CHAPTER X

Mr. Wadham, Junior, a morning or so later, rang the bell at Number 94 Grosvenor Square and aired himself for a moment upon the broad doorstep, filled with a comfortable sense that this time, at least, in his prospective interview, he was destined to disturb the disconcerting equanimity of his distinguished client. He was duly admitted and ushered into the presence of the Marquis, who laid down the newspaper which he was reading, nodded affably to his visitor and pointed to a chair.

"Your request for an interview, Mr. Wadham," the former said, "anticipated my own desire to see you. Pray be seated. I am entirely at your service."

Mr. Wadham paused for a moment and decided to cross his legs. He was already struggling against that enervating sense of insignificance which his client's presence inevitably imposed upon him.

"We heard yesterday morning from Mr. Merridrew," he commenced. "He made us a remittance which was four hundred pounds short of what we expected. His explanation was that your lordship had received that sum from him."

"Quite right, Mr. Wadham," the Marquis assented affably. "Quite right. I was in the neighbourhood, and, finding Mr. Merridrew with a considerable sum of money in hand, I took from him precisely the amount you have stated."

"Your lordship has perhaps overlooked the fact," Mr. Wadham continued, "that we are that amount short of the interest on the Fakenham mortgage—Number Seven mortgage, we usually call it."

"Dear me!" the Marquis observed. "Surely such a trifling sum does not disturb your calculations? You do not run my affairs on so narrow a margin as this, I trust, Mr. Wadham?"

"It isn't a question of a narrow margin, your lordship," Mr. Wadham replied. "There is, as a rule, no margin at all. We usually have to make the amount up by overdrawing, or by advancing it ourselves. This time the firm wish me to point out that we are unable to do either."

"Dear me! Dear me!" the Marquis ejaculated, in a tone of some concern. "I had no idea, Mr. Wadham, if you will forgive my saying so, that your firm was in so impecunious a position."

"Impecunious?" the lawyer murmured, with his eyes fixed upon his client. "I scarcely follow your lordship."

"Did I not understand you to say," the Marquis continued, "that this trifle of four hundred pounds has upset your arrangements to such an extent that you are unable to make your customary payments on my behalf?"

"Will your lordship forgive my pointing out," Mr. Wadham explained, "that these payments are on your account, and that it is no part of the business of solicitors to finance their clients, without a special arrangement? We have our own more lucrative investments continually open to us, and we are at the present moment several thousand pounds out of pocket on account of recent law expenses."

"The whole thing," the Marquis pronounced, "seems to me very trifling. State in precise terms, if you please, Mr. Wadham, the object of your visit."

"To ask for your lordship's instructions as to the payment of twelve hundred pounds interest, due to-morrow," Mr. Wadham replied. "We have eight hundred pounds in hand from Mr. Merridrew. So far from having any other funds of your lordship's at our disposal, we are, as I have pointed out, your creditor for a somewhat considerable amount."

The Marquis was leaning back in his chair, the tips of his long, elegant fingers pressed gently together.

"It appears to me, Mr. Wadham," he said quietly, "that your visit is, in a sense, an admonitory one. Your firm resents—am I not right?—the fact that I have found it convenient to help myself to a portion of the revenue accruing from my estate."

"We should not presume for a moment to take up such an attitude," the lawyer protested. "On the other hand, the four hundred pounds in question requires replacement by to-morrow."

"And you find the raising of that sum inconvenient, eh, Mr. Wadham?"

The young man was distinctly ill at ease. His instructions were to be firm and dignified but by no means to offend; to deliver a formal protest against this tampering with funds already dedicate, but to do or say nothing which would give the Marquis any excuse for reprisals against the firm. Mr. Wadham began to wonder whether perhaps he was a person of small tact, or whether these instructions were more than usually difficult to carry out.

"There is no sacrifice, your lordship," he said slowly, "which my firm would hesitate to make in your interests and the interests of the Mandeleys estate. At the same time, the unexpected necessity for finding these sums of money is, I must confess, at times a strain upon us."

The Marquis nodded sympathetically. He rose to his feet, crossed the room towards his desk, which he unlocked with a key attached to a gold chain, and returned with a bundle of scrip in his hand.

"I have here, Mr. Wadham," he announced, "scrip in a very famous oil company, the face value of the shares being, I believe, a trifle over forty thousand pounds. I, in fact, paid that price for them at the beginning of the week."

The young lawyer uncrossed his legs and swallowed hard. He was prepared for many shocks, but this one seemed outside the region of all human probability.

"Did I understand your lordship to say that you had paid forty thousand pounds for them?" he gasped.

The Marquis assented with an equable little nod.

"I was somewhat favoured in the matter," he admitted, "as the value of the shares has, I believe, already considerably increased. The amount I actually paid for them was, in round figures, forty thousand and one hundred pounds—transfer duty, or something of that sort. I have little head for figures, as you know, Mr. Wadham. You had better take these—not for sale, mind, but for deposit at one of my banks. You will probably find that, under the circumstances, they will permit you to overdraw an additional five hundred pounds on my account, without embarrassing your own finances."

Mr. Wadham, Junior, took the bundle of scrip into his hand, and glanced hastily through it.

"The Pluto Oil Company of Arizona," he murmured reflectively.

"The name of the company is doubtless unknown to you," the Marquis observed indulgently; "they are, in fact, only just commencing operations—but it is the opinion of my friend and financial adviser, Mr. David Thain, that the forty thousand pounds' worth of shares you have in your hand will be worth at least two hundred thousand before the end of the year."

"Mr. David Thain, the multi-millionaire?" Mr. Wadham faltered.

"The same!"

The lawyer gripped the bundle hard in one hand, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again and struck out boldly.

