CHAPTER I
A little, knuckly man bounded into Clement Seadon’s cabin with an india-rubber violence. He snapped the door closed, and faced the startled young man.
“You’re Clement Seadon,” he cried; “I’m Hartley Hard.”
The young man stopped unpacking.
“I don’t think I know you,” he said.
“You needn’t think. You don’t know. I’m a complete stranger to you—in the flesh. But don’t talk. I haven’t much time.”
Clement glanced at the umbrella and obvious shore rig of the bounding little man.
“In fact,” he said, in the other’s manner, “you have no time at all. ‘All ashore’ was called two minutes ago.”
“Oh, don’t talk,” panted the little man. “This thing is terribly important. I mustn’t lose a moment telling you. You know Heloise Reys?”
“Not at all,” said Clement dryly. He began again to unpack.
“For heaven’s sake, don’t quibble, man. You know her. You came from London to Liverpool in the same carriage as Heloise Reys.”
“Oh, that was Heloise Reys,” said the young man, dropping his dress-shirts and looking up with interest. “The Gorgon woman with her called her Loise.”
“Nickname,” said the little man breathlessly. “Her name is really Heloise—What I mean to say is, you do know her.”
“Not really,” said Clement with exasperating (and, one is afraid, deliberate) casualness. “A mere chance acquaintance.”
He refused to tell the little man that, having encountered her in the C.P.R. office, he had determinedly looked out for her on the boat train.
The little man danced about in a fury of anxiety.
“Please do remember that I have the barest possible time to tell you what I must tell you. Don’t interrupt. Don’t quibble. You know her. She is good looking.”
“Very good looking,” said Clement, staring at the little man in amazement.
“She is a charming girl,” urged the little man.
“Perfectly charming,” said Clement.
“Of very good family, too,” snapped the little man.
“Probably,” said Clement. “But I didn’t find that out.”
“Don’t have to, take it from me. Very good family. No father, no mother.”
“That,” said Clement, “I shall have to take from you.”
His astonishment had given way to a sort of guarded amusement. He was of the genial type of young man, one who could see the humorous side of things quickly.
The little bouncy man waved his umbrella in excitement.
“Do take it from me,” he cried. “No mother, no father. No encumbrances, and no one to control her. Remember that, no one to watch over her. And she is very well off. Very rich.”
Clement could only stare. The little man swept on: “Very beautiful. Very charming. A girl with a gentle, tender heart—much too tender. Too quixotic. A fine character. Good family—and rich. Extremely rich. You understand all that?”
“Look here—what on earth are you driving at?” cried the astounded Clement.
“But do you understand?” wailed the little man. “Have you grasped it all? A worthy girl. A girl worthy of any man. A girl that any man can be proud of. A girl——”
This was too much for Clement. “I say,” he burst out, “I say, are you—are you asking me to marry her?”
The excited dance of the little man now took on a touch of relief as well as anxiety. “You grasp it. You see it,” he trilled. “Assuredly. Marry her—that’s it.”
“My dear idiot,” shouted Clement. “My dear madman. Don’t you understand that——”
“No time to understand,” skated on the little man. “No time at all. Know it’s all rapid and wrong and amazing, but that’s what I want. You marry her. You can do it. You’re young. Young and handsome and healthy. And a sea-voyage. Sea-voyages are the chance of sentiment. Idle days, luxurious days. Moonlight—looking at the wake. Oh, the very chance for falling in love.”
“Do you realize you’re talking like an idiot? I’ve only just met Miss——”
“I know. I know. Awfully like an idiot. That’s because I am in such a hurry. I know exactly how it all sounds to you—but, really, I can’t help myself. Such a time. But that’s what I want you to do—really. Fall in love with her. Make her fall in love with you. Make her promise to marry you. Before she gets to Canada make her promise to marry you. Don’t let her put you off. Force her to do it.”
Clement sat down heavily on his bunk. He stared amazed at the little man.
“I’m afraid you’re mad,” he said.
“Mad,” snapped the little man. “I’m not mad. I’m a lawyer.”
Clement wanted to say that even lawyers went mad sometimes, but the little man hurled himself along.
“I’m a lawyer. I’m her lawyer. I’m your lawyer, too—one of them. That’s luck. When I saw you come out of the train with her, saw that you knew her, I noted that down as a piece of luck. You see I knew you were all right. Knew that through business—oh, I’m a partner of Rigby & Root.”
“My lawyers!” cried Clement.
“Yes! Yes! Haven’t I been telling you that? We’re her lawyers, too. When I saw you together, I said to myself, ‘Good, that’s a second line of defense. If I fail to bring her to reason I fall back on Clement Seadon—Mr. Clement Seadon. He’ll be my second line. Good fellow. Good family. Young, attractive, handsome to the eye. Has wits. Has capacity. Has a brain in his head. Has pluck and physical strength, too. Can carry a thing through in spite of danger.’ ...”
