“I have people behind me who can find money to any amount if the job is good enough, and you’re spoiling a good pitch, Thalia.”
“Oh, I am, am I?” said Thalia. “Admitting I am all you think I am, in what way do I spoil the pitch?”
Mr. Barnet rolled his head from side to side with a smile.
“My dear girl,” he said with good-natured reproach. “How long do you think you’re going to last, taking money from envelopes and sending on old bits of paper? Eh? If my friend Brabazon hadn’t got the idea into his silly head that the fraud was worked in the post, you’d have had the police in your office in no time. And when I say my friend Brabazon, I’m not being funny, see?”
Here, he evidently thought he had said too much, though he found it very difficult indeed to leave the question of his friendship with the austere banker. Challenged, he might have said more, but Thalia offered no comment.
“Now, I’m going to tell you something,” he leant over the table and regulated his voice. “Milly and me have been working Brabazon’s bank for two months. There’s a big lot of money to be got, but not out of the bank—Brabazon is a friend of mine—but it can be done through one of the clients, and the man with the biggest balance is Marl.”
Her lips curled for the second time that day.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she said quietly. “Marl’s balance wouldn’t buy a row of beans.”
He stared at her incredulously, then looked at Milly Macroy with a frown.
“You told me that he had the best part of a hundred thousand—”
“So he has,” said the girl.
“He had until today,” replied Thalia. “But this afternoon Mr. Brabazon went out—I think he went to the Bank of England, because the notes were all new. He sent for me and I saw them stacked up on his desk. He told me he was closing Marl’s account, and that he was not the kind of man he wanted as a client. Then he took the money and called on Marl, I think, for when he came back just before the bank closed he handed me Marl’s cheque.”
“ ‘I’ve settled that account, Miss Drummond,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’ll be troubled with that blackguard again.’ ”
“Did he know about Marl asking you out to dinner?” asked Milly, but the girl shook her head.
Mr. Barnet said nothing. He was sitting back in his chair, fondling his chin, with a faraway look in his eyes.
“A big amount, was it?” he asked.
“Sixty-two thousand,” replied the girl.
“And it is in his house?” said Barnet, his face pink with excitement. “Sixty-two thousand! Did you hear that, Milly? And you’re dining with him tonight?” said “Flush” Barnet slowly and significantly. “Now, what about it?”
She met his gaze without flinching.
“What about what?” she asked.
“Here’s the chance of a lifetime,” he said, husky with emotion. “You’re going to the house. You’re not above stringing the old man along, are you, Thalia?”
She was silent.
“I know the place,” said “Flush” Barnet, “one of those quaint little houses in Kensington that cost a fortune to keep up. Marisburg Place, Bayswater Road.”
“I know the address pretty well,” said the girl.
“He keeps three menservants,” said “Flush” Barnet, “but they’re usually out any night he happens to be entertaining a lady friend. Do you get me?”
“But he’s not entertaining me in his house,” said the girl.
“What’s the matter with a little bit of supper after the show, eh?” asked Barnet. “Suppose he puts it up to you, and you say yes. There’ll be no servants in the house when you get back. That I’ll take my oath. I’ve studied Marl.”
“What do you expect me to do? Rob him?” asked Thalia. “Stick a gun under his nose and say, ‘Deliver your pieces of eight’?”
“Don’t be a fool,” said Mr. Barnet, startled out of his pose of elegant gentleman. “You’re to do nothing but have your supper and come away. Keep him amused, make him laugh. You needn’t be frightened because I’ll be in the house soon after you, and if there’s any trouble I’ll be on hand.”
The girl was playing with her teaspoon, her eyes fixed on the tablecloth.
“Suppose he doesn’t send his servants away?”
“You can bank on that,” interrupted Mr. Barnet. “Moses! There never was such a wonderful opportunity! Do you agree?”
Thalia shook her head.
“It is too big for me. Maybe you’re right and I’m likely to get into trouble, but it seems to me that petty pilfering is my long suit.”
“Bah!” said Barnet in disgust. “You’re mad! Now’s your time to make a harvest, my dear. You’re not known to the police. You’re not under the limelight like me. Are you going to do it?”
She dropped her eyes again to the cloth and again fidgeted with her spoon nervously.
“All right,” she said with a sudden shrug, “I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.”
“Or for a good share of sixty thousand as for a miserable couple of hundred, eh?” said Barnet jovially, and beckoned the waiter.
Thalia left the restaurant and turned homeward. She had to pass the bank, and it was not good policy, she thought, to hail a taxicab until she had left the neighbourhood, where Mr. Brabazon’s grave eyes might observe her extravagance. She had turned into the stream of pedestrians that thronged Regent Street at this hour when she felt a touch on her arm, and turned.
A young man was walking by her side, a good-looking, keen-faced young man who did not smile ingratiatingly as others had done who had nudged her arm in Regent Street, nor did he inquire if she were going the same way as he.
“Thalia!”
She turned quickly at the sound of the voice, and for a second her self-possession failed her.
“Mr. Beardmore!” she faltered.
Jack’s face was flushed and he was obviously embarrassed.
“I only wanted to speak to you for a moment. I have waited for a week for the opportunity,” he said hurriedly.
“You
