“Well, he has gone,” said Mordaunt at last.
“With your letter to Mr. Septimus Crottle,” Mr. Ricardo added; and now Mordaunt laughed without any reservation.
“Old Septimus can take it,” he cried. “Besides, I shall see Septimus on Sunday night, and that’s before he will.”
Mordaunt took a cigar from a mahogany box and split the end of it by the squeeze of his finger and thumb. He lit it and sat back smiling, as if the picture of Septimus Crottle banished the picture of a bandit.
“Do you know Crottle? The queerest old bird. Owns the Dagger Line, and was once a commander — a tyrant in a reefer jacket then, and a tyrant in a broad cloth frock-coat now. Choked off any young men who came after one of his daughters, not because they were gold-diggers, but because it was the business of maidens to wait upon their fathers.”
“Amiable patriarch,” said Mr. Ricardo.
“Patriarch, yes; amiable, no,” Mordaunt returned, mid laughed again. “You should see him on his Sunday nights. In his glory! But he’s shrewd, too. And he’d do you a good turn—” Mordaunt paused, “that is, if you acted on his advice, of course. You see, he’s never in doubt.”
Mordaunt was no longer deriding the comic aspect of Septimus Crottle. Mr. Ricardo suspected, indeed, that he was to hear the explanation of that change in Mordaunt which had so perplexed him. There was a confusion, a hesitation, in Mordaunt’s manner.
“I never told you how I came across old Septimus, did I? But, of course, I didn’t. I was on this ketch in the Helford river. A great sailor of small boats had built his home there, and a few of us used to anchor about his house for his birthday. There were four or five yachts anchored in the pool above and below and opposite to Helford village. Septimus came in a schooner with more draught than any of our boats, and anchored down the river at Passage. Well, that evening — I don’t know what made me do it — I had seen him in the garden that afternoon, an old boy, straight as a flagstaff, without any inhibitions; and there he was, once the commander of a ship, now the owner of the Dagger Line. So that night I sent an excuse from a party on one of the yachts, dined alone, and afterwards sculled in my dinghy down to the schooner at Passage.”
He had found Septimus seated in the shelter of his deck cabin, with a rug about his waist and a trifle suspicious that an upstanding young fellow should row away from a golden company to pass an hour with a solitary old crab-apple. Septimus Crottle did not ask his new companion why, but he gave him a large Havana cigar and, as Mordaunt drew a lighter from his pocket, he objected.
“Will you use the box of wooden matches at your elbow, please.”
Mordaunt turned round. A small table had been, placed noiselessly beside his chair with an ash-tray upon it and a box of Bryant and May’s matches. So much reverence for a cigar seemed to Mordaunt to call for a response, and as he smoked, it certainly did.
“This really is a wonderful cigar, Mr. Crottle,” said Mordaunt, pitching his praise high.
“It is the best,” returned Mr. Crottle, simply and sufficiently. “It’s mine.”
Philip did not feel that his impulse had been fruitful. On the other hand, the old man, with his sharp nose and his lean chin, seemed quite content that the younger man should sit by his side and say nothing. The tide sang against the planks of the schooner. Up in the pool by Helford village the lights of the yachts threw out from their skylights a glow of jewels cased in black velvet. From one, a woman’s voice, fresh and clear as a blackbird’s in the dew of the morning, soared in a delight which knocked against the stars; and Mordaunt found himself pouring out in a low voice the story of his distress, the twistings and turnings in a world where he had lost his way.
