‘They thought he might have found a job with another mine in the Southwest, but the only one being exploited at the time was at San Miguel in New Mexico. When the agent went there to enquire about him, no one had ever heard of Grant, and didn’t recognise him from the tintype they were shown.
‘The agent says he thought that the Bratt’s Crossing woman, Jane Jackson, was lying, that she knew more than she said, but she stuck to her story. Funny thing, the mine at San Miguel was blown up in yet another quarrel among thieves shortly before the one at Bratt’s Crossing, but it wasn’t permanently damaged.
‘Whatever the truth of it all, when Grant reappeared again, it was to descend on New York and begin to make his reputation. Not just for making money—he’s a devil with the women, they say. His first major killing on Wall Street came when he took over Southwest Mining, and had the president sent to prison for fraud. The mine at San Miguel, which is still being worked, was owned by Southwest—Grant owns it now.
‘What was he doing during the eighteen months or so he was missing? Was it all a coincidence that two mines were blown up when he was in the Southwest, and that he took over Southwest after he made his pile—or wasn’t it?’
‘Perhaps,’ Walker said. ‘This may be very interesting. But it’s of no use to me. Is he honest?’
Captain Legge gave a hollow laugh. ‘Honest! Makes a mysterious fortune in the Southwest, God knows where or how, becomes a tiger in the world of finance by sailing close to the wind, turns himself into a multi-millionaire, richer than his supposed father—with whom he has little to do—what do you think?’
‘I think,’ Walker said, ‘that he looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, and I always distrust gents who look like that. And your man thinks he had something to do with San Miguel?’
‘Sure of it, but he can’t prove a thing. There were a lot of young hoodlums running around the Territory making fortunes for themselves, and some of them managed to hang on to their money. But I’ve met Grant several times, here in London, and he’d stick out like a sore thumb in a frontier town, that’s for sure.’
Walker thought of dirty Mr Dilley/Horne, who melted into the crowd in a London pub, and who garrotted innocent policemen in alleys, and who seemed to possess a dozen different voices.
Suppose that he had disguised himself before he went to San Miguel? By some means turned himself into the sort of grimy ruffian who terrorised decent people in the Territory? Would anyone ever have believed that such a villain could be clean-cut, civilised Mr Jacobus Grant? And why would rich young Jacobus Grant want to do such a thing, anyway?
‘Nearly ten years ago, all this,’ said Captain Legge cheerfully, ‘and now, after making Lady Kenilworth his mistress, he’s married into the aristocracy, and the Prince of Wales calls him friend. What makes you think he’s up to his games here?’
‘Things,’ said Walker darkly, ‘things.’ He could believe anything of Mr Dilley, with his magic tricks. Anything at all. Even becoming a kind of Billy the Kid might not be beyond him, weird though that might seem.
Dinah Grant knew nothing of her husband’s magic tricks. The day after the Hertfords’ reception she had said to him at breakfast, her tone as impersonal as his was sometimes, ‘Why did you marry me, Cobie? I’m sure that it wasn’t because you loved me.’
If he was taken by surprise he did not show it.
He said slowly, ‘I married you, Dinah, for a variety of reasons, not all of them creditable. I meant what I told you before we were married. That I thought you would make me a good wife and a mother for my children. In time, you will be both, in the fullest sense, I hope. Be sure that you will always have my respect, even if I cannot pretend to offer you love. I believe that, unlike most women, you would not wish me to lie to you about that.’
Dinah nodded, mutely. She had expected nothing else from him. Had he really meant it when he had told her before their marriage that he didn’t think that he could ever love anyone? She thought that he might have said it to soften the blow of his not loving her, but it seemed that he had been telling her the truth.
‘It must be hard for you,’ she said, ‘to know that of yourself. To be unable to love.’
‘Better so,’ he replied. Was there a trace of bitterness in his tone? ‘I would rather that you didn’t love me, Dinah. The women who have been foolish enough to love me in the past have usually paid a hard price for doing so.’
