'It wouldn't take us long to corner that stock at rock-bottom prices. It would be pie. What I mean, it isn't as if the Horned Toad was a Kennecott or an Anaconda. It's always been halfway between a may-be and a never-waser. If you start selling shares a couple of thousand at a time, folks'll soon begin to sit up and take notice.'
Mr Frisby bridled a little. He shifted irritably in his chair. It offended his amour propre that his companion should imagine it necessary to instruct him in the A.B.C. of market-rigging.
'You go to your broker and start selling,' proceeded Mr Hoke, not observing these signs of impatience, 'and you can bet he'll do something about it. He'll notify his clients that the President of Horned Toad is getting out from under and that things look fishy. They'll tumble over themselves to unload.'
'Naturally,' said Mr Frisby.
'You go to him on 'Change and whisper in his ear that you want him to sell a couple of blocks of two or three thousand . . .'
'I know,' said Mr Frisby. 'I know, I know.'
'And all the while we'll be buying the stuff up in Paris or Amsterdam. Well, what about it?'
Mr Frisby brooded darkly. On moral grounds he had no objection to the scheme whatever. He heartily approved of it. What was distressing him was the fact that, in enriching himself, he would be compelled also to enrich Mr Hoke.
'Is it a go?' asked that gentleman.
'Yes,' said Mr Frisby.
'Oke,' said Hoke. 'Then that's settled.' A pretty enthusiasm lighted up his face. 'I knew it was a lucky day for me when I went into partnership with you, Pat,' he said, handsomely.
'Don't call me Pat,' said Mr Frisby morosely.
'Well, what's your first name?'
'Never mind,' said Mr Frisby.
It was a point on which he was sensitive. Much time had passed since then, but he could never quite forget the day when the leading wag of his school had discovered his secret.
'Well, I must be getting along,' said Mr Hoke.
'Do,' said Mr Frisby cordially. 'The air in this office won't be fit to breathe till you've gone and I've had the windows opened.'
'By the way, did you ever hear the story of the two . . .'
'Yes,' said Mr Frisby.
'Well, I'll be getting along.'
'Start now,' said Mr Frisby.
J.B. Hoke pranced out jubilantly, treading on air, and immediately outside the door cannoned into a substantial body.
'Can't you look where you're going?' he demanded, aggrieved.
'Why, hullo, Mr Hoke,' said the body amiably.
J. B. Hoke recognized the young man who might have been described, without stretching the facts, as the founder of his fortunes. It was to this young man that he owed the delightful experience of sitting in T. Paterson Frisby's office and telling T. Paterson Frisby just where he got off. This pleasing reflection assuaged the pain in the toe on which Berry had trodden.
'Why, hello, Mr Conway,' he said genially. 'Have a good cigar.'
'Thanks.'
'And how's every little thing with Mr Conway?'
'I'm fine. How are you?'
'I'm fine.'
'Both fine. Fine!' said Berry.
'Got any more mines to sell?' asked Mr Hoke.
'No. That was the only one. I can do you five thousand shares of Federal Dye, if you like.'
'Not for me, thanks.'
'No,' said Berry. 'I suppose you're satisfied with the Dream Come True.'
Mr Hoke looked grave.
'You stung me good over that,' he said. 'Two thousand five hundred dollars for a patch of sand covered with barrelhead cactus. Well, well, well, you're a business man, all right.'
It seemed to Berry – being, as he was, in a mood of universal benevolence and wishing to see nothing but smiling faces around him – that he ought to say something to indicate a possible silver lining. He, too, considered that Mr Hoke had allowed his native generosity to lead him into a bad bargain.
'Oh, come!' he protested heartily. 'You never know. I shouldn't be at all surprised if there weren't millions to be made out of the Dream Come True.'
The joviality had returned to Mr Hoke's face. It now faded again as if it had been wiped off with a sponge. For the first time, it occurred to him how very near the door Berry had been standing at the moment of their impact.
Could he have overheard that last little conference?
Pallidly, Mr Hoke ran over in his mind the more recent of his companion's remarks. He was horrified to discover, that, read in the light of these new suspicions, they had a sickeningly sinister ring. "I suppose you're satisfied with the Dream Come True," he had said. And, after that, this shattering speech about the possibility of there being millions in the thing. He stared at Berry with eyes like apprehensive poached eggs.
'What makes you say that?' he quavered.
'Oh, it just struck me as a possibility,' said Berry with a pleasant smile.
A smile, that is to say, which would have seemed pleasant to anyone else. To J. B. Hoke it suggested a furtive gloating.
'What were you doing, standing outside that door?' he asked.
'I thought I heard the buzzer.'
'Oh?' said Mr Hoke slowly. 'Well, nobody touched the buzzer.'
'False alarm,' said Berry genially. 'I'll get back to my basket.'
Mr Hoke watched him out of sight. Then he burst into the office and tottering to the desk, placed his lips to Mr Frisby's ear.
