Lucky Logan Finds Love (3 page)

Belinda gave a little moan.

“I cannot – believe – it! How can – this have happened? Where is the – money we always – had?”

“It has all gone,” D’Arcy Rowland replied in a hard voice, “and a great deal more besides.”

Belinda clasped her hands together, trying to remain calm.

She felt that her brain was whirling.

She drew in several deep breaths before she stammered,

“I suppose we have – something in the – house you could sell?”

“The house has gone too!”

Belinda stared at him.

“Gone? H-how is – that – possible? It belongs to –
me!”

“I know,” D’Arcy Rowland retorted, “but I pledged it at the bank with its contents and – ”

He paused for a moment.

Then, as if he forced himself tell the truth, he added,

“I said that you understood the situation and I forged your – signature.”

“But – how could you
do
such a – thing,” Belinda gasped.

Her stepfather did not answer and she said,

“Could I not – somehow – claim it back and say it was a – mistake?”

“If you do that, I shall be arrested for forgery in addition to other things for which I am being dunned,” D’Arcy Rowland replied. “I think the penalty for that is penal servitude!”

Belinda wanted to scream.

Instead, she was silent until in a trembling voice she asked,

“What can – we do – if the house has – gone and we have no money – we have – nowhere to go!”

There was silence until her stepfather muttered,

“I suppose I should apologise to you, but words are hopelessly inadequate. My only excuse is that I loved your mother as I have never loved another woman.”

Now there was a little warmth in his voice as he went on,

“As I expect you know, there have been dozens of women in my life. But your mother was different. When I lost her, I thought I would go mad!”

There was an agony in the way he spoke that Belinda did not miss.

“In fact, I
did
go mad,” he continued. “I went to London and tried by every means in my power to forget what I had lost. I gave parties that cost money and presents to women who made me sick because they were not your mother.”

He looked at Belinda for a moment, saw her stricken eyes, and added,

“I suppose I should not be telling you this, but you may as well hear the truth. I indulged in every depravity available, simply to try and cure the ache in my heart. But I failed.”

“I-I think I – understand,” Belinda murmured.

“It is only now that I realise I have not only destroyed myself, but you,” he said. “The duns are waiting to take me before the Magistrates, and the bank has given me one month to find what I owe them before they foreclose on this house and we are thrown into the gutter!”

Belinda gave a little cry.

Then she asked,

“What about the – servants? Bates has been with – us for nearly – forty years and Mrs. Bates is – not strong. They will never – find another position and – will end up in the workhouse.”

“Where we will join them,” D’Arcy Rowland said sharply.

“There must be – something we can do – something!” Belinda whispered.

She was fighting against the horror that was seeping over her.

She was trying to use her brain as her father had taught her to do.

“There – must be – something!”she repeated.

“There is something,” her stepfather answered, “if you will agree to it.”

He finished his glass of champagne as he spoke. Putting it on a table, he sat down on the sofa beside her.

“Perhaps,” he said in a conciliatory tone, “I should have told you the situation more gently, but I wanted you to understand first what we are up against before I told you that there is one ray of hope at the end of a very dark tunnel.”

He was now speaking in the way he had always spoken to her mother.

Belinda knew it made him irresistible, as there was something unusually attractive about his voice.

She had once heard one of the men who stayed at the house state,

“D’Arcy can charm the birds off the trees and how often has he done so, I wonder?”

Everybody had laughed.

Belinda thought now that he was going to try and charm her and she had the distinct feeling it would be something that she should resist.

At the same time, she was asking herself how she could possibly give up her home, the house her mother had made so beautiful and which her father had always been so proud of.

She could hardly believe that her stepfather should have forged her name.

She knew he was right in saying that forgery was considered a very serious offence in the Criminal Courts and he would undoubtedly receive a very long sentence of imprisonment.

As if he realised what her thoughts were, D’Arcy Rowland said,

“I have always known you were very intelligent, Belinda. That is why I think you will understand now what I am going to ask you to do.”

He looked at her pleadingly before he went on,

“I swear it is the only possible way by which you can save me and, incidentally, yourself.”

Belinda pressed herself against the cushions behind her so that they gave her support and she tightened her fingers until they hurt.

Every instinct in her body made her want to scream at her stepfather and she might even burst into tears because she felt so helpless.

Then she could see her father teaching her the languages that had meant so much to him and she could hear him describing the characteristics of the people who spoke them.

He had summed them up so cleverly and he made a picture which his young pupil could readily understand.

‘I must be calm – I must listen to every word and not think about myself,’ Belinda thought.

“I expect you have heard of Marcus Logan,” her stepfather began, “and doubtless read about him in the newspapers?”

Belinda knew exactly what he was saying.

The story of
Lucky Logan
had been repeated over and over again every time he made some new discovery.

He had been written up not only in the financial columns of every newspaper, but was also headlined in the main news pages.

Marcus Logan had been sent home to England from India to go to school and his father was the Governor of Bombay.

It was a long journey, as the ship had to sail all the way round the Cape of Good Hope.

Marcus, however, enjoyed himself, as there were several other boys of his age also returning to England. They played deck tennis and every other kind of game available and they were delighted when the ship put into the port of Cape Town to be able to go ashore.

They then set out to explore what they could of that part of Africa.

Because there was no hurry, as the ship had stores to take aboard, they went climbing up a nearby mountain.

They had climbed some way when there was a storm of tempestuous rain, but fortunately there were some small caves on the mountainside where they could shelter.

Three of the boys rushed into the nearest one and filled it so that there was no room for Marcus.

