The Profiteers E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Endymion Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 276

Beschreibung

Edward Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1946) was the earliest writer of spy fiction as understood today, inventing the "rogue male" school of adventure thrillers and writing over 150 novels of all sorts. The Profiteers was written about the stock market post-World War I and pre-1929 crash.

Leseprobe

THE PROFITEERS

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E. Phillips Oppenheim

ENDYMION PRESS

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Copyright © 2016 by E. Phillips Oppenheim

Interior design by Pronoun

Distribution by Pronoun

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER I

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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

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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.