CHAPTER TWELVE

At the end of the week, the Jasper Stormonts moved to the fine old Tudor house at Effington. And, shortly before they did so, there came for Lydon an invitation from his future uncle-in-law which the young man fancied had been instigated by the banker. If it did not interfere with his business arrangements, would Leonard make the Hall his headquarters for the next week, going up to London in the morning and returning when the duties of the day were done? Jasper Stormont’s holiday was to be only a brief one, and shortly he would return to China for another long period of exile. Perhaps in this brief time he wished to see as much as possible of the man who was to marry his daughter, in order to prove if further acquaintance would increase or diminish his first favourable impressions of him.

For Gloria had told him that her father had formed an exceedingly good opinion of him, and expressed his satisfaction that she had made such a wise choice.

“And dear dad’s opinion is worth having,” said the girl proudly. She was fond of her uncle, very grateful to him for all he had done for her, for the happiness he had brought into her life. But it was easy to see that for her father she had a great respect almost amounting to reverence, in addition to her filial love. No doubt, so far as character was concerned, she put the two men on totally different planes. And Lydon knew that her instinct was right. Even if he had never opened that letter to Zillah Mayhew, and still believed Howard Stormont to be what he had originally thought him--a shrewd, blunt, genial fellow--he would have soon discovered that Jasper was made of the sounder metal.

The young man laughingly told his sweetheart that he thought her father had been at the bottom of this unusual invitation, and she admitted it.

“He’s a very keen judge of character,” she said. “In his responsible position he is bound to be. And he says you never thoroughly know a man till you have stayed in the same house with him. No doubt that is why he wanted you here daily for a time.”

“Till he had completed his investigations, eh?” observed Lydon, with an amused smile, although at the same time he had every sympathy with regard to Jasper’s anxiety on behalf of his child. “Well, dear, I shall have to mind my P’s and Q’s, shan’t I? I must take care not to come down grumpy in the morning, or show any of the latent villainy that is hidden somewhere in my disposition.”

The girl laughed happily. She had inherited her father’s capacity for reading character, and she had not much fear of this open, honest, even-tempered young fellow, whose moods hardly ever seemed to vary.

It occurred to Lydon that, on this visit, Stormont was devoting himself much more closely to his business, whatever it might be, than was usual with him. He went up pretty early to London every day, and on two occasions he missed dinner, and did not return till late in the evening. Evidently something of importance was going on.

There were, strange to relate, no dinner parties during that week. Lydon could hardly believe there was so much affection between the two men that Howard wanted to enjoy his brother’s company without interruption. He thought it was rather a matter of policy.

Howard knew that, if questioned, Gloria would not be able to conceal the fact of his extravagance. She might even let out that there were periods when he was obviously short of money, and in view of these possible confidences he did not wish to give Jasper the elder brother’s privilege of lecturing him. In the eyes of such a financial purist as the banker, his happy-go-lucky methods would savour of nothing short of criminal folly.

Lydon listened to his sentiments one night when the two men were together in the smoking-room, on the second occasion on which Howard had not returned to dinner. The banker’s face was very grim as he delivered his criticism on what he knew and had observed.

“I have known next to nothing of my brother’s affairs since he left England. I knew he went to Australia for a while and that things did not prosper greatly with him there. When his letter arrived, offering to adopt Gloria, and stating that he was firmly on his feet, I accepted what he said in good faith. Her letters showed they were all leading a very luxurious life, and that money seemed to be spent like water. Of course, I was terribly disillusioned when, such a short time ago, I learned the actual truth. Without mincing words, I can tell you I was not only surprised but intensely disgusted, especially when I heard of that thousand pounds borrowed from you. It hit Gloria very hard, that transaction. She is a girl of extremely delicate feeling, and under the peculiar circumstances it was in the very worst taste. Drowning men, we know, catch at straws; it showed how very near to drowning he must have been. He is no fool; he must know how ugly it would look to a third party.”

Lydon made no comment. Had things not been as they were, he might have put up some defence for Howard Stormont, out of his natural kindness of heart. But he could not do so now. The man was unscrupulous to the core.

“When my brother was a young man, he was always very headstrong, also fearfully extravagant, if only in a small way,” went on Jasper in the same severe tone. “He never seemed able to curb his desires, to restrain any momentary impulse. If he wanted a thing and hadn’t the money to pay for it, he would go into debt to get it, trusting that luck would enable him to avoid the disagreeable consequences. I know this fatal weakness was a great anxiety to our parents, honest and God-fearing people, and made them tremble for his future.

“This big house, with its staff of indoor and outdoor servants eating him up, is a piece of the most colossal folly I have ever come across, and in my business we meet with very many specimens of the spendthrift. Everybody in the banking world does. I have no hesitation in discussing it with you; as Gloria’s future husband you have a right to know how matters stand. And further, in the distress which he brought on himself, he showed his hand plainly to you.”

As Jasper Stormont elected to be so confidential with him, he thought he might continue the conversation on the same lines.

“It seems to me that his business is evidently a very precarious one. It is rather a strange thing that I have never known what that business really is; it is not a thing on which you can put a quite straight question to a man, but it usually leaks out pretty soon. You know that I am a consulting engineer; I know that you hold a high post in the banking world. I have never even heard from your brother where his offices are. Gloria does not seem to know much about it. She thought he was what you call a financier. Well, we must admit that is rather a vague term.”

