“Can I do anything?” asked Lord Peter.
“Oh, no, thanks—very decent of you, but it’ll pan out all right in time.”
“This isn’t a bad salmis,” said Lord Peter.
“I’ve eaten worse,” admitted his friend.
“What about those Argentines?” inquired Lord Peter. “Here, waiter, there’s a bit of cork in my glass.”
“Cork?” cried the Honourable Freddy, with something approaching animation; “you’ll hear about this, waiter. It’s an amazing thing a fellow who’s paid to do the job can’t manage to take a cork out of a bottle. What you say? Argentines? Gone all to hell. Old Levy bunkin’ off like that’s knocked the bottom out of the market.”
“You don’t say so,” said Lord Peter. “What d’you suppose has happened to the old man?”
“Cursed if I know,” said the Honourable Freddy; “knocked on the head by the bears, I should think.”
“P’r’aps he’s gone off on his own,” suggested Lord Peter. “Double life, you know. Giddy old blighters, some of these City men.”
“Oh, no,” said the Honourable Freddy, faintly roused; “no, hang it all, Wimsey, I wouldn’t care to say that. He’s a decent old domestic bird, and his daughter’s a charmin’ girl. Besides, he’s straight enough—he’d do you down fast enough, but he wouldn’t let you down. Old Anderson is badly cut up about it.”
“Who’s Anderson?”
“Chap with property out there. He belongs here. He was goin’ to meet Levy on Tuesday. He’s afraid those railway people will get in now, and then it’ll be all U.P.”
“Who’s runnin’ the railway people over here?” inquired Lord Peter.
“Yankee blighter, John P. Milligan. He’s got an option, or says he has. You can’t trust these brutes.”
“Can’t Anderson hold on?”
“Anderson isn’t Levy. Hasn’t got the shekels. Besides, he’s only one. Levy covers the ground—he could boycott Milligan’s beastly railway if he liked. That’s where he’s got the pull, you see.”
“B’lieve I met the Milligan man somewhere,” said Lord Peter, thoughtfully. “Ain’t he a hulking brute with black hair and a beard?”
“You’re thinkin’ of somebody else,” said the Honourable Freddy. “Milligan don’t stand any higher than I do, unless you call five-feet-ten hulking—and he’s bald, anyway.”
Lord Peter considered this over the Gorgonzola. Then he said: “Didn’t know Levy had a charmin’ daughter.”
“Oh, yes,” said the Honourable Freddy, with an elaborate detachment. “Met her and Mamma last year abroad. That’s how I got to know the old man. He’s been very decent. Let me into this Argentine business on the ground floor, don’t you know?”
“Well,” said Lord Peter, “you might do worse. Money’s money, ain’t it? And Lady Levy is quite a redeemin’ point. At least, my mother knew her people.”
“Oh, she’s all right,” said the Honourable Freddy, “and the old man’s nothing to be ashamed of nowadays. He’s self-made, of course, but he don’t pretend to be anything else. No side. Toddles off to business on a 96 bus every morning. ‘Can’t make up my mind to taxis, my boy,’ he says. ‘I had to look at every halfpenny when I was a young man, and I can’t get out of the way of it now.’ Though, if he’s takin’ his family out, nothing’s too good. Rachel—that’s the girl—always laughs at the old man’s little economies.”
“I suppose they’ve sent for Lady Levy,” said Lord Peter.
“I suppose so,” agreed the other. “I’d better pop round and express sympathy or somethin’, what? Wouldn’t look well not to, d’you think? But it’s deuced awkward. What am I to say?”
“I don’t think it matters much what you say,” said Lord Peter, helpfully. “I should ask if you can do anything.”
“Thanks,” said the lover, “I will. Energetic young man. Count on me. Always at your service. Ring me up any time of the day or night. That’s the line to take, don’t you think?”
“That’s the idea,” said Lord Peter.
Mr. John P. Milligan, the London representative of the great Milligan railroad and shipping company, was dictating code cables to his secretary in an office in Lombard Street, when a card was brought up to him, bearing the simple legend:
Lord Peter Wimsey
Marlborough Club
Mr. Milligan was annoyed at the interruption, but, like many of his nation, if he had a weak point, it was the British aristocracy. He postponed for a few minutes the elimination from the map of a modest but promising farm, and directed that the visitor should be shown up.
“Good afternoon,” said that nobleman, ambling genially in, “it’s most uncommonly good of you to let me come round wastin’ your time like this. I’ll try not to be too long about it, though I’m not awfully good at comin’ to the point. My brother never would let me stand for the county, y’know—said I wandered on so nobody’d know what I was talkin’ about.”
“Pleased to meet you, Lord Wimsey,” said Mr. Milligan. “Won’t you take a seat?”
“Thanks,” said Lord Peter, “but I’m not a peer, you know—that’s my brother Denver. My name’s Peter. It’s a silly name, I always think, so old-world and full of homely virtue and that sort of thing, but my godfathers and godmothers in my baptism are responsible for that, I suppose, officially—which is rather hard on them, you know, as they didn’t actually choose it. But we always have a Peter, after the third duke, who betrayed five kings somewhere about the Wars of the Roses, though come to think of it, it ain’t anything to be proud of. Still, one has to make the best of it.”
Mr. Milligan, thus ingeniously placed at that disadvantage which attends ignorance, manoeuvred for position, and offered his interrupter a Corona Corona.
“Thanks, awfully,” said Lord Peter, “though you really mustn’t tempt me to stay here burblin’ all afternoon. By Jove, Mr. Milligan, if you offer people such comfortable chairs and cigars like these, I wonder they don’t come an’ live in your office.” He added mentally: “I wish to goodness I could get those long-toed boots off you. How’s a man to know the size of your feet? And a head like a potato. It’s enough to make one swear.”
“Say