'S-s-s-say!' he hissed.
Mr Frisby withdrew his ear austerely and began to dry it.
'Haven't you gone yet?' he asked. 'Do you want me to put a bed in here? What time do you like to be called in the morning?'
Sarcastic, of course. Bitter, undoubtedly. But there are times when a man may legitimately be sarcastic and bitter.
'Say, listen,' said Mr Hoke urgently. 'Just outside the door I ran into that secretary of yours. He was standing there.'
'What of it?'
'Well, do you think he could have heard what we were saying? I was talking pretty loud.'
'You always do. It's one of the things that get you so disliked.'
'And he said something – darned significantly, I thought – about wasn't it possible that there might be millions made out of the Dream Come True.'
'He did?'
'He certainly did. Say, listen. If advance information of our little arrangement gets out before we're ready, we're sunk. It wouldn't be difficult for this fellow to raise a bit of money and start in buying up the shares on margin. He might get thousands for next to nothing, and stay sitting pretty while they shot up. And before we know what was happening those shares would be hitting the ceiling and we'd lose our shirts if we tried to buy them. I've known it happen that way before. Years ago, when I was with Mostyn and Kohn in Detroit, the time they were working that A. and C. ramp, there was a bad leakage in the office.'
'There would be, if you were there,' said Mr Frisby.
'I had nothing to do with it,' protested Mr Hoke, and in his voice there was the pain of what-might-have-been. 'I never knew a thing that was going on. But somebody got advance information, and what they did to Mostyn and Kohn was nobody's business. The stock kited sixty points the first day, and Mostyn and Kohn out in the cold, wondering what was happening to them and each of them accusing the other of double-crossing him. Mostyn hit Kohn on the beezer, I remember, and God knows there was plenty of it to hit. Well, that's what's going to happen here if we don't watch out. You ought to fire that fellow, Pat.'
'Don't call me Pat,' said Mr Frisby. 'And where's the sense of firing him?'
'Well, we ought to do something.'
'Why did he say he was standing out there?'
'He put up some story about thinking he had heard the buzzer.'
'H'm!' said Mr Frisby. 'Well, good-bye.'
'Don't you want me to wait?'
'Is it likely that anyone would ever want you to wait? Get out of this, and don't keep coming running in again all the time.'
'Well, I
'll tell you. My mind's not easy.'
'A mind like yours,' said Mr Frisby, 'couldn't be.'
For some moments after the door had closed, T. Paterson Frisby sat rocking meditatively in his chair. He was not thinking about Berry. His partner's panic had aroused no responsive thrill in his heart. What did disturb him was the thought that, in a world which they said they were going to make fit for heroes to live in, nobody had started the millennium by lynching J. B. Hoke. It looked like negligence somewhere.
He spent nearly twenty minutes thinking about Mr Hoke. At the end of that period, crystallizing his thoughts, as was his custom, into the telling phrase, he reached for a cuff and wrote on it as follows:
J. B. Hoke is a son of a . . .
In moments of strong emotion the handwriting tends to deteriorate. Mr Frisby's did. So what that last word was we shall never know.
CHAPTER 9
I
The total failure of her brother George to accomplish anything constructive by his trip to Valley Fields had convinced Lady Vera Mace of the truth of the ancient proverb that if you want a thing well done you must do it yourself. Reluctantly, therefore, for she was a woman with many calls on her mind, she caught the six-thirty-four train some days later, and, arriving at the gate of Peacehaven, met her nephew, Lord Biskerton, coming out. Another moment, and she would have missed him.
Had she done so, it would have been all right with the Biscuit. This sudden apparition of a totally unwanted aunt affected him much as the ghost of Banquo on a memorable occasion affected Macbeth.
'Good Lord!' he exclaimed. 'What on earth are you doing down here?'
'I want to have a talk with you, Godfrey.'
'But you can't,' protested the Biscuit. 'I'm not open for being talked to.'
His emotion was understandable. He was just on his way to Castlewood to collect Miss Valentine and take her to the Bijou Palace (One Hundred Per Cent. Talking) at the corner of Roxburgh Road and Myrtle Avenue, the meeting-place of all that is best and fairest in Valley Fields. And, while he knew he was doing this merely because he was sorry for a lonely little girl, a stranger in a strange land, who had few pleasures, the last thing he wanted was a prominent member of the family dodging about the place, taking notes of his movements with bulging eyes.
'I'm busy,' he said. 'Occupied. Full of appointments. I'm just off to the pictures.'
'What I have to say is much more important than any pictures.'
'Not than these. They're showing a film of the life of a Spanish onion. Full of educative value, with a most beautiful theme song.'
'I shan't keep you more than a few minutes. I've got to catch the seven-ten train back to Victoria. I am dining with Lady Corstorphine at Mario's.'
'Ah!' said the Biscuit, relieved. 'That puts a different complexion on the matter. Well, I'll walk to the station with you.'
