The Dusky Hour (2 page)

“Ah,” breathed Mr. Moffatt, and he pushed his glass of wine away – a thing that he had never done in all his life before – and he forgot to pass the decanter to Mr. Larson, ruefully aware his own glass was empty, and had been for some time. “Ah,” said Mr. Moffatt again.

“I don't know why they do it,” Mr. Pegley protested earnestly. “I don't know even how they meet their liabilities in these days, with all the taxes they clap on land. Why, to-day, the five thousand acres in a ring fence our fathers used to dream of – more a liability than an asset.”

“Pretty heavy liability, too,” declared Mr. Moffatt, still neglectful of that excellent and sound port of the 1904 vintage, still forgetful of Larson's empty glass, “and you've got to pay taxes on that liability, too – talk about four and six in the pound! Jolly lucky if you get off with double that.”

“I know, I know,” said Mr. Pegley, with a world of sympathy in his soft, caressing tones.

“I admit,” said Mr. Larson, but a little as if he deeply regretted having to agree with anything Mr. Pegley said, “I admit the landed classes are at present most unfairly taxed. The trouble is, Moffatt,” he told their host, with one of his rare and charming smiles, “you country gentlemen don't command votes enough. I was dining” – he paused, checked himself on the edge of what would evidently have been a breach of confidence –”I have personal knowledge,” he went on, “that the Chancellor has been told so himself in the plainest language. He admitted it; all he said was, he could do nothing. As the – the person I am speaking of said afterwards, ‘Politicians never can do anything.'”

Mr. Moffatt expressed a brief but lurid hope anent the future of all politicians.

Mr. Larson, twiddling his empty glass, for his host was still far too absorbed to remember the port, relapsed into his accustomed silence. Mr. Pegley went on talking. Mr. Moffatt continued to listen, to listen as uncertain heirs listen to the reading of a rich man's will.

“I mustn't give names,” said Mr. Pegley smilingly, “but I can assure you for one list of investments my clients show me that I can O.K., take my fee for examining, and never worry about again, I get half a dozen that are simply deplorable in their neglect of opportunity, and at least one or two where a very slight readjustment can treble the return. Even in a really good list there is often opportunity for a change that may mean a few hundreds extra with equal security – not to be sneezed at these days. I remember after the war – I had just come out of hospital and was trying to pick up the threads again – I was shown a list; £50,000 capital. A lump in the two and a half's – good enough if two and a half suits you and you can meet your social position on it. Another lump in the five per cent war loan – good enough then, but, as I told my client, liable to a cut as soon as the Government was ready.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Moffatt again, thinking ruefully of his comfortable little £100 a year from war loan abruptly and bewilderingly turned into £70.

“The rest,” Mr. Pegley went on, “the weirdest stuff you ever saw. I remember one item. Three thousand in a dead alive old family business that just about kept itself going but had a valuable freehold that made the capital safe. Well, I drew up a scheme for that man. No. Thanked me, but wouldn't change a thing. His look-out. I got my fee. Whether he acted on my advice or not was his affair. I met him a few months back. He was getting twelve hundred a year from his consols. His thousand from war loan had been cut to £700. The rest of his capital brought him about £500. His estate in the Cotswolds put him in wrong a tidy sum every year.”

Mr. Moffatt groaned sympathetically. His own land did not “put him in wrong” by any means, but when he looked at his yearly outlay he often believed it did.

“Meant he had under a thou, to keep up his position on couldn't be done, of course. Well, believe me or not,” said Mr. Pegley, using a favourite expression of his, “that man still had by him the list of suggested investments shown in the scheme I drew up for him. The first item had gone down the drain – total loss. It happens even with a deal you feel sure of, though I had marked it ‘Speculative.' But the rest showed a return for that year of grace as near £17,000 per annum as makes no difference. I admit that was partly because the other item I had marked ‘Speculative' had turned up trumps – much better than I expected, though I thought it good. That happens, too. It was bringing in more that year than the whole of the poor devil's actual income – and then some. Not so bad, eh? I agree it was a gold-mine, and therefore a wasting asset. But, all the same, good for another twenty years in full yield and for another twenty tailing off. Besides the chance of another strike. ‘If I had done as you advised' he told me, looking a bit thin about the gills; and then the bus he was waiting for because he couldn't afford a taxi came along, and he jumped on. I felt a bit sorry for him – and sorry there wouldn't be any Christmas whisky turning up from him either. I own up, I do appreciate it when clients show they haven't quite forgotten.”

