Adrian looked after her. Secrecies! A touch of intrigue and conspiracy. Sullying things! He understood their necessity for the moment. But they were intolerable. Tomorrow, he hoped, would begin to end them.
Sonia arrived at the Ritz Hotel next day, looking her prettiest in a wide red hat, her best shoes, and a pale grey frock. She looked rather anxiously round the restaurant at the outset, but recovered her spirits when she realized that there was no one to spy upon her. David Bletchworth, for his part, was buoyant with good news. He and his wife had taken a furnished house in Upper Brook Street for the remainder of the season. Perhaps Miss Chalice would dine with them one night. They had, in any case, to arrange a date in the early autumn on which Adrian would address the political council of the constituency.
“A matter of form,” said David Bletchworth. “But it’s got to be observed. Adrian’s candidature is really accepted.”
It was a pleasant luncheon. Sonia rather quiet, young Mrs Bletchworth observant, and David doing the talking. But when the meal was over and Sonia had gone, Joan Bletchworth said warmly to Adrian: “I’ll do all that I can.”
And Adrian answered gratefully: “Thank you! I believe that I shall want your help.”
XXX. IN DANGER
You have been mine before —
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow’s soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall — I knew it all of yore.
— D.G. Rossetti
“I must go back to Grosvenor Street,” said Adrian, looking at the clock.
“I’ll walk with you,” said David Bletchworth.
They put Joan Bletchworth into her car, and when she had driven off, crossed Piccadilly. At the corner of Berkeley Street a newspaper placard caught Bletchworth’s eye.
“Halo!” he cried, and catching Adrian by the arm, he stopped him. “Look!”
Adrian read:
BASRA OILFIELDS
SENSATION
He was aware, with the rest of the Londoners, that sensations steepen with the fall of day. The prodigy of the three o’clock edition is the commonplace of the late extra. From its proud monopoly of the front page, it is degraded to half a column in the middle of the paper. Still, the future of the Basra Oilfields was a question of importance which particularly concerned Adrian’s chief Should the Government assure a national oil supply by becoming the dominant partner in the concern and appointing representatives upon the directorate? Or should it leave all the responsibility to the private trader? The Parliamentary Session was very near to its end, now. Within the week the decision must be made. Adrian bought a copy of the paper and read that during the morning a rumour had spread that the Government had made up its mind to stand aloof.
“Is that true?” asked Bletchworth.
“I haven’t an idea,” replied Adrian. “Cratton keeps the whole affair in his hands, All I do is to supply him with the balance sheets and reports of other companies.”
Bletchworth read over Adrian’s shoulder.
“‘On the strength of the rumour, the Market weakened and something like a panic set in. By midday the shares had dropped six points.”
“I’m rather tempted to have a flutter,” he said. “Let them go down a bit more and then buy, eh? On the chance that the rumour’s wrong, what?”
Adrian shook his head.
“I can’t help you, David. I don’t believe that the question has come up before the Cabinet yet, and if it had done I shouldn’t know the result. And if I knew the result I shouldn’t tell it to you.”
Bletchworth laughed.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” he agreed cheerfully.
They parted at the corner of Mount Street, but before they parted Adrian said: “Parliament rises on Friday week, ten days from now. I want you and Joan to dine with me before. Tuesday, say! It’s important to me.”
Bletchworth looked keenly at his friend. The words were simple enough, but he had caught some vibration in the voice to which he was quite unused, a plea, an urgency which was disconcerting.
“All right!” he answered. “Joan’ll ring you up if she can’t manage it. But I’m pretty sure that she can.”
He held up his stick to a passing taxi and, jumping in hurriedly, was carried eastwards. He was uncomfortable, as he explained afterwards to his wife.
“Adrian never raised his voice. He was standing like anybody else giving you a casual invitation to dinner. But he made me feel that something ordained centuries ago was coming to fulfilment and we mustn’t balk it.”
