by Talbot Mundy
“What’s the meaning of all this?” asked Powers.
“That’s the ten thousand that you told me to go and make! I preferred that it should be ten thousand of your money, that’s all!”
“Then you and Mr. Galloway are — er—”
“Accomplices?” suggested Allison.
“And was this talk about getting me into society all bunk?”
“Not a bit of it!” said Sammy, stepping forward. “Allow me, Mr. Powers! This is my friend that I said I’d like to introduce to you afterward. You’ll remember, I said he can do more for you socially than even I can!”
“Who thought out this scheme?” asked Franklin Powers — bewildered for almost the first time in his life.
“Bill did!” said Sammy. “I simply obeyed orders! He planned the game, and he rode Souffrière. No other horseman in England could have brought him in a winner. It took a man with brains to win this race and to put through such a scheme. We were both of us broke, and we’ve each of us made twenty-five thousand, thanks to him — and you!”
“You’ve got everything you bargained for!” said Allison, trying not to laugh. “As my prospective father-in-law you’ll have the entree into society right away. May I take it that your — ah — your objection is — ah — withdrawn?”
“You may! Shake!”
The Honorable William Allison turned to Gladys. “Care to come into the paddock?” he asked her, almost casually.
“I’ll go anywhere in the world with you!” she answered.
THE LADY AND THE LORD
A KITTY CROTHERS STORY
An actress who is not exactly in the first flight is bound to be more or less of a nomad; so there was nothing particularly astonishing in not hearing from Mrs. Crothers for several months.
True, she might have written; but if she were ever to become famous, her autograph would be valuable for its very rarity, for she seldom wrote to anyone.
When she went away from New York with some touring company or other, she simply dropped out of her friends’ existence for a while; and when she came back again, she resumed her acquaintanceship just as she had left it off, without explanation or comment.
So it was even less astonishing that she should arrive at my flat one afternoon, panting from the exertion of climbing so many stairs, and demand tea. That was to be expected of her.
What really was remarkable was her gorgeous raiment. It was so magnificent and up-to-date that even Ugly, my mongrel hound, scarcely knew her.
She rang my bell as though it were a fire-alarm, and, when I opened the door for her, pushed past me into the sitting-room with an air of indescribable importance. Then she threw her new fur jacket over the typewriter, as a signal that work was over for the day, and subsided into my armchair.
I produced tea and cigarettes, and sent the boy out for cakes, and while he was gone for them, I stood and gazed at her in the silent wonder and admiration that I knew was expected of me.
As soon as the cakes came, Ugly laid his gigantic muzzle in her lap; and it was not until she had given him about half a dollars worth that she paid any attention to me.
“You’ll make him awfully sick!” I ventured presently.
“Nonsense! A change of diet’s good for him. Besides, I like to feed him.”
That, of course, settled it. I relapsed into my former condition of awe and bewilderment.
“You notice it, then?” she asked me, with the least suspicion of a smile, when Ugly had swallowed the last of the cakes.
“I’m not blind! Climb off that high horse, Kitty, and tell me all about it.”
“That’s what I came round for.”
“I knew you did. I’m waiting.”
“You’re in too much of a hurry. I don’t think you’ve admired me enough yet!”
“It’s like Ugly and the cakes. You’d like some more awfully, but it wouldn’t be good for you. You’ll have to tell me the story first, if you want any more admiration. Besides, I’m too dazzled to be able to think of any words that would do you justice.”
“It isn’t a story at all. It’s something that really happened. I’ve just come back from England.”
This was really amazing. That Kitty Crothers should cross the Atlantic was almost unbelievable. She hated to leave Broadway, and it was only stern necessity that induced her to travel even in her own country.
“Did you get all that finery in London?”
“No, Paris! But I’ll come to that presently. I must tell you first what I went for.”
“I can guess that. Your late husband owned some property over there, or was heir to it, or said he was. You went over there to collect. Isn’t that right?”
“More or less. But how did you know?”
Shortly after her husband’s death I had recommended a lawyer to her on that very business. He had failed to trace any connection between the late Amos Crothers and the Carruthers estates in Essex; but he sent in a bill of costs which I had to settle. So the question seemed just a leetle bit superfluous. But as she seemed to have forgotten the incident, it seemed best to equivocate.
“You told me yourself,” I said. “Go on.”
“I’m going on, if you’ll only give me time. The first trouble I had was raising enough money for the trip. Of course the passage itself didn’t cost so much, but you’ve got to have some money at the other end, haven’t you?”
She seemed to expect an answer, so I said that in my experience money was quite useful in England.
“Well, I never met with such difficulty in my life. I tried at first to syndicate myself, but you’d never believe how incredulous people are — at least, all the people who’ve got money!”
“That’s how they get it, Kitty.”
“Do they? It isn’t how I got it.”
Her face broke up into dimples as she smiled reminiscently. It was evidently a good story that was coming, but she kept me waiting several minutes for it while she enjoyed the memory of it herself.
I had to break into her reverie.
“How did you get the money for the trip?” I asked.
