“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!”
“He talks like an educated man,” she said wonderingly.
He nodded.
“He’s a Bachelor of Arts of Oxford. Old Joe Bray sent him there.” He smiled at her gasp of astonishment. “Joe did some queer, good-hearted, silly things,” he said, “and sending Fing-Su to Oxford was one of them.”
She could never remember exactly what happened at luncheon. She had a dim recollection that he talked most of the time, and only towards the end of the meal had she an opportunity of expressing her fears as to Mr Narth’s attitude.
“Don’t worry about him. He’s got his troubles, and they’re pretty bad ones,” he said grimly.
But there was one matter upon which she must speak. He had ordered a car to be waiting, and insisted upon seeing her home to Sunningdale, and this gave her her opportunity.
“Mr Lynne–-” She hesitated. “This absurd marriage–-“
“No more absurd than other marriages,” he said coolly, “and really not so absurd as it seemed when my whiskers were in full bloom. Do you want to get out of it?”
Joan was pardonably annoyed at the hopefulness in his tone.
“Of course I don’t want to get out of it!” she said. “I’ve promised.”
“Why?” he asked.
The colour came to her cheeks.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Why did you agree so readily? That rattles me rather,” he said. “You’re not the kind of girl to take the first man who came along. You’re quite different from the stout and sentimental Mabel and the highly-strung Letty. What pull has Narth?”
The question silenced her.
“He has a pull, hasn’t he? He said to you: ‘You’ve got to marry this queer bird or else I’ll’–-what?”
She shook her head, but he was insistent, and his keen grey eyes searched her face.
“I was ready to marry anything when I came along. But I didn’t expect—you!”
“Why were you ready to accept anything?” she challenged, and a faint smile showed in his eyes.
“That’s fair,” he admitted; “and now I’ll tell you. I loved old Joe; he saved my life twice. He was the dearest, most fantastical old romance-hound that ever lived, and was mad keen that I should marry one of his family. I didn’t know this until he told me he was dying—I didn’t believe him, but that crazy Dutch doctor from Canton confirmed the diagnosis. Joe said that he’d die happy if I’d carry on the line, as he called it, though God knows he has no particular representative of the line worth carrying on—with the exception of you,” he added hastily.
“And you promised?” she asked.
He nodded.
“And I wasn’t drunk when I promised! I’ve a horrible feeling that I’m sentimental too. He died in Canton— that’s where the cable came from. How like Joe to die in Canton!” he said bitterly. “He couldn’t even die normally on the Siang-kiang!”
She was shocked by his callousness.
“Then what do you expect me to do, now that I know you are only marrying me to keep a promise?” she asked.
“You can’t take advantage of my frankness and sneak out,” he said a little gruffly. “I saw old Joe’s will after I’d arrived in England, when it was too late to alter it. Your marriage before the end of the year makes a million pounds’ difference to Narth.”
“As much as that?” she asked, in amazement.
For some reason he was astonished.
“I thought you were going to say ‘Is that all?’ It is really worth more than a million—or will be in time. The company is enormously rich.”
There followed a period when both were too immersed in their own thoughts to speak, and then:
“You managed—things for him, didn’t you, Mr Lynne?”
“My best friends call me Cliff,” he said, “but if you find that embarrassing you may call me Clifford. Yes, I managed things.”
He offered no further information, and the silence thereafter grew so oppressive that she was glad when the car stopped before the door of Sunni Lodge. Letty, who was on the lawn playing croquet, came across, mallet in hand, with uplifted eyebrows.
“I thought you were lunching in town, Joan?” she asked disapprovingly. “Really, it’s awfully awkward. We’ve got the Vaseys coming this afternoon, and I know you don’t like them.”
And then she saw for the first time the good-looking stranger and lowered her eyes and faltered, for Letty’s modesty and confusion in the presence of Man were notoriously part of her charm.
Joan made no attempt to introduce her companion. She said goodbye to her escort and watched the car glide down the drive.
“Really, Joan,” said Letty petulantly, “you’ve got the manners of a pig! Why on earth didn’t you introduce him?”
“I didn’t think you wanted an introduction; you’ve been so awfully unpleasant about him since he was here last,” said Joan, not without a little malice.
“But he’s never been here before!” protested the girl. “And it’s perfectly horrible of you to say that I’ve said anything unpleasant about anybody. Who is he?”
“Clifford Lynne,” said Joan, and added: “My fiance!”
She left Letty open-mouthed and dumbfounded, and went up to her room. The rest of the afternoon she spent in some apprehension as to what Mr Narth would say on his return. When eventually he did come—it was just before dinner—he was surprisingly affable, even paternal, but she detected in his manner a nervousness that she had never noticed before, and wondered whether the cause was Clifford Lynne or the sinister Chinaman of whom she had such bad dreams that night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mr Clifford Lynne had rented a small furnished house in one of those streets in Mayfair which had the advantage, from his point of view, of a back entrance. There was a small garage behind the house, which opened on to a long and very tidy mews made up of other garages, each capped by a tiny flat, wherein the chauffeurs attached to his respectable neighbours had their dwelling.
Something was puzzling Clifford Lynne—and it was not Fing-Su, or Joan or Mr Narth. A doubt in his mind had blossomed into a suspicion, and was in a fair way to being a conviction.
