Part 3

"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 kind 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; the thinks it will explode."

"It can't explode," he said, shaking his head. "Those vapor 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 airplane and stayed overnight in Paris. My fiancé is a French marquis 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. Peter's 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 amporas 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 marvelous 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-believe 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 to a 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 'honorable'."

"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."

"Rats!" said Christina contemptuously. "Friendships between attractive shop girls and well-to-do young men! I've heard about 'em--platonic. Have you ever heard of Archianassa? She was Plato's mistress. He didn't even practice the kind of love that is named after him. Evie is a good girl and has really fine principles. I shock her awfully at times, I wish I didn't. I don't mean I wish I didn't say things that make her shocked, but that she wouldn't be shocked at all. You have to have a funny kink in your mind before you take offense at the woman and man facts. If you blush easily, you fall easily. I wish to God Evie wasn't so pretty. And she's a dear, too, Ambrose. She has great schemes for getting me away to a country where my peculiar ailment will dissolve under uninterrupted sunlight. Poor darling! It would be better if she thought more of her own dangerous sickness."

"Ronald Morelle," said Ambrose suddenly, "but it wouldn't be he."

"Who is Ronald Morelle?"

"He is the only Ronald I know. I don't even know him. He's a friend of a--a friend of mine."

"Rich--where does he live?"

"In Knightsbridge somewhere."

Christina whistled. "Glory be! Evie's shop is in Knightsbridge!"

At eleven o'clock that night Evie Colebrook came into the room, and, as she stooped over the bed to kiss her sister, Christina saw something.

"You've been crying, Evie."

Evie turned away quickly and began to unfasten her skirt. "I--I twisted my ankle--slipped off the sidewalk--I was a baby to cry!"

Christina watched her as she undressed rapidly. "You haven't said your prayers, Evie."

"Damn my prayers!" There was a little choke at the end. "Put out the light, Christina, I'm awfully tired."

Christina reached up for the dangling chain that Ambrose Sault had fixed to the lamp, but she did not immediately pull it. "Mr. Sault was talking about people he knew tonight," she said carelessly. "Have you ever heard of a man called Ronald Morelle?" There was no answer, then.

"Good-night, Christina."

Christina pulled the chain and the light went out.

V

Beryl Merville told herself, at least once a day, that the average girl did not give two thoughts about the source of her father's income. In her case, there was less reason why she should trouble her head.

Dr. Merville had retired from practice four years before. In his time, he was what is loosely described as "a fashionable physician," and certainly was regarded as one of the first authorities of cardiac diseases in the country. His practice, as a consultant, was an extensive one, and his fees were exceptionally high, even for a fashionable physician. When he retired he was indubitably a rich man. He sold his house in Devonshire Street and bought a more pretentious home in Park Place, but--the zest for speculation, repressed during the time he was following his profession, had occupied the hours of leisure which retirement brought to him. An active man, well under sixty, the emptiness of his days, after he had turned over his work, filled him with dismay. He had broken violently from the routine of twenty-five years and found time the heaviest of the burdens he had ever carried. He tried to find interests and failed. He was under an agreement to the doctor who had purchased his practice not to return to his profession, or he would have been back in Devonshire Street a month after he had left. He bought a few thoroughbreds and sent them to a trainer, but he had no love for the turf and, although he won a few respectable stakes, he quitted the game at the end of the first season.

Then he tried the stock market, made a few thousands in oil and grew more interested. A rubber speculation hurt him, but not so much that his enthusiasm was damped or his bank balance was seriously affected. He followed this loss with what might have been a disastrous investment in South African Mines. Then, at a nerve-racking moment, came Steppe, who held up the market and let out Merville, bruised and shaken, but not ruinously so. Here might have ended the speculative career of Dr. Merville, had he not been under an obligation to the South African. Within a month of their meeting, the doctor's name appeared on the prospectus of one of Steppe's companies--a mild and unromantic cold storage flotation which was a success in every sense. Merville had many friends in society; people who might look askance at the name of Jan Steppe, and be disturbed by the recollection of certain other companies which that gentleman had floated, accepted Dr. Merville's directorship as evidence of the company's stability and financial soundness. The issue was over-subscribed and paid a dividend from the first year.

This object lesson was not lost upon the big man. He followed the promotion with another. The East Rand Consolidated Deep was floated for three-quarters of a million. Applications came in for two millions. Dr. Merville was chairman of the board. Even Jan Steppe was surprised. Large as was the circle of Merville's acquaintances, neither his personal popularity nor his standing as a financial authority could account for this overwhelming success. Merville himself discounted his own influence, not realizing that in the twenty-five years of professional life, he had built up a national reputation. His name had been a household word since his treatment of a foreign royalty whose case had been regarded by native physicians as hopeless. This may not have been a complete explanation; probably the fact that the stock in the cold storage company stood at a premium had something to do with the rush for Consolidated Deeps.