As he said that, his rapid eye glinted on Clement. He was staccato, but he was not stupid. Clement stiffened. He was the type of clean, young Anglo-Saxon who did stiffen at the hint of danger. The type that goes about quietly, calmly avoiding trouble—but is not really heartbroken when trouble comes along. The little lawyer saw Clement stiffen, he chuckled internally and continued his express monologue.
“That’s what I said to myself when I saw you. I said, ‘Mr. Clement Seadon has all the qualities necessary. An admirable second line of defense. And well-off, too. Rich. He’s not an adventurer hunting heiresses.’ That’s what I said when I saw you. And I went off to Heloise Reys’ cabin and tried to bring her to reason. Oh, I strove. I strove. I talked my best.”
He stopped and waved his umbrella in a gesture of hopelessness.
“You strove, and strove—and then had to fall back on your second line,” said Clement, helping him out.
Clement’s mind was in a curious condition. He realized that all this was madder than anything had any right to be—and yet he was rather intrigued, rather interested. He could not have told why. The fact that the little man was a lawyer, and his own lawyer at that, may have been the reason. Or it may have been that suggestion of danger, of adventure, called to that instinct lying dormant in the young of Clement’s race. Whatever it was, mad though he felt the whole business to be, he sat and listened.
The lawyer said, “You are right. I could do nothing with her. I failed. I could not bring her to reason. She is so quixotic. So headstrong. She has the wrongest sense of what is right.... And then I have no proofs. Only fears, only suspicions. I couldn’t clinch the matter with her. I couldn’t bring home anything to her.”
“And what were you trying to bring home to her?” demanded Clement, who really thought he was entitled to some explanation.
“Bring home to her? The truth about that scamp. I was trying to make her see that she should not go out to Canada to marry him.”
Clement gasped. Also he felt a little stab of pain. Heloise was certainly most extraordinarily attractive.
“Marry him? Marry whom? Haven’t you just been insisting that she should marry me?”
“Of course,” shouted the little man. “That’s it. That’s what I’m driving at.”
“But what are you driving at?” gasped Clement. “First you tell me to get her to marry me, then you tell me she is going to marry some one else.”
“Perfectly true,” said the little man. “She is making this journey to Canada to marry some one else, a man named Henry Gunning.”
Clement fell back, too, staggered for thought. “Are you a lawyer,” he demanded, “or are you an apostle of the Mormons?”
The little lawyer rushed over to Clement and caught him by the lapel of his coat. “No! no! no!” he cried. “Please do understand. It is this hurry that has made everything so complicated. She is going to Canada to marry Henry Gunning. But she must not marry him. She must be prevented. That’s what I want you to do. I want you to make her marry you in order that she won’t marry Gunning.”
“And why shouldn’t she marry the man she wants to?” Clement demanded.
“Because,” said the lawyer, speaking earnestly and impressively, “because it’s a swindle. She’s got into the hands of rogues, of swindlers, of criminals. Of that I am sure. The whole thing is terribly evil. And she must be saved. You must save her.”
Clement was about to answer. There was a knock on the cabin door. Clement called, “Come in.”
The door opened about a foot. An evil and repulsive face looked in. The little eyes in the ugly face swiveled all round the cabin in a swift, furtive glance. They took in Clement; they took in the little lawyer. A palish tongue licked purple, dry lips. A husky voice croaked, “Beg pardin, sir!”
The little lawyer snapped, “What do you want, man?”
“Beg pardin,” said the hoarse voice again. “Just looking round ter see if all visitors is ashore. Bedroom steward, sir.”
The fully opened door revealed the white coat and bobbly trousers of a veritable bedroom steward.
“All right, my man,” said the little lawyer, “I’m going ashore in a minute.”
“Ha,” said the steward, coming in with the satisfaction on his face such as policemen wear when they catch an authentic burglar. “Should be ashore. Orders is that all visitors sh’d be ashore. Come this way, sir. Quick, please, sir.”
“I’m going ashore in a minute,” said the little lawyer.
“Orders, sir. Gotter be now, sir.”
“Get out of this,” snapped the lawyer. “I’ll go ashore before the ship sails, never you fear.”
The steward came forward with an air of menace in his bearing.
“You go ashore, now, see. Them’s me orders, an’ I’ve got to see that it’s done—can’t stop arguing.”
“I don’t want you to,” said the little man decisively. “Particularly as Captain Heavy is the person you should argue with. If Captain Heavy was wrong in saying I could stop aboard, I think you should be the one to tell him, not me.”
