They had reached the end of the road, the shaggy pony following obediently.
“Old Mr Bray was rather set on your marrying one of our family, wasn’t he?” she asked, so unexpectedly that for the moment he was taken aback.
“Why, yes,” he said.
“And you were awfully fond of Mr Bray?”
He nodded.
“Yes, I think so. You see, we lived together for so long, and he was a likeable old devil. And he nursed me through cholera, and if it hadn’t been for him I should have pegged out—which is Spanish for died. I certainly liked him.”
“You liked him so much,” she challenged, “that when he asked you to come to England and marry one of his relations, you promised–-“
“Not immediately,” he pleaded. “I made no promise for an awful long time. To tell you the truth, I thought he was mad.”
“But you did promise,” she insisted. “And shall I tell you something else you promised?”
He was silent.
“You told poor Mr Bray you would say nothing that would make the girl reject you and spoil his plans!”
Only for a moment was the bearded man embarrassed.
“Clairvoyance was never a favourite science with me,” he said. “It’s too near witchcraft. I knew an old woman up in Kung-chang-fu who–-“
“Don’t try to turn the subject, Mr Lynne. You promised Mr Bray that when his relations produced a girl of the family for you to marry, you would say nothing which would make her change her mind, that you would in fact express no unwillingness to marry.”
He fondled his invisible chin.
“Well, maybe you’re right,” he confessed. “But I’ve said nothing,” he added quickly. “Have I told you that I’m not a marrying man, and loathe the idea of matrimony? Have I told you how poor old Joe has blighted my young life? Have I gone on my knees and begged you to refuse me? Own up, Joan Bray!”
She shook her head; the smile that was in her eyes was now twitching at her lips.
“You’ve said nothing, but you’ve made yourself look a scarecrow.”
“And fearfully repulsive?” he asked hopefully.
She shook her head.
“Not quite. I’m going to marry you; I suppose you know that?”
The gloom in his face was such that she could have smacked him.
“I don’t want to marry you, of course,” she said tartly, “but there are—there are reasons.”
“Old Narth has forced you into it,” he said accusingly.
“Just as old Mr Bray forced you into it,” she replied at once. “It is a queer position, and it would be tragic if it wasn’t laughable. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but there’s one thing I wish you to do.”
“What is that?” he asked.
“Go to a barber’s and have that ridiculous beard shaved,” she said. “I want to see what you look like.”
He sighed wearily.
“In that case I’m booked,” he said. “Once you see my face you will never, never give me up. I was the best-looking man in China.”
He held out his hand.
“Congratulations,” he said simply, and she dissolved into laughter, and was still laughing when she came up the drive and met Mr Narth’s suspicious frown.
CHAPTER NINE
“What is amusing you?” asked Stephen, who at the moment had good reason for being anything but amused.
“I’ve just been talking to my—fiancé,” she said, and Stephen’s face cleared.
“Oh, the wild man!” he said.
He had a letter in his hand. The morning post came early at Sunningdale.
“Joan, I want you to come to the City today—to lunch.”
This was a surprising invitation. As a rule when she went to the City she lunched alone.
“A little bit of a lunch in the office,” he said awkwardly. “And I want you to meet a friend of mine—er—a rather brilliant fellow, an Oxford graduate and all that sort of thing.”
His manner rather than his words puzzled her. He was so obviously ill at ease that she could only wonder at the cause of his embarrassment.
“Is Letty coming?” she asked.
“No, no,” he said quickly. “Only you and I and my—um—friend. I suppose you’ve none of those stupid prejudices against—er—foreigners?”
“Foreigners? Why, no—you mean he isn’t European?”
“Yes,” said Mr Narth, and coughed. “He is Asiatic; in point of fact, he’s a Chinaman. But he’s an awfully important person in his own country, my dear, a mandarin or a governor or something, and a perfect gentleman. I wouldn’t ask you to meet anybody I shouldn’t care to meet myself.”
