A telegram was waiting for Leslie when he entered the narrow portals of the City Proscenium Club. He took it down and opened it leisurely, and read its contents. A puzzled frown gathered on his forehead. It ran:—
“I must see you this afternoon. Meet me at Charing Cross Station four o’clock.—Gilbert.”
Punctually to the minute Leslie reached the terminus. He found Gilbert pacing to and fro beneath the clock, and was shocked at his appearance.
“What on earth is the matter with you?” he asked.
“Matter with me?” demanded the other hardly, “what do you think is the matter with me?”
“Are you in trouble?” asked Leslie anxiously.
He was genuinely fond of this friend of his.
“Trouble?” Gilbert laughed bitterly. “My dear good chap, I am always in trouble. Haven’t I been in trouble since the first day I met you? I want you to do something for me,” he went on briskly. “You were talking the other day about money. I have recognised the tragedy of my own dependence. I have got to get money, and get it quick.”
He spoke briskly, and in a matter-of-fact tone, but Leslie heard a determination which had never formed part of his friend’s equipment.
“I want to know something about shares and stocks and things of that sort,” Gilbert went on. “You’ll have to instruct me. I don’t suppose you know much about it yourself”—he smiled, with a return to the old good-humour—“but what little you know you’ve got to impart to me.”
“My dear chap,” protested the other, “why the devil are you worrying about a thing like that for on your honeymoon? Where is your wife, by the way?”
“Oh, she’s at the house,” said the other shortly. He did not feel inclined to discuss her, and Leslie, in his amazement, had sufficient tact to pass over the subject.
“I can tell you all I know now, if you want a tip,” he said.
“I want something bigger than a tip—I want investments. I want you to tell me something that will bring in about twelve thousand a year.”
Leslie stopped and looked at the other.
“Are you quite—?” he began.
Gilbert smiled, a crooked little smile.
“Am I right in my head?” he finished. “Oh, yes, I am quite sane.”
“But don’t you see,” said the other, “you would want a little over a quarter of a million to bring in that interest.”
Gilbert nodded.
“I had an idea that some such amount was required. I want you to get me out between tonight and tomorrow a list of securities in which I can invest and which must be gilt-edged, and must, as I say, secure for me, or for my heirs, the sum I have mentioned.”
“And did you,” asked the indignant Leslie, “bring me to this beastly place on a hot afternoon in June to pull my leg about your dream investments?”
But something in Gilbert’s face checked his humour.
“Seriously, do you mean this?” he asked.
“Seriously, I mean it.”
“Well, then, I’ll give you the list like a shot. What has happened—has uncle relented?”
Gilbert shook his head.
“He is not likely to relent,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I had a note today from his secretary to tell me that he is pretty ill. I’m awfully sorry.” There was a genuine note of regret in his tone. “He is a decent old chap.”
“There’s no reason why he should hand over his wealth to the ‘demnition bow-wows,’ ” quoted Leslie indignantly. “But why did you meet me here, my son? Your club is round the corner.”
“I know,” said Gilbert; “but the club is—well, to tell you the truth,” he said, “I am giving up the club.”
“Giving up your club?” He stood squarely before the taller man. “Now just tell me,” he asked deliberately, “what the Dickens all this means? You’re giving up your club, you’ll be giving up your Foreign Office job next, my Croesus!”
Gilbert nodded.
“I have given up the Foreign Office work,” he said quietly. “I want all the time I can get,” he went on, speaking rapidly. “I want every moment of the day for my own plans and my own schemes. You don’t know what it’s all about, my dear chap”—he laid his hand affectionately on the other’s shoulder—“but just believe that I am in urgent need of all the advice you can give me, and I only want the advice for which I ask.”
“Which means that I am not to poke my nose in your business unless I have a special invitation card all printed and decorated. Very good,” laughed Leslie. “Now come along to my club. I suppose as a result of your brief married life you haven’t conceived a dislike to all clubs?”
Gilbert made no answer, nor did they return again to the subject until they were ensconced in the spacious smoking-room of the Junior Terriers.
For two hours the men sat there, Gilbert questioning eagerly, pointedly, jotting down notes upon a sheet of paper. The other answered, often with some difficulty, the running fire of questions which his friend put.
“I didn’t know how little I knew,” confessed the young man ruefully, as Gilbert wrote down the last answer to the very last question. “What an encyclopædic questioner you are; you’re a born examiner, Gilbert.”
Gilbert smiled faintly as he slipped the sheet of paper into his pocket.
“By the way,” he said, as they were leaving the club, “I made my will this morning and I want you to be my executor.”
Leslie pushed his hat back with a groan.
“You’re the most cheerless bird I’ve met for quite a long time,” he said in exasperation. “You were married yesterday, you’re wandering round today with a face as long as an undertaker’s tout—I understand such interesting and picturesque individuals exist in the East End of London—you’ve chucked up the billet that’s bringing you in quite a lot of money, you’ve discussed investments, and you’ve made your will. You’re a most depressing devil!”
Again Gilbert smiled: he was grimly amused. He shook hands with the