“Ca’pen Heavy.... Why didn’t you say that ’efore?” snarled the man. He went sullenly out of the cabin. The little lawyer waited for a minute, then he slipped out, too. He darted up the little alleyway that led to the main passage along the deck. Clement heard him say in a tart voice:
“My good man, I know my way off this ship—you needn’t hang about here waiting to conduct me off.”
In a moment he was back with Clement, talking rapidly again, but this time in a noticeably lowered voice.
“He’s one of them. I thought he was. You’ll have to be on your guard against that steward.”
“One of whom?” asked Clement, trying to keep pace with the happenings. “One of the rogues, do you mean? Good heavens! are you telling me there is a sort of Villains’ Gang of them aboard this ship?”
“I don’t say it,” said the little man grimly, “but I shouldn’t be at all surprised if it were so. It’s a big thing, a terribly big thing, my friend, this marriage of Heloise. It is a matter of a million pounds sterling and more.”
“You are rather stunning as well as other things,” said Clement limply.
He really was feeling a trifle dazed. The little man had so hustling a manner. Also, his own knowledge of the girl, Heloise Keys, was of the faintest kind. She was just a tall, slim girl whom he had found attractive enough to want to know again after his first meeting. She was quite pleasant, quite English, quite natural. Apart from her special attraction, she was just one of the millions of crisp, self-assured and self-contained young women of Britain.
He had met her, as he had said, twice. The first time had been a delightful accident. He had arrived to book his passage at the Canadian Pacific Ocean Service Office in London, to find her there on the same errand.
What is more, there was a certain sense of comradeship in that action, for both intended to sail to Canada in the same ship, the Empress of Prague. One shipping clerk attended to both, he left the one cabin plan before them from which to choose their rooms, while he went away on the business of registering their tickets.
Clement had only to glance once at the cabin-plan to make his decision. He had sailed on the Empress before. All he had to do was to see whether his old cabin, which had been a comfortable one, was unoccupied. It was unoccupied. He jotted down its number to give to the clerk when he came back.
Heloise and her companion were not so decisive. Heloise, at least, showed all the hesitance proper to people unaccustomed to sea travel. The other woman was making suggestions, but Clement did not pay any attention to her. She was so obviously a companion, a servant, though of the cultured sort.
The clerk had tactfully pointed out a large cabin. After having spoken in glowing terms of it, he had gone off leaving the decision to the ladies. Clement had nothing against that clerk. As a clerk, he knew his business, which was to fill up cabins. He was merely doing his duty in suggesting that cabin to people who did not know the art of selecting cabins—there were so many people who knew it too well, and would leave that cabin on his hands.
Clement noted the battle of indecision with some amusement. Also with some interest, because Heloise (only he didn’t know she was Heloise, then) was extremely pretty. Also he thought she was of that trusting and sweet disposition that will take the word of anybody—even of shipping clerks. Obviously, she was going to follow his suggestion.
When the shipping clerk went to the back of the office Clement saw to it that she didn’t. He looked up at her as she puzzled over the deck plan, smiled in a disarming way, and said, “I say, if you don’t mind my butting in, I wouldn’t take that inner room. You’ll find it hot and rather airless, and there’s no light at all except artificial light.”
She answered him before she thought about who he was. “Are you sure of that?”
“Quite,” he told her. “I know the Empress of Prague well; you’ll be quite comfortable on her, particularly if you take, say, that cabin over there, instead of that inner one.”
As he spoke he heard an indignant sniff from the companion. He looked beyond the girl and saw a comely, chilly, thick-set, middle-aged woman. A woman who had a broad and attractive smile which, somehow, did not seem to penetrate deeper than the surface of her skin. It was the sniff and the smile that led Clement to christen her the Gorgon, then and there.
But the girl herself was not sniffing in moral indignation. She was pleased and friendly. “But it is jolly of you to help,” she cried. “You are sure that one over there is the better cabin?”
“As sure as I like light and fresh air,” Clement smiled at her. “You’ll get both in that, you see, it’s an outside cabin. Has—windows—ports, you know. And it’s roomier.”
“Then, that’s the one we’ll have, Méduse,” said the girl, and the Gorgon (really, Clement had been very apt in his nickname) said in a light voice slightly tipped with frost, “That is also the one I suggested. Remember I, too, have traveled on the sea before, Loise.”
The girl paid no attention to that. She did not allow herself to be distracted from Clement, as she was obviously meant to be distracted. She was, in fact, rather pleased to meet a young, good-looking, polished man, who was also to be a companion during the voyage across the Atlantic. She said, smiling, “I’m thoroughly mystified by all this sort of thing. I’ve never done anything but the cross-Channel trip before, and then only by daylight. The tricks of cabins and comfort are dark secrets, as yet. It is really very good of you to give me that tip.”
“Oh, travelers are a brotherhood who should band together in the face of the common enemy,” said Clement cheerfully.
“Are we going to have common enemies?” she asked pleasantly.