“I didn’t get it. That’s the funny part about it! I offered several people ten percent of the whole thing if they would finance the trip. That was businesslike, wasn’t it?
“And I assured them that the estates were worth millions. But — you can believe me or not, as you like — they simply wouldn’t listen. I tried everybody I knew, and scores of people I didn’t know; but it was no use. Positively nothing doing!
“You’ve no idea how stuffy business people are! I thought at one time of trying you; but I knew you couldn’t even pay your club dues as a general rule, so you were out of the question. I just didn’t know what to do.”
“How on earth did you get across, then?”
“Oh, I had enough money for a second-class passage; but by the time I’d tipped my cabin steward, and paid the cab fare at Southampton, there was only forty dollars left; and it was even less when the money-changer had finished swindling me.
“I never was good at arithmetic, and in the end I called one of those delightful English policemen. He was polite, and even fatherly; and he wouldn’t even look at the dollar I offered him; but he figured it out three times in his notebook, and got the result different each time, and in the end I had to take what the banker offered me. But I know he swindled me!”
“Did you go to a bank to change it?”
“Sure! Where else should I go?”
“What bank?”
“The London and Southwestern, I think it was called.”
“And you called in a policeman?”
“I did.”
“Whom did you see?”
“The manager, of course.”
Now, the manager of a main branch of an English joint-stock bank is as consequential as an admiral of the fleet, and much more important.
“I’ll go on with the story when you’ve finished laughing,” she said.
“I’d give a year’s income to hav
e been there when it happened! Didn’t he order you out of the bank?”
“Certainly not. He was as polite as possible. He offered me a chair, and made a clerk bring another one for the policeman, and left us to figure it out. He asked me, though, if I’d mind sitting in the outer office while we worked it out, because he was busy; but he wasn’t in the least rude.”
“Go on,” I said. “I’m ready to hear anything after that.”
“Well, of course I engaged a room at the best hotel. I had lots of trunks, and the only thing I could do was to throw a bluff; so I went to the best hotel, and took the best room there was in it. They must have thought I had millions.”
“I don’t see how you make that out. Millionaires don’t travel in the second cabin, and they must have seen the labels on your trunks.”
“What d’you suppose I tipped the cabin steward for? All my things were marked, ‘Wanted on the voyage,’ and I made him pull all the labels off before we got to Southampton and put on first-class labels.”
“You ought to have been a criminal. But perhaps you are one. I’d better wait until you’ve told me how you got the money.”
“I went to bed early the first night, because I wanted to think out a plan, and I can always think better in bed than anywhere else.”
“D’you mean to say that you hadn’t thought out a plan before you started?”
“Oh! How stupid men are! How could I possibly make a plan when I hadn’t any money, and didn’t know where I was going to stop, or what Southampton was like or anything? It was different, of course, after I’d landed and had taken a room at the hotel. I was on the scene then. But, of course, I hadn’t any plan until I got there.”
“What was your idea, then? Just to trust to luck?”
“Something like that. At all events, the luck was all my way on that trip. But it didn’t look very promising that first night. I lay in bed, and thought, and thought, and I couldn’t make head or tail of it. And at last I gave it up and went to sleep.
“I felt better in the morning, but even then I realized that my chance of success was pretty thin. I hadn’t enough money to pay one week’s bill at the hotel. It was an expensive place, and I had to order expensive wine at dinner to keep up appearances. I’d got to be quick.
“So directly after breakfast I sent for the local directory, and looked through the list of lawyers. There were dozens and dozens of them; but I picked out the one with the most space allotted to him, and then looked him out in another part of the book, and found he was also the mayor. That was the man for me.
“I couldn’t pay anybody’s bill as things stood, so it seemed best to me to run up a real, fat bill with a big man, who might possibly wait for his money and give me a chance to turn round.
“Then I asked to see the proprietor of the hotel. When he’d finished bowing — they’re not in the least like American hotel proprietors, they’re really polite — I asked him if he knew Mr. Lewisohn; and he told me that Mr. Lewisohn was his lawyer and conducted all his legal business.”
“He was probably the gentleman who sued the guests who neglected to pay their bills,” I suggested.
“Probably. But he said that Mr. Lewisohn was a most influential and respected gentleman. I suppose he meant by that that he had a big political pull; but they have such a funny way of expressing things in England, and you can never be quite sure what they do mean.”
“I know it,” I said. “They call a ‘four-flusher’ a ‘chancer,’ even when she’s a woman and pretty.”
She actually blushed.
“I wasn’t a four-flusher. And if you’re going to be rude, I won’t tell you the story. I knew that I was after a certainty; the only difficulty was in getting somebody with money to believe it.”
“I was only citing an instance,” I said guiltily. “Go on with the story.”
“Well, I told Mr. Bertram — that was the proprietor’s name — that mine was most important business, and that I wouldn’t have an inkling of it get in the papers for anything; and I asked him to be sure not to answer any questions about me to anybody. He said he would be most discreet — just like that— ‘most discreet.’