He had resigned his commission when one of the youngest captains, after the 1914-18 war, meaning to think over his life and plan what he should do. He might go into Parliament. He had a house and land in Dorset where there was an opportunity. Or he might go into business — big business — in the City. Or he might write — a comedy which would endure with “The Way of the World” an epic, perhaps, which would stand on the same shelf with “The Ring and the Book” a novel which would make people cry Fielding Redivivus. Meanwhile, he did nothing. Some day he would begin, when he was quite sure of the road which led to greatness. But meanwhile he ran about from party to party, talking with other young men and women of the fine thing he was going to do. But one after another the young men passed him into a different and busier country. One was elected to the House of Commons, and made a first speech which was the talk of the town. A second wrote a play which stirred the critics and filled the theatre for a year. A third wrote a book which was bought as well as read. They would all come back, of course, as their squibs flickered out. But they didn’t come back, and there was he, still wandering from party to party, jealous, dissatisfied, hollow as an empty tin. Septimus Crottle listened whilst the stars slid down the sky and the lights went out in the yachts in the pool. Then he said quietly: “Great authors! To me they are the loud-speakers of God.” He turned to Mordaunt. “Are you of their company?”
“How should I know?” Mordaunt asked after a pause.
“They have their labels.”
“For instance?
“They think less of the name they make than of the work they do.”
Mordaunt laughed curtly. Admit that, and he was ruled out! But how could he not admit that?
“Well, I asked for it,” he told himself, and thought that he might just as well, like Oliver, ask for more. So he said, rather arrogantly: “Perhaps there are other labels.”
Old Crottle was quite unimpressed by his young friend’s curling lip.
“Of course.” And after a glance at Mordaunt, Septimus looked out over the dark water, selecting one which would be most suitable.
“They don’t nurse long grievances,” he said. “They are too busy creating. They curse and damn for five minutes and then they get on with their job.”
For the second time that night Philip Mordaunt took it on the point of his chin. He took a whisky and soda afterwards and hoped that he had not obtruded too long between Mr Crottle and his repose.
Mr. Crottle, however, confessed to having been flattered by Philip Mordaunt’s visit.
“Besides,” he said, standing at the gangway, “every-body enjoys giving advice, as long as he’s quite certain that the advice isn’t what the advised had come to hear.”
Mordaunt halted on the first rung of the ladder and stepped on board again.
“Yes,” he said in some surprise, “the curious thing is that I’m not discouraged. On the contrary, I am relieved.”
The sense of relief stayed with Mordaunt as he sculled back to his yacht, and was no less strong the next morning. Old Septimus had banged the door on a good many dreams which of late were darkening into torments. He had left Mordaunt to find another door for himself, and it was evident to Mr. Ricardo that somehow Mordaunt had succeeded.
Philip looked up at the clock on the wall behind the stove as he ended his story.
“You’ll want to catch the Torbay Limited,” he continued. “There it is, in Kingswear station. Hamlin will land you at the steps and put your bag in your carriage. I am sorry that I couldn’t give you a better passage from France.”
CHAPTER 5
DANIEL HORBURY
ON THAT AFTERNOON, Mr. Horbury, Member of Parliament for the Kempston Division of London, walked from the House of Commons to his office at a few minutes after four. He had done two useful things for himself, and perhaps for his country. He had asked a question and he had voted in a division. The division took place on the Government’s need to occupy the whole time of the sitting, and was a daily affair, occurring just after questions were concluded. Thus a shrewd man, and no one had ever denied shrewdness to Mr. Horbury, could well within the compass of an hour establish proofs of his stern determination to fulfil his duties towards his constituents and the State. That the division was a formality, mattered nothing; that he would not be
present to vote upon the serious question for which the Government claimed the whole sitting, mattered less. He had had his name duly noted down on the division list, and it was the division a day which kept the opponent away and confirmed the constituents in the belief that they had chosen the best sort of man to represent them.
Mr. Horbury, having thus done his duty, ambled across St. James’s Park to his office in King Street. He was a heavily-lipped, short-legged, obese man who walked like a pigeon, crossing his toes. He was not noticeable indeed unless he raised his head, and then the big red face on its bull neck startled one. For his head, down to a line just below the eyes, was massive as an emperor’s, and the strong eyes were noble. But below the eyes a curious blend of the animal and the insignificant disgraced his features. His nose, for in stance, was small and round, his upper lip long, and the swollen jaw not so much massive as brutal — the jaw of a great ape welded to the brow of a Caesar, set upon a torso of so slovenly a vulgarity that the man almost escaped the curiosity of the passers-by. But there were some to whom he was unknown, people no doubt a little more sensitive than their neighbours, who felt a chill if he approached, like that cold aura which, in the legends of the Sabbaths, enfolded the person of Satan. Mr. Horbury walked clumsily and slowly, round the water where the pigeons imitated his progress, to the Marlborough Gate, through a dark and exclusive arcade, and so to his fine panelled offices in King Street.
