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‘Now, what the hell did he mean by that?’ said Van Aldin as he sank back into his chair again.
All his uneasiness returned in full force. There was something here that he had not yet got to the bottom of. The telephone was by his elbow; he seized it, and asked for the number of his daughter’s house.
‘Hallo! Hallo! Is that Mayfair 81907? Mrs Kettering in? Oh, she’s out, is she? Yes, out to lunch. What time will she be in? You don’t know? Oh, very good; no, there’s no message.’
He slammed the receiver down again angrily. At two o’clock he was pacing the floor of his room waiting expectantly for Goby. The latter was ushered in at ten minutes past two.
‘Well?’ barked the millionaire sharply.
But little Mr Goby was not to be hurried. He sat down at the table, produced a very shabby pocketbook, and proceeded to read from it in a monotonous voice. The millionaire listened attentively, with an increasing satisfaction. Goby came to a full stop, and looked attentively at the wastepaper-basket.
‘Um!’ said Van Aldin. ‘That seems pretty definite. The case will go through like winking. The hotel evidence is all right, I suppose?’
‘Cast iron,’ said Mr Goby, and looked malevolently at a gilt arm-chair.
‘And financially he’s in very low water. He’s trying to raise a loan now, you say? Has already raised practically all he can upon his expectations from his father. Once the news of the divorce gets about, he won’t be able to raise another cent, and not only that, his obligations can be bought up and pressure can be put upon him from that quarter. We have got him, Goby; we have got him in a cleft stick.’
He hit the table a bang with his fist. His face was grim and triumphant.
‘The information,’ said Mr Goby in a thin voice, ‘seems satisfactory.’
‘I have got to go round to Curzon Street now,’ said the millionaire. ‘I am much obliged to you, Goby. You are the goods all right.’
A pale smile of gratification showed itself on the little man’s face.
‘Thank you, Mr Van Aldin,’ he said; ‘I try to do my best.’
Van Aldin did not go direct to Curzon Street. He went first to the City, where he had two interviews which added to his satisfaction. From there he took the tube to Down Street. As he was walking along Curzon Street, a figure came out of No. 160, and turned up the street towards him, so that they passed each other on the pavement. For a moment, the millionaire had fancied it might be Derek Kettering himself; the height and build were not unlike. But as they came face to face, he saw that the man was a stranger to him. At least—no, not a stranger; his face awoke some call of recognition in the millionaire’s mind, and it was associated definitely with something unpleasant. He cudgelled his brains in vain, but the thing eluded him. He went on, shaking his head irritably. He hated to be baffled.
Ruth Kettering was clearly expecting him. She ran to him and kissed him when he entered.
‘Well, Dad, how are things going?’
‘Very well,’ said Van Aldin; ‘but I have got a word or two to say to you, Ruth.’
Almost insensibly he felt the change in her; something shrewd and watchful replaced the impulsiveness of her greeting. She sat down in a big arm-chair.
‘Well, Dad?’ she asked. ‘What is it?’
‘I saw your husband this morning,’ said Van Aldin.
‘You saw Derek?’
‘I did. He said a lot of things, most of which were darned cheek. Just as he was leaving, he said something that I didn’t understand. He advised me to be sure that there was perfect frankness between father and daughter. What did he mean by that, Ruthie?’
Mrs Kettering moved a little in her chair.
‘I—I don’t know, Dad. How should I?’
‘Of course you know,’ said Van Aldin. ‘He said something else, about his having his friends and not interfering with yours. What did he mean by that?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Ruth Kettering again.
Van Aldin sat down. His mouth set itself in a grim line.
‘See here, Ruth. I am not going into this with my eyes closed. I am not at all sure that that husband of yours doesn’t mean to make trouble. Now, he can’t do it, I am sure of that. I have got the means to silence him, to shut his mouth for good and all, but I have got to know if there’s any need to use those means. What did he mean by your having your own friends?’
Mrs Kettering shrugged her shoulders.
‘I have got lots of friends,’ she said uncertainly. ‘I don’t know what he meant, I am sure.’
‘You do,’ said Van Aldin.
He was speaking now as he might have spoken to a business adversary.
‘I will put it plainer. Who is the man?’
‘What man?’