“Not on the Empress,” said Clement. “It’s a happy ship. But still there are always little things where the hardened traveler can help.”
“Hardened?” she echoed. “You must have begun before your teens then.... But it is rather nice, oh, and lucky, to meet some one who is going by the same boat. I have a feeling that going by boat must be rather like going to a new school—everybody is new and reserved. So that if one knows some one already....” They went galloping off into that chatter which overtakes vivid people who have found a common ground, and not even the sniffs of the Gorgon could check them. Definitely, Clement thought then, the Gorgon wanted to claw the girl away. She disliked the acquaintance.
Still, she did not have her way, though she hurried the girl off with some speed when the bargain over the counter had been completed. Even then the girl, as she went, held out the pleasant promise of their future meeting.
“We’ll meet again, then, on board,” she had nodded to him as she left the shipping office.
“Or on the boat train,” said Clement. “You’ll go up to Liverpool by that?”
“Of course,” she said, smiling. “Until then.”
Clement completed his own reservations, and went out of the office with a feeling of elation. He was already looking forward to his trip to Canada, where he hoped to get some sport: trout and salmon fishing, and later some duck shooting, and, perhaps, a chance at moose. But now his trip seemed a much jollier affair, and he wasn’t thinking of sport when he felt that.
She had been so pretty. She had such an extraordinary charm. She was fine and upspringing if she was slim. She carried herself so well. And her face was so vivid and alluring. Her skin was cool and white and glowing, and her features delicate and exquisite. She was more than pretty, she was beautiful.
And that candor and kindness that seemed to be her nature. A sort of honesty, a nobility that placed her right above petty feminine things—yet there was no denying the warm and tender femininity of her nature. A real woman, a beautiful woman. A woman in a million.
And yet he had not found out her name. Beyond the fact that her companion called her Loise, he knew nothing about her. He might have inquired from the shipping clerk. He did not inquire. He was as young and as straight-minded as that.
He had thought about her a great deal between that time and the sailing of the boat. And he was early at Paddington on the day that the boat train left. He had got all his own luggage stowed with the celerity of an old traveler and was looking out for her some time before she arrived.
He helped her and her companion, the Gorgon. He had already found them a compartment, had secured it with a healthy tip. It was to be his own compartment, too, if she gave permission, and, delightfully, she did. He traveled with her all the way to Liverpool, but, looking back at it now, it had been rather a curious journey.
He had put certain things down to accidents, those accidents that will beset travelers at times. But now—he wondered.
In the first place, he had nearly missed the train. They had been sitting there, chatting, quite serenely, gazing with slightly amused contempt at those passengers of the breed always doomed to be late for trains. Then the Gordon discovered that a rather special parcel left in the baggage room yesterday (heaven knows why!—the Gorgon seemed the sort of feminine mystery who would do just that sort of thing) had not been retrieved. When the Gorgon mentioned the parcel, the girl Loise had made an exclamation of acute vexation.
Clement was young enough (and she was pretty enough) to seize such an opportunity of doing her service. He said decisively it might be rescued, and he asked crisply, “How much time have we?”
It was the Gorgon who had pulled her watch with (now he could see) astonishing celerity. The watch showed that there was a full thirteen minutes to spare before the train went. That was ample. The Gorgon gave him the cloakroom ticket for the parcel. The girl described its nature rather well in one or two words, and she indicated the shelf on which it had been placed.
Clement darted out to the cloakroom, not looking at the station clock, as he should have done. He reached the counter, put the ticket and a large tip on the zinc surface and exhorted the attendant to hurry. The attendant smiled happily at the tip, examined the ticket and said blandly, “Na-poo.” It wasn’t his ticket at all, it was one issued by another station, Victoria.
“Hang!” shouted Clement. “I must get that parcel ... there it is over there.” The girl Loise’s description and directions had helped him out. He told the attendant in vivid language who had left it. He was not kind to the Gorgon, but his picture of her was unmistakable.
“I remember,” said the attendant. “Remember the lady wot was wit’ ’er. A very pretty lady.... All the same, you ain’t got the right ticket.”
“Hang it all, man, don’t argue!” shouted Clement. “I’ve got to catch the boat train....”
And when he said that the attendant had suddenly become very much alive. He snatched at the parcel and swung it over. “’Ave you got to catch it, well you’ve got to run blame ’ard ter do it. It’s just about going out.”
As Clement, sprinting like the deuce, ran for the train, he glanced at the station clock. Heavens! that wretched woman’s watch must be frightfully and femininely wrong. The train was just due to leave.
He simply flung himself by the ticket collector at the platform gate. The man shouted at him, but Clement fought his way by—if they wanted to question him they must do it at the other end. The train was just moving.