The new company did not pay dividends, but long before the first was due, Mr. Steppe had launched two others. On paper Dr. Merville made a fortune; actually, he acquired heavy liabilities, not the least of which was his heavy participation in a private flotation which Mr. Steppe, with unconscious humor, labeled: "The Investment Salvage Syndicate." It was a stockholding company and in the main it held such stock as a general public declined to purchase. There are rules of behavior which normal people do not transgress. A gentleman does not search the overcoat pockets of his fellow clubmen, and confiscate such valuables as he may find; nor does he steal into the houses of people he does not know and remove their silver. A corporation man has a less rigid code. Dr. Merville found himself consciously assisting in the manipulation of a stock, a manipulation which could only be intended to deprive stockholders of their legitimate rights. There was one unpleasant moment of doubt and shame when Merville sought to disentangle his individuality from this corporative existence. He tried to think singly, applying the tests which had governed his life--he found it easier to divide his responsibility.

Somehow he felt less venal when only a fourteenth of the blame attached to him. This fraction represented his holding in Consolidated Deeps. Wealth is an effective narcotic. Rich and fearless men can find a melancholy pleasure in the contemplation of their past sins. But poverty and the danger of poverty acts as a microphone through the medium of which the still small voice of conscience is a savage roar.

Beryl thought he was unusually nervous when she went to find him in his study. He started at the sound of her voice.

"Ready--yes, dear. What time did Steppe say?"

"Eight o'clock. We have plenty of time, father--the car isn't here yet. Do you know whether Ronnie will be there?"

Dr. Merville was looking abstractedly at her; his mind, she knew, was very far away. "Ronnie? I don't know. John Maxton will be there. I saw him today. Steppe admires him and John is clever; he will be a judge one of these days. Yes--a judge." The little grimace he made was involuntary.

"One would think you expected to meet him in his official capacity," she laughed.

"Absurd of course--as to Ronnie? How do you feel about him, Beryl?" The maid tapped at the door to say the car had arrived.

Beryl answered: "Do you mean--I don't quite know what you do mean?"

"About the scandal. Do you remember a man who came to see you--why he should have come to you I don't know--with a story about his sister?"

"East was the name. Yes, Ronnie told me all about it. The man is a blackmailer and his sister was not much better. Ronnie had shown a kindness to the girl, he met her at some--some mission or other. Ronnie does queer things like that--and he gave her some money to go on a holiday. That was all."

"Humph--ready?"

"But, daddy, don't you believe Ronnie?" She was desperately anxious to consolidate her own faith.

"I don't know. Ronnie is a queer fellow--"

He was ready to go; his overcoat was over his arm and yet he lingered. She guessed he would say something more about Ronald Morelle and was stiffening to defend him, but she was mistaken.

"Beryl, you are twenty-two and very beautiful. I may be biased but I hardly think I am. I have seen many lovely women in my life and you could hold your own with any of them. Do you ever think of getting married?"

She tried hard to control herself, but the color in her face deepened and faded.

"I haven't thought much about it," she said. "There are two parties to a marriage, daddy."

"Are you fond of anybody? I mean are you, in your heart--committed to any one man?"

A pause, then: "No."

"I'm glad," said her father, relieved. "Very glad--you must look for something in a man which fellows like Ronnie Morelle can never give to a woman--power, fortune, mental strength and stability--come along."

She followed him to the car dumb with astonishment, but not at that moment apprehensive. She knew that he had been talking of Jan Steppe.

VI

Mr. Steppe had a house in Berkeley Square which he rented from its lordly owner. Beryl had dined there before, and it had been a baffling experience, for in no respect did the personality of the tenant find an opportunity of expressing itself. The furnishings and the color schemes of the landlord had been left as they had been found, and since the atmosphere of the place was late Victorian, Mr. Steppe was unconformable to his surroundings.

Beryl thought of him as a Sultan amidst samplers.

Sir John Maxton was talking to him when they were announced. One of the greatest advocates at the bar, Maxton was tall, slender, esthetic. His gentle manner had led many a confident witness into trouble. He had a reputation at the bar as a just and merciless man; a master of the art of cross-examination.

"The doctor told me you were likely to be here," he said, when she had escaped from Steppe's thunderous civilities. "I hoped Ronnie would have come--have you seen him lately?"

