“I swear it’s all true. Every word of it.”
“You seem to forget that I’ve been behind the scenes. I’m not simply an ordinary member of the audience. I know how the illusion is produced. I’ve seen the strings pulled. Why, dash it,
“You don’t mean to say you think–-!”
“Don’t be an ass, James. Of course I do. You’ve had the brazen audacity to attempt to work off on Eva the game you played on Margaret. But you’ve made a mistake. You’ve forgotten to count me.”
I paused, and ate a muffin. James watched me with fascinated eyes.
“You,” I resumed, “ethically, I despise. Eva, personally, I detest. It seems, therefore, that I may expect to extract a certain amount of amusement from the situation. The fun will be inaugurated by your telling Eva that she may have to wait five years. You will state, also, the amount of your present income.”
“Suppose I decline?”
“You won’t.”
“You think not?”
“I am sure.”
“What would you do if I declined?”
“I should call upon Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell and give her a quarter of an hour’s entertainment by telling her of the System, and explaining to her, in detail, the exact method of its working and the reason why you set it going. Having amused Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell in this manner, I should make similar revelations to Eva. It would not be pleasant for you subsequently, I suppose, but we all have our troubles. That would be yours.”
He hesitated.
“As if they’d believe it,” he said, weakly.
“I think they would.”
“They’d laugh at you. They’d think you were mad.”
“Not when I produced John Hatton, Sidney Price, and Tom Blake in a solid phalanx, and asked them to corroborate me.”
“They wouldn’t do it,” he said, snatching at a straw. “They wouldn’t give themselves away.”
“Hatton might hesitate to, but Tom Blake would do it like a shot.”
As I did not know Tom Blake, a moment’s reflection might have told James that this was bluff. But I had gathered a certain knowledge of the bargee’s character from James’s conversation, and I knew that he was a drunken, indiscreet sort of person who might be expected to reveal everything in circumstances such as I had described; so I risked the shot, and it went home. James’s opposition collapsed.
“I shall then,” administering the
“Thank you,” said James, “but don’t bother. On second thoughts I will tell Eva about my income and the five years’ wait.”
“Thanks,” I said; “it’s very good of you. Good-bye.”
And I retired, chuckling, to Rupert Street.
CHAPTER 23
IN A HANSOM
I spent a pleasant week in my hammock awaiting developments.
At the end of the week came a letter from Eva. She wrote:—
“You vixen,” I thought. “Yes; I’ll come and see you fast enough. It will give me the greatest pleasure to see you crushed and humiliated.”
I collected my evening clothes from a man of the name of Attenborough, whom I employ to take care of them when they are not likely to be wanted; found a white shirt, which looked presentable after a little pruning of the cuffs with a razor; and drove to the Gunton-Cresswells’s in time for dinner.
There was a certain atmosphere of unrest about the house. I attributed this at first to the effects of the James Orlebar Cloyster bomb-shell, but discovered that it was in reality due to the fact that Eva was going out to a fancy- dress ball that night.
She was having dinner sent up to her room, they told me, and would be down presently. There was a good deal of flitting about going on. Maids on mysterious errands shot up and down stairs. Old Mr. Gunton-Cresswell, looking rather wry, was taking cover in his study when I arrived. Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell was in the drawing-room.
Before Eva came down I got a word alone with her. “I’ve had a nice, straight-forward letter from James,” she said, “and he has done all he can to put things straight with us.”
“Ah!” said I.
“That telegram, he tells me, was the outcome of a sudden panic.”
“Dear me!” I said.
“It seems that he made some most ghastly mistake about his finances. What exactly happened I can’t quite