Mr. Horbury was uneasy. There was a certain danger to be eliminated. Not so very serious a danger. Daniel Horbury was accustomed to navigating shoals still more menacing than the shoals of Lezardrieux. But, in order to eliminate the danger of this afternoon, Horbury would have to relinquish a victim, a victim plump and ripe, the fruit of a golden tree, and Mr. Horbury had the greatest detestation of such sacrifices. He went through the outer office into his own sanctuary. It was panelled with rosewood. The deep arm-chairs were cushioned with a dark red damask. A great walnut writing-table, shaped in an arc and fashioned in the days of Queen Anne, with, the carved pigeon-holes and little doors of its period, decorated the centre of an Aubusson carpet.
Mr. Horbury paused for a moment upon the threshold, consoled for his uneasy reflections by the sheen and costliness of his surroundings.
“Not many offices like this, Foster,” he said to a clerk who was reading out a list of names at his elbow.
“No, sir.”
Foster was an old-fashioned clerk from Gracechurch Street and knew Big Business to be more generally associated with worn linoleum, upright Victorian chairs, and ink-stained writing-tables.
“Will you see Mr. Ricardo at five-thirty?”
“Mr. Ricardo?”
Horbury became very still. Mr. Ricardo! He had never heard of a Mr. Ricardo. And the unknown was always dangerous.
“It is not convenient,” said Horbury. “This afternoon I don’t wish to be disturbed.”
Horbury shut the door. On the writing-table lay the last edition of the Evening Standard. He approached it with a careful carelessness, for there are times when a prudent man will play-act even to himself alone. He turned the pages as though they were of little interest, and came willy-nilly to the shipping news. There, at the very head of the column, the announcement stood:
“El Rey from South American ports passed Prawle Point at 6 a.m.”
Mr. Horbury expected the announcement, yet he was taken aback. Providence should have intervened, as Providence had often dutifully done, in Mr. Horbury’s affairs. There were, however, occasions when Providence, though willing, wanted just a trifle of help. Horbury must, in the parliamentary phrase, explore the avenues. He went to a cupboard and opened it. Two shelves were disclosed. On the first stood half-a-dozen glasses and a small wire-cutter; on the lower half a dozen swelling bottles with a golden-yellow foil guarding the mushroom-headed corks and a famous year on a printed strip.
The pop of the cork was heard by the clerks and no longer provoked even the office humorist to imitate the sound of liquid hissing into a glass.
Horbury, in his sanctuary, drank half of his bottle. He lifted the receiver from the hook of his telephone and dialled LED 0045. In a little while he heard a door close noisily and, upon the closing of the door, an eager, wooing voice.
“Is that you, Beautiful?”
Mr. Horbury smiled, showing all his teeth to the gums, but he used a pleasant voice.
“No, not more so than usual. It’s just plain Daniel Horbury speaking.”
At the other end of the line there was silence. Daniel Horbury really smiled this time as he pictured to himself a man shocked into speechlessness and grey with fear.
“You got my message?” Horbury continued.
“Yes.”
“Sorry I use your private number.”
“Who gave it to you?”
Horbury made a joke. At least it seemed a joke at the time.
“Mr. Ricardo,” he returned. It was the last name which he had heard when he entered his office, and he rang off before another question could be put to him.
Mr. Horbury finished off his bottle of champagne, leaning back in his chair with his short legs crossed under his walnut table. He was tempted, indeed, to commemorate the name of Mr. Ricardo with a second bottle. After all, he was wont to argue, as long as you don’t begin before eleven o’clock in the morning, champagne can’t do you much harm. It gives a sparkle to your plans and delays their over-hasty execution.