The memory of Belita, who had died because of him, was strong in him. The lost look which Dinah had worn when he had first met her, and which had brought Belita’s memory back to him so sharply, had gone. But there was also Jane to remember, and Susanna, and Susanna’s desperate behaviour since he had been compelled to reject her recently. How much better it would have been if she had never met and loved Cobie Grant!
He did not want love to complicate the friendship which was growing up between him and his young wife. He almost told her so, but decided that she was being brave enough in surviving marriage to him at all, without his being as brutally honest as that. Like Marietta, his mother, he had wondered how Dinah would cope with him.
Well, was apparently the answer!
Dinah thought so too a week after she had really become his wife. She was being serenaded. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and she and Cobie were in bed—or, rather, were on top of his bed. They had spent the morning and the early afternoon at the Zoo.
‘What, never been there?’ he had exclaimed in mock horror. He had immediately ordered the carriage, and they had enjoyed a few happy hours walking round and admiring the animals, about which he seemed to know everything important. This didn’t surprise Dinah: his apparently encyclopaedic knowledge had lost its power to amaze her.
After that they had been driven to a restaurant and had taken lunch on a terrace overlooking the Thames. He had ordered wine, and drank more of it than she had ever seen him do before. He had insisted that she drink her share, too.
She had never felt so foolishly happy as she did when she was being driven across London, back to Park Lane in the open landau, her parasol up, and her husband opposite to her, saying in a low voice, ‘What shall we do now, Dinah? It’s a day to celebrate. I know, let’s…’
He raised his eyebrows at her and left the sentence unfinished, so that she began to giggle helplessly.
‘Read a book of sermons,’ he finished, looking severe. ‘I think that I may have one in my room.’
He leaned back, looking particularly innocent, an expression which she was coming to know. It meant that Mr Jacobus Grant was contemplating, or doing, something exceedingly naughty.
Oddly enough, she had seen it on his face when they had walked through the Zoo that morning. They had turned a corner sharply, and had almost knocked over a large lugubrious-looking man, who had started back from them, looking embarrassed.
‘Oh, I do beg your pardon,’ Cobie had exclaimed, all polite embarrassment, that look on his face. ‘We didn’t see you coming, did we, my dear? Pray do accept our apologies for any inconvenience we may have inadvertently caused you. A lovely day, is it not? You are interested in the animals, too?’ he finished brightly.
The man had seemed more distressed by the encounter than they were. ‘Not at all,’ he had stammered, and shuffled his big feet. ‘I mean…’
‘I can particularly recommend the lions to you,’ Cobie had gone on gaily. ‘It will be feeding time for them soon, I understand. Not Christians—or criminals—of course. Those distressing little habits ended some time ago, thank goodness. Don’t let us detain you.’
They had turned yet another corner after they left the man, who was still dithering, and some impulse made Dinah look back. He had not moved from where they had collided with him, but was watching them walk away, a bemused expression on his face.
Yet another impulse which she didn’t understand—she seemed to have a lot of them when she was out with her husband—made her ask, ‘Did that man know you, Cobie? He gave you the oddest look.’
&n
bsp; ‘What man, my dear?’ he had asked her, turning his bright blue eyes on her. ‘Oh, that man,’ he said, following her gaze. ‘No, I don’t think that you could say that he knows me,’ which was, Dinah thought afterwards, an odd way of answering her. It was yet another of his two-edged remarks which no amount of puzzling could explain.
He wasn’t being two-edged on the bed. He was completely, gloriously, straightforwardly naked after a happy hour spent pleasuring Lady Dinah Grant, who, a Japanese kimono carelessly wrapped about her, was listening to him while he played, not the guitar, nor the piano, but a banjo.
She was leaning against the bed-head, he was facing her at the bottom, tickling her toes with his, and was singing what he told her was a song from the American South called ‘The Devil Take the Blue-tail Fly’.
The voice which he was using to sing it was deep and throaty, not at all like his usual pleasant baritone, and she was lying there feeling deliciously sinful, aching a little, for it had been a rather more vigorous session than usual. She had the notion that slowly, slowly, he was initiating her into the wilder shores of passion and, if so, she didn’t mind a bit, not she.
