked, as they strolled toward the car.

“Why not come up to the flat to tea on Saturday afternoon?” he suggested, but she shook her head.

“I’d rather not, Ronnie—do you mind? I… well, I don’t want to somehow. Am I an awful pig?”

He smiled down on her. “Of course not… oh, damn!” A girl on a horse had just cantered past. She saw him and lifted her whip to acknowledge his raised hat.

“Who is that?” Evie was more than curious.

“A girl I know,” he said suavely. “The daughter of my doctor, and rather a gossip.”

“You’re ashamed of being seen with me.”

“Rubbish!” he laughed. “I am so proud of you that I wish she had stopped, confound her!” He took her hand and smiled into her eyes. “Good-bye, beloved,” he breathed.

Evie Colebrook watched the car until it had turned out of sight. It was following the gossiping girl, but she did not care. She went home walking on air. At the corner of the Row, the big car drew abreast of the rider. “Why on earth are you riding on Bank Holiday, Beryl—the park is full of louts, and there aren’t half a dozen people in the Row!”

Beryl Merville looked at him quizzically. “And why on earth are you in the park, Ronnie; and who was your beautiful little friend?”

He frowned. “Friend… ? Oh, you mean the girl I was speaking to? Would you call her beautiful?… yes, I suppose she is pretty, but quite a kid. Her father is an old friend of mine—colonel—I forget his name, he is something at the War Office. I have an idea they live near the park. I saw her walking, and stopped the car to talk to her. Frankly, I was so bored that I almost fell on her neck. I wasn’t with her for five minutes.”

Beryl nodded and dismissed the matter from her mind. She was more interested in another subject.

“Yes, dear, I had your letter. I’m an awful brute not to have come over and seen you. But the fact is, I have been working hard. Don’t sneer, Beryl. I really have. Sturgeon, the editor of the Post Herald, has discovered in me a latent genius for writing. It is rather fun… apparently I have a flair for that kind of work.”

“But, Ronnie, this is great news! Stop your car by the corner and find a man to hold my horse… there is an awful lot I want to talk to you about.” He parked his car, and, helping her dismount, handed the reins to an idle groom. A watchful attendant drew near. “You will have to pay for the seats, Ronnie, I have no money.”

“Happily I have two tickets,” he said, and realized his mistake before he drew them from his pocket.

“I thought you hadn’t been with your colonel’s daughter more than five minutes?” she challenged, and laughed. “I sometimes think that you’d rather lie than eat!”

“My dear Beryl.” Mr. Morelle’s tone revealed both shock and injury. “Did I say that I didn’t sit with her? I couldn’t be so uncivil as to expect her to stand. The fact is, that she hinted that she would like me to drive her round the park, and I had no wish to.”

“Never mind your guilty secret,” she said gaily, “tell me all about your new job. Poor Ronnie, so they have made you work at last! I feared this.”

Ronnie smiled good-naturedly. “It is amusing,” he said. “I was always rather keen on that kind of work, even when I was at Oxford. Sturgeon saw some verses of mine in one of the quarterlies, and asked me if I would care to describe a motor-car race… the Gordon Bennett Cup. I took it on and he seemed immensely pleased with the account I wrote. I feel that I am doing some poor devil out of a job, but—”

“But it doesn’t keep you awake at nights,” she finished. “But how lovely, Ronald. You will be able to describe Mr. Steppe’s trial… everybody says that one of these days he will be tried… ”

Ronald Morelle was not amused. She saw a frown gather on his forehead and remembered that he and Mr. Steppe had some association. “Of course I’m joking, Ronnie. How awfully touchy you are! Mr. Steppe is quite nice, and people invariably say unpleasant things about a successful man.”

“Steppe… ” he paused. There was a nervousness in his manner and in his tone which he could not disguise. “Steppe is quite a good fellow. A little rough, but he was trained in a rough school. He is very nearly the cleverest financier in this country or any other.” He would have changed the conversation had she not interpolated a question. “I do not know him… Sault you said? No, I’ve never met him. He does odd jobs for Moropulos. A half-caste, isn’t he? What a nerve the fellow had to come to the house! Why didn’t you kick him out?”

“It is obvious that you haven’t seen him or you wouldn’t ask such a question,” she replied, her eyes twinkling.

