‘That’ll be three,’ said his father.
‘Right-ho, if you say so!’
They drank standing, their eyes fixed upon the revolving doors through which Peter would presently come. Standing there, utterly unconscious of their surroundings, glasses in hands, they were a couple which brought the gaze of many eyes to bear upon them. Exactly of a height, exactly of a breadth, with the same rather prominent-jawed, imperious nosed, hard-bitten good looks, the same deep, wide shoulders and narrow horseman’s hips, they were a walking, talking proof that heredity is not an old wife’s tale. What lineage, God knows, for F. X. himself could scarcely tell you from whence he came, but wherever this was, it and his own life had stamped their stamp upon the man, and this stamp was upon the son. They did not, these two, behave like father and son. They were more like elder and younger brother—much more. In only one particular was their aspect different. In the dress of F. X. was a careless, easy mixture of opulent cloth and ‘I-like-a-loose-fit-blast-it-what-do-clothes-matter?’ carelessness. In the dress of Tony was a superb and apparently unconscious elegance.
The revolving doors revolved. The little negro page-boy smiled until his face looked like an ice pudding over which chocolate has unevenly flowed.
‘Mawnin’, miss!’ said the page-boy.
‘’Morning, Sambo!’ said Peter Rickforth. She looked about her. She did not have far to look. Father and son were straight before her. She came towards them with her hands outstretched.
‘My dears,’ she said, ‘do not—do not say all those things which are trembling on your tongue and shooting darts of fire from your too amazingly similar pairs of eyes! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! And I’m sorry! How’s that?’
‘Very well,’ said F. X. ‘In fact, Peter, I think you are too well-mannered. After all, you know, any couple of men ought to be only too damn glad for you to lunch with them at all, let alone worry if you’re a few minutes late.’
‘Few minutes!’ said Tony. ‘Few minutes! If you do this, my girl, after we’re married, you’ll only do it once. At least, only once a month.’
Peter’s golden eyes stared at him. ‘Only a month? Why only once a month? Why not once a week?’
‘The effects,’ said Tony, ‘of the beatings will last three weeks, five days and seven hours exactly. We’ve got a table. Shall we go in, F. X.?’
‘If,’ said his father, ‘the lady wills.’
The lady did will, and presently they sat, a trio to draw all eyes, over a meal which was probably for that one day at least the best of its kind in all London.
It was over coffee that F. X. said:
‘Peter, I want to talk to you about your family.’
Peter laughed. ‘Family, sir?’ she said. ‘It’s the first I know about it!’
‘I mean,’ said F. X., ‘the other way round, backwards. Your father.’
‘Oh, Daddy!’ said Peter. ‘What’s he been doing? You don’t mean to tell me that squinting one in the Palazzo chorus has been getting Daddy into trouble, do you? She does squint, you know. She’s got the most awful cast in one eye!’
‘My good girl,’ said Tony, ‘you want a twisted snaffle in that mouth of yours.’
‘Your father, Peter,’ said F. X., ‘said nothing to me about squinting Palazzo’s. Nothing at all. He wouldn’t. He might think I’d take a fancy to them. I’m worried about your father’—his smile was gone now—‘because your father is getting worried about RYNOX.’
‘And a fat sauce,’ said Peter, ‘he’s got. Worried about RYNOX. I’ll scald his fat little ears! What d’you mean, F. X.—worried about RYNOX?’
She leant her elbow on the table and looked steadily, with a seriousness belying her words, into the eyes of F. X.
‘Have a cigar, Tony?’ said F. X. ‘All right, Peter, I’m going to shoot in a minute. There’s a maitre d’hotel with long pitchers just behind. Have a cigar, Tony, go on? … Look here, Peter, I don’t know whether Tony’s told you. Being Tony he probably has, but RYNOX is on about the stickiest patch of country we’ve ever struck. The position exactly is this—that if we can keep going for another six months, we shall be rolling along on top of the world, and right on top of the world. If we can’t keep going for six months, we shall be rolling along somewhere in Lambeth gutter. Now, I’m not joking, Peter. I’m talking dead straight. RYNOX is mine. I mean, I started it, and I don’t believe, for business purposes, in limited companies. A limited company means limited credit, and I like my credit hot, strong and unbounded. Hence the unlimited condition of RYNOX. But, Peter, do you know what an unlimited company means? It means that if the company fails, all the creditors can come down upon not only the company, but upon all the individual partners in the company. That is, upon me first, then Tony, and then your father. They can take not only the chairs and desks and pictures and carpets out of the office, but the tables and pianos and bath-taps out of your house.’
‘All right, sir! All right!’ Peter was smiling again now. A very different smile, a smile which made Tony gasp at his luck, and F. X. mentally raise a hat.
‘All right, sir,’ said Peter again. ‘Yes, I knew that.’
A good lie; she hadn’t known that. Both men knew that she hadn’t known that. Both men if possible loved Peter more than they had five minutes ago.
‘Your father,’ said F. X., ‘being, if I may say so, Peter, a very shrewd but rather timid Leadenhall Street business man, has frankly got the wind up. I keep soothing him down but I’d like you to help. I’d like you really to soothe him right down.’ He turned to his son. ‘Tony, has Sam said anything to you lately?’
‘Sam,’ said Tony. ‘Sorry, Peter, Daddy thinks that if a man is under fifty he ought still to be playing with rattles. Sam doesn’t understand me, I don’t understand Sam. How on earth Peter ever managed to be—sorry, old thing! Anyway, in answer to your question, F. X. Benedik, Sam has not said anything to me. I think he has to Woolrich, though.’
F. X. laughed. ‘If he said anything against RYNOX to Woolrich, I know what he’d get! That boy’s keener on his job than anybody so fond of trips into the country’s any right to be. RYNOX is graven on his liver.’
Tony moved the glasses from before him; leaned across the table; said in a different tone:
‘Look here, Dad, we’re going to pull this off, aren’t we? Because if you think it’s too much for you … but of course you don’t!’
‘I don’t think anything,’ said F. X. ‘I know, boy, I know. By the way, did you see that friend of yours? Young Scott-Bushington?’
Tony’s lip curled. ‘I saw him all right. Cold feet though. Nothing doing, F. X.’
F. X. grinned. ‘Don’t look so solemn! That’s all right. Look here, Peter’—he turned to the woman who was going to be his son’s wife—‘I don’t know how much Tony tells you, but I’d tell you everything and then some. What RYNOX wants, Peter, is a hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds.’
‘That all?’ said Peter.
F. X. smiled. ‘It sounds a lot of money, my dear, but in this sort of business it’s, well, just nothing. You know what RYNOX are doing, don’t you, Peter? RYNOX have practically chucked all their other interests into the fire to back the Paramata Synthetic Rubber Company.’
Peter nodded. ‘Oh, yes, I know that. Tony does tell me things.’
‘I expect,’ said F. X., ‘he does, and if I may say so, quite right, too. Well, the Paramata Synthetic Rubber Company’s going—not west, but big. We’ve