“Then I asked him whether I could count on Mr. Lewisohn to be most discreet, and he assured me that I could; so I asked him to telephone for an appointment for me, and he did it at once. Later on I ordered a carriage to drive round to the lawyer’s office.
“They tried to palm off a one-horse thing on me at first; but I sent it back and ordered a landau with two horses, and the proprietor of the hotel came out himself and helped me into the carriage.
“In Southampton people don’t usually drive when they’re going to see their lawyers; they walk. I know that, because when I got there I wasn’t kept waiting a minute. The clerk showed me right in.
“Mr. Lewisohn proved to be a little man, with a shiny bald head and a ring of coal-black curly hair all round it, just like a monk’s. He was sitting in a dark corner at a large roll-top desk, with rows and rows of black steel boxes on shelves behind him.
“Until your eyes got used to the light you could scarcely make out his features at all, and he made me sit on a chair where the light fell right on me. But I’d taken a lot of trouble with my toilet that morning, and I didn’t feel nervous in the least.
“He didn’t put his feet on the desk, or smoke, as Broadway lawyers do; but he sat back and listened to what I had to say with his hands folded in front of him, and his thumbs twisting round and round each other slowly. And every time I stopped talking he nodded.
“I told him that I had had a letter of introduction to another lawyer, whose name I wouldn’t mention; but that Mr. Bertram, the proprietor of the hotel, had told me that Mr. Lewisohn was much the best lawyer in the place, and I had decided to place my business in his hands.
“I’m not sure even now whether he was so used to hearing himself described as the best lawyer in the place that it had ceased to interest him, or whether he was suspicious of any attempt at flattery. I’m inclined to think he was suspicious — the least attempt at civility makes the English suspicious — I’ve found that out. At all events, he didn’t seem to appreciate it very much.
“But he kept on nodding and nodding while I talked, and when I mentioned the Carruthers estates he woke up at once and began making notes. At last he made another appointment for the following day; and I had evidently succeeded in impressing him favorably, because he showed me to the door of the office himself, instead of letting the clerk do it.
“And, of course, then he couldn’t help seeing the carriage and pair; I was glad of that.
“Of course, I knew he’d telephone to Bertram before I had time to get back to the hotel, but that didn’t worry me; all Bertram could say was that I had first-cabin labels on my trunks, and that I had engaged an expensive room. Besides, he knew nothing against me, anyhow.
“I wasn’t afraid of Bertram; and, as it turned out, I must have been right, because when I went back the next day Mr. Lewisohn was politeness itself, and after we’d talked for nearly an hour he took me out to lunch. I kept the carriage waiting all the time, and drove him back to his office afterward. It would never have done to seem worried about money.”
“He didn’t let you pay for the lunch, did he?”
“Of course not. But I had to pay for the carriage — or, rather, I had it charged up on my bill. I was getting so short of ready money that I was beginning to feel desperate. I hadn’t enough money to pay my fare back to New York, even third class, by that time, because I’d been spending my ready money pretty freely in order to keep up appearances.
“I was seriously considering a visit to the hockshop, and was wondering whether I’d got anything with me that an ‘uncle’ could be induced to lend money on, when who should come to stay at the hotel but a real English aristocrat — the kind you only read about in the Sunday paper, and never come across in real life.
“He was about twenty-two years old, with red hair and a pimply face
, and simply oceans of money. It was he who saved the situation.
“Of course, he didn’t carry the money with him; but you could tell he had it by the awful arrogance of his manservant and the deference the hotel people paid him. You can always tell when a man’s got money.”
“How was it, then, that the hotel people couldn’t tell that you hadn’t any?”
“I’m not a man — I’m a woman.”
“I see. Is there any way of telling when it’s a woman?”
“Not unless you’re a woman yourself. A woman can sometimes guess. But I’ll never finish if you keep on interrupting so.”
“All right; I’ll be good.”
“When his lordship came into the hotel and saw me in the lobby he stared harder than was polite; so I went upstairs to my room and stayed there. But you can bet I didn’t have dinner upstairs.
“I got out my very best dress — the one I’d been keeping for emergencies — and came down just a little late — not too late, you understand — but late enough not to have to go in with the crowd. He was waiting about in the hall to watch me go in, and, though he didn’t stare quite so hard that time, he followed me into the dining room and sat down at the next table, with his back toward me.”
“Beastly rude of him!”
I thought I was wanted to sympathize, but I mistook my cue.
“I told you not to interrupt. He wasn’t rude at all. He must have bribed the head waiter like a whole board of aldermen, because the man came over to me at once and said that my table had been reserved by some other people, and would I mind if I sat at the next table for that evening.
“He said that Lord Tipperary had the next table, but that he was sure that Lord Tipperary wouldn’t mind. And he actually had the nerve to go to Lord Tipperary and ask him if I might sit at his table, just as if they hadn’t fixed it all up between them before dinner.
“So I pretended to be rather annoyed; but not too annoyed, and changed places; and, of course, the head waiter had to put some other people at my table, though there were several other tables in the room that were disengaged all through dinner; and in about a quarter of an hour Lord Tipperary and I were quite like old friends.