“I don’t know what he does,” Ronnie went on. “Steppe has a good opinion of him. That is all I know. He has three decorations for something he did in the war. He was in the Field Ambulance and brought in a lot of people from No- Man’s-Land. He is quite old, isn’t he?” She nodded. “Moropulos isn’t anything to boast about. Steppe likes him, though.” Apparently the cachet of Mr. Steppe satisfied Ronnie in all things. “He’s a Greek… you’ve met him? A sleek devil. They say that he’s afraid of Sault, except when he is drunk.”

“Ronnie!”

“A fact. Moropulos drinks like a fish. Absinthe and all sorts of stuff. Steppe told me. That is why this nigger fellow Sault is useful. Sault is the only man who can handle him. He’s as strong as an ox. There isn’t a smarter devil than Moropulos. He has the brain of a Cabinet Minister, and is as close as an oyster. But when the fit is on him he’d stand up in the street and talk himself into gaol. And others… not Steppe, of course,” he added hastily, “Steppe has nothing to be afraid of, only… well, Moropulos might say things that would look bad.”

“And is that all?” she asked, with an odd sense of disappointment. “Doesn’t Mr. Sault do anything else but act as an sort of keeper?”

Ronnie, already weary of the subject, yawned behind his hand. “Awfully sorry, but I was up late last night. Sault? Oh yes, I believe he does odd jobs. He is rather an ugly brute, isn’t he?”

She did not answer this. Her interest in the man puzzled her. He appealed in a strange fashion to something within her that was very wholesome. She was glad, very glad, about his war decorations. That he should have done fine things… she liked to forget Ronnie’s war services. “I wish I had decided to ride this morning,” complained Ronnie. “I never dreamt you would be out on a day like this. Why I came into the park at all I really do not know. I didn’t realize it was a bank holiday and that all these dreadful people would be unchained for the day. How is the doctor—well?” She nodded. “He looked a little peaked when I saw him last. Look, Beryl… Steppe!” A car, headed for Marble Arch, had swerved across the road in response to the signal of its occupant. It pulled up behind Ronald’s machine, and Mr. Steppe, with his queer sideways smile, alighted, waving a white-gloved hand. “Oh, dear,” said Beryl plaintively, “why did I get off that horse? I could have pretended that I had not recognized him.”

“My dear girl!” Ronald was genuinely distressed, and it came to Beryl in the nature of an unpleasant discovery that he was so completely in awe of the financier, that his manner, his attitude, the very tone of his voice, changed at the sight of him. And Steppe seemed to expect this homage, took it as his right, dismissed and obliterated Ronnie from participation with a jerk of his head intended as an acknowledgement of his greeting and as an excusal of his presence. Beryl could not help realizing his unimportance in the millionaire’s scheme of life.

The photographs of Jan Steppe, which have from time to time appeared in the public press, at once flatter and disparage him. The lens has depicted faithfully the short black beard, the thick black eyebrows, the broad nose and the thick bull-neck of him. They missed his immense vitality, the aura of power which enveloped him, his dominant and forceful ego. His voice was thick and deep, sometimes in moments of excitement, guttural, for his grandfather had been a Transvaal boer, a byworner who had become, successively, farmer and mine-owner. Jan Cornelius Steppe, the first, had spoken no English, his son, Commandant Steppe, an enlightened and scholarly man, spoke it well. He had been killed at Tugela Drift in the war, whilst Jan the third was in England at a preparation school.

“Huh! Beryl! Very good luck, huh? I shall miss my train, but it is worth while. Riding? God! I wish I wasn’t so fat and lazy. Motor-cars are the ruin of us. My grandfather rode twenty miles a day and my father was never off a horse. Huh!”

Beryl often asked her father why Mr. Steppe grunted at the end of his every question. But it was not a grunt. It was a throaty growl cut short, a terrifying mannerism of his, meaningless but menacing. She used to wonder whether the impression of ruthless ferocity which he gave was not more than half due to this peculiarity. He towered above her, a mountain of a man, broad of shoulder and long of arm. There was something simian about him, something that was almost obscene. He was fond of describing himself as fat, but this was an exaggeration. He had bulk, he was in the truest sense gross, but she would not have described him as fat.

“Sit down,” he commanded, “I haven’t seen you since Friday. The doctor came in yesterday morning. Nerves, huh? What’s the matter with him?”

Beryl laughed. “Father receives a great deal of misplaced sympathy. He is really very well. He has been jumpy ever since I can remember.”

Steppe nodded. He was sitting by her side in the chair vacated by Ronnie, and Ronnie was standing. “Sit down, Ronnie.” She pointed to a chair at the other side of her. “N—no thank you, Beryl,” he said hastily, for all the world like a schoolboy asked to sit in the presence of his master.