‘Where did you learn that?’ she asked him sleepily.
‘At the Yale Glee Club. It was my star turn there.’
It would be a star turn anywhere, she thought, closing her eyes, and letting languor overtake her. He would be a star turn anywhere.
‘Is there anything you can’t do?’ she asked him, opening her eyes after he had finished the song in a flurry of major chords.
He nodded his head, and said smartly, ‘Have a baby.’
She prodded him, hard, with her toes. ‘Not that, silly.’ She had taken to teasing him lately, and he seemed to like it.
‘I can give you one, though,’ he told her. ‘It’s fun getting there, isn’t it? What about a bath? I feel sticky.’
Dinah said, ‘I’m sticky, too. I suppose I’d better go to my room, and ring for Pearson to run one for me.’
‘I’ll run one for you,’ he promised, beginning to play the banjo again, and singing soft words which she could not distinguish in the gaps in his conversation with her.
‘No need to trouble Pearson—or anyone else. We could have one together.’ Now he was playing a music hall song, ending with the words, ‘If you want to know the time, ask a policeman.’
Memory stirred in her. ‘That’s what that man we bumped into this morning looked like. A policeman.’
‘Clever girl,’ drawled Cobie lazily. ‘Exactly what I thought myself. Who was he there to arrest? The lions—or the tigers? You, me?’
Dinah remembered what he had been saying before policemen walked into the conversation, ‘Do you mean…have a bath…together?’
‘Why not?’ he told her idly, running his toes down her calf. ‘We could discuss the meaning of life in it.’
‘Do you think that he was there to arrest someone? I’ve never seen anyone arrested.’
Dinah had never engaged in such ridiculous conversations in her life as those she had with her husband. He seemed to encourage her to flit about verbally, not say, ‘Oh, Dinah, don’t be silly,’ as everyone but Faa did when she let her imagination rove loose.
‘Probably.’
He rose with one agile movement, and made his way to the door which opened on to the splendid bathroom which he had had installed after he had bought his Park Lane home.
‘Tell me,’ he asked, putting his head around the door after he had started the taps running, ‘what is your opinion of the notion of the transmigration of souls? That should do for starters.’
Dinah was still occupied with thoughts about the policeman. ‘He certainly wasn’t there to arrest me.’
‘Who? Oh, the policeman. Come on, Dinah, we mustn’t waste all this lovely water, or he will be after you.’
Cobie bent down, scooped her up and, before she could say any more, deposited her, kimono and all, into the deliciously warm bath, before following her in.
‘It was lucky that I ordered a big one,’ he told her. ‘I must have had you in mind… Let me do dreadful things to you, Lady Dinah,’ and he proceeded to do them…
There was a great deal of splashing, water flew everywhere, and Dinah found herself squeaking, ‘I’m upside down, Cobie, I’ll drown!’
‘No, you won’t,’ he said breathlessly, lifting them both a little so that she surfaced to cry, ‘Oh, oh, no, don’t stop, please…’
‘Shan’t,’ he gasped. ‘Exciting, isn’t it?’
It was.
More water flew into the air, and by the time he had finished with her Cobie had to put a gentle hand over her mouth to silence her when she shrieked in ecstasy.
Later she said, a little timidly, for it was not the sort of question one ought to ask perhaps, even of one’s husband, ‘Oh, Cobie, have you ever done that before?’ Then she laughed a little. ‘How silly I am. Of course you have. What a question.’
‘Yes,’ he said gently, stroking her damp hair, and kissing her ear.
‘With Violet,’ she couldn’t help asking, thinking, Oh, please, not with Violet.
‘No,’ he said, holding her close, ‘Not with Violet. Only once before—long ago. When you were still a little girl.’
He was remembering Jenny, the madam who had run the girls at the brothel at Bratt’s Crossing, and knew that even the man he had become had never valued her properly. For whatever reason, she had given him back his manhood after Greer had tried to beat it out of him. She had skilfully restored his self-respect, and her only reward had been to be half-forgotten until some impulse had made him pull Dinah into the bath with him.