Joan, his wife, crossed to him and perched on the arm of his chair.
“It’s extraordinary that you should think that, David,” she returned. “For all through lunch I was trying to make myself say, ‘Here’s a nice boy in love with a perfectly adorable girl and we must just help them along.’ But I couldn’t make myself say it. It sounded too — trivial. I seemed to be conscious of a tremendous drive behind both of them. They sat at the table talking the ordinary nothings, but I couldn’t reconcile them with what they talked. I felt that if we only had — what shall I say? — real vision, we should see two spirits — beings — souls, if you like — who had suffered horribly and would perhaps suffer irreparably unless this time they joined.”
She spoke her little speech slowly, faltering over her words, but she got her meaning out in the end.
Adrian, meanwhile, went back to his work, and whilst he worked Basra Oilfields continued to fall. They fell through the next day, steadily, until just before the Stock Exchange closed. This was the Wednesday. Late on Wednesday afternoon there was a reaction. Somebody was buying and buying heavily. On Thursday morning the shares had risen by four points. On Thursday afternoon Mr Spencer Cratton announced in the House of Commons the policy of the Government. After a careful survey of all the sources of oil fuel and the peculiar importance of sea-borne trade to Great Britain, the Cabinet had thought right to secure a predominant interest in these rich and newly discovered sources. Mr Spencer Cratton was never more lackadaisical than when he dropped his statement, word by word, from lips which could hardly be bothered to speak them.
“I believe that fellow,” cried one exasperated Member who had sold short and was already feeling the pincers, “could only be really startled if he realized suddenly one day the magnitude of his own indolence.”
The news reached the City just after the Stock Exchange had closed, and the next day the shares were rocketing. On Saturday morning one or two of the financial papers began to rumble. On Monday the rumble had grown into a definite growl. “Basra Oilfields” had been forced down by a lying rumour and then bought in for the inevitable rise. On Tuesday awkward words were used, such as “leakage” and “ramp.” Who had tied up a packet? The evening newspapers all asked that question and most of them violently. Spencer Cratton dropped some appropriate oil upon these rising waters. Enquiries would be made. But wasn’t it possible that some speculators had been sagacious and some had not? Or was there amongst those who dealt in stock and shares one level of high intelligence? However, if a head upon a charger was wanted, he would see what could be done about it. It was quite one of Cratton’s happiest efforts.
It was made upon the Tuesday, and Tuesday was an important day for all the people of this history. Adrian Shard, for instance, had asked to have Wednesday morning free.
“Tomorrow morning?” Cratton drawled. He looked up at Adrian and down upon his blotting pad. There he drew a face with his pencil and ornamented it with a tall hat and a pair of moustaches. “Well, why not?” he asked at length. “Oh, yes, everything’s in order. Tomorrow will do very well,” and Adrian left him reflecting how marvellously the Gods worked for those who left them to it.
Adrian, for his part, left his door ajar when he returned to his room, and seeing Sonia pass through the hall, went quickly out to her.
“I am free tomorrow morning,” he said. “Will you let me drive you to Ranelagh?”
Sonia’s eyes dan
ced.
“Will I not?” she cried.
“I’ll bring my car round at ten,” said Adrian, and at once she became wise, very wise, and shook her head.
“No,” she answered. “I’ll come round to your mews. Be ready for me.” She let her hand rest upon his for a moment, and ran up the stairs. Secrecies! Concealments! Always they had to go about with one another. Well, an end was coming to it. Adrian squared his shoulders and returned to his room.
That evening David Bletchworth and his wife dined with him. It was a hot night in the first week of August, and since his dining room faced the south, it seemed as though all the heat of the tropics had been compressed into that refectory. Over the coffee, Adrian poured out his troubles and something of his plans.
