Money in the Bank (3 page)

Shipley Hall, ancestral seat of George, sixth Viscount Uffenham, and rented furnished from him by Mrs. Cork, stood on a wide plateau, backed by rolling woodland, a white Georgian house set about with gay flower-beds and spreading lawns, commanding a comprehensive view of the surrounding countryside. Its grounds were looking their best in the June sunshine, and Soapy Molloy, pacing the terrace, was looking his best in a suit the colour of autumn leaves, a Panama hat, a red and yellow tie and a pair of those buckskin shoes with tan toecaps which add so much diablerie to a man's appearance.

Neither of these lovely sights, however, had the effect of lightening Dolly's despondency. The beauty of the grounds left her cold, and any uplift which she might have derived from the spectacle of her prismatic mate was neutralised by the fact that he was in the company of Mrs. Cork. And, as if this were not enough, he selected the exact moment when he swam into Dolly's ken for taking his fair companion's hand and giving it a courtly pat. The couple then passed from view into the rhododendron walk.

Dolly sank on to a handy tree stump, and there remained for some little time, a prey to bitter thoughts. Presently, she rose and made her way with leaden feet to her room. She was feeling that what she was suffering represented the limit which any young wife could be called upon to endure.

Opening the door, however, she found that she had been mistaken. Her view had been too optimistic. There was some more coming to her, and she paused on the threshold, tottering beneath the application of the last straw.

From under the dressing-table, rising like some
mesa
in a Western desert, there protruded a vast trouser seat. It quivered gently, like the butt end of a terrier at a rat hole.

On top of all her other troubles, Cakebread, the butler, was in again.

CHAPTER III

Despite the fascination of Mr. Molloy's society, Mrs. Cork had not lingered long in the rhododendron walk. She had a task to perform which required her presence indoors. Some ten minutes after Dolly had seen her on the terrace, she was in her study, speaking into the desk telephone.

"Miss Benedick."

"Yes, Mrs. Cork?" replied a charming voice, like spring winds sighing through pine trees.

"I want to see Mr. Trumper immediately."

"Yes, Mrs. Cork," said the charming voice.

Mrs. Cork gave her powerful shoulders a hitch, and took up her stand with her back to the empty fireplace, looking exactly like the frontispiece of her recently published volume of travel,
A Woman in the Wilds,
where the camera had caught her, gun in hand, with one foot on the neck of a dead giraffe.

Nobody who is interested in dead giraffes will require an introduction to Mrs. Wellesley Cork. But in the wide public for which the chronicler hopes that he is writing it is possible that there may be here and there a scattered few in whom these indiarubber-necked animals do not touch a chord. For the benefit of this handful, it must be mentioned that she was a very eminent explorer and big-game huntress.

It was the decease of Mr. Wellesley Cork some twelve years previously, leaving her at something of a loose end, that had caused her to turn her great natural energies, until then expended in keeping a husband in order, in the direction of roaming, rifle at the ready, the wilder portions of Africa. And she had done it with outstanding success. You could say what you liked about Clarissa Cork, and a thousand native bearers in their various dialects had said plenty, but you could not deny that she was far-flung and held dominion over palm and pine.

When this dynamic woman wanted to see people immediately, she saw them immediately. She had trained her little flock to come at her call as if they had been seasoned relay racers toeing the mark with, batons in their hands. The hour produced the man. Only a few minutes had elapsed before a shrimplike little figure came darting into the room. Mr. Trumper, and no other.

Mrs. Cork pierced him, as he entered, with a keen eye, as if he had been a gnu appearing through a thicket, and came to the point without delay. She was a woman who never wasted time in lengthy preambles.

"Well, Eustace, you know why I have sent for you."

A gulp escaped the unfortunate man. The look on her face was a look of doom, bidding him abandon hope. He had worshipped Mrs. Cork in a silent, shrimplike way, as men of his kind are so apt to worship her type of woman, for many years, and he had felt until this moment that the thought of this devotion might lead her to temper justice with mercy.

"You know the rule. Instant expulsion, if found eating meat. We must have discipline."

