Meet The Baron (15 page)

He waited for the fit of coughing to pass, and then repeated his question. After a moment’s hesitation the pug took a package from his pocket and handed it to his captor. The latter unwrapped two slim books, and whistled when he saw them. They were the last things he had expected.

“And he told you to take my bank pass-books, did he?” His voice was hard again.

“Yus.”

“And you looked at them?”

“I ain’t, mister, I ain’t, I swear. I wouldn’t understand them things if I did. I - ”

“Ain’t,” said Mannering. He scowled. “You have.”

“But I - ”

“I know. You ain’t. But you have, George. Just think a minute now. You looked at them, and one had four figures and the other four or five. You’re not sure which. You just glanced at them when I came in. Isn’t that so?”

The pug’s eyes glistened.

“I - I git you, mister.”

“You’d better. Tell Mr Septimus Lee that: one book four figures, the other four or five. If you don’t - and I shall have little difficulty in finding whether you do or not - if you don’t, George, I shall whisper to Septimus the single word ‘Rosa.’ You still get me?”

“I swear, mister - ”

“So you don’t go to Sunday School, George? Well, well. Now run along, will you? I want to think.”

If he spoke the truth, however, he derived little pleasure from his thoughts. He had convinced himself that the best thing to do was to let the burglar go, but as he pondered over the affair he realised that Lee was clever indeed. The Jew had not expected to get the pearls back, but he had tried to satisfy himself about the state of Mannering’s bank balance.

Mannering was still flushed with his victory over the Jew, but he realised that the other was dangerous, more dangerous perhaps than the police. The one thing to do, he told himself, was to visit Lee; probably nothing else would be so convincing. He would stick to his promise: he would not tell Lee that the pug had mentioned the Rosas; but there was nothing to prevent him from putting two and two together after recognising the man as Lee’s chauffeur.

“I owe you an apology, Mr Mannering. I offer it.”

“I owe you,” grunted John Mannering, “a beating up, brother to the one I handed out to that darned chauffeur of yours. Yes, I saw him outside as I came in. His nose is very sore, and I think you - ”

“You are not going to ask me to believe,” said Septimus Lee suavely, “that you will offer physical violence to a man so much older than yourself, Mr Mannering? I repeat, I offer you my apology. If you think deeply you will realise that it was a very natural thing for me to suspect - ”

“Not unless you were a - ”

Mannering broke off, and coloured. He did it well, and a peculiar little smile hovered round Septimus Lee’s thin lips.

“You weren’t going to say ‘crook,’ Mr Mannering? Such an awkward word, and - well, your interest in the Rosa pearls would have admitted a very strange construction, wouldn’t it? From the police, I mean, or even your friends.”

Mannering rubbed his chin in apparent agitation.

“Ye-es,” he admitted. He frowned. “All the same, I’ll make sure it’s the last business I ever do with you, Lee.”

“To my eternal regret,” murmured Lee.

Mannering glared at him for a moment, and then turned away, opening the door before the clerk could arrive. Septimus Lee smiled and sighed; his conviction, as Mannering went out, was that he had made a mistake about the man.

“And that,” Mannering told himself, “will keep Mr Lee off the grass for a little while. But he’s a crafty old devil. I’ll have to be careful.”

He did his best to forget the interview, and it was not long before he was thinking of a certain recent acquaintance. He smiled a little, and decided to pay a visit immediately.

Mr (late Herr) Karl Seltzer was a middle-aged, bullet-headed, placid, and kindly German who specialised in the teaching of languages. In many ways Seltzer was unique. To hear him talk in English, French, German, Russian, or a dozen different languages was a revelation. He sounded like a different man. Not only was the accent perfect, but he was able to adapt his voice to the very tones of the races whose language he was speaking.

Mannering had heard of him casually, and, realising that it was essential to be able to control - and if necessary change - his voice on occasions, he had started a course of lessons. The inflection was a matter of practice, and Seltzer was happy to find so adept a pupil; what he would have thought if he had known why Mannering was so anxious to be able to control the timbre and tone of his voice Mannering preferred not to ask himself.

The German’s square face brightened as Mannering entered his office in Wardour Street, for Mannering was amiable as well as intelligent.

