The girl knew the story of Doctor Merrill. It had been sketched briefly but vividly by John Minute. She knew also some of those scrapes which had involved Doctor Merrill’s ruin, material and moral.
“Frank,” she said, “if I can help you in any way I would do it.”
“You can help me absolutely,” said the young man quietly, “by marrying me.”
She gasped.
“When?” she asked, startled.
“Now, next week; at any rate, soon.” He smiled, and, crossing to her, caught her hand in his.
“May, dear, you know I love you. You know there is nothing in the world I would not do for you, no sacrifice that I would not make.”
She shook her head.
“You must give me some time to think about this, Frank,” she said.
“Don’t go,” he begged. “You cannot know how urgent is my need of you. Uncle John has told you a great deal about me, but has he told you this—that my only hope of independence—independence of his millions and his influence—you cannot know how widespread or pernicious that influence is,” he said, with an unaccustomed passion in his voice, “lies in my marriage before my twenty-fourth birthday?”
“Frank!”
“It is true. I cannot tell you any more, but John Minute knows. If I am married within the next ten days”—he snapped his fingers—“that for his millions. I am independent of his legacies, independent of his patronage.”
She stared at him, open-eyed.
“You never told me this before.”
He shook his head a little despairingly.
“There are some things I can never tell you, May, and some things which you can never know till we are married. I only ask you to trust me.”
“But suppose,” she faltered, “you are not married within ten days, what will happen?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“ ‘I am John’s liege man of life and limb and of earthly regard,’ ” he quoted flippantly. “I shall wait hopefully for the only release that can come, the release which his death will bring. I hate saying that, for there is something about him that I like enormously, but that is the truth, and, May,” he said, still holding her hand and looking earnestly into her face, “I don’t want to feel like that about John Minute. I don’t want to look forward to his end. I want to meet him without any sense of dependence. I don’t want to be looking all the time for signs of decay and decrepitude, and hail each illness he may have with a feeling of pleasant anticipation. It is beastly of me to talk like this, I know, but if you were in my position—if you knew all that I know—you would understand.”
The girl’s mind was in a ferment. An ordinary meeting had developed so tumultuously that she had lost her command of the situation. A hundred thoughts ran riot through her mind. She felt as though she were an arbitrator deciding between two men, of both of whom she was fond, and, even at that moment, there intruded into her mental vision a picture of Jasper Cole, with his pale, intellectual face and his grave, dark eyes.
“I must think about this,” she said again. “I don’t think you had better come down to the mission with me.”
He nodded.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said.
Gently she released her hand and left him.
For her that day was one of supreme mental perturbation. What was the extraordinary reason which compelled his marriage by his twenty-fourth birthday? She remembered how John Minute had insisted that her thoughts about marriage should be at least postponed for the next fortnight. Why had John Minute suddenly sprung this story of her legacy upon her? For the first time in her life she began to regard her uncle with suspicion.
For Frank the day did not develop without its sensations. The Piccadilly branch of the London and Western Counties Bank occupies commodious premises, but Frank had never been granted the use of a private office. His big desk was in a corner remote from the counter, surrounded on three sides by a screen which was half glass and half teak paneling. From where he sat he could secure a view of the counter, a necessary provision, since he was occasionally called upon to identify the bearers of checks.
He returned a little before three o’clock in the afternoon, and Mr. Brandon, the manager, came hurriedly from his little sanctum at the rear of the premises and beckoned Frank into his office.
“You’ve taken an awful long time for lunch,” he complained.
“I’m sorry,” said Frank. “I met Miss Nuttall, and the time flew.”
“Did you see Holland the other day?” the manager interrupted.
“I didn’t see him on the day you sent me,” replied Frank, “but I saw him on the following day.”
“Is he a friend of your uncle’s?”
“I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”
The manager took up three checks which lay on the table, and Frank examined them. One was for eight hundred and fifty pounds six shillings, and was drawn upon the Liverpool Cotton Bank, one was for forty-one thousand one hundred and forty pounds, and was drawn upon the Bank of England, and the other was for seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds fourteen shillings. They were all signed “John Minute,” and they were all made payable to “Rex Holland, esquire,” and were crossed.
Now John Minute had a very curious practice of splitting up payments so that they covered the three banking houses at which his money was deposited. The check for seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds fourteen shillings was drawn upon the London and Western Counties Bank, and that would have afforded the manager some clue even if he had not been well acquainted with John Minute’s eccentricity.
“Seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds fourteen shillings from Mr. Minute’s balance,” said the manager, “leaves exactly fifty thousand pounds.”
Mr. Brandon shook his head in despair at