One is not ashamed to say that the heart bleeds for Eustace Trumper. His great love had caused him to enrol himself among the foundation members of the little colony at Shipley Hall, but the Trumpers, father and son back through the ages, had always been valiant trenchermen, and Eustace in particular was noted in his circle for his prowess with knife and fork. At school, he had been known as Thomas the Tapeworm, and, grown to riper years, his abilities were so familiar at his club that when he appeared in the doorway of the luncheon-room, the carver flexed his muscles and behaved like a war horse at the sound of the bugle. If such a man. after nobly confining himself to vegetables for weeks and weeks, slips one day and is found in the potting shed with a cold steak-and-kidney pie on his very lips, who shall blame him?

Well, unfortunately, Mrs. Cork, for one.

" Discipline," she repeated. "You'll have to go, Eustace."

There was a pause. Mr. Trumper raised pleading eyes, like a netted shrimp.

"Give me another chance, Clarissa."

Mrs. Cork seemed moved, but she shook her head.

"Impossible, Eustace. Suppose it got about that I had overlooked this flagrant violation of the rules. What, for instance, would Mr. Molloy think? He has come here expressly to study our colony, with a view to starting something similar in America, if he finds it is a success. It would kill his enthusiasm."

One would scarcely have supposed that at such a moment as this Mr. Trumper would have had the spirit to frown. Nevertheless, he did, and darkly.

"I don't trust that man. I believe he's a crook."

"Nonsense."

"I'm sure he is. Nobody but a crook could be so smooth."

"Nonsense. Mr. Molloy is a charming, cultured American of the best type. A millionaire, too."

"How do you know he's a millionaire?"

"He told me so."

Mr. Trumper decided to abandon the topic. It had often given him cause for wonderment that this splendid woman, so shrewd and capable in her dealings with head-hunters and wounded pumas, should be so inadequate when confronted with the pitfalls of civilisation.

"Well, anyhow," he urged, "he'll never find out. Do let me stay, Clarissa. You know what it means to me to be near you. You are always such an inspiration to me."

Mrs. Cork wavered. She was a woman capable of checking a charging rhinoceros with a raised eyebrow and a well-bred stare, but she had her softer side. Except for her nephew, Lionel Green, there was no one of whom she was fonder than Eustace Trumper, nor had she failed, silent though it was, to note his devotion. She looked questioningly at a stuffed antelope's head which decorated the wall, as if seeking its advice. Then the struggle between principle and sentiment ended.

"All right. But don't let it happen again."

"I won't, I won't."

"Then we will say no more about it," said Mrs. Cork gruffly.

There was a silence, strained as silence always is after these poignant scenes. Eustace Trumper stood shuffling his feet softly. Mrs. Cork continued to stare at the antelope. Mr. Trumper was the first to speak, prefacing his words with a little cough, for the subject on which he was about to touch was a delicate one.

"Any news of Lionel, Clarissa?"

"I telephoned him this morning, directly after Miss Benedick had read me the report of the case in the paper."

"I hope he is coming here?"

"He will be down this evening."

"Capital. It will do him all the good in the world, being with you after such an ordeal. You are delighted, of course?"

Mrs. Cork relapsed into silence for a moment. When she spoke, her words came as a surprise to Mr. Trumper. "I'm not sure."

"Not sure?"

"I am rather wondering if Shipley Hall is quite the place for Lionel."

"I don't understand."

The french window of the study was open. Mrs. Cork strode to it, and raked the adjacent scenery with a quick glance. A couple of disciples were breathing deeply at the far end of the lawn, but they were out of earshot, and she returned, satisfied. She had that to say which she did not wish to be overheard.

"Eustace, have you ever suspected that there might be something between Lionel and Miss Benedick?"

"Why, no. What do you mean?"

"I believe she's setting her cap at him."

"Clarissa!"

"I may be mistaken, of course, but that is what I think. If she is, I'll soon put a stop to it. She may be Lord Uffenham's niece, but it's obvious that she can't have a penny, or what is she doing as my secretary-companion? That is why I am wondering if it is a good thing that Lionel is coming here. He is a sweet-natured, impulsive boy, just the sort to be an easy prey for a designing woman."