“A pleasure to see you, Mr Mannering,” he greeted.

“And not so bad to see you,” smiled Mannering. “I’ve just popped in for ten minutes,” he added, “to learn to be a Frenchman.”

“To learn the voice of a Frenchman,” corrected the tutor. “It would be a very difficult matter, Mr Mannering, to make you look anything but English.”

“That’s something,” Mannering murmured, but he grinned to himself Seltzer would go a long way before delivering so effective a back-hander.

After twenty minutes Mannering left the office and surprised himself by asking for cigarettes in fluent French. The girl at the kiosk looked at him bemusedly and demanded, “Ai?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mannering, with a smile that made her think of him on and off for the rest of the day. “Fifty Virginia Fives, please.”

He paid for the cigarettes, smiled again, and walked on, thinking of the effectiveness of Seltzer’s lessons. The possibility that he might spoil his ability to act quickly in an emergency by developing technique too much did not worry him a great deal. The occasion for using two or three entirely different-sounding voices did not come frequently, it was true, but it was an angle of his new profession that he found fascinating. He wondered how many years would pass before he was really confident of himself in every way.

Then he put the thought on one side and dwelt pleasantly on the next few hours. He was meeting Lorna at the Elan, and he had been looking forward to it all day. He saw her frequently - almost too frequently for his peace of mind - and there had been no meeting yet that he had not enjoyed thoroughly. He believed she could say the same.

He walked slowly towards the hotel, knowing that he was in good time. He felt at peace with the world. A warm sun was shining, but London was not too hot. The inevitable streaming crowds passed him, coming from heaven knew where. He wondered what they would think if they knew who was passing.

He reached the Elan, and forgot the subject, for Lorna followed almost on his heels.

“Am I late or are you early?” she asked, as they shook hands.

“We’re both marvels of punctuality,” said Mannering. “Shall we eat here, or do you know of a better manger.”

“Here, I’m afraid. I must be home by half-past two.”

“Duty calling - or parents,” chuckled Mannering.

As she peered at the menu he studied her thick, well-marked brows, the delicacy of her skin, the upward curve of her lips. Not for the first time he wondered why she so often was quiet almost to sullenness, why the expression in her fine eyes was so often mutinous. She seemed to bear a grudge against life, although there were moments when she forgot it, and when he forgot everything but the fact that they were together.

A week never passed that he did not see her; usually they met three or four times. The verbal fencing of the first meeting had gone. They spoke little to each other, but both enjoyed the long silences of real companionship. The ghost of Marie Overndon was dimming.

“Still keeping busy?” he asked, as they waited.

“Plenty to do,” she said. “I’m still waiting to paint you.”

“I still prefer photographs,” Mannering laughed.

“I think I’ll have the clear soup,” said Lorna obscurely.

Mannering looked about him during the meal. The Elan, at that time, was reaching the peak of its fame. Twice in as many months foreign royalties had graced it with their presence, and the crowd of moneyed hopefuls, hangers-on, and dilettanti grew larger week by week. Although it had the largest exclusive dining floor in London only a table here and there was unoccupied, and two Cabinet Ministers were present.

“What’s attracting you?” Lorna asked suddenly. Mannering smiled, and motioned to a far corner.

“I was looking at the Countess,’ he said “She’s telling some one about a brooch . . .”

“Emma? Is she here” Lorna Fauntley looked round, and smiled as she saw the Dowager Countess of Kenton talking animatedly with three companions at a table near the orchestra.

“With the Americans,” Lorna added, a moment later.

“Newcomers?”

“Hm-hm. I believe they’ve already been asked to meet the fascinating Mr Mannering.”

Mannering chuckled. His companion saw the flash of his white teeth, the fascinating - that was the right word! - gleam in his eyes. A cloud passed through hers, lingering for a few moments.

Mannering affected not to notice it.

“When and where?” he asked.

“Langford Terrace,” said Lorna. “Do you know, I think the Fauntley stock has gone up several points since it put a collar round you.”

“How sweetly you express it!” said Mannering.

Lorna laughed, but there was bitterness in her eyes and in her expression. Mannering did not pretend not to notice it; this time only a fool could have failed .

“Lorna,” he said quietly.

