“Come, come, sir,” he admonished him, “this kind of thing helps neither of us. It’s too late now to pretend to an innocence no jury would believe you to possess. The obvious point that you were coolly drawing these high dividends at a time when men are thankful for a mere three and a half per cent would attract suspicion. And how do you suppose it will improve Richard’s prospects to have a father in the dock for wilful fraud?”
There he touched Gray on his one human spot. He had never cared for any of his later children, but this first-born held such of his heart as was not occupied with his financial affairs. Nevertheless, he faced up to Eustace with commendable forcefulness.
“I’m not a child, to be scared by bogeys,” he told him.
“Nor a child to be acquitted on facts that even a child would hesitate to accept,” Eustace retorted. “I implore you, sir, to view the position squarely, and see your own liability, in the eyes of the public if not of the law or of your own. Who is going to believe we weren’t hand in glove? Not a British jury, I assure you, and though you might, through a lack of evidence, be acquitted on the main charge, your reputation will stink in the nostrils of all honest men.” Eustace could produce with the fine melodramatic flourish of his race just these high-sounding clichés that infuriated Gray, the more because he realised the truth of them.
Nevertheless, he clung stubbornly to his refusal to part with a penny to see his son-in-law through his unpleasant crisis. In vain did Eustace cajole, bully, threaten.
“Do you suppose I don’t know why you want this money?” Gray was goaded into exclaiming before the wretched undignified conversation came to a close. “You want to get hold of my cash and vanish with it out of the way of the law and set up your web somewhere else.”
Eustace, trembling with passion, retorted, “Very ingenious suggestion on your part, sir. And do you expect anyone to believe that a man so astute as that didn’t know what he was doing when he put thirty thousand pounds into my companies?”
II
Up and down their room, in slippered feet, turning, hesitating, pacing, halting, turning again, went Eustace hour after hour through the interminable evening, until Olivia, her tact, patience, and sweetness of temper exhausted by this intolerable prowling, cried, “Oh, Eustace, for heaven’s sake stop it. I shall have hysterics.”
Eustace paid no attention; for the moment, she did not exist. Olivia, realising the depths of his absorption, compelled her nerves to remain calm for a little longer while she enviously watched her husband’s supple figure moving like a great cat in and out of the shadows. Her own was thickening disquietingly. They said Jews were stout, gross even, particularly if they were financiers, but nothing less like the novelist’s conception of a Jew than Eustace could be conceived. Only in the shrewd expression of the dark face, and the smooth black hair brushed straight off an olive-coloured forehead, did he betray his origin.
“And he doesn’t have to wear corsets or endure massage. And he certainly eats and drinks far more than I do,” thought Olivia resentfully.
At length, however, she was aware that, come what might, some sort of a scene was inevitable, and, sitting bolt upright in the bed and speaking very loudly, she asked, “Have you any aspirin, Eustace? My head is driving me crazy. It’s watching you like this, hour after hour…”
He came to an abrupt standstill at the foot of the bed. “Olivia, you should know your father better than I do. Is there any way of compelling him to help us? I thought the threat of dishonour would be sufficient, expecially if I mentioned Richard, but apparently I miscalculated. He’s our only chance now.”
“He has got the money?”
“He’s got fifteen thousand pounds’ worth of bonds in the safe in his room. I saw them myself not two months ago, when I came down to talk over further investments in the —— Co. Ten thousand would pull us through and set us on our feet. Moneylenders can’t help us; the City of London is honeycombed with spies; they’d realise at once that everything was up, even if anyone would lend us anything on our security. Well?”
Olivia said, “It isn’t only us. It’s Richard, too. I’m sure he’s in a tight hole, and has been trying to touch father. Perhaps he’s been luckier than we.”
“We know Richard’s in a tight hole, but not so tight as ours. He can’t afford publicity any more than we can, but at least it won’t mean broad arrows for him. I daresay”—he shrugged elaborately—“it won’t be very pleasant to be sold up. They say his extravagances these last six months have been fantastic. But there it is. I don’t for a moment believe, though, that Richard has been any luckier in getting anything out of your father than I have. I had first innings for one thing, and for another I saw Richard coming out of the library looking like murder. He’ll hardly speak to anyone. Oh, he’s in a mess all right. If he weren’t, he might have done something. It won’t be pleasant for him having all his relations in the criminal court. Besides, there’s some story about a woman I’ve been hearing lately.”
Olivia forgot her headache. “Richard—and a woman!”
Eustace laughed unguardedly. “Well, why not? He’s human, isn’t he? And