"But what makes you think so?"

"I thought I saw signs of some understanding between them, the last time he was down here. Little things, but I noticed them. And I didn't at all like the way she behaved this morning, when she was reading me the newspaper account of Lionel's examination by that man, J. G. Miller. Her voice shook so much that I looked up, and I saw that her eyes were blazing. And when I said that I wished I could strangle J. G. Miller with my bare hands, she gave a sort of wistful sigh. I thought it most extraordinary. What possible reason was there for her to be so concerned, unless what I suspect is true?"

"You don't think it was just natural good feeling?"

"No, I don't."

"It might very well have been. I can assure you that everybody here is most resentful about the whole affair. I was speaking to Cakebread after breakfast, and he told me that the cook had expressed herself very strongly."

Mrs. Cork stiffened.

"Cakebread? Are you in the habit of discussing the intimate affairs of the family with my butler?"

Mr. Trumper blushed.

"No, no," he said hastily. "But I happened to come upon him unexpectedly in my bedroom, and you know how difficult it is on these occasions to think of anything to say. Especially to Cakebread. I confess I find him a little overpowering. He has such an odd way of staring at one."

"He was in your bedroom? He doesn't valet you. What was he doing in your bedroom?"

"He appeared to be searching under the bed."

Mrs. Cork started.

"That's odd. Only the other day, I found him in my room, rummaging in one of the cupboards. He said he was looking for a mouse."

"He told me he was looking for beetles."

"I don't like this, Eustace."

"It is disturbing. I certainly saw no beetles."

"I hope the man's honest."

"I am bound to say that that is a question which occurred to me. He looks completely so. But then all butlers do. Were his references satisfactory?"

"I didn't see them. There was no necessity. According to Miss Benedick, who looked after all the arrangements for taking the house, her uncle made it one of the conditions of letting me have the place that his butler should stay on. She told me that this was quite customary, and I saw no objection to it. But now---"

She paused, not because she had finished her remarks, but because there split the welkin at this moment the sound of a female voice raised in wrath, followed by a noise not unlike the delivery of a ton of coals.

"What the devil's that?" she asked, wondering.

Mr. Trumper had skipped to the door. He vanished for a brief space, to return with first-hand information.

"It is Cakebread. He appears to have fallen downstairs. Oh, excuse me."

The concluding words were addressed to Mrs. Molloy, who had brushed past him at a high rate of speed and was now standing inside the room, breathing emotionally and exhibiting other signs of being a good woman wronged.

"Say, listen, Mrs. Cork!" she cried shrilly.

Her tone was not the tone in which people habitually addressed the chatelaine of Shipley Hall, but feminine curiosity induced the latter to overlook this.

"Is something the matter, Mrs. Molloy?"

"You bet your silk underwear something's the matter. Either you keep that darned butler of yours on a chain, or there'll have to be drastic steps taken. Hell's bells, there's a limit."

"I'm afraid I do not understand you. What has my butler been doing?"

"I've just caught him rousting around in my room. For the second time in two days, by golly. Can you blame anyone for beefing? When we came to visit here, I understood that that room was reserved for I and my husband. Nobody ever mentioned that we were supposed to muck in with the butler. Hasn't he got a room of his own, or what is it?"

Mr. Trumper had been punctuating this powerful speech with amazed squeaks.

"How very remarkable!" he now ejaculated. "After what we were speaking about, Clarissa."

"Mr. Trumper has just been telling me," explained Mrs. Cork, "that he found Cakebread in his room this morning, in most suspicious circumstances. And I was saying that not long ago I found him in mine. We were agreeing, when you came in, that something would have to be done."

"I'll say something'll have to be done, and quick. You don't need any three guesses to tell you what the old blimp is after. He's getting around to cleaning out the joint and skipping. It's a wonder to me he hasn't done it already. Fire him out on his fanny pronto, is my advice, or we shan't have a darned thing left that we can call our own."

"I quite agree with you. He shall go to-day." Mrs. Cork strode masterfully to the desk and spoke into the telephone. "Miss Benedick."