He sighed sentimentally and lapsed into silence. Mr. Moffatt continued to stare solemnly at his glass of port, still forgetting to drink it, still forgetting to pass on the decanter. He was lost in dreams, dreams of golden streams pouring automatically into his banking account, enormous ceaseless quarterly dividends declared by benevolent directors for the benefit of their shareholders. Why not? he thought. Mr. Larson, with the regretful look at the motionless decanter of one who finally abandons hope, took a pencil and card from his pocket and began to write in his small, precise hand. Mr. Pegley watched him sideways, scowling a little. Mr. Moffatt woke suddenly from his abstraction. 

“Shall we go into the drawing-room?” he said. “I expect Ena's got the coffee waiting for us.”

They all three rose, Mr. Moffatt still forgetful of his port he left untouched in its glass on the table – a circumstance that made the pale, thin, softly moving butler, a man named Reeves who had not been long in his present situation, lift his eyebrows in surprise before he drank it off himself, and another to keep it company.

In the drawing-room, Mr. Moffatt's daughter, Ena, was sitting alone, waiting for them. She was small, slim, with small, attractive, well-shaped features, solemn eyes, about her a general look of health and the outdoors that went oddly enough with her reddened lips of an unnatural crimson, her painted finger-nails, the plucked ugliness of her eyebrows whereby she claimed her right to share in all the bored sophistication of modern youth. She was dividing her attention between her own thoughts, a Persian kitten – named Gwendolene – a cigarette she had allowed to go out because really she hated the things, a new novel, a magazine that told how to knit jumpers of incredible fascination, and a small table on which stood a coffee-pot, a spirit-lamp, a kettle, cups, and so on. In another part of the room stood a bridge-table, with cards and scoring-pads all ready. Mr. Moffatt was, somewhat unexpectedly, a keen and successful bridge-player who had even taken part in tournaments. Remarkable to see how neatly and swiftly those big, rather clumsy-looking hands of his could shuffle and deal the cards.

The coffee was already brewed, and Ena began to pour it out as the three men came in.

“Where's Noll?” her father said to her.

“Messing about with the snaps he's been taking,” Ena answered. “Wants to develop some of 'em.”

 “Better tell him the coffee's ready,” suggested Mr. Moffatt.

“He can come for it when he wants to,” replied Ena with sisterly indifference.

Mr. Pegley, sipping his coffee, began to praise it. Ena listened indifferently. She knew she could make coffee as it should be made and so seldom is. Now, if anyone had praised a cocktail of her mixing – but, then, no one ever did, nor even drank it if that extremity could be avoided.

“There's a legend,” Mr. Pegley was saying, “that you only get good coffee in Turkey, the States, and France. In France it's half chicory, in Turkey it's just mud, and in the States it's all cream. Now this is the real thing.”

Then he began to talk about a coffee-making machine about to be put on the market, for which, he said, he was providing the finance.

“Speculative side-line,” he explained; “not the sort of thing I could recommend to the clients who do me the honour to consult me about their list of investments.”

Apparently with this machine you put the raw beans in at one end, touched a button, and in a minute or two a stream of perfect coffee poured into the waiting cups at the other end.

Ena listened, polite but bored. She hated machines. She felt they had a secret grudge against her. Whenever she went near one, it always refused to work, while her brother, Noll, had only to touch the wretched things and at once they would purr away contentedly. Ena felt it was hardly fair. She said:

“How lovely, Mr. Pegley, but it wouldn't do for us. We haven't electricity. Dad says he can't afford to install it.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” Mr. Pegley agreed. “Unfortunately, there is that.” He paused. “So unnecessary,” he murmured, as if to himself; “so very unnecessary.”

Mr. Larson strolled over, his coffee in his hand, to Mr. Moffatt, and dropped before him the card he had written in the dining-room. It bore the words:

“Share Pusher.”

