by Frank Savile
CHAPTER V
MR. MILLER
Outside their own country two British types carry their caste markspatently. They are the tourist and the officer. Gibraltar abounds withboth, the company of the first having an occasional and transientsuperiority when it is swollen by Transatlantic arrivals or intermittentyachting cruisers. But the officers of the garrison and their wives anddaughters are the reigning members of the informal club which makesSociety on the Rock. They know each other, they discuss each other; thelonger they stay the more parochial grow their interests. Newcomersundergo a period of silent probation. They cannot slip in unobserved.The who and the whence test is applied to each with unction, sometimeswithout justice, but almost invariably with good-humor. As a consequenceeverybody, within limits, knows something about everybody else.
There are exceptions, and one, an olive-complexioned, gray-clad,gray-haired, dark-eyed man, was walking steadily down the Waterport onesunny afternoon as a rush of cabs towards the custom-house proclaimedthe incoming of an important steamer. Mr. William Miller had apleasantly situated cottage in the South Town. The postman knew that hehad many correspondents in Spain, England, Germany, and elsewhere.Moorish visitors from across the straits were not infrequent at a smalloffice which he retained in Waterport Street. Men of letters, desiringinformation on recondite subjects, separated themselves from thefrivolous landing parties of Messrs. Cook and called at the sameaddress. No one had ever tapped the sources of Mr. Miller's encyclopaedicknowledge in vain. No one had found him otherwise than affable. Andthough it was understood that his activities were literary, no residentor tourist had successfully probed the nature of his life-work.
The wives of many colonels had recognized this and had flung themselveswith ardor against the breastworks of his imperturbability. Not one ofthem could look back with pride on any action in which they had won evena temporary advantage. Mr. Miller spoke freely, showed an intimateknowledge of men and manners throughout the civilized world, andappeared to manifest pleasure in sociabilities. His only attempts toreturn these lay in small but eclectic tea-parties whereat he displayedhoards of artistic treasures and discoursed learnedly of carpet dye andporcelain marks.
But he was by no means a ladies' man. He accepted, and was welcome atthe hospitalities of many a mess or gun room. He sang well and couldplay a more than ordinary effective accompaniment to a comic song afterhearing the air whistled half a dozen times by its would-be interpreter.The impersonality of his social attitude prevented his being popular,but he was an institution. As he walked along he bowed, nodded, smiled;obviously he knew everybody. Obviously everybody knew him.
As he walked across the sunlit square and dived into the deeply shadowedtunnel which is the Waterport, a tender fussed noisily up to the quay.Mr. Miller eyed the passengers on its deck keenly.
The steamer was evidently a White Star in from New York. The load ofcolossal trunks upon the deck would have told him that apart from theaccent of the passengers and the flag at the masthead. Baggage agentsbegan to dart here and there; Mr. Cook's uniformed interpreters were inthe forefront of the fray; Spanish cab runners yelled and grimaced.
Mr. Miller stood aside without attempting to force a way into thetumult. His hands rested quietly together on the hilt of his cane. Hisbrow was contemplative and unruffled. Certainly if he awaited anythinghe was in no hurry to find it.
All things come to those who wait, and Mr. Miller had not to wait long.A man strode suddenly out of the custom-house gate, thrust aside theSpanish porter who was snatching at his handbag, and made a beckoningmotion towards a cab.
Mr. Miller strode quietly forward and reached it simultaneously with thefare.
The man looked at him with a sudden irritable alertness and then brokeinto a grin.
"You're here," he said, and flung his bag upon the seat. The otherresponded with a tiny shrug as if he deprecated the platitudinous natureof the remark. He motioned the man to take his seat, sat down besidehim, and told the driver the name of an hotel. "Your man is lookingafter your heavy luggage?" he questioned.
The other nodded impatiently.
"Yes," he said. "Not that there's much to look after." He turned andglanced into his companion's face. "I'm getting down to bed-rock now;nothing left to waste on trivialities. I nearly came second class."
Miller's eyebrows rose.
"That would have been unnecessary." He speculated.
"Imbecile, as it turned out," agreed the man. "There were somebridge-playing Southerners on board, old school, couldn't bringthemselves to be civil to the New Yorkers, but ready to take anEnglishman, and a lord, moreover, to their hearts. No high play, but I'meight hundred dollars up on the voyage."
Miller nodded placidly.
"Bed-rock is quite a way down yet," he smiled.
"Not if expenses are to mount as you advised me in your last letter,"snapped the other. "Has anything been done?"
Miller shook his head slowly.