‘The man. That’s what Derek was driving at. Some special man who is a friend of yours. You needn’t worry, honey, I know there is nothing in it, but we have got to look at everything as it might appear to the Court. They can twist these things about a good deal, you know. I want to know who the man is, and just how friendly you have been with him.’
Ruth didn’t answer. Her hands were kneading themselves together in intense nervous absorption.
‘Come, honey,’ said Van Aldin in a softer voice. ‘Don’t be afraid of your old Dad. I was not too harsh, was I, even that time in Paris?—By gosh!’
He stopped, thunderstruck.
‘That’s who it was,’ he murmured to himself. ‘I thought I knew his face.’
‘What are you talking about, Dad? I don’t understand.’
The millionaire strode across to her and took her firmly by the wrist.
‘See here, Ruth, have you been seeing that fellow again?’
‘What fellow?’
‘The one we had all that fuss about years ago. You know who I mean well enough.’
‘You mean’—she hesitated—‘you mean the Comte de la Roche?’
‘Comte de la Roche!’ snorted Van Aldin. ‘I told you at the time that the man was no better than a swindler. You had entangled yourself with him then very deeply, but I got you out of his clutches.’
‘Yes, you did,’ said Ruth bitterly. ‘And I married Derek Kettering.’
‘You wanted to,’ said the millionaire sharply.
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘And now,’ said Van Aldin slowly, ‘you have been seeing him again—after all I told you. He has been in the house today. I met him outside, and couldn’t place him for the moment.’
Ruth Kettering had recovered her composure.
‘I want to tell you one thing, Dad; you are wrong about Armand—the Comte de la Roche, I mean. Oh, I know there were several regrettable incidents in his youth—he has told me about them; but—well, he has cared for me always. It broke his heart when you parted us in Paris, and now—’
She was interrupted by the snort of indignation her father gave.
‘So you fell for that stuff, did you? You, a daughter of mine! My God!’
He threw up his hands.
‘That women can be such darned fools!’
CHAPTER 6
Mirelle
Derek Kettering emerged from Van Aldin’s suite so precipitantly that he collided with a lady passing across the corridor. He apologized, and she accepted his apologies with a smiling reassurance and passed on, leaving with him a pleasant impression of a soothing personality and rather fine grey eyes.
For all his nonchalance, his interview with his father-in-law had shaken him more than he cared to show. He had a solitary lunch, and after it, frowning to himself a little, he went round to the sumptuous flat that housed the lady known as Mirelle. A trim Frenchwoman received him with smiles.
‘But enter then, Monsieur. Madame reposes herself.’
He was ushered into the long room with its Eastern setting which he knew so well. Mirelle was lying on the divan, supported by an incredible number of cushions, all in varying shades of amber, to harmonize with the yellow ochre of her complexion. The dancer was a beautifully made woman, and if her face, beneath its mask of yellow, was in truth somewhat haggard, it had a bizarre charm of its own, and her orange lips smiled invitingly at Derek Kettering.
He kissed her, and flung himself into a chair.
‘What have you been doing with yourself ? Just got up, I suppose?’
The orange mouth widened into a long smile.
‘No,’ said the dancer. ‘I have been at work.’
She flung out a long, pale hand towards the piano, which was littered with untidy music scores.
‘Ambrose has been here. He has been playing me the new Opera.’
Kettering nodded without paying much attention. He was profoundly uninterested in Claud Ambrose and the latter’s operatic setting of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. So was Mirelle, for that matter, regarding it merely as a unique opportunity for her own presentation as Anitra.
‘It is a marvellous dance,’ she murmured. ‘I shall put all the passion of the desert into it. I shall dance hung over with jewels—ah! and, by the way, mon ami, there is a pearl that I saw yesterday in Bond Street—a black pearl.’
She paused, looking at him invitingly.
‘My dear girl,’ said Kettering, ‘it’s no use talking of black pearls to me. At the present minute, as far as I am concerned, the fat is in the fire.’
She was quick to respond to his tone. She sat up, her big black eyes widening.
‘What is that you say, Dereek? What has happened?’
‘My esteemed father-in-law,’ said Kettering, ‘is preparing to go off the deep end.’
‘Eh?’
‘In other words, he wants Ruth to divorce me.’