"Only for a few minutes on Monday. I met him in the park. I didn't know you were a friend of his, Sir John?" Maxton's lips curled. Beryl wondered if he was trying to smile, or whether that twitch indicated something uncomplimentary to Ronnie.

"I'm more than a friend--and less. I was one of the executors of his father's will. Old Bennett Morelle was my first client and I suppose I stand _in loco parentis_ to Ronnie by virtue of my executorship. I have not seen him for quite a year. Somebody told me that he was scribbling! He always had a bent that way--it is a thousand pities he didn't take the law seriously--an occupation would have kept him out of mischief."

"Has Ronnie been called to the bar?" she asked in astonishment. Maxton nodded.

"Just before the war, but he has never practiced. I hope that the newspaper connection will keep him busy."

"But Ronnie works very hard," she asserted stoutly. "He has his company work, he is a director of several and chairman of one I believe." Maxton looked at her with the faintest shade of amusement in his eyes.

"Of course," he said drily, "that is an occupation." He lowered his voice. "Do you mind if I am ill-bred and ask you if you have known our host very long?"

"A few years." He nodded.

Beryl, glancing across at her father and Steppe, saw that the doctor was talking earnestly. She caught Steppe's gaze and looked back to Sir John.

"I have been fighting a case for him--rather a hopeless proposition, but we won. The jury was wrong, I think, in giving us a verdict. I can say this because the other side have entered an appeal which is certain to succeed."

Jan Steppe must have heard the last sentence.

"Huh? Succeed? Yes, perhaps--it doesn't matter very much. I had a verdict, a disqualified winner is still a moral winner, huh, doctor? You used to be a racing man, what do you think?"

Dinner was announced whilst the doctor was disclaiming any knowledge of the turf or its laws. The dinner was exquisite in its selection and brevity. Mr. Steppe had one special course which none of the others shared. He invited them and showed no regret when they refused. A footman brought a silver dish piled high with steaming mealy cobs. He took them in his hands and gnawed at the hot corn. It was probably the only way that mealies could be eaten, she told herself--no more inelegant an exhibition than the sword-swallowing man[oe]uvre which followed the serving of asparagus.

"Sault?" Mr. Steppe was wiping his fingers on his serviette. "You asked me once before, Beryl--where was it? In the park. No, I haven't seen him. I very seldom do. Strange man, huh?"

The butler had attended more frequently to Dr. Merville's wine glass than to any other of the guests. His gloom had disappeared and he was more like the cheerful man Beryl remembered.

"Sault is a danger and a menace to society," he said.

Steppe's brows lowered but he did not interrupt.

"At the same time he can exercise one of the most beneficent forces that nature has ever given into the care of a human being."

"You pique my curiosity," said Maxton, interested. "Is he psychic or clairvoyant--from your tone one would imagine that he had some supernatural power."

"He has," nodded Merville. "I discovered it some time ago. He lodges with a woman named Colebrook in a very poor part of the town. Mrs. Colebrook suffers from an unusual form of heart disease. She had a seizure one night and Sault came for me. You will remember, dear, when I was called out in the middle of the night--a year ago. The moment I examined the woman, who was unconscious, and in my opinion _in extremis_, I knew that nothing could be done. I applied the remedies which I had brought with me, and which I had thought, from his description of the seizure, would be necessary, but with no effect. Sault was terribly upset. The woman had two daughters, one bed-ridden. His grief at the thought that she would die without her daughter seeing her, was tragic. I think he was going upstairs to bring the girl down, when I said casually that if I could lend the patient strength to live for another hour, she would probably recover. What followed, seems to me even now as part of a fantastic dream."

Beryl's elbow was on the table, her chin in her palm and she was absorbed. Maxton lay back, his arm hanging over the back of his chair, weighing every word; Steppe, his hands clasped on the table, his head bent, skeptical.

"Sault bent down and took the inert hands of the woman in his--just held them. Remember this, that she was the color of this serviette, her lips gray. I wondered what he was doing--I don't know now. Only her face went gradually pink and her eyes opened."

"How long after he took her hands?" asked Maxton.

"Less than a minute I should think. As I say, she opened her eyes and looked around and then she nodded very slowly. 'What do you think of that, Dr. Merville?' she said."

"She knew you, of course?"

"She had never seen me in her life. I learned that afterwards. Sault dropped her hands and stood up. He was looking ghastly. Not a vestige of color. I said to him: 'Sault, what is the matter, and he answered in a cockney whine, that was 'h'less and ungrammatical--Sault never makes an error in that respect--'It's me 'eart, sir, I get them attacks at times--haneurism.'"

"Sault?"

Steppe's face was puckered into a grimace of incredulity.

"Go on, please, father!" urged the girl.