CHAPTER XXXIV

THE END

It was in his rooms that night, after supper, and comfortably seated before the fire, that Bobby's troubles began. Common-sense whispered into his ear:

"She will never know now that you cared for her, really. Bother Sam Hackett and her engagement to him. You should have told her, told her in the train or at the station. Instead of that you sat dumb as a fish, sulking. And who's Sam Hackett, anyhow, that she should care for him more than for you? He's a nice fellow enough; but look at him. He has neither good looks nor anything else. Is it too late to speak to her now? Yes, it's too late. These things can only be done on the spur of the moment. You had your chance in the train and it's gone. Imagine calling now at the office in cold blood and saying, 'I'm awfully sorry but I forgot to tell you something I ought to have told you before----'"

He got up and paced the room.

Next morning brought him all sorts of work that had to be attended to; letters that had accumulated during his absence, and bills that had to be paid. His bank balance was low. The time spent on the expedition had been entirely unproductive in work or money. Unless Behrens paid him that promised cheque soon, he would be in a very difficult position.

He had determined to call on Martia, but not before that cheque arrived. He would take it with him and insist on her receiving her share of it. Anyhow, it would be something to call about. But would it ever arrive?

He asked himself this question on the morning following, when the post brought him only a book catalogue and a typewriting agency's circular.

Was Behrens to be trusted?

Behrens at Poole had exhibited a new side to his character. The purely business side. The way he had gone over the accounts, his grumble at the expense incurred at Genoa over stores, his refusal to sell the _Lorna Doone_ at a cheap price, when, surely, out of gratitude he might have made Sam a present of her--all these things came back to Bobby, together with a certain coldness in the old man's manner now that everything was over and his ends secured.

Behrens, now that he had used the adventurers, seemed anxious to get rid of them all--so it seemed to Bobby--and there was no legal hold upon him, no contract, nothing.

On the morning of the third day, when the post had brought him nothing, not even a book catalogue, Bobby made up his mind to call on Behrens. Behrens by this time, in the super-heated atmosphere of Mr. Lestrange's imagination, had turned into a figure almost resembling a rogue.

He would have it out with Behrens and stand no nonsense. He was telling himself this, whilst putting on his overcoat, when a knock came at the door and the housemaid entered with a telegram.

It was from Behrens, and ran:

"_Please see me either to-day or to-morrow._"

Half an hour later he was in Museum Street. He dismissed his cab and entered the shop, where a young man was on guard--a foreign-looking individual, who was engaged at a side-table making a copy of a catalogue. This was Fernandez, Behrens' assistant, the man who had brought the lorry down to Poole for the conveyance back to town of the Hyalos marbles.

Fernandez said that his master was in, and was about to leave the shop to fetch him when, gliding amongst the antiques and past a Japanese warrior in steel armour, Behrens himself came.

He wore his skull-cap and he was smoking a cigarette through a long amber tube. Seeing who the visitor was he came forward, then, taking Bobby by the arm, he led the way through the back shop and upstairs to the sitting-room on the first floor.

"Well," said Behrens, "you have come. That is good, and now we can talk business. Take a seat and make yourself comfortable. Yes, I have got the things to London safe and sound, and I spent all yesterday in forming an estimate of their value. A difficult business, Mr. Lestrange, even for me. A business so difficult that I have determined to call in to my help, not now but at some future time, no less a person than M. Claudin Paris. I wish to be exact in my valuation. There is no use in talking vaguely of thousands of pounds. I wish to be exact. But till I arrive at some settled figure I have determined to offer you twenty."

Bobby felt as though someone had hit him on the head with a hammer.

Twenty pounds till Behrens "arrived at some settled figure"!

"Thank you," said he, "I would prefer to make them a present to you."

Behrens looked at him in astonishment.

"I do not know what is the matter with you all," he said. "I think you must all be a little mad. First Mr. Hackett, he wants nothing; then Martia Hare, she wants nothing; then Mr. Lestrange, he wants nothing. Are you so rich, then, as to turn twenty thousand pounds away from you as though they were twenty pence?"

"Twenty thousand?" cried Bobby.

Whilst he had been thinking in pounds, Behrens had been thinking in thousands!

Then he explained, and the old man laughed, made him sit down again, and went on:

"Yes, Mr. Lestrange, twenty thousand. Probably it will be more later on, but that much I can assure you of. The cheque is already made out. Here it is."

He rose and went to a desk and took out a cheque.

Bobby, taking it in his hands, looked at it, feeling like a man in a dream.

It was an extraordinary sensation, holding that slip of paper which was absolutely his and which represented a fortune.

Twenty thousand pounds! Many a man labours a lifetime without making that amount, or, making it, has to spend it in outgoing expenses, so that the end of his life finds him as poor as the beginning.

"It's good of you," was all he could find to say as he folded the cheque in three and placed it in his pocketbook.

"No," said Behrens, "it is only business. But that cheque is no use to you without a piece of advice. Draw that money and open an account with it at the same bank; it's one of the best in the world. Then ask them to invest it for you through their brokers in good sound securities. Then go on with whatever work you have taken up. A man of your age has no right to live on the interest of his money."

"I will do what you say," replied Bobby, "when I have seen Martia Hare, and if she still refuses to take anything."

