“You will make your journey in vain,” said Horace. “I have arranged for him to win.”
He waited later for an opportunity to say a word in private to the old man. It did not come till the end of the dinner, when he found himself alone with the earl.
“By the way,” he said, with an assumption of carelessness, “I want to see you on urgent private business.”
“Want money?” asked the earl, looking at him suspiciously from underneath his shaggy brows.
Horace smiled.
“No, I don’t think I am likely to borrow money,” he said.
“Want to marry my niece?” asked the old man with brutal directness.
“That’s it,” said Horace coolly. He could adapt himself to the old man’s mood.
“Well, you can’t,” said the earl. “You have arranged for your horse to win, I have arranged for her to marry Ikey. At least,” he corrected himself, “Ikey has arranged with me.”
“Suppose she doesn’t care for this plan?” asked Horace.
“I don’t suppose she does,” said the old man with a grin. “I can’t imagine anybody liking Ikey, can you? I think he’s a hateful devil. He doesn’t pay his debts, he has no sense of honour, very little sense of decency; his associates, including myself, are the worst men in London.”
He shook his head suspiciously.
“He’s being virtuous now,” he growled, “told me so confidentially; informed me that he was turning over a new leaf. What a rotten confession for a man of his calibre to make! I mistrust him in his penitent mood.”
He looked up suddenly.
“You go and cut him out,” he said, the tiny flame of malice, which gave his face such an extraordinary character, shining in his eyes. “Good idea, that! Go and cut him out; it struck me Mary was a little keen on you. Damn Ikey! Go along!”
He pushed the astonished youth from him.
Horace found the girl in the conservatory. He was bubbling over with joy. He had never expected to make so easy a conquest of the old man—so easy that he almost felt frightened. It was as if the Earl of Verlond, with that sardonic humour of his, was devising some method of humiliating him. Impulsively he told her all that had happened.
“I can’t believe it,” he cried, “he was so ready, so willing. He was brutal, of course, but that was natural.”
She looked at him with a little glint of amusement in her eyes.
“I don’t think you know uncle,” she said quietly.
“But—but—” he stammered.
“Yes, I know,” she went on, “everybody thinks they do. They think he’s the most horrid old man in the world. Sometimes,” she confessed, “I have shared their opinion. I can never understand why he sent poor Con away.”
“That was your brother?” he asked.
She nodded. Her eyes grew moist.
“Poor boy,” she said softly, “he didn’t understand uncle. I didn’t then. I sometimes think uncle doesn’t understand himself very well,” she said with a sad little smile. “Think of the horrid things he says about people—think of the way he makes enemies—”
“And yet, I am ready to believe he is a veritable Gabriel,” said Horace fervently. “He is a benefactor of the human race, a king among men, the distributor of great gifts—”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, and laying her hand on his arm, she led him to the farther end of the big palm court.
Whatever pleasure the old lord brought to Horace, it found no counterpart in his dealings with Sir Isaac.
He alternately patted and kicked him, until the baronet was writhing with rage. The old man seemed to take a malicious pleasure in ruffling the other. That the views he expressed at ten o’clock that night were in absolute contradiction to those that he had put into words at eight o’clock on the same night did not distress him; he would have changed them a dozen times during the course of twenty-four hours if he could have derived any pleasure from so doing.
Sir Isaac was in an evil frame of mind when a servant brought him a note. He looked round for a quiet place in which to read it. He half suspected its origin. But why had Black missed so splendid an opportunity of meeting Lord Verlond? The note would explain, perhaps.
He crossed the room and strolled towards the conservatory, reading the letter carefully. He read it twice, then he folded it up and put it into his pocket; he had occasion to go to that pocket again almost immediately, for he pulled out his watch to see the time.
When he had left the little retreat on his way to the hall, he left behind him a folded slip of paper on the floor.
This an exalted Horace, deliriously happy, discovered on his way back to the card-room. He handed it to Lord Verlond who, having no scruples, read it—and, reading it in the seclusion of his study, grinned.
X
A Policeman’s Business
There was living at Somers Town at that time a little man named Jakobs.
He was a man of some character, albeit an unfortunate person with “something behind him.” The something behind him, however, had come short of a lagging. “Carpets” (three months’ hard labour) almost innumerable had fallen to his share, but a lagging had never come his way.
A little wizened-faced man, with sharp black eyes, very alert in his manner, very neatly dressed, he conveyed the impression that he was enjoying a day off, but so far as honest work was concerned Jakobs’ day was an everlasting one.
Mr. Jakobs had been a pensioner of Colonel Black’s for some years. During that period of time Willie Jakobs had lived the life of a gentleman. That is to say, he lived in the manner which he thought conformed more readily to the ideal than that which was generally accepted by the wealthier classes.
There were moments when he lived like a lord—again he had his own standard—but these periods occurred at rare intervals, because Willie was naturally abstemious.
