Saunders in his office, the last race of the day over, was glancing through some trial totals of the day’s figures when one of his two clerks showed in Mr. Marble.
“Hallo?” he said, glancing up, “so you’ve made a bit?”
Mr. Marble sank wearily into the chair indicated and took the cigarette that Saunders offered.
“What did you get? Six to one?” asked Saunders. He was half joking, half serious. He had determined that Mr. Marble’s final bait of yesterday of three thousand percent was a mere piece of bluff. Obviously Marble had taken a chance and it had come off, and he, glad to see his money back, let alone with profit attached, would not press him too hard for the fulfilment of all his promises.
“Don’t know,” said Marble. “Haven’t worked it out like that. But the total comes to something like fifty thousand.”
“What?” gasped Saunders. “Fifty thousand? Or it’s francs, I suppose you mean?”
“No,” said Marble expressionlessly, “pounds.”
“D’you mean it?”
“Oh, of course I do. You’ll get the official notification from the Bank tomorrow.”
Saunders said nothing. Nothing in his limited vocabulary was equal to the situation.
“Fifty thousand pounds,” said Mr. Marble, still expressionless, but bracing himself unobtrusively for the final effort. “Let’s work out what my share of it is.”
It was astonishing to him to find that Saunders agreed without any difficulty at all. He would not have been surprised to find him refusing to render any account whatever; he could have retained the whole and nothing could have been proved against him. But Marble, when he feared this, allowed his fear to overbalance his estimation of several important items in Saunders’ makeup. In the first place, Saunders was an honest man. In the second place, he was so dazzled by the magnitude of the profit that he did not grudge the fair share of the man who had earned it for him. In the third place, he was a bookmaker, and he was accustomed to handing over large sums on account of transactions of which no law in the United Kingdom took the slightest notice.
“Rightio,” said Saunders. “How much is it exactly?”
“Fifty thousand, three twenty-nine, and a few shillings.” Saunders hastily figured it out. Marble had done it in his head long ago.
“I make your little packet come to £27,681. Oh, and the sixty you gave me. I get twenty-two thousand odd for myself. Not bad going for three phone calls.”
Saunders was trying to be offhand in the presence of this magician who could make thousands sprout in the course of a night. Actually, he was bursting with astonishment and curiosity.
“When’s settling day?” he demanded.
“The money’ll come in soon. You’ll have it in less than a week. Might be tomorrow, but I doubt it. The Bank will let you know.”
“Right. I’ll send you a cheque then. Your working agree with mine?” Saunders was trying his best to be the complete business man, although the largest cheque he had written in his life was for no more than five hundred pounds, and that occasion still haunted him in his worst nightmares.
“Very well, then.” Mr. Marble rose from his chair.
Mr. Saunders could retain himself no longer.
“Oh, sit down, man, and tell me how it was done. No, we must go and have a drink to celebrate this. Let’s make a night of it, up West somewhere. Let’s—”
But none of these things appealed to Mr. Marble, although the very mention of a drink set him yearning.
“No,” said Mr. Marble. “I have to push off home.”
And he went home, too. Although Mr. Marble was possessed of twenty-seven thousand pounds he spent his evening, as long as he was sober, sitting in a dreary little suburban drawing-room gazing out over a desolate suburban backyard, for fear lest some trespasser or some stray dog should find something out.
VI
Mr. Marble arrived home one evening lighter of step and of heart than he had been for some time previously. Even when the shadow of the gallows lies across one’s path one cannot help feeling a little elated when one has just received, and paid into a new account at a new bank, receiving the homage of a bank manager, the sum of twenty-seven thousand pounds odd.
Mr. Marble was done with speculation. The money, as he had decided in a serious conference with the bank manager, was all going into gilt-edged investments—save for a thousand pounds which was destined for the purchase of 53 Malcolm Road. Even with this deduction Mr. Marble would be in the possession of the comfortable income of twelve hundred pounds a year, although—as the bank manager said deprecatingly—the income-tax collector would have a fat slice out of it.
So Mr. Marble hung up his hat in the hall with a freedom of gesture unusual to him, and marched briskly into the dining-room to find his family assembled still over the tail end of their tea.
“You’re early, Will,” said Mrs. Marble, rising uncomplaining to hurry the preparation of her husband’s evening meal.
“So I am, so I am,” said Mr. Marble, and threw himself down in the armchair beside the empty grate.
It is a strange fact, but true, that Annie Marble’s habit of saying the obvious did not get on his nerves. In that lukewarm wooing, seventeen years ago, one of the things that appealed most strongly to Mr. Marble was the fact that Annie did not say unexpected things, and that he never had to bother about entertaining her. Yet at the moment he had a little scene in his mind’s eye that would startle her and interest her enormously, and he had been looking forward to it for days.
“What about
