“There was,” said the baronet with a grin, “a high-spirited nephew, who ran away from home, and is believed to have been killed on a cattle-ranch in Texas. At any rate, Lord Verlond intends applying to the court to presume his death.”
“That was a blow for the old man,” said Black.
This statement seemed to amuse Sir Isaac. He leant back in his chair and laughed loud and long.
“A blow!” he said. “My dear fellow, he hated the boy worse than poison. You see, the Verlond stock—he’s a member of the cadet branch of the family. The boy was a real Verlond. That’s why the old man hated him. I believe he made his life a little hell. He used to have him up for weekends to bully him, until at last the kid got desperate, collected all his pocket-money and ran away.
“Some friends of the family traced him; the old man didn’t move a step to search for him. They found work for him for a few months in a printer’s shop in London. Then he went abroad—sailed to America on an emigrant’s ticket.
“Some interested people took the trouble to follow his movements. He went out to Texas and got on to a pretty bad ranch. Later, a man after his description was shot in a street fight; it was one of those little ranching towns that you see so graphically portrayed in cinema palaces.”
“Who is the heir?” asked Black.
“To the title, nobody. To the money, the boy’s sister. She is quite a nice girl.”
Black was looking at him through half-closed eyes.
The baronet curled his moustache thoughtfully and repeated, as if to himself, “Quite a nice girl.”
“Then you have—er—prospects?” asked Black slowly.
“What the devil do you mean, Black?” asked Sir Isaac, sitting up stiffly.
“Just what I say,” said the other. “The man who marries the lady gets a pretty large share of the swag. That’s the position, isn’t it?”
“Something like that,” said Sir Isaac sullenly.
The colonel got up and folded his napkin carefully.
Colonel Black needed ready money so badly that it mattered very little what the City said. If Sandford objected that would be another matter, but Sandford was a good sportsman, though somewhat difficult to manage.
He stood for a moment looking down on the baronet thoughtfully.
“Ikey,” he said, “I have noticed in you of late a disposition to look upon our mutual interests as something of which a man might be ashamed—I have struck an unexpected streak of virtue in you, and I confess that I am a little distressed.”
His keen eyes were fixed on the other steadily.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said the baronet uneasily, “but the fact is, I’ve got to keep my end up in society.”
“You owe me a little,” began Black.
“Four thousand,” said the other promptly, “and it is secured by a £50,000 policy on my life.”
“The premiums of which I pay,” snarled the colonel grimly; “but I wasn’t thinking of money.”
His absorbed gaze took in the baronet from head to foot.
“Fifty thousand pounds!” he said facetiously. “My dear Ikey, you’re worth much more murdered than alive.”
The baronet shivered.
“Don’t make those rotten jokes,” he said, and finished his brandy at a gulp.
The other nodded.
“I’ll leave you to your letters,” he said.
Colonel Black was a remarkably methodical and neat personage. Wrapped in his elaborate dressing-gown, he made his way through the flat and, reaching his study alone, he closed the door behind him and let it click.
He was disturbed in his mind at this sudden assumption of virtue on the part of his confederate; it was more than disconcerting, it was alarming. Black had no illusions. He did not trust Sir Isaac Tramber any more than he did other men.
It was Black’s money that had, to some extent, rehabilitated the baronet in society; it was Black’s money that had purchased racehorses and paid training bills.
Here again, the man was actuated by no altruistic desire to serve one against whom the doors of society were shut and the hands of decent men were turned.
An outcast, Sir Isaac Tramber was of no value to the colonel: he had even, on one occasion, summarized his relationship with the baronet in a memorable and epigrammatic sentence: “He was the most dilapidated property I have ever handled; but I refurnished him, redecorated him, and today, even if he is not beautiful, he is very letable.”
And very serviceable Sir Isaac had proved—well worth the money spent on him, well worth the share he received from the proceeds of that business he professed to despise.
Sir Isaac Tramber feared Black. That was half the secret of the power which the stronger man wielded over him. When at times he sought to escape from the tyranny his partner had established, there were sleepless nights. During the past few weeks something had happened which made it imperative that he should dissociate himself from the confederacy; that “something” had to do with the brightening of his prospects.
Lady Mary Cassilirs was more of a reality now than she had ever been. With Lady Mary went that which Black in his vulgar way described as “swag.”
The old earl had given him to understand that his addresses would not be unwelcome. Lady Mary was his ward, and perhaps it was because she refused to be terrorized by the wayward old man and his fits of savage moroseness, and because she treated his terrible storms of anger as though they did not exist and never had existed, that in the grim old man’s hard and apparently wicked heart there had kindled a flame of respect for her.
Sir Isaac went back to his own chambers in a thoughtful frame of mind. He would have to cut Black, and his conscience had advanced so few demands on his actions that he felt justified in making an exception in this case.
He felt almost virtuous as he emerged again, dressed for the park, and he was in his brightest mood when he met Lord Verlond and his beautiful ward.
There were rude
