Beggar’s Choice (14 page)

“Are you writing to him?”

“Of course I am. I write to him by every mail. Wouldn't you like to know what I'm going to say about you?”

“Not if it's very bad. I'm a sensitive plant, and if you wrote harshly about me—I should just fade out.”

“'M——” said Corinna. She looks awfully pretty when she says “'M——” I expect she knows it too.

Our dance was just coming to an end, when she exclaimed and pulled me out of the stream.

“I've got a note for you, and I'm forgetting all about it!”

I felt very much surprised, because I couldn't think who could have given her a note. She took it out of a little silver bag and gave it to me. I felt more puzzled than ever. There was a small square envelope with a typed address, “Carthew Fairfax, Esq.,” and that was all.

“Who is it from?” I asked.

“I don't know.”

“But who gave it you?”

“A waiter put it down on the table in front of me.”

“A waiter?”

She nodded.

“Open it—that's the way to know who it's from.”

The music had stopped, and there were a lot of people passing us. I stood back to get out of their way and tore open the envelope.

There was a plain sheet of paper inside, or rather, part of a sheet of paper, for the top of it had been torn off, leaving the docked sheet almost square. Across this square was typed:

Accept any invitation extended to you. You are to go about and make friends. Look up old acquaintances and make new ones. Funds by first post to-morrow.

Z.10

I stared at the paper. It was thick and expensive. The bit that had been torn away would have had an embossed address on it and a telephone number—I'd have given something to see them. I put the note away in my pocket, and found Corinna looking at me with eyes like saucers.

“Well?” she said.

“I'm not any the wiser.”

“Really?”

“Really. Would you know the waiter who gave you the note?”

“No, I shouldn't—I never saw him.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's perfectly intriguing,” said Corinna. “I had just finished my soup, when a hand came over my shoulder—and of course I thought it was going to take my plate, but it didn't—it just put down that note and went away. And I was too perfectly surprised to do anything but stare at the envelope—because I didn't even know you were in the room. And when I turned round, you couldn't say there was any particular waiter near our table at all.”

Of course it's the easiest thing in the world to tip a waiter and tell him to let a girl have a note without seeing who gives it to her. I just wondered who had tipped the waiter. And as I was wondering, Corinna said “Oh!” and I looked down the room, and at the far end, coming through the open folding doors, I saw Anna Lang.

“Well, I'll tell any one she's handsome,” said Corinna, in the tone of one who concedes a single virtue.

Anna came in alone. The dancing floor was empty for the moment, and she crossed it slowly and with the most complete self-possession.

Corinna was quite right—she's handsome. and I'd never seen her look handsomer. She was dressed in some sort of rose-colored stuff which sparkled all over as if it were powdered with diamonds. She holds herself magnificently, and she walks like a Spanish woman or an Indian. Every one in the room was looking at her.

She came up to Corinna and shook hands. I didn't know whether she'd seen me or not.

“I've come after all,” she said. “Uncle John was so distressed at my missing your party. He begged me to take the car and run up—and as he really was going straight to bed after his dinner, I came.”

When Corinna had been nice and polite, Anna looked at me, and was surprised. I don't know how she thought I was going to believe she'd only just seen me, because I am six foot one to Corinna's five foot two, so it stands to reason she couldn't very well have seen her and missed me.

She said, “Car! What a surprise!”

I said, “Is it?” and Corinna laughed.

“Is it?” said Anna. “What am I to say to that? It's a very pleasant surprise to all your friends to find you've come out of your shell again.” She turned to Corinna. “We're very old friends, you know, and though I've come so late, I hope he's not too much booked up to dance with me.”

I was dancing the next with Fay, and I said so; but as I said it, she came up behind us and told me quite coolly that she was cutting my dance. After that there didn't seem to be any way out of dancing with Anna, so we danced. But when we had gone about half-way round the room, she said, in a low voice.

“I don't want to dance—I want to talk to you. Let's go and sit out somewhere. Up in the gallery's a good place if it's not too crowded.”

First of all I hoped it would be crowded, and then I decided that it might be just as well to have a good straight talk with Anna. If she was my mysterious employer, I was through, and the sooner she knew it the better.

The gallery runs across one side of the room, and at either end of it there are palms in pots, and a couple of chairs which are pretty well screened from view. She made a beeline for the nearest pair of chairs, and it just went through my mind that she seemed to know all about the place. And then I saw something that gave me the most furious amount to think about. Anna was looking at me, and I hope my face didn't give anything away. I stood aside to let her sit down, and then I took the outer of the two chairs myself.

What I had seen was this. Lying on the floor in front of my chair was one of the little sparkling diamond things which were sewn all over Anna's dress. I put my foot on it, because I didn't think she'd seen it, and I didn't want her to see it. It meant that Anna had been up in this gallery already to-night. She hadn't just come—she'd been up in the gallery in one of these screened seats, watching us all. It looked very much to me as if I had found my employer all right, because if she wasn't watching me, why should she first say she couldn't come, and then pretend she'd only just arrived, when, as a matter of fact, she must have been here some time? I felt most awfully sick about the whole thing, and I was determined to have an explanation.

All this takes a long time to write, but it didn't take any time to think. I just saw it in my mind like you see a picture hanging on a wall. By the time Anna had finished settling herself and getting into a becoming attitude, I was ready.

“I was very glad to see you,” I said.

“Were you? How nice of you!”

“Not very. I'm glad to see you because I want an explanation.”

“Do you? How unpleasant!”