“They will never give her to me willingly. The mother has been against me from the beginning. I suppose they have ambitions for her. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s at the back of it at all. But I think it’s something odd and” — he shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably— “something a little sinister. I think they are considering Sonia not as Sonia, but as a pawn to be moved about on their own particular chessboard. She’ll have to come away out of their hands altogether, before—” He broke off and turned to Joan eagerly. “I shall know how things are between Sonia and me tomorrow morning. If they are what I hope, will you receive her? I shall go to Mrs. Cratton, of course, but she’ll say no. Sonia’s a year under age. Suppose that she comes away, will you find room for her? Of course they’ll have to give way if we’re determined about it.”
“Of course,” said David Bletchworth, “we’ll love to have her, old man,” and Joan Bletchworth agreed.
“Good!” said Adrian.
He rose up, relieved of half of his anxieties. “Let’s go and smoke in the garden. We’re in a furnace here.”
He opened the door which led to his drawing room. It was at the back of the house, with a long window which gave onto the garden. From the balcony a flight of steps led down into the garden. But they did not go down into the garden. The drawing room was in darkness when Adrian opened the door. He came to a sudden stop in the doorway. He did not even reach out a hand to switch on the light. He just stood on the threshold of the room looking out through the open window across the gardens. Then, in a hushed and constrained voice, he said: “Come in, will you?” and he made way for them.
Bletchworth and his wife followed him, and he closed the door of the dining room. The three of them stood in the darkness. On the far side of the gardens a house was lighted up.
“Look!” said Adrian. “In the blue room, there. Do you see? The man in his day clothes — that’s Cratton. The woman in a dinner gown — that’s Sonia’s mother. And the third man in the smoking jacket — that’s Andros, the financier.
“Is it?” Bletchworth asked.
“Yes. I’ve seen him with Cratton before. By Jove—” And he came to a stop. He had not only seen Andros in that room before. He had seen Andros in Cratton’s suite in the hotel at Genoa. What had Cratton said when Adrian had been ushered into the room in place of Andros? “I thought it would be prudent if we had a talk here privately and then perhaps not meet so often until the affair’s over.” What affair? Adrian drew in a long breath. The affair of the Basra Oilfields?
“I wonder,” he said slowly.
He recalled Mr Bunt and the condition of embarrassment in the house’s finances which Mr Bunt connoted. There flashed into his mind, too, a little circumstance which he had never been able to explain. His very ignorance of life had been his main recommendation in Spencer Cratton’s eyes. He had secured the post because he was ignorant. His ignorance had even overridden Mrs. Cratton’s hostility. Where was the particular virtue of his ignorance unless Cratton was already, at Genoa, contemplating this raid upon the public?
“Yes, I wonder,” he repeated, with a rather wry smile at the thought of what treasure trove this little episode would be to Charles Trapp, if he ever heard of it.
Suddenly Bletchworth touched his arm.
“Look!” he in his turn said. “Your Mr Andros is moving.”
So he was, but he was not taking his leave. He had been sitting at the end of Spencer Cratton’s table and bending over it with every appearance of intense concentration. Now he rose, holding a paper in his hand, and with a nod of satisfaction handed it to Cratton. Whilst Cratton looked it over, he picked up from the table a tiny red book.
“That’s the English-Italian dictionary my chief was continually fingering at Genoa,” said Adrian.
Mr Andros took up something else, too, from the table. It looked like a short, flat slip of yellow wood. But though the light in the indigo room was sparklingly bright and the characters visible and their movements distinct, all was on too small a scale at that distance for unfamiliar things to be identified.
Andros took the paper from Cratton and, to Adrian’s astonishment, walked to the door at the corner of the great window through which Sonia had come the first time that he had seen her. Andros opened the door, and whilst he opened it, turned his head towards the Crattons in the room behind him and made some laughing remark.
“But he’s going into the room I use,” said Adrian, as Andros passed through the doorway. “There’s nothing in it but my table, with my papers.”