“Sit down,” growled Steppe, and, to the girl’s amazement, Ronnie sat. It was the only notice Jan Steppe took of his presence throughout the interview, and Ronnie neither showed resentment nor made the slightest attempt to intrude into the conversation that followed. Presently Steppe looked at his watch. “I can catch that train,” he said, and got up. “You’re coming to dinner with me next week—I’ll fix the date with the doctor.” She said she would be delighted. Something of the mastership extended to her. “You saw Sault?” He turned back after he had taken her hand. “Queer fellow, huh? Big man, huh?”

“I thought he was… interesting,” she admitted.

“Yes… interesting. A man.” He glowered at Ronald Morelle. “Interesting,” he repeated, and went away with that. Her fascinated gaze followed him as he strode toward the car. “Paddington… get me there, damn you,” she heard him say; and when the car had gone…

“Dynamic,” she said, with a sigh. “He is like a power-house. When I shake hands with him I feel as though I’m going to get a bad burn! You were very silent, Ronnie.”

“Yes”—absently. “Old Steppe is rather a shocker, isn’t he? How did he know you had seen Sault?”

“Father told him, I suppose. Ronnie, are you afraid of Mr. Steppe?”

He coloured. “Afraid? How stupid you are, Beryl! Why should I be afraid of him? He’s… well, I do business with him. I am a director of a company or two; he put me into them. One has to—how shall I put it? One has to be polite to these people. I’ll go along now, Beryl… lot of work to do.”

He was uncomfortable and she did not pursue the subject. The knowledge brought a little ache to her heart—that Ronnie was afraid of Jan Steppe! She would have given her soul to respect Ronald Morelle as she respected the swarthy grey-haired man whom even Steppe respected.

CHAPTER IV

“CHILDREN,” said Mrs. Colebrook, peering into the saucepan that bubbled and splashed and steamed on the kitchen fire, “are a great responsibility… especially in this neighbourhood where, as you might say, there is nothing but raffle.” Sometime in her youth, it is probable that Mrs. Colebrook had to choose between ‘rabble’ and ‘riff-raff’ and had found a compromise. “That man Starker who lives up the street, number 39 I think it is… no maybe it’s 37—it is the house before the sweep’s. Well, I did think he was all right; geraniums in his window, too, and canaries. A very homely man, wouldn’t say boo to a goose. He got nine months this morning.”

Ambrose Sault, sitting in a wooden chair which was wedged tightly between the kitchen table and the dresser, drummed his fingers absently upon the polished cloth table-cover and nodded. His dark sallow face wore an expression of strained interest. “Evie… well, I’m worried about Evie. She sits and broods—there’s no other word for it—by the hour, and she used to be such a bright, cheerful girl. I wonder sometimes if it is through her working at the drug-stores. Being attached to medicines in a manner of speaking, you’re bound to hear awful stories… people’s insides and all that sort of thing. It is depressing for a young girl. Christina says she talks in her sleep and moans and tosses about. It can’t be over a young man, or she’d bring him home. I asked her the other day—I think a girl’s best friend is her mother—and all I got was, ‘Oh, shut up, mother’. In my young days I wouldn’t have dared to speak to my mother like that, but girls have changed. They want to go to business, cashiering and typewriting and such nonsense. I went out to service when I was sixteen and was first parlourmaid before I was twenty. But talk to these girls about going into domestic service and they laugh at you.”

A silence followed which Sault felt it was his duty to break. “I suppose they do. Life is very hard on women, even the most favoured of women. I hardly blame them for getting whatever happiness they can.”

“Happiness!” scoffed Mrs. Colebrook, shifting the saucepan to the hob, “it all depends on what you call ‘happiness.’ I don’t see much happiness in standing in a draughty shop taking money all day and adding up figures and stamping bills! Besides, look at the temptation. She meets all kinds of people… ”

“I think I’ll go upstairs to my room, Mrs. Colebrook. I want to do a little work.”

“You’re a worker,” said Mrs. Colebrook admiringly. “I’ll call you when supper is ready.”

“May I walk in to see Christina?”

He asked permission in the same words every night and received the same answer. “Of course you can; you need never ask, Mr. Sault. She’ll be glad to see you.”