“Why, of course, Mr Narth, if you wish me to…”
“His name is Grahame St Clay. He has large commercial interests both in this country and abroad.”
Grahame St Clay?
Where she had heard that name before, she could not for the moment recall. She asked a question as to the hour and went into the house, wondering for what especial reason she had been chosen as Mr Narth’s luncheon guest and why he was so anxious for her to meet his new acquaintance. She had never heard the name before until–-
Try as she did, she could not remember when it had been mentioned.
Mr Narth, somewhat relieved, went back to the library and read the letter again. This was the first consequence of his loan, and already he was regretting a transaction which gave a Chinaman the right of addressing him as ‘My dear Narth.’ There were only a dozen lines of neat writing:
Since I met you today, I have heard that your niece, Miss Joan Bray has become engaged to Clifford Lynne, whom I know slightly. I should very much like to meet this young lady. Won’t you either bring her to lunch at the Albemarle, or, if it is more convenient to you, to the City? Perhaps you would fix your own time and place. Please arrange this and telephone me as soon as you get to your office.
The letter had been expressed and posted in London the night before, and the tone of assurance which St Clay had adopted was particularly irritating to a man of Narth’s susceptibilities. To do full justice to his character, it may be said in truth that he had no very strong objection to Joan meeting the man. Where Joan was concerned he took a broad view. Had it been Letty or Mabel, he might have felt differently—but it was Joan.
But, being strangely minded, he was by no means anxious to be seen in public lunching with an Oriental, and for that reason had decided that the meal should be in the boardroom, where he had given many little repasts to his business associates.
When he reached his office that morning he found Major Spedwell waiting for him, and that military gentleman was less saturnine than usual.
“I’ve just seen St Clay,” he said. “Have you fixed that luncheon for him? He’s rather keen on it.”
“Why?” asked Narth.
Spedwell shrugged his shoulders.
“God knows. He’s a queer bird, St Clay. He’s as generous as a prince—don’t forget that, Narth. You’ll find him a very useful man.”
“What is he in?” asked Narth.
“Business, you mean? He’s in all sorts of things. He’s got a big factory at Peckham, but he has other means as well. You’re in luck, Narth; he’s taken a liking to you.”
“Oh!” grunted the other; he was by no means enthusiastic.
Spedwell was looking at him with a queer, dry smile on his unprepossessing face.
“You’ve led a quiet sort of life, haven’t you, Narth? I mean the kind of life that the average City man has. You’ve never gone in for adventure or bloodshed, or things of that sort?”
“Good heavens, no!” said Stephen Narth, staring at him. “Why?”
“I only asked,” said the other indifferently. “Only—you can’t expect to be a gentle crook all the days of your life.”
“‘Crook’ isn’t a word I like, Spedwell,” said Stephen sharply.
“I didn’t suppose it was,” said the other with cool indifference. “I’m mer
ely pointing out the impossibility of getting away with—everything by sitting down in an easy chair and thinking out new ramps. There’s no sense in getting up in the air about it, Narth. We’re men of the world, and we understand that Narth Brothers has been a sham and a fraud for the past ten years. The gentle crook either drifts gently into a fortune or into jail—and you’ve made no fortune, and never will.”
Stephen Narth faced him squarely.
“What’s the idea of all this stuff?” he demanded.
The Major was fingering his little moustache thoughtfully.
“I’m only warning you, that’s all,” he said, “that there comes a point to every grafter when he’s got to try something else, even if he only tries it once. Do you mind me speaking plainly?”
“You’re not exactly wrapping up your words now,” said Narth sarcastically. “You’ve called me a grafter and a crook! If you’ve anything plainer, let’s have it!”
The Major pulled up a chair on the opposite side of the writing-table and sat down, folding his arms on the table.
“St Clay’s going to try you out,” he said, “and if you play up to him there’s a million in it!”