The old fellow grinned.

"Go on then and see her," said he, taking Bobby by the arm and leading him down just as he had led him up. "See her and tell her old Behrens has not forgotten her. Ah, that is a girl! Do you know, Mr. Lestrange, why she will not take any money from this business? Well, I will tell you what is in my thoughts. Isaac was her lover, as you know, and this expedition would have been his had he lived. She would not make money out of it on that account. That is what I think. It is a beautiful thought. More beautiful even than the Aphrodite of Hyalos. Well, may she be happy yet with some man worthy of her. That is what I pray. Yes, come and see me again. I am always glad to see you, Mr. Lestrange, and her."

He showed Bobby into the street.

Here the huge cheque in the young man's pocket hit him again with the force of its eloquence. That vulgarism "money talks" expresses more than at first hearing it seems to do.

The cheque in his pocket was telling him that Museum Street was completely changed; that though the houses were still the same the atmosphere was different; that though it seemed to be leading him into New Oxford Street, it was in reality leading him into a new life.

It was only five minutes to eleven, so he determined to walk to Fleet Street. He was wise in this, for the walk gave him time to think, and freedom of mind to grasp and hold for a brief space the sense of Fortune.

Never again, no matter what his success might be, would he feel like that.

He chose to go by way of St. Martin's Lane, and then along the Strand, taking the same road as on that morning of his first visit to Martia, and, just as on that morning, he paused at the gunsmith's window to look at the guns and rifles.

And, just as on that morning, his heart went out to them; these very gods who preside over the destinies of their holders and handlers and the lives of the beasts of the jungle and the plain.

On that first day they had made the world of Literature seem a sick sort of place beside the world of Adventure. Since then he had tested the latter and knew the truth.

No. Once he had settled up the business of this cheque with Martia, he would write no more. He would seek the open spaces, where a man might breathe freely untrammelled by the thing we call Civilisation and free of the disease we call Love.

Again he saw the guns fading and giving place to the ghostly forms of the beasts of the jungle and the wilderness, whilst the sound of the Strand turned to the far-off roar of the tiger and the torrent. Then he turned and broke the spell, and passed on his way to White Lion Court.

Yes, Miss Hare was in, and would he wait, as she was engaged for a moment? It was just the same as on that first morning--the little waiting-room, the table with the papers laid out on it, the far-off clicking of typewriters, everything--just the same as though nothing had happened and the whole expedition had been a dream.

Then he was shown into Martia's room, and here again everything was just the same, even to the girl at the desk-table who rose to greet him, offered him a seat, and re-took her place at the table.

"I've got the cheque," said Bobby, after they had spoken a few words. "Behrens kept me waiting or I'd have called before. It's twenty thousand."

"Twenty thousand pounds?"

"Yes, twenty thousand. There may be more to come when he's had the opinion of another expert on the things, but anyhow it's not bad."

He fumbled in his pocket and produced the cheque which he handed to the girl, who looked at it, holding it for a moment, and then returning it to him.

He rose and placed it on the desk, and then sat down again.

"Half of that is yours," said he. "It is. I won't touch it unless you take your share. Sam refused anything, yet but for him and for you we'd never have pulled the business through. If you won't have it yourself, you've got to make him take it."

"But how am I to make him?" asked she. "I have no power over Mr. Hackett."

"Oh, yes you have. At least you will have. I've got to tell you that I couldn't help hearing what you said to him that night at the inn. I only heard a word, but it was enough. It told me everything."

"Word? At the inn? What on earth do you mean?"

"That you are engaged to him."

"Me? Engaged to Mr. Hackett?"

Martia looked at him as though she were doubtful as to his reason. Then a new light came into her eyes and across her face the ghost of a smile.

"Oh, I see now what you mean. I remember what he said that night." She laughed. "It was about Violet he was speaking."

"Violet?"

"My sister. He was engaged to her and they broke it off. It was the stupidest thing. That is what made him take to that horrid life all alone on a yacht. He really loved her just as she loves him. But I have made it all right now, and they are together again."

Before this news Bobby sat stricken dumb. He saw now the whole mystery of Sam and Martia in its proper light; the reason they had met in the first instance as strangers, yet evidently knowing one another; the reason Sam, the broken-hearted, had lapsed from sobriety at Genoa and Hyalos; the whole business and his own ghastly stupidity in flying to a wrong conclusion.

Then he leaned forward and took Martia by the hands.

She had loved him from the very first moment when he had come blundering into the office and into her life.

She told him so presently, speaking in a calm, level voice with a trace in her eyes of that strange remoteness which the sculptor had caught in the eyes of the Aphrodite of Hyalos.

* * * * *

Behrens is still alive. When he is dead the artistic world will, no doubt, receive the shock of its life, and Hyalos will perhaps deliver up, from the Street of Hermes and the Street of the Winds, treasures more wonderful than the Aphrodite or the ruins of the statue of Victory.

Even before that, if you have the money and the spirit of adventure and the time to hunt--for the location which I have given you is quite unreliable--you may forestall him and cover yourself with laurels--or, more likely, get yourself into a Greek prison! But you will get neither Robert Lestrange nor Samuel Hackett to assist you in the business. They are two happily married men in an age strangely unproductive of happy marriages.

THE END

[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]