Anna does annoy me when she talks like that. I wish she'd realize that making her voice sweet and arching her eyebrows at me simply doesn't cut any ice at all. If we were only happily uncivilized, I should shake her when she does it. Unfortunately one can't go about shaking people in modern evening dress—I think it's rather a pity myself. I expect I glowed a bit, but I wasn't going to let her put me off. I said,

“Look here, Anna, I want to know straight out whether you're my employer?”

Her eyebrows went nearly up to the roots of her hair.

“My—dear—Car!”

“Yes or no—are you?”

“No.” She began to laugh. “No, no, no, no.”

“I don't see anything to laugh at.”

She stopped laughing so suddenly that there was something startling about it. Her face turned tragic. She doesn't really look her best when she laughs, and I expect she remembered that and switched off into being the tragic muse.

“Why did you say that?” she asked.

“Because I wanted to know. The other day I had an appointment to meet some one with a view to earning five hundred pounds. You and Bobby Markham kept the appointment and took me down to Linwood. You offered me five hundred pounds to do something which I refused to do.” I stopped because I wasn't sure how much to tell her—I've never had what you might call an urge to tell Anna anything about my private affairs. At the same time I'd got to find out whether I was being jockeyed into taking money from her.

She looked at me rather strangely, leaning a little forward in her low chair.

“Yes, Car,” she said; and then, “You refused. I went home. That was all.”

“Was it? That's what I want to know. You see, next morning I got a letter saying that my original correspondent had not kept his appointment. He made another.”

“You went?” Her voice shook.

“Yes, I went.”

She had turned pale—I swear she had.

“And——”

“Don't you know?”

“No. Car, can't you see that I don't? You
must
see.” If it had been any one else, I should have said she was speaking the truth. “Tell me what happened.”

“No—I don't think I will. If you're not mixed up in it, you're not. But what I want to know is—why did you butt in on that first appointment of mine? If you're not in the affair now, what brought you into it then? You say you're not in it now. Well then, it was a private affair between me and some one else—a very private affair. How did you come to know about it? Why did you keep that appointment? Where, in fact, do you come in?”

She leaned back in her chair as soon as I began to ask my questions. This brought her face into shadow. The little sparkles on her dress caught the light when she moved. Then she stopped moving and there was one of those silences that feel as if they might go on forever. I wasn't going to break it. I wondered if she was thinking up a lie, or trying to make up her mind to tell the truth. Anyhow, it was up to her.

After a long time she sighed as if she was tired. Then she said,

“Car, if I tell you the truth, will you believe me?”

“Yes—if you tell me the truth,” I said.

“I don't suppose you will believe me, but this is what happened. I had come up to town, and I was looking for a place in the City where a friend of mine had told me you can get a marvelous reduction on Persian rugs—I wanted one for my bedroom. I couldn't find the number.”

I wondered what all this rigmarole was about. It sounded to me as if she was giving herself time to invent something, or to put the finishing touches to what she
had
invented. She looked at me all the time—the dark, mournful gaze stunt.

“There were two men walking just in front of me, and one of them said your name—he really did, Car. So of course I was startled and interested, and I came up a little nearer and listened to what they were saying. You know how people will talk in a London street when they think no one knows them.”

“What did they say?” I asked.

“One of them said, ‘I've talked to him on the telephone and made an appointment to meet him to-night at ten o'clock at the corner of Churt Row and Olding Crescent.' The other man said, ‘Will he come?' and the first man laughed and said, ‘He'd go farther than Putney for five hundred pounds! So would I if I were in his shoes!'”

“Well?” I said.

“They went on talking,” said Anna. “One of them was a little man in glasses, and the other was tall and thin. It was the little man who was going to meet you.”

I wondered about this little man. For the first time, I thought Anna might really be speaking the truth. Z.10 had kept under the shadow of the wall in Olding Crescent; but even in the dark you can tell a little man from a tall one, and I put him down at five foot five or so. And he wore glasses, because he kept putting up his hand and fiddling with them whilst we were talking. It wasn't so dark but that I could see when we moved.

I said, “A little man with glasses?”

“He had gray hair and a pointed ferrety nose,” said Anna. “He said, ‘Mind you, I shall test him very carefully before I use him. To begin with, I have made an appointment with him for to-night. But I shall not keep it—I shall leave him to kick his heels, and then make another appointment. That will test his temper and his keenness.'”

I was getting interested. Anna stopped, so I said,

“Go on.”

“There isn't any more,” she said. “The tall man looked round, saw how near I was, and said something that I didn't catch. They began to talk about other things, and a moment later they separated.”

I thought about that. It might have happened. A month ago I was walking down the Strand, and a man and a girl in front of me whom I had never seen before in my life were talking about Billy Rogers who was at my prep school. Things like that happen.

Anna went on looking at me as if she expected me to say something. After a bit I said,

“Why did you keep that appointment?”

She said “Oh!” as if I had made her angry.

“Well,” I said, “it seems to me it's a very natural thing for me to ask. What made you butt in on a business affair between me and some one you didn't know anything about?”

She lifted her hand and let it fall again on to her knee.

“I hadn't seen you for three years.”

That's the sort of thing that's most frightfully difficult to answer. It made me angry, and she said quickly,

“You don't believe that.”

I let that go.

“And what made you think of asking me to forge a check?”

“Hush!” she said. “Car—you promised—you promised!”

I thought she was frightened. She was acting of course. I don't think she can help acting—but under the acting she was frightened. I came to the conclusion that she really had been monkeying about with Uncle John's money, and I did just wonder whether she hadn't told me about it in confidence so as to shut my mouth. I didn't see how it could have come to my knowledge—but Anna would have known more about that than I did. Well, I thought that was about enough. I pushed back my chair, but she caught hold of my arm.

“You
promised
, Car! You'll keep your promise, if you won't help me in any other way.”