Narth looked at him straightly.
“A million pounds is an easy phrase, but a lot of money,” he said.
“More than a million,” said Spedwell decisively. “This is the biggest thing you’ve ever been in, my friend.”
Narth was irritated. A million—even a nebulous million—was a terrific sum, but was he not the heir to Joe Bray’s fortune?
“I don’t know that I’m so anxious,” he said. “Joe Bray was not exactly a pauper.”
For a second a little smile played on the saturnine face of the other.
“How much do you think you’re going to get out of that estate?” he asked, and then, hastily: “Well, maybe you’ll get a packet—but you’ll make more out of St Clay if you play your cards right.”
He left Stephen Narth a little uneasy, more than a little bewildered. For the first time since he had received the news of Joe Bray he began to wonder whether he was justified in his jubilation. Yet Joe had been a rich man, the owner of important concessions, a financier of governments, if all that the City said was true—the old fellow must have been enormously rich. It was a pleasant thought.
At a quarter to one Grahame St Clay arrived, a perfectly groomed man about town in his grey morning suit and shining silk hat. Narth had time now to take a closer observation of him. He was just a little overdressed, the diamond pin in his cravat just a little too large. He affected a heavy perfume, and when he took out his silk handkerchief the office became unbearable to a man who was used to a more wholesome atmosphere.
“You got my letter?” It was the tone of an employer speaking to a servant.
Mr Narth writhed. There was something patently offensive in the man’s attitude. He glanced at the desk where Narth was sitting, coolly read the letter that he had been writing, and without invitation pulled up a chair and sat down.
“That girl is coming, is she?”
“Miss Bray is lunching with us, yes,” said Narth, a little stiffly, and something in his voice must have warned St Clay, for he laughed.
“My dear man, you are suspicious of me! Come, come, this will never do! So early in our acquaintance too! You see, Narth, in my own country I am quite an important person, and I have acquired the habits of the overlord! You must make allowances.”
There was a knock at the door. Perkins, the clerk, came in and looked mutely at Stephen.
“Who is it—Miss Bray?”
“Yes, sir,” said Perkins. “Shall I tell her to wait–”
“Ask her to come in.”
For the first time in his life it struck Stephen Narth that Joan was a very pretty girl. Certainly she had never looked quite so lovely as she did that morning, a slim figure in a blue tailor-made suit and a little red hat that seemed as if it must have been specially designed to emphasize the milk and rose of her complexion and give to her blue eyes a new depth.
The effect she produced on the Chinaman was remarkable. He stood with his lips apart, staring at her until he saw the red come to her face. Then:
“This is Mr St Clay,” said Narth.
Her hand was out to take the big paw extended, when the door leading to the office was flung open and a young man came in. He was a very well-dressed young man; that was the first impression Joan Bray had of the newcomer—a peculiarly feminine instinct that Sackville Street had made his clothes. He was young, but he was not a boy; there was a touch of grey at his temples, tiny lines about his eyes. In the folds of a toga he would have been a tribune of old Rome, with his handsome eagle face and his imperious mien.
He stood in the doorway looking from St Clay to Narth—not once did he look at the girl. For a moment Narth was dumbfounded at this unexpected irruption upon his privacy.
“What do you want?” he asked. “You’ve made a mistake, haven’t you? This is a private office–-“
“No mistake at all,” said the stranger, and, hearing his voice, the girl turned and looked at him in amazement. “All the mistakes are on your side, Narth, and you never made a bigger mistake than when you had the audacity to ask my future wife to sit at the same table as this damned murdering Chink! Fing-Su!”
Mr St Clay, BA, covered his hands mechanically.
“Excellency!” he said in the Mandarin tongue.
Joan uttered a gasp of amazement. The best-looking man in China had not exaggerated his attraction—for the stranger in the doorway was Clifford Lynne!