“And I can assure you, Leonard, I know almost as little as you do; my sister appears equally ignorant. When I have talked about the subject, about which there should be no mystery, there is an obvious attempt to sheer off it. So far as I can gather from random statements, he might be described as a financier. He gets concessions from foreign countries; he negotiates big loans for all sorts of things, does a bit of company promoting, etc. But he avoids details and gives no names. Of course, some men are very reticent about their private affairs, but reticence so pronounced savours greatly of mystery.”

There was a long pause and then the banker waved his hand round the room, decorated and furnished in such a costly fashion, with a gesture that was contemptuous.

“But one thing I am certain of, I have often been told that I possess second sight in matters like these. This cannot go on for long, in the light that has been thrown upon it by his borrowing from you what was, after all, a trifling sum for a man in a good way of business to find. A year or two of bad trade will bring him to the ground. Perhaps another year’s reprieve in which he will be struggling to tide over. You and I will then, I expect, be invited to put money into the sinking ship. If so, take my advice and sternly refuse. With a man of my brother’s headstrong nature and extravagant proclivities, you might as well throw it in the sea.”

Lydon thanked his future father-in-law for his advice, thinking, as he did so, that Howard Stormont would never get another loan out of him. Did this honourable, straightforward man of business only know what he knew, he would be overwhelmed with grief and shame at possessing such a brother.

“You can see it is a subject on which I have necessarily to hold my tongue,” exclaimed Jasper Stormont. “For all I ought to know to the contrary, he may be conducting his affairs with the greatest prudence, is making enough to enable him to run this place and accumulate a fair fortune besides. What I know about the true state of affairs comes from Gloria, from whom I have drawn it with the greatest reluctance. My lips are sealed; she would hate him to find that she has been telling tales out of school; for whatever faults he may have, he has taken the place of a second father to her, and she cannot but appreciate him for that.”

Yes, scoundrel as he might be, Howard Stormont no doubt had his good points, and his kindness to his niece was not the least amongst them.

“I forgot to tell you one thing, not that I am very greatly impressed by it,” said the banker as they parted for the evening. “The other day, in a fit of confidence, he imparted to me that he was on a very big thing which he expected to mature shortly, something out of which he would make enough to secure a handsome competence for life. If this came off, he said he would retire from business, and lead this life of a country gentleman which appears to have such great fascinations for him.”

Leonard pricked up his ears at this information. If Howard Stormont was on some big enterprise, it would be of a nefarious kind.

“He didn’t disclose the nature of this great _coup_, of course?” he asked.

The banker shook his head. “He didn’t give me the slightest hint. But, as I said, I attach very little importance to it. All these speculators are sanguine creatures, and follow wills-o’-the-wisp with a blind devotion worthy of a better cause. They have always got some grand scheme on which is to make them rich beyond the dreams of avarice.”

Lydon was much impressed by that conversation with Jasper Stormont. Like himself, at an earlier stage, he had sensed a certain mystery surrounding his brother. He wondered whether bankruptcy and poverty would be the only doom that might fall upon the owner of Effington Hall? He thought he might escape that, in spite of the banker’s gloomy predictions. After all, he had kept up opulent state for a great many years. According to Gloria’s statement, he had been wealthy ever since she had taken up her residence with them. He was a cunning and resourceful man; although he lacked the solid qualities of his brother, probably he would never come quite down to the ground. But the young man was not sure a darker doom might not descend upon him in spite of his cleverness.

He wondered if his sweetheart had told her father of the visit of that shabby Colonial, and the scene in the billiard-room when the drunken creature had been on the point of blurting out something, and had been stopped by his host, who was in a perfect agony of apprehension. He asked her the next day, and she assured him she had kept silence.

“I have really let out more about Uncle Howard than I ought,” she explained, in a contrite voice. “But dad has a very persuasive way with him; he would have made a splendid cross-examiner. I expect his business has developed his faculties in that direction; he says that people wanting favours come to him with all sorts of ingenious lies. He leads you on in a quiet, suave sort of way to all kinds of admissions. And you know I haven’t the gift of reticence, I am far too outspoken. I could see that uncle was terribly upset by that visit. I have noticed a great change in him since. He gives me the impression of a man who has received a great shock, and can’t recover from it.”

Lydon had himself noticed a certain change in the man. He was less bluff and genial than he used to be, and at times he caught a brooding expression, an air of abstraction, as if he were thinking deeply over something. At first he imagined Howard was nerving himself to make a confession to his brother, similar to the one he had made to himself, that he was living up to his income and that Gloria could expect very little from him when he died. But on thinking more over it he came to the conclusion that his sweetheart was right, that the change in his demeanour was due to the visit of Tom Newcombe, his “old pal.”

In the meantime Lydon had received reports from Grewgus, the first arriving a few days after he had left Paris. From these he learned that the detective and his colleague were keeping a close watch upon the man Edwards and Miss Glenthorne, to call her by her latest alias. They watched them from about eleven o’clock in the morning--the woman did not stir out till then--till late at night.

The programme was much the same every day. In the morning Zillah met the man Edwards, and they walked about together in the outskirts of Paris. They steered clear of the well-known portions, as no doubt Calliard was pursuing his business there, and they might run across him at any moment. In the afternoon they usually took a car and drove out to Versailles or some other suburb.

In the evening Zillah invariably met the opulent jeweller, Calliard, and they dined together at one of the numerous expensive restaurants that abound in the gay city. Monsieur Calliard was evidently a rich man and begrudged nothing in the pursuit of his pleasures.

Then one day came a brief telegram from Grewgus: “The birds have flown, slipped away. All news when we meet. Leaving to-day. Be at my office to-morrow morning as early as you like.”

On the face of it, it looked as if the detective had failed in his mission, that the two schemers had outwitted him, and stolen a march on him.