Suddenly the side room sprang into view. Andros had switched on the light. He went across to Adrian’s desk and bent over it. Then he raised himself erect again, quickly, like a marionette obeying the jerk of the wire. He turned towards the window, took a swift stride to it, and making of his hands a couple of blinkers about his eyes, peered through the pane. Adrian turned his head in a panic lest the light should be streaming through from the dining room behind him. But the door was shut close. He and the Bletchworths were standing in the very heart of darkness. He was conscious of an immeasurable relief There was something being done in that house on the other side of the two gardens which he must know. For it threatened him. Adrian felt sure of it. It threatened him — ruinously.
“Watch!” he whispered to his friends, thanking all the stars of heaven that he had these good witnesses at his side.
Andros drew back from the window and lowered the blind. But even so, they could see his shadow flung upon it by the light, now dwindling, now swelling into a figure monstrous and alarming as he moved about the room. For a few minutes he so moved, bending over the table at this end of it and at that. Then he turned the lights off and returned to the Crattons. But when he returned, his hands were empty.
Very cautiously Adrian and his friends slipped back into the dining room. The table had been cleared now, and the three of them sat about it and, for a while, were silent. Adrian’s face was white and his eyes shone with fear.
“I don’t like that,” he said at length.
“Nor I,” Joan added.
“Of course, I may be frightening myself for nothing.”
“But you don’t believe it,” said Bletchworth.
“He may have been putting on my table some paper for me to attend to.”
“Andros?” Bletchworth asked; and the question destroyed in a second Adrian’s moment of confidence. Yes, what had Andros to do with his table and his papers? A new dread seized him.
“I am not expected tomorrow morning,” he exclaimed. “I asked to have it free. I remember there was something queer in Cratton’s manner when he gave me leave. Yes, there was… What did he say?— ‘Tomorrow will do very well’ — and he looked at me rather strangely.” Adrian rose up straight from his chair.
“He wants a head on a charger, does he?”
Adrian stood for a moment and then bent down.
“David! I must find out what it was Andros left in my room. Tomorrow morning will do, so long as I’m early. I can call in at eight — to see if there are any letters. Nobody will be down except the servants. If they’ve planned anything against me — why, they’ll put it into practice later. There’ll be an outside witness. Well, I’ll have a witness, too. Will you c
ome with me?”
“Yes.”
“If Andros has hidden anything in my desk, we’ll find it.”
“I’ll be here at half-past seven,” said Bletchworth.
“Good!” cried Adrian. “But wait a moment! Do you mind, Joan?”
He brought a writing pad to the table, and wrote down exactly what he and the Bletchworths had seen and the hour when they had seen it and the date of the month. Then they all three signed it.
“If the worst happens, we have this, at all events, to bear us out,” said Adrian as he locked the paper away. But he slept that night only by fits and starts. For he was sure that he stood in a peril of all his hopes.
XXXI. THE CIPHER
A presence, strange at once and known
Walked with me as my guide,
The skirts of some forgotten life
Trailed noiseless at my side.
— J.G. Whittier
An astonished butler opened the door at eight o’clock in the morning.
“But your room’s not ready, Sir,” he protested.
“That doesn’t matter. It can be done afterwards,” said Adrian. “I shall be away all the morning. But there’s a letter or two I must write. Come on, David.”
Adrian led the way across the hall and into his room. The blind was still down. It seemed certain that its last visitor was Mr Andros. Adrian drew up the blind and noiselessly opened the window. He turned to the table. It was in all circumstances but one just as he had left it the evening before, pencils by the side of the blotting pad, pens in the tray, a stand for writing paper and envelopes, no litter of letters, everything most orderly. But on the edge of the table was the little red English- Italian dictionary which both of them had last seen in George Andros’ hand.
“Do you see that?” David Bletchworth asked.
“I do, indeed,” returned Adrian.
“Now, why on earth—” Bletchworth began, and Adrian set himself down in his chair at the table.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 634