Mr. Moffatt looked very startled. His eyes and mouth opened to their widest. His face, red with an outdoor life, went redder still. Before he could speak the door opened and there appeared the pale, soft-moving butler, a little more pale, more softly moving even than usual.

“Colonel Warden to see you, sir,” he said. “In the library, sir. On business. I was to say he wouldn't keep you more than a minute or two.”

“Colonel Warden?” repeated Mr. Moffatt, surprised. “Our chief constable,” he explained to the two men.

“Oh, dear,” exclaimed Ena, turning quite pale. “I do hope Noll hasn't been speeding again or anything.”

“Warden wouldn't come himself about that,” her father said. “Is Colonel Warden alone?” he asked the butler.

“No, sir,” Reeves answered, glancing uneasily over his shoulder. “A Scotland Yard man's with him – a detective-sergeant. Bobby Owen his name is.”

Mr. Moffatt put down his cup and rose to his feet. Mr. Pegley looked startled and uneasy. Mr. Larson was staring straight at him, and Mr. Pegley, catching his eye, looked more uneasy still. Ena, too, continued to look a little frightened, for she had a well-founded mistrust of her brother, once he got into that sports car of his that seemed to go to his head as cocktails went to her own. With a word of apology to his guests, Mr. Moffatt left the room.

The library was at the back of the house, a pleasant, comfortable apartment overlooking the rose-garden and the tennis-court and containing, too, some really fine old eighteenth-century furniture and one incongruously new roll-top desk in fumed oak. Mr. Moffatt had seen it advertised as necessary to all aiming at modern efficiency, and had reduced Ena nearly to tears by insisting upon installing it in the library, which served also as his business room and general sanctum and defence against all domestic worries and intrusions. It was here Ena came once a month with her housekeeping books, and here that she extracted with difficulty the sums necessary to settle the amounts owing, for Mr. Moffatt had a firm conviction that houses could easily be run without cash. An appeal for money for another new frock or for an extra visit to town met as a rule with a generous response, but a greengrocer's bill or the coal-merchant's account came always as a fresh surprise and a fresh imposition. Thither, too, came Noll Moffatt to be informed stormily that that sort of thing had got to be stopped, that when he, Mr. Moffatt, was his, Noll's age, etc., etc., and finally to depart with sufficient to cover all pressing liabilities, since Mr. Moffatt's worst roarings were the more tolerable in that they generally ended in the production of a chequebook. Noll Moffatt, by the way, was supposed to be reading for the Bar. In actual fact his chief interest was photography and his one ambition was to become a camera-man in a film studio. But there Mr. Moffatt drew a very thick, black line, seeing, as he did, little difference between a camera-man in a film studio and a seaside photographer touting on the beach. The Church, the Army, or the Bar – the Stock Exchange at a pinch – for a Moffatt of Sevens, on the Berkshire boundary; no other profession existed.

As up to the present the film companies seemed to share Mr. Moffatt's objections to Noll's securing work with them, the young man spent most of his time at home, exploring the possibilities of novel “shots” and producing occasionally results of some interest. There was, for instance, one sequence in colour of chickens, hatching out, taken on a small poultry farm near – the Towers Farm – that had induced the Super Production Picture Company to show a gleam of interest in his work.

In this room, then, there now waited Colonel Warden, the county chief constable, a tall, strongly built, military-looking man, standing with his back to the fire. At a respectful distance stood his companion, Detective-Sergeant Bobby Owen, of the C.I.D., Scotland Yard, studying with interest a map of the surrounding country and looking rather puzzled over it.

The door opened and Mr. Moffatt came in. The colonel apologised for troubling him at so late an hour. Mr. Moffatt said that was all right; always pleased to see the colonel; at least, unless it was any fresh performance of his young hopeful in the sports car rashly presented to him on his twenty-first birthday; and the colonel said, oh, no, nothing like that: the young man had of late been more careful to confine his exploits to the unrestricted roads where you could break your own neck or your neighbour's within the four corners of the law.

“It's really,” explained the colonel, “about that bad smash there was yesterday near Battling Copse on your west boundary. You've heard of it?”