He flung himself at the door of the guard’s van. And the evil chance of such things seemed to be against him. A very large, a very bulky man was trying to do the same thing. He was an idiot of a man. He stumbled and fumbled. He blocked the way with his hideous ineptitude. So stupid was he that Clement had the feeling that exasperated people get, that is, the fool was doing it all purposely.
Clement Seadon was young and very active. While the excessive man still stumbled and blundered along beside a train steadily gathering pace, he nipped ahead of him, and with an agile twist was on to the footboard and into the van.
He turned at once to help the large fool. With a surprising access of nimbleness the big fellow was already in the train, standing beside him in the van. Already saying with a sort of purring urbanity, “Well, that was the nearest shave—nearer for you, sir. I must apologize. I did not actually realize you were trying to get on the train. I thought you were a porter or some one trying to help me. I must apologize, sir.”
He said this with the utmost geniality, which, at the same time, seemed to be reserved. It was as though he spoke automatically the right things; but what he said had no relationship to what he felt. And while he spoke he stared fixedly across Clement’s shoulder, and Clement was aware of the smallness of his eyes and their astonishing closeness together.
Still everything had ended well, and he said as much. He parted with this far too much of a man, and made his way along the corridor to his compartment. Here he was not at all sorry for the accident. Both ladies were in a lively state of alarm, and that alarm gave way to a cheery thankfulness at seeing him safely on board once more.
Or rather with the girl Loise that was how things worked out, and, as far as he was concerned, the journey was made even more attractive by the emotion this little episode had called up. It was not quite so with the Gorgon. She seemed overwhelmed by the knowledge that it was her stupidity in the matter of her watch and the wrong cloakroom ticket that had nearly caused Clement to miss the train and the boat. Her apologies were profuse, and she endeavored to make an amende by correcting, rather late in the day, the time on her watch.
The rest of the journey was uneventful (and Clement was now seeing things in a more acute light)—unless one could see something grave in the tiny incident on the landing stage.
The whole of Clement’s baggage had gone astray.
Now that he looked at it, Clement began to see the strangeness of the happening. He had not been careless. He had instructed a porter fully before returning to help the ladies. He had even chuckled at his own efficiency when, on looking back, he saw the big man who had all but prevented his gaining the boat train, standing helpless near his own busy porter.
Nevertheless twenty minutes later Nicholson, his cabin steward, told him he could not find his luggage anywhere. Nicholson was not a man to make mistakes and if he said luggage could not be found, it could not be found. Angry as he was at the mishap Clement wasted no time. He had to have that luggage. Naturally, he could not possibly sail without a rag to his name.
The stuff that was in Clement Seadon came out in the way he handled this contretemps. He went straight to the Canadian Pacific shipping agent, and put the problem up to him. The man belonged to a service that suffers attractively from an ideal of complete efficiency. The agent began to hustle.
He was, of course, helped by Clement. Clement had the type of mind that pays attention to a porter’s registration number when the porter holds up the metal plate upon which it is stamped to the hirer’s gaze. Clement remembered and repeated the number, and left the matter in the hands of the agent. In half an hour his luggage was on board the Empress.
A foreman had named the porter from the number; a dock policeman had stated that he had seen this man trundling the barrow-load of luggage away from the shed in the direction of the Cunard dock; the luggage was run to earth. The porter, on being taxed with his strange behavior, offered a wild and absurd story of having been told that Mr. Seadon had suddenly received orders to go by Cunard. A steward had come off the Empress just as he was going on to it, and given this very definite command.
He was, so the porter said, “a littlish, mean-looking ’ound of a steward.” Nicholson was a big man. And, though the porter may have based his description of the offending steward on anger, Clement, with a sudden blaze of comprehension, now recognized how well that description fitted the steward who had just tried to turn the little lawyer off the boat. Had that steward tried to keep him off the boat also? It looked extraordinarily like it.
Thus, though he might have been inclined to scout the whole idea of the gang of rogues who were working to accomplish the undoing of the girl Heloise and her million pounds, as something absurd and unreal, actually the train of circumstances forced him to say limply:
“You are rather stunning as well as other things.”
The little man went on promptly with his hasty and hurtling attack.
“I know, stunning and absurd and incredible. It sounds all that, I know. To me it is all that—only, I’ve got to face things as they appear to me and I’ve so little to go on, yet so much. A huge fortune, that foolish girl’s happiness, and all that sort of thing—is at stake....”
He seemed anxious to impress Clement with the soundness of his case, and it was now Clement who cried, “But get on with it, man. You haven’t too much time. You’ll have to go ashore very soon. Tell me the facts.”
“Facts,” snapped the little man. “The first is she’s going out expressly to find and marry this weak-will, this ne’er-do-well Henry Gunning.”
“Why? Is she engaged to him?” demanded Clement, with peculiar interest.
