Away Went Love (7 page)

“But, Hope, surely you can put that aside for once,” Richard cried, and the anxiety in his tone made her feel how little her prejudice against Errol Tamberly mattered compared with the faint possibility of finding someone who would help Richard in his distress.

“The—the only way I could approach it would be through his rather tiresome sense of responsibility towards me,” she said slowly. “He does seem to think that, in becoming the guardian of the twins, he’s also taken on some sort of responsibility for me too. He’s quite wrong, of course, but—”

“We might make use of it,” suggested Richard, perhaps a shade too quickly, but, after all, his anxiety could be understood. “Would he believe that you could have got into debt to that extent?”

“No,” Hope said very promptly. “And, if he did, he’d expect to see the bills. Besides, Richard, I couldn’t tell an absolute and direct lie, even over this.”

“But it’s useless to tell him the truth,” exclaimed Richard, the faintest note of exasperation sounding through his anxiety. “As you yourself said, there’s not the slightest reason why he should lend the money to me. He’d simply turn the idea down flat, and I can’t say I should blame him.”

“No, of course—I didn’t mean that, exactly. But I should have to put it that I and a friend were in great trouble and—”

“Hope, that isn’t much good.”

“It’s
got
to be some good,” Hope retorted obstinately. “If I go to Errol Tamberly—and—and I think I’ll probably have to—you must leave it to me to decide what I say. I can’t and I won’t depart from the truth further than I can possibly help. I may not like him, but he’s a perfectly truthful and upright man himself, and I refuse to tell him lies.”

Richard was silent and for a moment he pressed his lips together as though he found Hope’s particular brand of honesty rather trying in the circumstances. Then his good nature and his sense of gratitude evidently reasserted themselves. His face cleared and he kissed her.

“You’re right, of course, dearest, and you must handle this thing your own way. For me the amazing thing is that you’re willing to help me at all. Almost any other girl would be furious and reproachful at being faced with a situation like this. No one but you would understand how it came about. But you do see, Hope, don’t you?—I daresay I’ve been unutterably stupid and—wicked, if you like—but it was because I wanted to be able to give you something really worthwhile. I swear it was. I wouldn’t have taken the risk for anything else on earth.”

“Yes, I know.” She returned his kiss eagerly, though her eyes were troubled. “But, please, Richard, don’t ever again think things like prosperity and luxuries and so on matter to me beside having you safe and—and honest.” She flushed a little as she brought out the last word, but her own uncompromising sense of honesty refused to allow her to call Richard’s lapse anything but what it was.

He made a slight face, but he said quite steadily: “All right. I’ll remember—just as I shall remember the lesson this whole thing has been. You needn’t worry about it ever happening again, my dear.”

She flung her arms round him and hugged him gratefully for this assurance. For the first time that evening she felt she had her old familiar Richard back.

“When are you going to make the attempt?” he asked, at last taking up his neglected cup of coffee.

“Tomorrow,” Hope said promptly. “He comes to the Laboratory on Mondays and I shan’t wait a moment longer than I need.—Oh, Richard, don’t drink that. It must be cold.” She hastily provided him with fresh coffee, though he protested with a smile that she bothered about him too much.

“I probably shan’t get a chance of speaking to him privately until the end of the afternoon,” Hope went on, thinking aloud and making her arrangements as she did so. “He isn’t the kind of man to let you bring up private matters during official hours, so he would consider the whole thing more—tolerantly”—she felt that was too optimistic a word as soon as she had uttered it—“if I went to see him after hours. More as the sister of the twins than as an assistant in the Lab., if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I know.” Richard nodded his approval.

She thought he was waiting to hear just how she meant to tackle the problem, but as she really had no idea herself at that moment, she said as much quite frankly.

“I’ll think it over very carefully,” she promised. “But a lot will have to depend on his mood and—and his first reactions.”

“I leave it entirely to you,” Richard told her, and though he smiled, his eyes said so plainly that his fate was practically in her hands that Hope felt more than ever responsible for bringing off her effort successfully.

For the short time longer that he stayed Hope devoted herself to trying to cheer and reassure him. He needed it
—
badly. She could see that. And in trying to raise his hopes she raised hers temporarily.

After all, Errol Tamberly
was
a very rich man—he
did
seem to entertain some sort of guardianly feeling towards her—he
might
be persuaded to help a friend of hers, so long as she could represent herself as being personally involved as well.

Not until Richard had bade her an affectionate goodnight and gone did Hope begin to remember the exact terms in which Errol Tamberly had spoken of Richard the previous day. Certainly she would have to conceal the identity of the “friend who needed help”! It was not going to be easy, from any point of view.

Not unnaturally, Hope spent a restless and broken night, and set out for the Laboratory next morning feeling singularly unprepared for the tackling of a crisis. She even found herself hoping in a cowardly way that some reason would prevent Dr. Tamberly from coming that day. But then she remembered that delaying the unpleasant interview would also mean delaying the solution of Richard’s problem. The sooner she got it over, the better.

Unaffected by her hopes one way or the other, Dr. Tamberly made his appearance in the Laboratory at the exact time when he might have been expected. He was, as one of the other junior assistants had once put it, almost terrifyingly punctual, and very correct in all the minor virtues.

His curt “Good morning” included Hope as merely one of the staff. And then he disappeared into his office, to which his shorthand-typist was almost immediately summoned.