But to-day execution was needed. He pushed his chair back, unlocked a drawer and lifted out of it a small chart set flat with drawing-pins upon a thin ebony board. Five black pins were stuck in the chart, and now Horbury added a sixth, just seven miles west of Start Point where, at six o’clock on that morning, El Rey had lumbered past the Prawle Signal Station on her journey to Thames’ mouth. Horbury replaced the map in the drawer. He then called up his flat in Park Lane. He asked for his wife, and when she spoke to him there was suddenly another man at Horbury’s desk, one with a laugh in his eyes as well as on his lips, and even a throb of music in his voice.
“Olivia — that’s you? Yes, and the sound of you drives everything else out of my head — listen now, it’s urgent — oh, by the way, I heard you called beautiful less than half an hour ago — oh, I needn’t have rung you up to tell you that? — you haven’t got it at all — I heard you addressed as Beautiful over a private line,” and he chuckled comfortably. There came back to him a tiny cry.
“You’ve been reading my letters!”
“Would I?” cried Horbury indignantly. “The number was given to me by a Mr. Ricardo.”
“Who?”
“A Mr. Ricardo. But don’t go away. This is serious. We must go down to Lordship Lane to-night. At least, I must, and I do hope you will. We are free to-night, aren’t we?”
In a room overlooking Hyde Park a woman half the age of the Obese Romeo in King Street listened and smiled. “Yes, I’ll come,” and again Romeo was talking.
“We might sleep there, don’t you think? It’ll be the full moon. You know how the big oaks with their black shadows make crazy patterns on the meadow; and all the birds aren’t dumb at the end of August when you’re near.”
It was commonplace raillery, but whoever had seen Olivia Horbury, with a tender smile trembling upon her lips, might well have addressed her as “Beautiful.”
“What’s the plan?” she asked.
“Will you drive the small car and pick me up here at seven-thirty? We might dine at the Milan Grill, and get to the house at half-past nine. And somewhere about half-past ten I’ll lock the front door, and we shall be alone in that lovely silence — Beautiful.”
He could hear the deep breath she drew and wanted no other answer. He rang off and settled himself to compose a speech for the September rally in his constituency. Then he bathed, shaved, and dressed for the evening in a dinner jacket. He was hardly ready before Foster announced to him that Mrs. Horbury was waiting for him. He sent the commissionaire out to the car with the chart, bidding him ask
Mrs. Horbury to take care that the pins were not displaced; and he took from a secret drawer in the Queen Anne bureau a large sealed envelope which just fitted into the inside pocket of his jacket.
He slipped on his overcoat and stood once more upon the threshold, looking here and there about the room. He was merely admiring its sheen and costliness. It did not occur to him that he would never see it again.
CHAPTER 6
A WAKEFUL NIGHT
MR. RICARDO ARRIVED in London at half-past three. He had slept in the train and was looking forward to giving his friend, Monsieur Hanaud, over a charming little dinner for two, quite a comical account of his night’s adventure on the mail ship Agamemnon, plying between Brittany and the Dart.
But, alas! though he rehearsed the scene diligently, letting the real terrifying danger leak through the amusing episodes, making much of the mate’s miscalculation of the dawn, it was good work wasted. Only Hanaud’s suit-case arrived in Grosvenor Square in time for dinner.
With the bag, however, there was a note of eastern abasement, written hastily in pencil at Victoria Station. Hanaud had a telephone call and a visit to make, and he must attend a conference after that with Superintendent Maltby, who would keep him to dinner.
Mr. Ricardo was torn between testiness and gratitude. On the one hand he had, in order to fulfil the duties of a host, endured through a long, dark night the impact of those black, snow-crested waves. On the other hand, even as he spread his napkin over his knees, his eyes closed and his head nodded. Mr. Ricardo, in fact, was exhausted, and as soon as the formula of his dinner was complete, he rang for his butler.
“Thompson, I shall go to bed. You will see when Monsieur Hanaud comes in that he has everything he wants. You will ask him what he would like for his breakfast. For me, after my usual breakfast upstairs at eight, I shall come down at nine-thirty. Will you please tell him?”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 152