‘How stupid!’ said Mirelle. ‘Why should she want to divorce you?’
Derek Kettering grinned.
‘Mainly because of you, chérie!’ he said.
Mirelle shrugged her shoulders.
‘That is foolish,’ she observed in a matter-of-fact voice.
‘Very foolish,’ agreed Derek.
‘What are you going to do about it?’ demanded Mirelle.
‘My dear girl, what can I do? On the one side, the man with unlimited money; on the other side, the man with unlimited debts. There is no question as to who will come out on top.’
‘They are extraordinary, these Americans,’ commented Mirelle. ‘It is not as though your wife were fond of you.’
‘Well,’ said Derek, ‘what are we going to do about it?’
She looked at him inquiringly. He came over and took both her hands in his.
‘Are you going to stick to me?’
‘What do you mean? After—?’
‘Yes,’ said Kettering. ‘After, when the creditors come down like wolves on the fold. I am damned fond of you, Mirelle; are you going to let me down?’
She pulled her hands away from him.
‘You know I adore you, Dereek.’
He caught the note of evasion in her voice.
‘So that’s that, is it? The rats will leave the sinking ship.’
‘Ah, Dereek!’
‘Out with it,’ he said violently. ‘You will fling me over; is that it?’
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘I am very fond of you, mon ami—indeed I am fond of you. You are very charming—un beau garçon, but ce n’est pas pratique.’
‘You are a rich man’s luxury, eh? Is that it?’
‘If you like to put it that way.’
She leaned back on the cushions, her head flung back.
‘All the same, I am fond of you, Dereek.’
He went over to the window and stood there some time looking out, with his back to her. Presently the dancer raised herself on her elbow and stared at him curiously.
‘What are you thinking of, mon ami?’
He grinned at her over his shoulder, a curious grin, that made her vaguely uneasy.
‘As it happened, I was thinking of a woman, my dear.’
‘A woman, eh?’
Mirelle pounced on something that she could understand.
‘You are thinking of some other woman, is that it?’
‘Oh, you needn’t worry; it is purely a fancy portrait. “Portrait of a lady with grey eyes”.’
Mirelle said sharply, ‘When did you meet her?’
Derek Kettering laughed, and his laughter had a mocking, ironical sound.
‘I ran into the lady in the corridor of the Savoy Hotel.’
‘Well! What did she say?’
‘As far as I can remember, I said “I beg your pardon,” and she said, “It doesn’t matter,” or words to that effect.’
‘And then?’ persisted the dancer.
Kettering shrugged his shoulders.
‘And then—nothing. That was the end of the incident.’
‘I don’t understand a word of what you are talking about,’ declared the dancer.
‘Portrait of a lady with grey eyes,’ murmured Derek reflectively. ‘Just as well I am never likely to meet her again.’
‘Why?’
‘She might bring me bad luck. Women do.’
Mirelle slipped quietly from her couch, and came across to him, laying one long, snake-like arm round his neck.
‘You are foolish, Dereek,’ she murmured. ‘You are very foolish. You are beau garçon, and I adore you, but I am not made to be poor—no, decidedly I am not made to be poor. Now listen to me; everything is very simple. You must make it up with your wife.’
‘I am afraid that’s not going to be actually in the sphere of practical politics,’ said Derek drily.
‘How do you say? I do not understand.’
‘Van Aldin, my dear, is not taking any. He is the kind of man who makes up his mind and sticks to it.’
‘I have heard of him,’ nodded the dancer. ‘He is very rich, is he not? Almost the richest man in America. A few days ago, in Paris, he bought the most wonderful ruby in the world—“Heart of Fire” it is called.’
Kettering did not answer. The dancer went on musingly:
‘It is a wonderful stone—a stone that should belong to a woman like me. I love jewels, Dereek; they say something to me. Ah! to wear a ruby like “Heart of Fire”.’
She gave a little sigh, and then became practical once more.
‘You don’t understand these things. Dereek; you are only a man. Van Aldin will give these rubies to his daughter, I suppose. Is she his only child?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then when he dies, she will inherit all his money. She will be a rich woman.’
‘She is a rich woman already,’ said Kettering drily. ‘He settled a couple of millions on her at her marriage.’
‘A couple of million! But that is immense. And if she died suddenly, eh? That would all come to you?’