"Force is beyond us," he said, "for we don't possess it. Bribery is outof the question; there is no one left by the other side who has not hadhis price. Opportunity may be ours. We must await it."
"And waiting costs twenty pounds a week!"
The gray man turned his opened palm outwards with a deprecative motionwhich was not English at all.
"My dear Lord Landon, how can Opportunity be seized if there is no oneto meet her when she appears?"
Landon gave a dissatisfied grunt.
"How many lacqueys have you set to wait on her?"
"Six," said Miller, succinctly. "Six men of action, who would havesucceeded before now, but for an accident."
Landon's face took on the eager expression of a wolf to whom a distanttaint is brought by the evening wind.
"Eh?" he cried. "There has been a chance, then; their defences are notimpregnable?"
Miller shook his head.
"They have been strengthened since," he said diffidently. "But the weakspot in them is the child himself. He has never had, if you will pardonthe remark, proper control. He is frankly disobedient of the precautionswith which they surround him."
Landon grinned.
"There's my blood in him," he chuckled. "And, by God, I'm fond of thelittle toad, too. It's not only to spite her, Miller, or for the moneythat's in it. I never took the trouble to whop him; I believe he'd cometo me of his own accord, if he had the chance."
"It's a large if," suggested Mr. Miller, politely.
Landon made no retort. His face had assumed a meditative mask; his lipswere firmly pressed together; he had the effect of one who calculatespro against con.
"That's why I think it's time I took a hand," he said suddenly. "We'llknock off three of your six, Miller. I am prepared to be a host inmyself."
For the moment the other said nothing. They had swung out of theWaterport Street and turned the sharp corner which brought them to theentrance of the hotel. He listened quietly as his companion demanded thenumber of the room engaged for him, received his letters, and enteredthe lift. He accompanied him silently. It was not till they were leftalone that he pulled a pocket-book out, tranquilly turned the leaves,and consulted an entry.
"I note that I have had no remittance from you, Lord Landon," heannounced, "since November."
"Six weeks ago," agreed Landon, languidly. "Six times twenty is ahundred and twenty. You reinforce my argument, my good Miller. A hundredand twenty pounds gone and you show me--nothing."
The other coughed a dry, perfunctory little cough.
"As far as I am concerned, the money is, as you say, gone," he allowed,"but you have just come by one hundred and sixty sovereigns owing to thecomplacence of these Southern gentlemen on board your boat. That puts usright and safeguards another fortnight."
Landon nodded and answered in a voice as dry as his own.
"That is a matter for discussion," he intimated. "I should like to hearthese expenses justified to some appreciable extent. What was the chancewhich failed?"
"Though it failed,
" rejoined Miller, "it proved the advantage ofconstant vigilance. The child separated himself from his guardians inthe very midst of the late afternoon traffic and got into the hands ofone of our men. They reached the pier together; they were within an aceof success. Then Fate interfered--it must have been Fate," heinterpolated with the ghost of a grin--"because her instrument was ofyour own house."
Landon came to a sudden halt in the opening of an envelope.
"What's that?" he cried quickly. "A relation of mine?"
"Captain John Aylmer, R.A., Assistant Secretary to the new MilitaryWorks Commission," answered Miller, sedately.
Landon swore. Then suddenly he began to laugh.
"It's quaint," he conceded. "It's damned quaint, Miller. And hedid--what?"
Miller shrugged his shoulders.
"Interested himself in the situation, caused a delay which was fatal,for the moment, to our success. He cross-questioned the child and ourman had to save himself, alone."
Landon laughed again.
"And he knew, this cousin of mine? He knew whose child it was?"
"Not then, but now, I imagine. He has met him since, at the Tent Club.He has also met your late father-in-law."
"What? The Kite--old Jacob--he's there?"
"Personally superintending a situation which gets daily moreimpenetrable, for us. Each fright we give them adds another palisade tothe defence."
Landon took up the letters which he had laid down and went on openingand glancing through them. He pursed up his lips into an obstinately setexpression; he assumed the air of a bargainer who has reached the limitof his purpose. For he fully understood the drift of Mr. Miller'sremarks.
"We had better be plain with each other," he said at last. "My littleexpedition to the States has been a failure. As a matrimonialproposition I am, for the present, out of the running. They told me tocome again in a year's time. Title-hunting American women have shortmemories, but some beastly reporter recognized me and ran two columns ofreminiscences of the trial. That queered me, and after all the decree isnot made absolute for another six months."
"Is this anticipatory of the announcement that those eight hundreddollars are the only support between you and bed-rock after all?"
