After he had gone, Black paced the apartment, deep in thought.
He took down from the shelf a continental Baedeker and worked out with a pencil and paper a line of retirement. The refusal of Sandford to negotiate with him was the crowning calamity.
He crossed the room to the safe which stood in the corner, and opened it. In the inside drawer were three flat packets of notes. He picked them out and laid them on the table. They were notes on the Bank of France, each for a thousand francs.
It would be well to take no risks. He put them in the inside pocket of his coat. If all things failed, they were the way to freedom.
As for Essley—he smiled. He must go anyway.
He left his flat and drove eastwards to the City.
Two men followed him, though this he did not know.
Black boasted that his corporation kept no books, maintained no record, and this fact was emphasized the night that the Four had visited him unbidden. Their systematic search for evidence, which they had intended to use against him at a recognized tribunal, had failed to disclose the slightest vestige of documentary evidence which might be employed.
Yet, if the truth be told, Black kept a very complete set of books, only they were in a code of his own devising, the key of which he had never put on paper, and which he only could understand.
He was engaged on the evening of the detective’s visit in placing even these ledgers beyond the reach of the Four. He had good reason for his uneasiness.
The Four had been very active of late, and they had thought fit to issue another challenge to Colonel Black.
He was busy from nine o’clock to eleven, tearing up apparently innocent letters and burning them. When that hour struck, he looked at his watch and confirmed the time. He had very important business that night.
He wrote a note to Sir Isaac Tramber, asking him to meet him that night. He had need of every friend, every pull, and every bit of help that could come to him.
IX
Lord Verlond Gives Dinner
Lord Verlond was an afternoon visitor at the Sandford establishment. He had come for many reasons, not the least of which nobody expected. He was a large shareholder in the Sandford Foundries, and with rumours of amalgamation in the air there was excuse enough for his visit. Doubly so, it seemed, when the first person he met was a large, yellow-faced man, confoundedly genial (in the worst sense of the word) and too ready to fraternize for the old man’s liking.
“I have heard of you, my lord,” said Colonel Black.
“For the love of Heaven, don’t call me ‘my lord’!” snapped the earl. “Man alive, you are asking me to be rude to you!”
But no man of Verlond’s standing could be rude to the colonel, with his mechanical smile and his beaming eye.
“I know a friend of yours, I think,” he said, in that soothing tone which in a certain type of mind passes for deference.
“You know Ikey Tramber, which is not the same thing,” said the earl.
Colonel Black made a noise indicating his amusement.
“He always—” he began.
“He always speaks well of me and says what a fine fellow I am, and how the earth loses its savour if he passes a day without seeing me,” assisted Lord Verlond, his eyes alight with pleasant malice, “and he tells you what a good sportsman I am, and what a true and kindly heart beats behind my somewhat unprepossessing exterior, and how if people only knew me they would love me—he says all this, doesn’t he?”
Colonel Black bowed.
“I don’t think!” said Lord Verlond vulgarly.
He looked at the other for a while.
“You shall come to dinner with me tonight—you will meet a lot of people who will dislike you intensely.”
“I shall be delighted,” murmured the colonel.
He was hoping that in the conference which he guessed would be held between Sandford and his lordship he would be invited to participate.
In this, however, he was disappointed. He might have taken his leave there and then, but he chose to stay and discuss art (which he imperfectly understood) with a young and distracted lady who was thinking about something else all the time.
She badly wanted to bring the conversation round to the Metropolitan police force, in the hope that a rising young constable might be mentioned. She would have asked after him, but her pride prevented her. Colonel Black himself did not broach the subject.
He was still discussing lost pictures when Lord Verlond emerged from the study with Sandford.
“Let your daughter come,” the earl was saying.
Sandford was undecided.
“I’m greatly obliged—I should not like her to go alone.”
Something leapt inside Colonel Black’s bosom. A chance … !
“If you are talking of the dinner tonight,” he said with an assumption of carelessness, “I shall be happy to call in my car for you.”
Still Sandford was not easy in his mind. It was May who should make the decision.
“I think I’d like to, daddy,” she said.
She did not greatly enjoy the prospect of going anywhere with the colonel, but it would only be a short journey.
“If I could stand in loco parentis to the young lady,” said Black, nearly jocular, “I should esteem it an honour.”
He looked round and caught a curious glint in Lord Verlond’s eyes. The earl was watching him closely, eagerly almost, and a sudden and unaccountable fear gripped the financier’s heart.
“Excellent, excellent!” murmured the old man, still watching him through lowered lids. “It isn’t far to go, and I think you’ll stand the journey well.”
The girl smiled, but the grim fixed look on the earl’s face did not relax.
“As you are an invalid, young lady,” he went on, despite May’s laughing protest—“as you’re an invalid, young lady, I will have Sir James Bower and Sir Thomas Bigland to meet you—you know those eminent physicians, colonel? Your Dr. Essley will, at any rate—experts both on the action of vegetable