‘As things stand at present,’ said Kettering slowly, ‘it would. As far as I know she has not made a will.’
‘Mon Dieu!’ said the dancer. ‘If she were to die, what a solution that would be.’
There was a moment’s pause, and then Derek Kettering laughed outright.
‘I like your simple, practical mind, Mirelle, but I am afraid what you desire won’t come to pass. My wife is an extremely healthy person.’
‘Eh bien!’ said Mirelle; ‘there are accidents.’
He looked at her sharply but did not answer.
She went on.
‘But you are right, mon ami, we must not dwell on possibilities. See now, my little Dereek, there must be no more talk of this divorce. Your wife must give up the idea.’
‘And if she won’t?’
The dancer’s eyes narrowed to slits.
‘I think she will, my friend. She is one of those who would not like the publicity. There are one or two pretty stories that she would not like her friends to read in the newspapers.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Kettering sharply.
Mirelle laughed, her head thrown back.
‘Parbleu! I mean the gentleman who calls himself the Comte de la Roche. I know all about him. I am Parisienne, you remember. He was her lover before she married you, was he not?’
Kettering took her sharply by the shoulders.
‘That is a damned lie,’ he said, ‘and please remember that, after all, you are speaking of my wife.’
Mirelle was a little sobered.
‘You are extraordinary, you English,’ she complained. ‘All the same, I dare say that you may be right. The Americans are so cold, are they not? But you will permit me to say, mon ami, that she was in love with him before she married you, and her father stepped in and sent the Comte about his business. And the little Mademoiselle, she wept many tears! But she obeyed. Still, you must know as well as I do, Dereek, that it is a very different story now. She sees him nearly every day, and on the 14th she goes to Paris to meet him.’
‘How do you know all this?’ demanded Kettering.
‘Me? I have friends in Paris, my dear Dereek, who know the Comte intimately. It is all arranged. She is going to the Riviera, so she says, but in reality the Comte meets her in Paris and—who knows! Yes, yes, you can take my word for it, it is all arranged.’
Derek Kettering stood motionless.
‘You see,’ purred the dancer, ‘if you are clever, you have her in the hollow of your hand. You can make things very awkward for her.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake be quiet,’ cried Kettering. ‘Shut your cursed mouth!’
Mirelle flung herself down on the divan with a laugh. Kettering caught up his hat and coat and left the flat, banging the door violently. And still the dancer sat on the divan and laughed softly to herself. She was not displeased with her work.
CHAPTER 7
Letters
‘Mrs Samuel Harfield presents her compliments to Miss Katherine Grey and wishes to point out that under the circumstances Miss Grey may not be aware—’
Mrs Harfield, having written so far fluently, came to a dead stop, held up by what has proved an insuperable difficulty to many other people—namely, the difficulty of expressing oneself fluently in the third person.
After a minute or two of hesitation, Mrs Harfield tore up the sheet of notepaper and started afresh.
Dear Miss Grey,—Whilst fully appreciating the adequate way you discharged your duties to my Cousin Emma (whose recent death has indeed been a severe blow to us all), I cannot but feel—
Again Mrs Harfield came to a stop. Once more the letter was consigned to the wastepaper-basket. It was not until four false starts had been made that Mrs Harfield at last produced an epistle that satisfied her. It was duly sealed and stamped and addressed to Miss Katherine Grey, Little Crampton, St Mary Mead, Kent, and it lay beside the lady’s plate on the following morning at breakfast-time in company with a more important-looking communication in a long blue envelope.
Katherine Grey opened Mrs Harfield’s letter first. The finished production ran as follows:
Dear Miss Grey,—My husband and I wish to express our thanks to you for your services to my poor cousin, Emma. Her death has been a great blow to us, though we were, of course, aware that her mind has been failing for some time past. I understand that her latter testamentary dispositions have been of a most peculiar character, and they would not hold good, of course, in any court of law. I have no doubt that, with your usual good sense, you have already realized this fact. If these matters can be arranged privately it is always so much better, my husband says. We shall be pleased to recommend you most highly for a similar post, and hope that you will also accept a small present. Believe me, dear Miss Grey, yours cordially.
Mary Anne Harfield.