"You jump at my meaning. I'm going to take over the duties of your six,or of some of them, at any rate."
The other's gray eyes reviewed his companion with a keenly calculatingglance. There was no irritation in it, rather there was satisfaction.Mr. Miller did not present the aspect of a man whose chances ofreceiving a debt of one hundred and twenty pounds had been madedoubtful. He had more the look of a bull speculator watching a tape asthe eighths and sixteenths are added every few minutes to the stockwhich he commands.
"You will fail," he said drily. "Without funds you must fail. One poorman, in spite of the story books, can do nothing against a hundred andwealth."
"Possibly," said Landon. "But one may be permitted to try."
"No," said the other, stolidly. "One may not be permitted, in Tangier."
Landon looked up and for a moment silence hung heavily between the twomen. The one who stood was the picture of heavy, imperturbableresolution. Landon, sitting back in his chair, was animate with energy,with a sort of tenseness which was almost magnetic. It was as if apanther faced a rhinoceros.
Then Landon shrugged his shoulders.
"Am I being threatened, my dear Miller?" he asked quietly.
"You are being informed," said the other. "The Syndicate which Irepresent is willing to finance you, for an adequate return. Withoutthat it proposes to make Tangier an impossible residence for you."
Landon stared his surprise and his obvious relief.
"They are going to speculate in me?" He pondered for a moment. "I don'tpromise, or I haven't promised, that I shall allow old Jacob to buy thechild back, if we get him, at all."
Miller nodded weightily.
"That does not matter to us," he announced. "That is as you like."
Landon's eyes were still wide and debating.
"Then your return comes--where?" he asked.
"We are willing to wait for it," said the other. "The first service werequire from you is that you will renew your acquaintance with yourcousin, Captain Aylmer, and endeavor to remove the distaste which Iregret to think he feels for your company."
Landon bent forward, leaned his elbows on the table and his chin on hisclosed fists. He stared at his companion with a concentrated,dispassionate examination which seemed to probe and fathom through thedepths of the other's impenetrability.
Miller met the scrutiny with no other manifestation than an, ifpossible, increase of apathy.
Landon dropped his hands slowly upon the table and gave his head a tinyshake.
"I don't understand you," he said. "Why has my cousin a distaste for mysociety? We have never been in collision. As a matter of fact, he wasbest man at my wedding."
"It is to be supposed that he read the account of your divorce," saidthe other, stolidly. "He has now made the acquaintance of your wife'srelations."
"I see," said Landon, slowly. "Is that all?"
"Isn't it enough? Are you generally received?"
There was something callous, almost brutal, in the man's tone. The tinyspot of color which began to burn in Landon's sallow cheek was evidencethat he recognized it.
"So," he answered, "I am to eat dirt at the hands of Captain JohnAylmer? I am to appear to like it? Why?"
"Because," said Miller, dispassionately, "you are practicallypenniless. That is your side of the question. Our side is that yourcousin happens to be what he is--Secretary to the Military WorksCommission, who hold the immediate future of Gibraltar in their hands."
For the second time, and through a longer silence, the two stared ateach other. As the fiery torch of comprehension burned brightly onLandon's face, rose to his forehead, seemed, indeed, to gleam in hiseyes, his lips, which were at first grim and rigid, curled slowly into asneer.
"By the Lord!" he swore. "By the Lord, Miller, you have an impudence!"
"I have a knowledge of values," said the other, impassively. "I wish toget my commission both ways. I expect it from you, because you get thejob from no one else. I expect it from my employers, because you arepractically the only tool at present, which they can use. I am perfectlyopen with you."
"As open as the Pit!" snarled Landon. "As candid as midnight! Let's havea taste of it plainly. What is it you want of me--robbery?"
Miller made a gesture of deprecation.
"I want you to--borrow--unknown to your cousin, certain books, thenature of which will be indicated to you in detail."
"And if I don't?"
"You must, at any rate, try."
"And if I won't?"
Miller smiled.
"We don't discuss absurdities."
There was nothing manifestly menacing in this, but there was a sense offinality. It reached Landon like a shaft of cold air blown in throughthe suddenly opened door. Mentally he flinched from it; he lifted hisshoulders into a shrug of resignation.
"Where are his quarters?"
"In the South Town near my own cottage. For the moment that does notmatter. You meet him to-morrow, by accident. You do not know, you see,that he is here?"
He consulted a small time-table.
"We should be on the quay about three-thirty to-morrow, when the steamergets in from Tangier."
For the second time Landon expressed surrender with a passive shrug.