At the head of the narrow stairway Sault knocked on a door and a cheerful voice bade him come in. It was a small room containing two beds. That which was nearest the window was occupied by a girl whose pallor was made more strangely apparent by a mop of bright red hair. Over her head, and hooked to the wall, was a kerosene lamp of unusual design and brilliance. She had been reading and one white hand lay over the open page of a book by her side. Sault looked up at the lamp, touched the button that controlled the light and peered into the flame. “Working all right?”

“Fine,” she said enthusiastically. “You’re a brick, Ambrose, to make it. I had no idea you could do anything like that. Mother won’t touch it, she thinks it will explode.”

“It can’t explode,” he said, shaking his head. “These vapour gas lamps are safe, unless you fool with them. Have it put outside the door in the morning and I’ll fill it. Well, where have you been today, Christina?”

She showed her small white teeth in a smile. “To Etruria,” she said solemnly. “It is the country that was old when Rome was young. I went on an exploring expedition. We left Croydon Aerodrome by aeroplane and stayed overnight in Paris. My fiance is a French marquess, and we stayed at his place in the Avenue Kleber. The next morning we went by special train to Rome. I visited the Coliseum by car and saw the temples and the ruins. I spent another day at the Vatican and St. Peters and saw the Pope. Then we went on to Volsinii and Tarquinii and I found a wonderful old tomb full of glorious Etruscan ware. Plates and amphoras and vases. They must have been worth millions. There we met a magician. He lived in an old ruined house on the side of the hill. He had a flock of goats and gave us milk. It was magic milk for suddenly we found ourselves in the midst of an enormous marble city full of beautiful men and women in togas and wonderful robes. The streets were filled with rich chariots drawn by little horses. The chariots shone like gold and were covered with figures of lions and hunters and trees and scrolls… wonderful! And the gardens! They were beautiful. Flowers of every kind, heliotrope, and roses, and big white trumpet lilies, and the marble houses were covered with wisteria… oh, dear!”

“Etruria?” repeated Sault thoughtfully. “Older than Rome? Of course, there must have been people before the Romans, the sort of ancient Britons of Rome… ”

Her eyes, fixed on his, were gleaming with merriment. “Of course. I told you about the marvellous trip I had to China? When I was the lovely concubine of Yang-Kuei-Fee? And how the eunuchs strangled me? That was long after Rome, but China was two thousand years old then.”

“I remember,” he said soberly, “you went to China once before then… ”

His glance fell on the pages of the book, and he picked it up, turning its meaningless leaves. “It is all about Etruria,” she said. “Evie borrowed it from the store. They have a circulating library at the store. Have you seen Evie?”

He shook his head. “Not for weeks,” he said. “I am usually in my room when she comes home.” Christina Colebrook, invalid and visionary, puckered her smooth brows into a frown. She had emerged from her world of dreams and make- belief and was facing the ugliness of life that eddied about her bed. “Evie is changed quite a lot,” she said. “She is quieter and dresses more carefully. Not in the way you would notice. She always had good taste, but especially in the way of underclothes. All girls adore swagger underclothes. They live in dread that one day they will be knocked down by a motor-bus and taken in hospital wearing a shabby camisole! But Evie… she’s collecting all sorts of things. You might think she was getting together a trousseau. Has she ever spoken to you about anybody called ‘Ronnie’?”

“No—she never speaks to me.” said Ambrose.

“You know nobody called ‘Ronnie’?” He signified his ignorance. At the moment he did not associate the name.

“She talks in her sleep.” Christina went on slowly, “and she’s spoken that name lots of times. I haven’t told mother; what would be the good with her heart as it is? ‘Ronnie’ is the man who is worrying her. I think she is in love with him or what she thinks is love. And he is somebody in a good station of life because once she called out in the middle of the night. ‘Ronnie, take me in your car.’”

Sault was silent. This was the first time Christina had ever spoken to him about the girl.

“There is only one thing that can happen,” said she wisely, “and that would break mother’s heart. Mother has very narrow views. The people of our class have. I should feel that way myself if I hadn’t seen the world,” she patted the book by her side. “Perhaps mother’s view is right. She is respectable and the old Roman Emperor Constantine, when he classified the nobility, made the ‘respectable’ much superior to the ‘honourable’.”

“What do you mean… about Evie?”

“I mean that she’ll come to me one night and tell me that she is in trouble. And then I shall have to get mother into a philosophical mood and try to make her see that it is better for a child to be illegitimate than not to be born at all.”

“Good gracious!” said Ambrose, startled. “But it may be… just a friendship.”