CHAPTER TEN
Fing-Su’s embarrassment was only of the shortest duration. The folded arms came apart, the shrinking figure gained a new and sudden poise, and Grahame St Clay was his European self again. Into the dark eyes came a malignant fire which made him of a sudden a figure of terror. Only for the fraction of a second did the beast in him raise his head. The light died; he was his old pedantic self.
“This intrusion is perfectly unwarrantable,” he said in a^ queer, staccato tone which in any other circumstances would have been ludicrous.
Clifford Lynne’s eyes were on the white table with its silver, glass and flowers, and then they slowly strayed to the girl, and he smiled. And this strange man had the most beautiful smile the girl had ever seen.
“If you can endure me through a meal,” he said, “I should like to be your host.”
Joan nodded.
She was frightened in a breathless, pleasant way, but immensely interested. She would not have been human had she been otherwise. These two men were enemies, bitter and remorseless, and now she understood, as clearly as though the story had been told to her, the significance of the snake which had wriggled from the box in the drawing-room at Sunningdale. St Clay had sent it. This suave Chinaman whom Clifford Lynne had called Fing-Su! And as this realization came to her, she turned pale, and moved unconsciously nearer to the intruder.
“Mr Narth!”
Fing-Su was speaking with difficulty. The rage in him was boiling up through the veneer which the university had given him, and his voice was tremulous, almost tearful.
“You have invited me—to lunch with this lady. You are not to allow this–-” Here he choked.
Stephen Narth felt it was a moment when he might at least attempt to assert his personality.
“Joan, you will stay here,” he commanded.
That was easy enough to say. What tone he must adopt to the man in the doorway was another and more difficult matter. If the odd-looking apparition of Sunningdale had been difficult to deal with, this cool and debonair man-about-town was much more of a problem.
“Um—Mr Lynne–-” he began, mildly enough. “This is extremely awkward. I have asked Joan to lunch with our friend–-“
“Your friend,” said Lynne quickly, “not mine! It might occur to you, Narth, that I should wish to be consulted before you issue invitations to my future wife, and ask her to lunch with a man who regards assassination as a reme
dy for most difficulties that come his way!”
He beckoned Joan to him with a slight jerk of his head, and meekly she went to him. Mr Narth had not even the courage to be angry.
Lynne stood aside for a moment to let the girl pass into the outer office, then he turned.
“Three of you people are playing with fire, and one of you is playing with hell,” he said slowly. “Spedwell, you were once an officer in the British Army, and presumably you have the atrophied qualities of a gentleman somewhere in your composition. I am not going to appeal to that tattered remnant, but to your sense of self-preservation. There’s a gallows ahead of you, my man—fifty seconds’ walk from the condemned cell to eternal damnation!”
He ignored Narth, but his long finger stretched out, pointing to the Chinaman.
“Fing-Su,” he said, “for the third time I warn you! The Joyous Hands will need a new chief, and that fine factory of yours will go up in smoke, and you with it!”
Turning, he walked out and slammed the door behind him.
The girl was waiting in the corridor outside the office. She was bewildered, excited, and running through the web of her emotions was a thread of faith in this strange man who had come so unexpectedly and so violently into her life. She turned as he closed the door and responded to his smile.
“Let’s go to the Ritz,” he said brusquely. “I am a very hungry man; I’ve been up since four.”
He said no word as they went down in the lift to the ground floor, and not until the taxi he called was threading its way through the tangle of traffic at the Mansion House did she speak.
“Who is Fing-Su?” she asked.
He started as though she had aroused him from a reverie.
“Fing-Su?” he said carelessly. “Oh, he’s just a Chink; the son of an old Chinese go-getter who wasn’t a bad fellow. The old man was missionary-educated, and that, of course, spoilt him. No, I’m not knocking missionaries; they cannot perform miracles. It takes nine generations to make a black man think white, but ten thousand years couldn’t change a Chinaman’s mentality!”
The Yellow Snake Page 5