When she emerged again, he came out too—on his way to a conference, and Hope realized that she had indeed been right when she had said there would be no chance to speak to him until the end of the day.

The reprieve both relieved and dismayed her. If
only
the whole dreadful business were over, one way or the other!—But it had to be one way—
not
the other. She simply could not face the prospect of going back to Richard to confess failure. During the night and this day she had had time to look realities in the face.

Failure to find that five hundred pounds would mean ruin for Richard—probably prison. It was impossible even to contemplate that. A prison sentence was something that happened to people one read about in the newspapers. Not to people one knew and loved. Not to Richard!

As the afternoon lengthened she grew calmer—perhaps with the calmness of despair. And when at last it was time to put away her work and go home, she took off her overall, smoothed her hair with an absent, nervous gesture, and went along to Dr. Tamberly’s private office.

She could not remember ever having hated anything more, but, calling on all the courage she had, she knocked on the door and, in answer to his abrupt “Come in,” entered the room.

He was sitting at his desk writing, but glanced up as she entered and spoke in some surprise.

“Hello! What do you want? Come on in and sit down.”

He was, Hope thought with faint amusement, decidedly more the guardian than the employer at the moment and, however much she might have resented that a few days ago, now she only hoped it might augur well for the interview.

He continued to write for a few minutes. Then he flung down his pen and gave her his entire attention.

“There, that’s finished. Well, what is it Hope?”

The guardianly mood again! He was certainly not in the habit of calling her by her Christian name.

“I wanted to talk to you about something quite—personal—”

“Yes?” He seemed surprised that she paused there. “Something about the twins?”

“No. Oh, no. Something about me and—and money.”

To her astonishment, he smiled with an air of grim indulgence.

“Money, eh? You want some, in fact?”

She flushed deeply.

“H-how did you guess?”

“Come, that’s not very difficult, surely? I suppose you outran the constable a bit while your parents were away, in the expectation that an indulgent father would pay up when he came back, and now you’re stuck. What’s the damage?”

Hope found that she was trembling. The fact that, within limits, he was prepared to be tolerant—even indulgent both disconcerting and unnerving. It made her all the more certain, somehow, that, outside those limits, he would be extremely hard to deal with.

“It isn’t—quite—as you imagine,” she got out, rather jerkily.

“No?”

“No—There’s really a very large sum involved.”

He tipped back his chair and regarded her.

“How much?” he demanded bluntly.

“Five hundred pounds.”

“Five
hundred
!” His chair dropped bade into position with a thud. “Good God, how did you manage that?”

She nervously passed the tip of her tongue over her lips.

“Doctor Tamberly, believe me, I wouldn’t have come to you if there had been any other way—”

“I believe you,” he said, and the dry significance which he gave to that made her flush again. “But that doesn’t explain why you have come to me at all. Why do you need five hundred pounds?”

This was the moment! Now she had got to make the best story she could.

“Well, you see, I and a friend—”

“What friend?”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said hastily. “I and this—this friend made a terribly unfortunate speculation. We—we made some money at first—then we came down with a crash and—”

“Do you mean you’ve been betting heavily and can’t pay your debts?”

“
No
!”

She realized the next moment that her tone was unreasonably shocked and indignant for one who was supposed to have speculated heavily.

“We—it was stocks and shares.”

“What do you know about stocks and shares?” he asked curiously. “I shouldn’t have thought they were much in your line.”

“They—aren’t, exactly.” She felt nervously that he might start testing her knowledge of the stock market at any moment. “He—my friend—did the actual business part of it and—”

“He fooled you out of your money, in fact. I suppose it was young Fander?”

“There was no question of fooling me out of my money,” Hope said with emphasis, because it was a relief to be able to deny part of his suggestion categorically. She was horrified to find how unerringly he identified Richard, and she hoped he would not demand a straight answer to an enquiry on that.

“Very well, then. It was a joint affair. By mutual consent you put your capital into some investment?”

“Yes.” She was breathing a little more easily now.

“But you were unfortunate and lost the lot?”

“Yes.”

“An expensive lesson, Hope. What makes you think I should pay for it?”

“Well—Oh!” She saw then that she had not covered the necessity for replacing the money.

“Exactly,” he said dryly. “Now let’s begin at the beginning again and tell the truth. Most of the money that was lost was put in by young Fander. Is that right?”

“I didn’t say it was Richard!”

“You don’t need to,” he said rather roughly. “No one but the man you think you’re in love with would persuade you to go in for something of this sort. Most of the money
—
perhaps”—he regarded her thoughtfully—“perhaps all of it—was put in by Fander. It’s gone and it’s imperative that the money is replaced. Therefore it’s not his own money. Am I right?”

She stared back at him in horrid fascination. It seemed to her—perhaps unreasonably—that his deduction was uncannily quick. Anyway, it was impossible to deny that he was right.

“Doctor Tamberly, will—will you please help us?”

He picked up his paper knife and balanced it thoughtfully on a paper weight.

“I really fail to see why I should pay out five hundred pounds for the sake of Richard Fander.”

“No—but for—for my sake?”

He glanced at her and frowned.

“You’re being sentimental, you know, Hope. The fellow deserves to go to jail.”

“Oh, I know it sounds like that, but you don’t know all the circumstances. He mustn’t go to—to prison. I’d do anything to prevent that.”

“Anything?”

“Why—why, yes—I think so.”

There was a short silence. Then Errol Tamberly tossed down the paper knife and leant back in his chair.