"As your lordship's adviser," he said, "may I enquire as to the nature of the payment which you have made? Forty thousand pounds is not a sum which either of the banks with whom your lordship has credit—"

The Marquis waved his hand.

"My dear young friend," he explained, "it was not necessary for me to resort to banks. Mr. Thain suggested voluntarily that I should give him my note of hand for the amount. He quite understood that a man whose chief interest in the country is land does not keep such a sum as forty thousand pounds lying at his banker's."

Mr. Wadham groped for his hat.

"The shares shall be deposited, and the interest, of course, paid," he murmured. "I am sorry to have troubled your lordship in the matter."

"Not at all, not at all," the Marquis replied genially. "Very pleased to see you at any time, Mr. Wadham, on any subject connected with the estates. Ah!" he added, glancing at a card which a footman at that moment had brought in, "here is my friend, Mr. David Thain. You must meet him, Mr. Wadham. Such men are rare in this country. They form most interesting adjuncts to our modern civilisation. Show Mr. Thain in, Thomas."

David Thain duly arrived. He shook hands with the Marquis and was by him presented to Mr. Wadham.

"Mr. Wadham is my legal advisor—or rather a junior representative of the firm who conduct my affairs," the Marquis explained. "I have just handed him over my shares in the Pluto Oil Company, for safe keeping."

"Very glad to know you, Mr. Thain," the young lawyer observed, reverently shaking hands. "One reads a great deal of your financial exploits in the newspapers just now."

"I really can't see," David replied, "that your press men are much better over here than in the States. In any case, Mr. Wadham, you mustn't believe all you read."

"You will give my regards to your father and the other members of your firm," the Marquis concluded, with the faintest possible indication of his head towards the door. "I shall probably have some instructions of an interesting nature to give you before long, with regard to the cancellation of, at any rate, the home estate mortgages. Ah, here is Thomas! Very much obliged for your attention, Mr. Wadham."

The lawyer made his adieux in somewhat confused fashion, and left the room with an ignominious sense of dismissal. The Marquis glanced at the clock.

"I am a creature of habit, Mr. Thain," he said. "At twelve o'clock I walk for an hour in the Park. Will you give me the honour of your company?"

"Anywhere you say," David assented. "There was just a little matter I wanted to mention—nothing important."

"Precisely," the Marquis murmured, ringing the bell. "You will return to lunch, of course? I shall take no denial. My daughter would be distressed to miss you. Gossett," he added, as they moved out into the hall, "my coat and hat, and tell Lady Letitia that Mr. Thain will lunch with us. Have you any idea, Gossett," he added, as he accepted his cane and gloves, "how to make cocktails?"

"I have a book of recipes, your lordship," was the somewhat doubtful reply.

"See that cocktails are served before luncheon," the Marquis instructed. "You see, we are not altogether ignorant of the habits of your countrymen, Mr. Thain, even if in some cases we may not ourselves have adopted them. A cocktail is, I gather, some form of alcoholic nourishment?"

Thain indulged in what was, for him, a rare luxury—a hearty laugh. He threw his head back, showing all his white, firm teeth, and the little lines at the sides of his eyes wrinkled up with enjoyment. Suddenly a voice on the stairs interposed.

"I must know the joke," Letitia declared. "How do you do, Mr. Thain? A laugh like yours makes one feel positively delirious with the desire to share it. Father, do tell me what it was?"

"To tell you the truth, my dear," the Marquis replied, quite honestly, "I am a little ignorant as to the humorous application of a remark I have just made."

"It was your father's definition of an American institution, Lady Letitia," David explained, "and I am afraid that its humour depended solely upon a certain environment which I was able to conjure up in my mind—a barroom at the Waldorf, say."

"Another disappointment," Letitia sighed.

"Mr. Thain is lunching with us, dear," her father announced.

"So glad," Letitia remarked, nodding to Thain. "We shall meet again, then."

She passed out of the front door, and David, who was very observant, noticing several things, was silent for the first few moments after her departure. She appeared, as she could scarcely fail to appear in his eyes, charming even to the point of bewilderment. Yet, although the wind was cold, she had only a small and very inadequate fur collar around her neck. Her tailormade suit showed signs of constant brushings. There was a little—a very modest little patch upon her shoes, and a very distinct darn upon her gloves. David frowned in puzzled fashion as he turned into the Park. Some of his boyish antipathies, so carefully nursed by his uncle and fostered by the atmosphere in which they lived during his early days in America, flashed into his memory, only to be instantly discarded. He remembered the drawn blinds, the weedy walks of Mandeleys; the hasty glimpse which he had had of silent, empty rooms and uncarpeted ways in the higher storeys of the mansion in Grosvenor Square.

"I am not a person," the Marquis observed, as they proceeded upon their promenade, "who needs a great deal of exercise, but I am almost a slave to habit, and for many years, when in town, it has been my custom to walk here for an hour, to exchange greetings, perhaps, with a few acquaintances, to call at my club for ten minutes and take a glass of dry sherry before luncheon. In the afternoons," he went on, "I occasionally play a round of golf at Ranelagh. Are you an expert at the game, Mr. Thain?"

"I have made blasphemous efforts," David confessed, "but I certainly cannot call myself an expert. Perhaps what is known as the American spirit has rather interfered with my efforts. You see, we want to get things done too quickly. Golf is a game eminently suited to the British temperament."

"You are doubtless right," the Marquis murmured. "That loitering backward swing, eh?—the lazy indisposition to raise one's head? I follow you, Mr. Thain. Your call this morning, by-the-by," he went on. "You have some news, perhaps, of these Pluto Oils?"

David shook his head.

"I came to see you," he announced, "upon a different matter."