“Engaged to him. Good gad—rubbish. Sheer quixotery. This is the story: They were brought up together—boy and girl. He was an unpleasant, feckless cub. His people had estates next old Reys. Both of ’em went about as kids. There was a sort of calf love. Both of ’em had it mildly ... nothing else to do in the country for the young but to be calves. Then he did something idiotic, and he was shipped off to Canada. His guardians did it—parents dead then.”
“What was it?”
“Oh, general irritation with his spinelessness and low tastes, plus a crisis. They made use of that crisis. Matter of fact, he stole.”
“Stole! But could Miss Heloise have anything to do with a thief?”
“Oh, but a plausible thief,” snapped the little lawyer. “What he stole, he said, was his. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t, and he knew it. It was a picture, an Old Master, belonging to his family. Family had died up to its ears in debt—for which his own bad habits were mainly responsible. Everything had been sold to settle those debts. He knew that all right. But he stole that picture, sold it, and went on the spree with the proceeds. There you get the type of man he is in a nutshell.”
“That doesn’t explain Miss Reys’ attitude.”
“Oh, he made a case. Said he thought he’d taken only what was his own. He bought her a silly little trinket, too, and made her believe he had sold the picture to get that. Absurd. But she was woefully young. She has a generous heart, and she was on the side of the scamp in affection. Well, that’s the beginning. He left her with the usual vows. He’d been unlucky. He had an unlucky nature, so he told her; but he was going to the great and grand New World to carve out a fortune for her. He would return, like the hero in a story, rich and powerful, and all because of her—all for her.”
“Well, what’s next. Has he made that fortune?”
“Not a bit of it. He’s the sort that doesn’t. Hasn’t the guts or the honesty. I don’t know what he’s done in the ten years he’s been away; nobody knows. I suspect a mountain of beastliness. But one thing I know. He hasn’t made that fortune.”
“You’re sure?”
“My dear lad, isn’t that why she’s going out? Oh, of course, I’m running on too fast. Well, that is the reason, anyhow. First year or two there were plenty of letters. Then the letters dropped away. His were sloppy and disconsolate, I gather. He was the unlucky sort even in Canada, he let her know. Of course he was. Then the letters stopped altogether. For years nothing was heard of him. Things went on with Heloise ever so much better. I thought she’d forgotten the ass. Then, quite suddenly, the whole of this business started again. Came at us, as it were, out of the blue.”
“And what precisely do you mean by that?” Clement asked.
“I can’t quite explain. Know nothing definite, you see. First Heloise’s father died. He left her in control of this fortune. Really an immense fortune. When I mentioned the figure of a million pounds I meant it. It is more than true. Heloise continued for some time in a state of happy ordinariness. Then she had another letter from the scallywag Gunning. I don’t know what was in it, but it seemed to fling her right back to those old flapperish, calfish days. From what I could gather, Gunning was still fighting his luck. He was fighting (so he hinted) with dogged courage. He remembered his vow to her, and had kept himself staunch, unfettered, and upright because of it. He meant to redeem it; in fact, he hinted that there was a chance of redeeming it—if only his spell of bad luck would break. He had a big thing in view—a huge thing—that would bring him a great fortune. Then he would be able to come to her. But he didn’t do more than hint at this big coup he had in mind. I told Heloise that that was the man all over; that he was merely exhibiting his vague and spineless nature. Stupid of me to say that. I was set aside as hard and unsympathetic at once, and nothing more was told to me. Heloise, naturally, thought it was his noble nature cropping out. He would tell her nothing until he had brought it off. He would be beholden to nobody until he had fulfilled himself. I said it was all rubbish; but Heloise, who thinks the best of everybody, clung to her view.... And then this confounded new companion supported that view, gave it a new strength?”
“How could a companion do any such thing?”
“I can’t answer riddles; I can only guess. Perhaps I am too easily suspicious. I suspected the old companion when she so inexplicably left Heloise’s service. Why? Well, it seemed illogical. She had an extraordinarily well-paid, extraordinarily comfortable job. It is the sort of job no woman of that kind would leave in a hurry. But she did. She said she had come into some money, a lot of it, and wanted to set up a little business of her own. Well, I couldn’t find out how she had come into that money—a few thousands it must have been. I tried to trace a source. I couldn’t find one. But she had the money from some one all right.”
“You suspect it was an underhand affair—she was paid?”
“I suspect, only. No facts. This new companion made me more suspicious. She’s a Canadian, or says she is.”
“Perhaps that’s the reason Miss Reys chose her—a reason of sentiment,” said Clement.
“You’ve touched the crucial plausibility of the matter. That is why Heloise chose her. The departing companion recommended this creature—suspicious again. Heloise was not altogether smitten with her at first, but the fact that she knew Canada turned the scale. The sentimental note won. And then—too surprising for life, I think: an attractive coincidence, thinks Heloise—this new companion knows Gunning.”
