“Goodnight, Gerald,” she said drily. “Try to get a little sleep.” She turned to the younger man. “Put him to bed, Cord, and cut all the wires around the Savoy, so he won’t call up those wretched brokers. I think he’s trying to gobble the whole English market.”
She marked sharply the effect of her shaft. Grayson turned a shade paler. He clutched Van Ingen’s arm.
“Get me out of here!” he whispered hoarsely. Lady Patricia viewed their departing backs with a fleeting ironical smile.
“Your father, my dear,” she murmured to Doris, “is a very remarkable man.”
Out in the fresh air, Grayson revived amazingly. His feebleness disappeared as if by magic, and he stepped out briskly. He nodded to a hansom in the rank and the man drew in to the opening.
“The Savoy,” cried Grayson.
He sprang in hastily.
Van Ingen made as if to follow, but Grayson held the apron door securely.
“No need in the world for you to accompany me, dear boy,” he exclaimed, smiling. “Go back. I feel quite braced already. It was that devilish stuffiness inside — a momentary seizure. Goodnight!”
He waved his hand and sank back. The hansom started forward with a jerk, and the young man retraced his steps to the theatre, frowning thoughtfully.
Ten minutes later Grayson thrust up the trap.
“You may drop me here,” he called. He descended and paid his fare. “I’ll walk the rest of the way,” he remarked casually.
“Bit thickish on foot tonight, sir,” offered the driver respectfully. “Better let me set you down at the hotel.” But his fare was already lost in the enveloping gloom.
Grayson wrapped his muffler closely about his chin, pulled down his hat to shadow his eyes, and hurried along like a man with a set destination. Presently he halted and signalled to a cab, crawling along close to the curb. Grayson scrutinised it keenly. The horse looked strong.
“Can you take me some distance?” he asked the driver.
“Take ye far’s you got the coin!”
Grayson glanced about him furtively. “As far as this?” He stepped forward and gave an address in a carefully lowered voice.
The driver leaned far down from his high box and peered into his fare’s face.
“Not there!” he muttered.
Grayson held out a sovereign silently. The driver shook his head.
“It’s fair worth a man’s life on a night like this.”
Two sovereigns gleamed in Grayson’s bare outstretched palm.
“I’ll double it if you drive fast,” he offered.
“All right, sir,” answered the man at length, a bit sullenly. “Jump in.” He turned his horse round and drove rapidly toward the river.
2. A Business Consultation
The fog was still heavy and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly in the yellow mist when the young messenger, the first half of his mission performed, struck briskly riverward to complete his business. He disposed of his violets at a corner stand, hailed a passing hansom boldly, and after a low consultation with the driver, got in. They drove steadily for an hour. The gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy. Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk.
“Here ye be,” he called huskily.
The boy sprang to the ground and peered about him. “It’ll do,” he announced, and then briefly, “Wait ‘arf an hour.”
He plunged down a dark and crabbed way, glancing warily behind him now and then to see if he was being followed.
Here, between invisible walls, the fog hung thick and warm and sticky, crowding up close, with a kind of blowsy intimacy that whispered the atmosphere of the place. Occasionally, close to his ear, snatches of loose song burst out, or a base, coarse face loomed head-high through the reek. But the boy was upon his native heath and scuttled along, whistling softly between closed teeth, as, with a dexterity born of long practice, he skirted slush and garbage sinks, held around the blacker gulfs that denoted unguarded basement holes, and eluded the hideous shadows that lurched by in the gloom.
Hugging the wall, he presently became aware of footsteps behind him. He rounded a corner, and turning swiftly collided with something which grappled him with great hands. Without hesitation, the lad leaned down and set his teeth deep into the hairy arm.
The man let go with a hoarse bellow of rage, and the boy, darting across the alley, could hear him stumbling after him in blind search of the narrow way.
Thin shivers of excitement rippled up and down his spine and his blood crinkled in his veins. Squatting close to the sloppy wall, he thrust out one leg and waited. He could feel the quarry come on, the big blowing body of him, the groping, outstretched arms. His leg stiffened rigid as a bar of iron. With a crash the man fell headlong across it. The boy laughed aloud and sheered aside, barely missing a knife which hurtled past and stuck quivering in the opposite wall.
As he sped along, a door suddenly opened in the blank wall beside him, and a stream of ruddy light gushed out, catching him square within its radiance, mud-spattered, starry-eyed, vivid.
A man stood framed in the doorway.
“Come in,” he commanded briefly.
The boy obeyed. Surreptitiously he wiped the wet and mud from his face and tried to reduce his wild breathing.
The room which he entered was meagre and stale-smelling, with bare floor and stained and sagging wallpaper; unfurnished save for a battered deal table and some chairs.
He sank into one of them and stared with frank curiosity past his employer, who had often entrusted him with messages requiring secrecy, past his employer’s companion, to the third figure in the room. A prostrate figure which lay quite still under the heavy folds of a long dark ulster with its face turned to the wall.
“Well?” It was a singularly agreeable voice which aroused him, softly modulated but with a faint foreign accent. The speaker was his employer, a slender dark man, with a finely carved face, immobile as the Sphinx. He had laid aside his Inverness and top hat, and showed himself in evening dress with a large buttonhole of Parma violets, which sent forth a faint, delicious fragrance.
Of the personality of the man the messenger knew nothing more than that he was an aristocratic young nob, eccentric in a quiet way, who lived in a grand house near Portland Place, and who rewarded him handsomely for his occasional services.
He related his adventures of the evening, not omitting to mention his late pursuer. “The keb’s waitin’ now, outside, sir,” he concluded. The man listened quietly, brooding, his elbows upon the table, his inscrutable face propped in the crotch of his hand. A ruby, set quaintly in a cobra’s head, gleamed from a ring upon his little finger. Presently he roused.
“That’s all tonight, my boy,” he said gravely.
“You’ve served me well.”
He drew out his purse, extracted two sovereigns, and laid them in the messenger’s hand.
“And this,” he said softly, holding up a third gold piece, “is for — discretion! You comprehend?”
The boy shot a swift glance, not unmixed with terror, at the still, recumbent figure in the corner, mumbled