“Do you think, one day soon, we could talk of marriage?”

There was silence for a moment. Her eyes filled with something which was closely akin to fear. Her voice lacked its usual steadiness as she spoke.

“Please,” she said, “please don’t, ever. I’m not the marrying kind, John. Forget it, will you.”

Mannering eyed her reflectively.

He knew that he would not have agreed if his reputed wealth had been real; he was beginning to realise that Lorna Fauntley, so self-reliant, rebellious, competent, graceful withal, and beautiful with that dark, stormy beauty which had intrigued him when he had first met her, now obsessed him. There was mystery in her smouldering eyes, and challenge. She seemed to suffer, and Mannering, with his knowledge of the months which had followed his visit to Overndon Manor, believed that he understood the cause of that suffering.

But he nodded slowly; they spoke of other things.

It was on the following day that Mannering looked at himself in a mirror, the dressing-table mirror in his bedroom at the Elan Hotel.

“You’re a prize ass, J.M.,” he said quietly. (The habit of talking to himself had commenced soon after his first excursion into the territory of other people’s property, and he indulged in it more and more as time went on.) “A gold medallist in fools. You went into this because you made an ass of yourself over a woman; you can’t want to get out of it because of another. Oh, I know she’s different; I know the thing’s taboo between us; I know - Stop it, J.M.! You can’t get out. Or if you do you’re scuppered. Do you get that? Scuppered, or as near as makes no difference. One day, if you make enough, yes . . .”

He broke off suddenly, and started as a tap came on the door of the outer room.

He looked at himself in the mirror again. His face had paled a little, and his lips were very close together. He was jumpy. The tap on the door had scared him momentarily. Odd how his nerves were a long way from steady - outside his job.

He lit a cigarette as he walked into the outer room and called, “Come in.” The door opened, more slowly than usual. Mannering felt his blood racing; there were times when he dreaded unexpected visitors, and fancied Bristow, for instance, putting awkward questions. Now...

“Damn!” he muttered again, and then exploded: “Jimmy, you smothering son of a - ”

“You leave my ancestry alone,” said Jimmy Randall cheerfully. He was a well-built man, fleshier than Mannering, but not fat; his face was pleasantly proportioned, although few would have called him handsome. But the lazy grin on his lips and in his eyes endeared him to most people.

“Just why,” inquired Mannering, with some warmth, “did you come in like that?”

Randall cocked his head and frowned.

“Hump! You’re not well, J.M. That was a joke.”

“A joke?”

“Don’t Wodehouse me,” retorted Randall; “and for the love of Mike give me a cigarette.”

Mannering offered his case, and extended his lighter gravely. He realised that Randall was in humorous mood, and Jimmy Randall on such occasions was impossible and thick-skinned. Randall sent a stream of smoke towards the ceiling, and then grinned, howbeit with a certain nervousness.

“Ill?” asked Mannering sympathetically.

Randall nodded, and then shook his head. That there was something worrying him Mannering could see, and he felt uneasy. This was one of the sides of his new life that he found worrying - the constant fear that someone - friend or foe didn’t matter - had guessed or learned of his activities.

“No,” said Randall at last. “I was - I was wondering, J.M., whether you’d like to come down to Somerset for a week or two.”

“That must be why you cracked that joke just now,” said Mannering soberly. He frowned a little. “What is worrying you?” he demanded.

Randall laughed, as if relieved at the thought that the other had half guessed.

“Well, I - it’s some time now since Toby and I tried to . . .”

“Set my feet on the straight and narrow path. Look here” - Mannering seemed genuinely apprehensive - “is this becoming a life’s habit?”

“Well,” said Randall, easing his collar, “not exactly. What I’m really trying to get out - but you’re such a funny cuss I don’t know how to put it - is that an old fla - friend of yours is due in town at the end of the week. And - ”

“An old flame,” mused Mannering. “Mimi, Madaline, Alice - ”

Randall shook his head, and Mannering scowled, uncertain whether this was a further display of the other’s humour. The idea seeped into his mind slowly, and the smile gradually disappeared. He hardly realised that his body had gone rigid, and that his face was set very grimly. Then he laughed - a forced laugh without a trace of humour.