Clement nodded. He, too, was beginning to think that the long arm of coincidence was beginning to suffer from strain.
“‘It only came out casually,’ says Heloise,” went on the little man; “but there’s the fact this companion who came to her by fishy means knew Gunning. Knew him well enough to sing rather an attractive song about him. Oh, she made it all sound very ordinary. She had not actually spoken to or known Gunning, but she had stayed at a place called Sicamous, where he was often to be seen, and where his name was very well known. He was known there as the Englishman whom providence had a grouch against. He was also known as the Englishman who would be a millionaire some day. No, don’t ask me why he was called that. That hasn’t been told me. I suspect my attitude of non-sympathy has been adroitly enlarged by that confounded companion. I’ve been kept out of it. All I know is that Heloise is filled with a sort of sentimental certainty that Gunning is out there in the wilds needing help. He is fighting a lone hand against circumstances beyond his strength. He is there working doggedly with a great chance within his grasp; but for lack of means, for lack of support, for lack of money he cannot make good. That’s how I see it, and I can see how the sentimental side has been worked up to secure Heloise’s sympathy. She feels he won’t, he doesn’t write to her because of his pride. His self-respect, his sense of decency, his grit and all that sort of bunkum forbids his writing to the girl he loves and wants to marry. That’s how they are playing on Heloise’s candid and sympathetic nature.”
“Well,” said Clement. “It might be correct. Men are rather like that, don’t you think?”
“Men, yes,” snapped the little lawyer. “Fellows like you, real men, would be like that. But Gunning—I don’t believe it.”
“That’s rather drastic.”
“My boy, I know Gunning. We acted for his people too. Gunning is not like that. He’s a moral tadpole. If he has changed, then the age of miracles has very certainly not passed.”
Clement thought this sort of talk led to nothing. He changed the line.
“And what’s the big chance that lies before him?”
“I told you I didn’t know,” said the little lawyer. “I’ve been kept in the dark over that.”
“Is Miss Reys in the dark?”
“What do you mean by that? As I tell you, I think she is certainly in the dark concerning this foul plot that is being worked on her. But concerning this big coup that Gunning is supposed to be able to bring off—no. She knows all about that. She’s been writing letters to people in Canada. The companion has supplied her with addresses, I take it. She’s received replies that have convinced her of the genuineness of Gunning and his prospects. Of that I am certain.”
“You don’t think those letters genuine?”
“I don’t think anything connected with this trip to Canada is genuine.”
Clement frowned. Thinking, he said, “Exactly what do you think these rogues, if they be rogues, are out to do?”
“I think they are out to get control of rather more than a million pounds sterling, which, at present, belongs to Heloise.”
“How will they do that—if she marries Gunning?”
“How will they?” began the little lawyer in exasperation. Then he said more precisely and quietly, “I will tell you exactly what I think. I think that, somehow, a band of rogues in Canada has found out from Henry Gunning that there is a sort of engagement between him and Heloise. They have learned from the same source that Heloise is worth a million of money. They have that rascal in their power. They have seen that through him there is a very good chance of getting that million of money into their power.”
“You’re making rather a long shot, aren’t you? After all, they must have known that they would have to reckon with Heloise, who will have something to say in the matter.”
The little man waggled his umbrella fiercely.
“Not a long shot,” he insisted. “They probably saw her letters to him. If they read those letters they would see exactly the sort of girl Heloise is. She is fine, honest. She is too generous for this world.... She is undoubtedly quixotic, as I have told you several times. They would see that a girl like that would respond to adroit handling. Her sense of honor would lead her to remain true to the letter of the bargain she made with Gunning years ago. Her sense of chivalry would send her out post-haste to his aid, if that aid was required. She would feel that he was making a tremendous sacrifice for her, and she would at once be willing to make a tremendous sacrifice in return.”
The little man paused, gazing at Clement.
“That’s her nature; generous to folly. She gives greatly, tremendously, if her heart is touched.... Well, that’s what these brutes have done. As I see it, they have assessed her, sized her up. They have put this plot into motion. Cunningly they have reawakened her interest in Gunning; first, by that letter from him; then they got rid of the old companion, and substituted this—this temptress from Canada. She has spent all her days playing upon Heloise’s heart-strings. She has cast a spell, a glamour, a damned romantic glamour, over that poor girl. She has painted a picture of the stoic Gunning fighting against luck for her. Painted him proud and silent and full of pluck, refusing to call on her aid, though she has but to stretch out a finger, back up some scheme of his, and he will win—he will win a fortune and win her. Oh, they have painted for her a beauteous and beastly picture. The sort of picture that can have but one effect on such a girl as Heloise. She has become inspired by it. She sees the great and the generous way. If this true man, Gunning, is too proud to cry for help, then she should be proud to go to him and help him. She will make her sacrifice also.... So—so off she packs to Canada. She starts out like a sort of rapturous female knight-errant.”
