“Good morning, Miss Mallathorpe!” he said. “You wish to see me? Come into my private office, if you please. I haven’t fixed on a clerk yet,” he went on, as he led his visitor through the outer room, and to the easy chair by his desk. “I have several applications from promising aspirants, but I have to be careful, you know, Miss Mallathorpe—it’s a position of confidence. And now,” he concluded, as he closed the door upon Nesta and himself, “how is Mrs. Mallathorpe today? Improving, I hope?”
Nesta made no reply to these remarks, or to the question. And instead of taking the easy chair which Eldrick had found so comfortable, she went to one which stood against the wall opposite Pratt’s desk and seated herself in it in as upright a position as the wall behind her.
“I wish to speak to you—plainly!” she said, as Pratt, who now regarded her somewhat doubtfully, realizing that he was in for business of a serious nature, sat down at his desk. “I want to ask you a plain question—and I expect a plain answer. Why are you blackmailing my mother?”
Pratt shook his head—as if he felt more sorrow than anger. He glanced deprecatingly at his visitor.
“I think you’ll be sorry—on reflection—that you said that, Miss Mallathorpe,” he answered. “You’re a little—shall we say—upset? A little—shall we say—angry? If you were calmer, you wouldn’t say such things—you wouldn’t use such a term as—blackmailing. It’s—dear me, I dare say you don’t know it!—it’s actionable. If I were that sort of man, Miss Mallathorpe, and you said that of me before witnesses—ah! I don’t know what mightn’t happen. However—I’m not that sort of man. But—don’t say it again, if you please!”
“If you don’t answer my question—and at once,” said Nesta, whose cheeks were pale with angry determination, “I shall say it again in a fashion you won’t like—not to you, but to the police!”
Pratt smiled—a quiet, strange smile which made his visitor feel a sudden sense of fear. And again he shook his head, slowly and deprecatingly.
“Oh, no!” he said gently. “That’s a bigger mistake than the other, Miss Mallathorpe! The police! Oh, not the police, I think, Miss Mallathorpe. You see—other people than you might go to the police—about something else.”
Nesta’s anger cooled down under that scarcely veiled threat. The sight of Pratt, of his self-assurance, his comfortable offices, his general atmosphere of almost sleek satisfaction, had roused her temper, already strained to breaking point. But that smile, and the quiet look which accompanied his last words, warned her that anger was mere foolishness, and that she was in the presence of a man who would have to be dealt with calmly if the dealings were to be successful. Yet—she repeated her words, but this time in a different tone.
“I shall certainly go to the police authorities,” she said, “unless I get some proper explanation from you. I shall have no option. You are forcing—or have forced—my mother to enter into some strange arrangements with you, and I can’t think it is for anything but what I say—blackmail. You’ve got—or you think you’ve got—some hold on her. Now what is it? I mean to know, one way or another!”
“Miss Mallathorpe,” said Pratt. “You’re taking a wrong course—with me. Now who advised you to come here and speak to me like this, as if I were a common criminal? Mr. Collingwood, no doubt? Or perhaps Mr. Robson? Now if either—”
“Neither Mr. Robson nor Mr. Collingwood know anything whatever about my coming here!” retorted Nesta. “No one knows! I am quite competent to manage my own affairs—of this sort. I want to know why my mother has been forced into that arrangement with you—for I am sure you have forced her! If you will not tell me why—then I shall do what I said.”
“You’ll go to the police authorities?” asked Pratt. “Ah!—but let us consider things a little, Miss Mallathorpe. Now, to start with, who says there has been any forcing? I know one person who won’t say so—and that’s your mother herself!”
Nesta felt unable to answer that assertion. And Pratt smiled triumphantly and went on.
“She’ll tell you—Mrs. Mallathorpe’ll tell you—that she’s very pleased indeed to have my poor services,” he said. “She knows that I shall serve her well. She’s glad to do a kind service to a poor relation. And since I am your mother’s relation, Miss Mallathorpe, I’m yours, too. I’m some degree of cousin to you. You might think rather better, rather more kindly, of me!”
“Are you going to tell me anything more than that?” asked Nesta steadily. Pratt shrugged his shoulders and waved his hands.
“What more can I tell?” he asked. “The fact is, there’s a business arrangement between me and your mother—and you object to it. Well—I’m sorry, but I’ve my own interests to consider.”
“Are you going to tell me what it was that induced my mother to sign that paper you got from her the other day?” asked Nesta.
“Can I say more than that it was—a business arrangement?” pleaded Pratt. “There’s nothing unusual in one party in a business arrangement giving a power of attorney to another party. Nothing!”
“Very well!” said Nesta, rising from the straight-backed chair, and looking very rigid herself as she stood up. “You won’t tell me anything! So—I am now going to the police. I don’t know what they’ll do. I don’t know what they can do. But—I can tell them what I think and feel about this, at any rate. For as sure as I am that I see you, there’s something wrong! And I’ll know what it is.”
Pratt recognized that she had passed beyond the stage of mere anger to one of calm determination. And as she marched towards the door he called her back—as the result of a second’s swift thought on his part.
“Miss Mallathorpe,” he said. “Oblige me by sitting down again. I’m not in the least afraid