Katherine Grey read the letter through, smiled a little, and read it a second time. Her face as she laid the letter down after the second reading was distinctly amused. Then she took up the second letter. After one brief perusal she laid it down and stared very straight in front of her. This time she did not smile. Indeed, it would have been hard for anyone watching her to guess what emotions lay behind that quiet, reflective gaze.
Katherine Grey was thirty-three. She came of good family, but her father had lost all his money, and Katherine had had to work for her living from an early age. She had been just twenty-three when she had come to old Mrs Harfield as companion.
It was generally recognized that old Mrs Harfield was ‘difficult.’ Companions came and went with startling rapidity. They arrived full of hope and they usually left in tears. But from the moment Katherine Grey set foot in Little Crampton, ten years ago, perfect peace had reigned. No one knows how these things come about. Snake-charmers, they say, are born, not made. Katherine Grey was born with the power of managing old ladies, dogs, and small boys, and she did it without any apparent sense of strain.
At twenty-three she had been a quiet girl with beautiful eyes. At thirty-three she was a quiet woman, with those same grey eyes, shining steadily out on the world with a kind of happy serenity that nothing could shake. Moreover, she had been born with, and still possessed, a sense of humour.
As she sat at the breakfast-table, staring in front of her, there was a ring at the bell, accompanied by a very energetic rat-a-tat-tat at the knocker. In another minute the little maid-servant opened the door and announced rather breathlessly:
‘Dr Harrison.’
The big, middle-aged doctor came bustling in with the energy and breeziness that had been foreshadowed by his onslaught on the knocker.
‘Good morning, Miss Grey.’
‘Good morning, Dr Harrison.’
‘I dropped in early,’ began the doctor, ‘in case you should have heard from one of those Harfield cousins. Mrs Samuel, she calls herself—a perfectly poisonous person.’
Without a word, Katherine picked up Mrs Harfield’s letter from the table and gave it to him. With a good deal of amusement she watched his perusal of it, the drawing together of the bushy eyebrows, the snorts and grunts of violent disapproval. He dashed it down again on the table.
‘Perfectly monstrous,’ he fumed. ‘Don’t you let it worry you, my dear. They’re talking through their hat. Mrs Harfield’s intellect was as good as yours or mine, and you won’t get anyone to say the contrary. They wouldn’t have a leg to stand upon, and they know it. All that talk of taking it into court is pure bluff. Hence this attempt to get round you in a hole-and-corner way. And look here, my dear, don’t let them get round you with soft soap either. Don’t get fancying it’s your duty to hand over the cash, or any tomfoolery of conscientious scruples.’
‘I’m afraid it hasn’t occurred to me to have scruples,’ said Katherine. ‘All these people are distant relatives of Mrs Harfield’s husband, and they never came near her or took any notice of her in her lifetime.’
‘You’re a sensible woman,’ said the doctor. ‘I know, none better, that you’ve had a hard life of it for the last ten years. You’re fully entitled to enjoy the old lady’s savings, such as they were.’
Katherine smiled thoughtfully.
‘Such as they were,’ she repeated. ‘You’ve no idea of the amount, doctor?’
‘Well—enough to bring in five hundred a year or so, I suppose.’
Katherine nodded.
‘That’s what I thought,’ she said. ‘Now read this.’
She handed him the letter she had taken from the long blue envelope. The doctor read and uttered an exclamation of utter astonishment.
‘Impossible,’ he muttered. ‘Impossible.’
‘She was one of the original shareholders in Mortaulds. Forty years ago she must have had an income of eight or ten thousand a year. She has never, I am sure, spent more than four hundred a year. She was always terribly careful about money. I always believed that she was obliged to be careful about every penny.’
‘And all the time the income has accumulated at compound interest. My dear, you’re going to be a very rich woman.’
Katherine Grey nodded.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I am.’
She spoke in a detached, impersonal tone, as though she were looking at the situation from outside.
‘Well,’ said the doctor, preparing to depart, ‘you have all my congratulations.’ He flicked Mrs Samuel Harfield’s letter with his thumb. ‘Don’t worry about that woman and her odious letter.’
‘It really isn’t an odious letter,’ said Miss Grey tolerantly. ‘Under the circumstances, I think it’s really quite a natural thing to do.’