So he looked around and saw that there was a smaller cave he could crawl into. He could not stand upright, but at least he was out of the rain.

Once he was inside, he found he could just sit up. The cave smelt of some animal and he thought the floor would undoubtedly be dirty.

He took off the woollen scarf he was wearing round his neck, spread it out and sat on it.

The storm did not last very long.

When it had passed, the boys in the next cave shouted to Marcus that they should go back to the ship.

He crawled out and only when he was outside did he remember his woollen scarf, so he darted back into the cave.

He pulled the scarf out and found when he picked it up that there was a stone caught in the wool.

It was a nicely shaped stone, so instead of throwing it away, he pushed it into his pocket.

After the boys had hurried back to the ship, Marcus thought no more about the stone in his pocket until he undressed that night.

It was then that he looked at the stone more carefully.

It was unlike any stone he had ever seen before. He had a strange feeling, a kind of perception that was to grow very much stronger as he grew older.

It told him there was something about the stone that was important to him.

He put it into a drawer in his cabin and forgot about it until he arrived back in England.

There he went shopping in London with the relative whom he was staying with.

On an impulse he went into a jeweller’s shop and it was one where his mother had bought some of her jewellery and he had been with her when she had taken a bracelet to be mended.

Marcus explained who he was to the assistant who had served her and was respectfully received. A chair was brought for him to sit on and then the assistant asked him,

“What can I do for you, sir? And I very much hope your lady mother is in good health.”

Marcus said that she was in rude health.

Then he brought the stone he had found in Africa out of his pocket.

“Can you tell me anything about this stone?” he enquired of the assistant.

The man behind the counter looked at it, picked up his eyeglass and looked at it more closely. Excusing himself, he then went to speak to the Head of the firm in another room.

Marcus looked around, thinking how pretty the jewels were and he remembered how lovely his mother had looked wearing her diamond tiara and necklace. It was at a time when his father had received a deputation of Maharajahs and their Suites.

He saw the assistant come hurrying back.

“I wonder, sir,” he said, “if you would step into the Private Office and meet our Chairman, who happens to be here today? He is very anxious to speak to you.”

Marcus was surprised.

But he followed the assistant into a small well-furnished room at the back of the shop.

It was, although he was not aware of it at the time, where only the richest and more important customers were served.

Two men were sitting at a long glass cabinet in which some exceptionally fine jewels were displayed.

They both rose as Marcus entered and shook him by the hand.

The Chairman introduced himself and added,

“I should be extremely interested, Mr. Logan, if you would tell us where you found this remarkable stone you have brought to show us?”

“It was on the voyage home from India,” Marcus replied.

And because they seemed so interested, he told them how it had become attached to his woollen scarf when he had sat in the cave.

The Chairman laughed and remarked,

“You did inadvertently what has been done for centuries. In the deep caverns it was the custom in order to retrieve precious stones, to throw down the dead carcase of an animal, possibly a sheep, so that the diamonds would adhere to it.”

Marcus looked at him in astonishment as he went on,

“Eagles in their search for food would go down to tear off pieces of the meat and carry them to their nests.”

He paused briefly,

“The seekers for diamonds would shoo them away, dig the gems out of the fur, then leave the eagles to their meal.”

“Diamonds?” Marcus exclaimed. “Are you telling me that the stone I have brought you is a
diamond?”

“We have, of course, had only a perfunctory glance at it before it is cut and polished,” the Chairman replied. “But I think, Mr. Logan, it is an exceedingly fine diamond! And larger than anything we have seen so far from Africa!”

That was the beginning.

Because the story was so fascinating, it followed Marcus Logan wherever he went.

He was a hero at Eton, although they teased him and as he grew older, people would ask him cheerily,

“Found any diamonds today?”

He finished at Eton and went on to Oxford.

During his vacations he was able to travel. He could not go very far, but he found some small gems of interest in Austria and amethysts in Scotland.

He knew that his instinct guided him.

As somebody said later, he could almost smell out a gem before he had even dug for it.

After his last journey, Queen Victoria had accepted the gift of a diamond and had it added to the Imperial Crown.

By the time Marcus Logan was twenty-nine, he was one of the most talked about men in the whole of Great Britain.

He had amassed an enormous fortune that did not seem of particular interest to him, but he had travelled to a great number of places in the world that no one had expected would produce fine gems.

Yet with ‘Logan’s magic touch’ they poured out a profusion of them.

D’Arcy Rowland spoke now of some of his achievements which actually Belinda knew already. She had, like millions of other people, found the story of
Lucky Logan’s discoveries
very exciting. Although it might be a year or more before he was expected to reappear, the newspapers were always waiting for him.

LOGAN’S BACK
would be the headline in every newspaper.

D’Arcy Rowland stopped enumerating Logan’s varied successes and Belinda knew that he was at last coming to the point of the story.

She could not imagine what it would be.

Yet she was listening and at the same time praying with all her heart that there was some way she could save her home.

“Nobody knows,” D’Arcy Rowland began, “when Logan goes off on one of his explorations or where he is going, but I have found out from a friend of mine who is on the Stock Exchange more or less what happens.”

He glanced at Belinda and saw that she was listening and carried on slowly,

“First of all, either somebody informs him or he guesses, where the gems are likely to be found. He does not go himself, but sends out people he can trust and who have worked for him for some time to look at the land and to buy where he wishes to investigate.”

“Buy?” Belinda asked, thinking it sounded very expensive.

“I know what you are thinking,” her stepfather replied. “What Logan is seeking is to be found mainly on rocky and mountainous land which cannot be cultivated.”

Belinda nodded, thinking that sounded reasonable.