'Is that your term for her?'
'Actually, no. It was said to me by an elderly relative of mine.'
'Yes, it isn't a description that one hears given often of a woman nowadays. It fits her, I think, very well. Only –'
'Only what?'
'Venus is seductive, is she not? Is she also ambitious?'
'You think Milly Jean Cortman is ambitious?'
'Oh yes. That above all.'
'And you think to be the wife of the Ambassador to St James's is insufficient to satisfy ambition?'
'Oh no,' said the Countess. 'That is only the beginning.'
He did not answer. He was looking out through the car window. He began to speak, then stopped himself. He noted her quick glance at him, but she too was silent. It was not till they were going over a bridge with the Thames below them that he said:
'So you are not giving me a lift home and you are not going back to the St James's Tower. We are crossing the Thames. We met there once before, crossing a bridge. Where are you taking me?'
'Do you mind?'
'I think I do.'
'Yes, I can see you might.'
'Well of course you are quite in the mode. Hi-jacking is the fashion nowadays, isn't it? You have hi-jacked me. Why?'
'Because, like once before, I have need of you.' She added, 'And others have need of you.'
'Indeed.'
'And that does not please you.'
'It would please me better to be asked.'
'If I had asked, would you have come?'
'Perhaps yes, perhaps no.'
'I am sorry.'
'I wonder.'
They drove on through the night in silence. It was not a drive through lonely country, they were on a main road. Now and then the lights picked up a name or a signpost so that Stafford Nye saw quite clearly where their route lay. Through Surrey and through the first residential portions of Sussex. Occasionally he thought they took a detour or a side road which was not the most direct route, but even of this he could not be sure. He almost asked his companion whether this was being done because they might possibly have been followed from London. But he had determined rather firmly on his policy of silence. It was for her to speak, for her to give information. He found her, even with the additional information he had been able to get, an enigmatic character.
They were driving to the country after a dinner party in London. They were, he was pretty sure, in one of the more expensive types of hire car. This was something planned beforehand. Reasonable, nothing doubtful or unexpected about it. Soon, he imagined, he would find out where it was they were going. Unless, that is, they were going to drive as far as the coast. That also was possible, he thought. Haslemere, he saw on a signpost. Now they were skirting Godalming. All very plain and above board. The rich countryside of moneyed suburbia. Agreeable woods, handsome residences.
They took a few side turns and then as the car finally slowed, they seemed to be arriving at their destination. Gates. A small white lodge by the gates. Up a drive, well-kept rhododendrons on either side of it. They turned round a bend and drew up before a house. 'Stockbroker Tudor,' murmured Sir Stafford Nye, under his breath. His companion turned her head inquiringly.
'Just a comment,' said Stafford Nye. 'Pay no attention. I take it we are now arriving at the destination of your choice?'
'And you don't admire the look of it very much.'
'The grounds seem well-kept up,' said Sir Stafford, following the beam of the headlights as the car rounded the bend. 'Takes money to keep these places up and in good order. I should say this was a comfortable house to live in.'
'Comfortable but not beautiful. The man who lives in it prefers comfort to beauty, I should say.'
'Perhaps wisely,' said Sir Stafford. 'And yet in some ways he is very appreciative of beauty, of some kinds of beauty.'
They drew up before the well-lighted porch. Sir Stafford got out and tendered an arm to help his companion. The chauffeur had mounted the steps and pressed the bell. He looked inquiringly at the woman as she ascended the steps.
'You won't be requiring me again tonight, m'lady?'
'No. That's all for now. We'll telephone down in the morning.'
'Good night. Good night, sir.'
There were footsteps inside and the door was flung open. Sir Stafford had expected some kind of butler, but instead there was a tall grenadier of a parlourmaid. Grey-haired, tight-lipped, eminently reliable and competent, he thought. An invaluable asset and hard to find nowadays. Trustworthy, capable of being fierce.
'I am afraid we are a little late,' said Renata.
'The master is in the library. He asked that you and the gentleman should come to him there when you arrived.'
Chapter 9
THE HOUSE NEAR GODALMING
She led the way up the broad staircase and the two of them followed her. Yes, thought Stafford Nye, a very comfortable house. Jacobean paper, a most unsightly carved oak staircase but pleasantly shallow treads. Pictures nicely chosen but of no particular artistic interest. A rich man's house, he thought. A man, not of bad taste, a man of conventional tastes. Good thick pile carpet of an agreeable plum-coloured texture.
On the first floor, the grenadier-like parlour-maid went to the first door along it. She opened it and stood back to let them go in but she made no announcement of names.
The Countess went in first and Sir Stafford Nye followed her. He heard the door shut quietly behind him.
There were four people in the room. Sitting behind a large desk which was well covered with papers, documents, an open map or two and presumably other papers which were in the course of discussion, was a large, fat man with a very yellow face. It was a face Sir Stafford Nye had seen before, though he could not for the moment attach the proper name to it. It was a man whom he had met only in a casual fashion, and yet the occasion had been an important one. He should know, yes, definitely he should know. But why — why wouldn't the name come?
With a slight struggle, the figure sitting at the desk rose to his feet. He took the Countess Renata's outstretched hand.
'You've arrived,' he said, 'splendid.'
'Yes. Let me introduce you, though I think you already know him. Sir Stafford Nye, Mr Robinson.'
Of course. In Sir Stafford Nye's brain something clicked like a camera. That fitted in, too, with another name. Pikeaway. To say that he knew all about Mr Robinson was not true. He knew about Mr Robinson all that Mr Robinson permitted to be known. His name, as far as anyone knew, was Robinson, though it might have been any name of foreign origin. No one had ever suggested anything of that kind.
Recognition came also of his personal appearance. The high forehead, the melancholy dark eyes, the large generous mouth, and the impressive white teeth — false teeth, presumably, but at any rate teeth of which it might have been said, like in Red Riding Hood, 'the better to eat you with, child!'
He knew, too, what Mr Robinson stood for. Just one simple word described it. Mr Robinson represented Money with a capital M. Money in its every aspect. International money, world-wide money, private home finances, banking, money not in the way that the average person looked at it.
