Meet The Baron

Mannering chuckled. His companion saw the flash of his white teeth, the fascinating — that was the right word! — gleam in his eyes. A cloud passed through hers, lingering for a few moments.

Mannering affected not to notice it.

“When and where?” he asked.

“Langford Terrace,” said Lorna. “Do you know, I think the Fauntley stock has gone up several points since it put a collar round you.”

“How sweetly you express it!” said Mannering.

Lorna laughed, but there was bitterness in her eyes and in her expression. Mannering did not pretend not to notice it j this time only a fool could have failed.

“Lorna,” he said quietly. “H’m-h’m?”

“Do you think, one day soon, we could talk of marriage?”

There was silence for a moment. Her eyes filled with something which was closely akin to fear. Her voice lacked its usual steadiness as she spoke.

“Please,” she said, “please don’t, ever. I’m not the marrying kind, John. Forget it, will you?”

Mannering eyed her reflectively.

He knew that he would not have agreed if his reputed wealth had been real; lie was beginning to realise that Lorna Fauntley, so self-reliant, rebellious, competent, graceful withal, and beautiful with that dark, stormy beauty which had intrigued him when he had first met her, now obsessed him. There was mystery in her smouldering eyes, and challenge. She seemed to suffer, and Mannering, with his knowledge of the months which had followed his visit to Overndon Manor, believed that he understood the cause of that suffering.

But he nodded slowly; they spoke of other things.

It was on the following day that Mannering looked at himself in a mirror, the dressing-table mirror in his bedroom at the Elan Hotel.

“You’re a prize ass, J. M.” he said quietly. (The habit of talking to himself had commenced soon after his first excursion into the territory of other people’s property, and he indulged in it more and more as time went on.) “A gold-medallist in fools. You went into this because you made an ass of yourself over a woman; you can’t want to get out of it because of another. Oh, I know she’s different; I know the thing’s taboo between us; I know . . . Stop it, J. M.! You can’t get out. Or if you do, you’re scuppered. Do you get that ? Scuppered, or as near as makes no difference. One day, if you make enough, yes . . .”

He broke off suddenly, and started as a tap came on the door of the outer room.

He looked at himself in the mirror again. His face had paled a little, and his lips were very close together. He was jumpy. The tap on the door had scared him momentarily. Odd how his nerves were a long way from steady — outside his job.

He lit a cigarette as he walked into the outer room and called, “Come in.” The door opened, more slowly than usual. Mannering felt his blood racing; there were times when he dreaded unexpected visitors, and fancied Bristow, for instance, putting awkward questions. Now . . .

“Damn!” he muttered again, and then exploded: “Jimmy, you smothering son of a . . .”

“You leave my ancestry alone,” said Jimmy Randall cheerfully. He was a well-built man, fleshier than Mannering, but not fat; his face was pleasantly proportioned, although few would have called him handsome. But the lazy grin on his lips and in his eyes endeared him to most people.

“Just why,” inquired Mannering, with some warmth, “did you come in like that?”

Randall cocked his head and frowned.

“Hump! You’re not well, J. M. That was a joke.”

“A joke?”

“Don’t Wodehouse me,” retorted Randall; “and for the love of Mike give me a cigarette.”

Mannering offered his case, and extended his lighter gravely. He realised that Randall was in humorous mood, and Jimmy Randall on such occasions was impossible and thick-skinned. Randall sent a stream of smoke towards the ceiling, and then grinned, howbeit with a certain nervousness.

“I’ll?” asked Mannering sympathetically.

Randall nodded, and then shook his head. That there was something worrying him Mannering could see, and he felt uneasy. This was one of the sides of his new life that he found worrying — the constant fear that someone — friend or foe didn’t matter — had guessed or learned of his activities.

“No,” said Randall at last. “I was — I was wondering, J. M., whether you’d like to come down to Somerset for a week or two.”

“That must be why you cracked that joke just now,” said Mannering soberly. He frowned a Little. “What is worrying you ?” he demanded.

Randall laughed, as if relieved at the thought that the other had hall guessed.

“Well, I — it’s some time now since Toby and I tried to . . .”

“Set my feet on the strait and narrow path. Look here” — Mannering seemed genuinely apprehensive — “is this becoming a life’s habit?”

“Well,” said Randall, easing his collar, “not exactly. What I’m really trying to get out — but you’re such a funny cuss I don’t know how to put it — is that an old fla — friend of yours is due in town at the end of the week. And . . .”