The little man had to stop, because his face and throat were working.
“And then when she finds him,” he ended, his voice harsh with emotion, “there’ll be a love scene ... and a marriage ... and then ... God knows what they will do then ... but as sure as I’m here, Clement Seadon, they’ll get that million ... and I daren’t ask myself how they will get it.”
Clement stood stiff with the tragedy that had suddenly burst in horror into that little cabin.
“I daren’t ask myself how they will get that million,” the little lawyer had said in emotion, and Clement shuddered. He saw the gaunt and lonely mountains of Sicamous (wasn’t that the place?). The dark, spruce-clad valleys, awfully lonely and awfully quiet. And in those silent valleys away from man—away from help and discovery—anything might happen.
He had a quick vision of the beautiful and splendid girl, and his skin crept with horror of—of the things that might happen.
He found that he had very little to say. He muttered lamely, “You are sure she is going out for this?”
“To see Gunning? Yes. She told me so frankly.”
“But—but to marry him?”
“I think so. Of course she wouldn’t tell me that, but”—and a gleam in his eye relieved the horror of the moment—“but I, as her lawyer, have been called upon lately to settle heavy bills with all the milliners, dressmakers, and purveyors of dainty feminine trivia in the kingdom of woman’s shopping. I don’t want to let you into delicate secrets; but, even to the unsophisticated male, such wholesale buying seems to point to one definite end.”
“I am a—a bachelor in such matters,” said Clement, glad to get the topic off the ugly strain. “But even with such preparations woman is not doomed to marriage. After ten years—Henry Gunning may not be likable. A man of the type you have described is an unpleasant object when he goes to seed; as, no doubt, he has gone to seed.”
“That gives me no ground for hope,” said the little lawyer. “He is plausible. He will probably get himself up to the scratch for the time being. Even this gang would see to that, don’t you think? His very seediness may make him seem more romantic—women are so illogically and amazingly made. And then in a lonely place.... No, the only safe and settled thing is to prevent the marriage. For you to prevent the marriage.”
Clement laughed with a touch of annoyed self-consciousness. “After all you’ve told me,” he said lamely, “I’ll keep my eye on her.”
“No—make love to her,” snapped the little lawyer.
“Perhaps I can advise her.”
“Rubbish—make her love you. Advise her? Good Lord, can any man advise a headstrong, well-educated young woman of the twentieth century. Advise her? Haven’t I been advising her not to do this mad thing for months! She’s certain of herself. She’s so practical about the whole matter.—Advise her? You might just as well try to advise Mount Popocatepetl to melt into the plain. Don’t attempt to advise. Do! Love her. Marry her.”
A sharp voice came swiftly along the gallery outside. A boy, running with some urgency, was yelling a name.
“Marry her, man,” snapped the little lawyer. “I’m cut off from her. I can do nothing. I depend on you.” He listened to the boy’s yells. “My name. I’m wanted.” He sprang to the door, ran up the alley-way to the gallery. “Boy! Boy! I’m Mr. Hard. Want me?”
A shrill voice yelled, “Lookin’ fer you everywhere, sir. Hurry. Ca’pen Heavy’s compliments, you gotter get off the ship damn quick. Casting off now. Look sharp, sir.”
The little man swung round, called down the alley-way into which Clement had come, “Got to go ashore. Don’t forget what you’ve got to do.”
“I’ll do my best,” cried the confused Clement.
“Best! No good. Marry her.”
“But, you see, she mightn’t——”
“Marry her,” snapped the little lawyer, already on the run. “Don’t give in to her. Make her marry you.”
Running, he went along the gallery out of sight.
Clement stared after him in bewilderment.
“Holy romance!” he murmured to himself. “Here’s a thing with which to begin a sea voyage.”
He turned to go back to his cabin. Away along the gallery, by the staircase that led up to the smoking room, he saw two men standing. They were standing watching him. They stood there for but a second, and then, with furtive quickness, they stepped back out of his sight.
It had been a matter of an instant. But Clement had recognized both of them.
One was the steward with the evil face who had tried to get the little lawyer off the ship, and had, so Clement felt, tried to get him off the ship, too, by sending his luggage astray.
The other was a tall, huge, almost excessive man. A man with little, sinister eyes ... the man who had all but prevented his getting into the train. The man whom he had seen close to his baggage before it went astray. He was there watching Clement, talking to the evil steward in an intimate way.
“Ah,” reflected Clement. “So you are in this. You are one of them.... And now that I come to think things out, there was never any doubt of it.”
He sat down on his bunk to face the problem of saving the girl Heloise from a gang of rogues, of whom the companion, Méduse, this huge man, and the steward at least were members.