‘Long ago,’ she repeated, and then, as though some psychic current had passed between them, she said, hesitantly, ‘When you…when your back was hurt?’
Surprised, Cobie’s hand stopped its stroking. He looked down at his young wife who was beginning to show a measure of intuitive understanding for which he could never have hoped.
‘Yes,’ he said, slowly. ‘It helped to heal it.’
‘Oh.’ Dinah sat up, her face alight, her eyes like stars. ‘You are to lie still now. You must be exhausted, holding me up like that. Now, it’s your turn to be loved.’
It was the first time that she had initiated love play between them, taken the lead. She rolled over on top of him, kissed him gently on the lips, and began to use her hands and body to pleasure him, as he had pleasured her. She took her time, laughing at him, and teasing him, and he marvelled at the change in her from the timid girl he had first met at Moorings.
Then thought stopped, and this time it was Dinah who put her hand over his mouth to stifle his cries.
Pleasure over, they climbed out of the cooling bath water. Cobie pulled dry towels around them and they went to sleep, there on the bathroom floor, the happy, sated sleep of those who have shared great physical joy.
Cobie’s valet, Giles, glanced at the clock. His master had told him earlier on that he and Lady Dinah would be dining at Mr Van Deusen’s and that he should be ready to present himself at six of the clock. But Giles was discreet. He knew that his master and his lady had gone up to their bedroom when they had come in, and had not come down for the tea which had been laid out for them in the drawing room. Tea in the servants’ room had been eaten to the accompaniment of nods and winks.
Six o’clock came and went, and still Mr Grant had not rung his bell. Hortense was sent upstairs to Lady Dinah’s room, ‘But she is not there,’ she said, returning downstairs. ‘She must be with him. They will be late.’
‘I don’t think they’ll mind,’ sniggered Boots, to be reprimanded by senior staff.
At half past six Giles put his head into his master’s bedroom. The bed and the room were empty, and all was quiet. He crept over to the bathroom door, opened it as quietly as he could, and looked in. They were lying asleep on the floor, swathed in towels, water everywhere. His grin, when he tip-toed out, was knowing, but kind.
So, Milord, for that was his nick
name for his American master, had been having his wicked way with his lady as vigorously as with his whores, had he? Well, he would have to think of some way of waking him up, otherwise, if Milord’s track record with women held good, it might be midnight before anyone would see them again.
Cobie, who since his days as an outlaw in the Territory had always slept lightly, heard the door shut quietly behind Giles. He sat up, looked down at his sleeping wife, who was learning the game of love so rapidly that he would have to run to keep ahead of her, and kissed her awake. ‘Time to wake up,’ he told her, ‘the world is waiting for us.’
‘S’all a waste of time, guv,’ Bates said. ‘He’s laughing at us, and he isn’t doing anything. Jumped on me with his lady wife on his arm today, he did. At the Zoo. Thinks it’s all a joke. He won’t do anything while we watch him.’
Walker stared morosely at him. Only that morning the Commissioner had sent for him and had said, severely, ‘I know you’re still having that feller who bribed us followed, Walker, but you haven’t found anything solid yet, have you? I’m giving you an order. You’re to let it go.’
Walker considered for a moment telling the Commissioner that he knew who the feller was, but he had no real proof that Horne/Dilley/Grant was doing anything criminal, and gave that idea up.
‘Let me have until the end of the week,’ he said at last. ‘Then I’ll forget him.’
Which was a lie, of course. He wasn’t going to forget Mr Dilley in a hurry.
‘No, Walker. Today. You hear me, Walker. I will be obeyed on this.’
Walker heard him. More morose than ever he went downstairs and gave the news to Bates and Alcott. ‘No more unexpected presents,’ muttered Bates, ‘but no standing about in all hours and all weathers, either.’
He and Alcott were not the only ones who had received gifts. Walker had gone home one night to find his wife cutting up a great pineapple, a rare treat. The message on the basket of fruit which had arrived that afternoon simply said ‘From an admirer’. His wife was so delighted that Walker was compelled to accept the pineapple and eat it—gall in the mouth as it was.
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