He hurried her round the corner and into the asphalt-paved, beehive-lined passage that led thither. Only when they were out of sight of Mulberry Grove did his composure return.
'How the dickens did you find out I was living here?' he asked. 'It looks to me as if there had been a leakage somewhere.'
'Your father went round to your flat and made Venner tell him.'
'Ah, that explains it. How is the guv'nor? Pretty fit and insolvent? Still stealing the cat's milk and nosing about in the street for cigar ends?'
'His health and finances are in much the same state as usual.'
'Poor old chap!' said the Biscuit sympathetically. 'Odd how none of our family seem able to get their hooks on a bit of money.'
'He tells me he is hoping to let Edgeling to Mr Frisby for Goodwood. I think it would be an excellent thing. But I did not come here to talk about your father. I want to speak to you about Ann.'
'Yes?' said the Biscuit. 'Good old Ann? How is she?'
'She is very well.'
'Buzzing about a lot and rejoicing in her youth, I suppose? Parties, routs, and revels?'
'She was at home, answering her letters of congratulation, when I left. At least, I think she was.'
'You think? Are there secrets between you?'
'It is quite possible,' said Lady Vera, 'that she was writing to everybody to say that congratulations were unnecessary, as she was no longer engaged.'
The Biscuit gaped.
'Says which?'
'What do you mean by that extraordinary expression?'
'Eh? Oh,' said the Biscuit, momentarily confused, 'I picked it up. From a fellow next door. A man. He's an American. An American man. One of the first families in Great Neck, New York. The phrase implies astonishment and incredulity. Why the dickens should Ann say she was no longer engaged?'
'Because she may be intending to break off the engagement.'
The Biscuit stared.
'What! Give me the push?'
'Yes.'
'You mean, actually slip me the old acid-drop?'
'Yes.'
'But what would she do that for?'
Lady Vera began to deliver the exordium which she had roughed out in the train.
'Your father and I are terribly worried, Godfrey. We both think that you have made the greatest mistake in disappearing like this.'
'But I had to disappear. Didn't the guv'nor explain? I was the hunted fox with the pack in full cry after me. I was the hare that pants for cooling streams when heated in the chase. I couldn't go out of doors without hearing a "Yoicks! Hark For'rard!" from a shirt merchant or a "Tantivy!" from a bespoke tailor.'
'I know all that,' said Lady Vera impatiently. 'Naturally it would have been a fatal thing if you had had to appear in the County Court. But whatever induced you to tell Ann you had mumps?'
'A pal of mine suggested that. You see, I had to give some explanation of why we failed to notice among those present the young and popular Lord Biskerton. Couldn't just disappear without a word.'
Lady Vera did not snort, for she was a woman of breeding. But she uttered a snort-like exclamation.
'It was an insane suggestion. So idiotic that I am surprised that you did not think of it yourself.'
'Harsh words,' said the Biscuit, pained. 'It seemed to me a ruse that met the case most admirably. Mumps are infectious, so Ann wouldn't come calling at the flat and smoothing my pillow and noticing with surprise that the bed was empty and had not been slept in. If you don't think that is a good idea, all I can say, Aunt Vera, is that you are pretty hard to please.'
'Mumps! And Ann a girl who is so painfully romantic and idealistic.'
'What's that got to do with it?'
'Good gracious, Godfrey . . . !'
'What a title for a musical comedy!' said the Biscuit with enthusiasm. ' "Good Gracious, Godfrey!" Can't you see it on the . . . But I'm interrupting you,' he broke off courteously, observing in his companion some slight signs of fermentation.
'What I was about to say was this. I think – and your father thinks – that Ann accepted you – well, shall we say without quite knowing her own mind. That being so, the slightest thing may cause her to change it. And you have deliberately put yourself into a position where, every time she thinks of you, it is to picture you with a face like a water-melon.'
'You mean,' said the Biscuit incredulously, 'you actually mean that a sweet girl like Ann would allow herself to be affected . . .'
'There is something so utterly ridiculous about mumps.'
'Well,' said the Biscuit, bitterly, 'if that is what a woman's heart is like, then all I can say is, a pretty sex! Yes, I mean it. A pretty sex!'
'And, in addition to that, I have every reason to believe that Ann has met some other man and become dangerously attracted by him.'
The Biscuit gasped. This was news, hot off the griddle.
'You don't mean that!'
'I do. She has been behaving in a very odd manner.'
'But, dash it, what can I do?'
'You must come back.'
'But I can't.'
'Yes, you can. You must tell her that you haven't g
ot mumps, after all. And to account for your absence you must say that you have had to go over to Paris. I have been talking it over with your father, and he agrees with me that it would be a very good thing if you did go to Paris. I can afford to pay your expenses, and I think I might manage to take Ann over there for a week or two. She would like Paris.'
'But I shouldn't,' said the Biscuit explosively. 'I can't stand Paris. I hate the place. Full of people talking French, which is a thing I bar. It always seems to me so affected.'
'It is better than talking like an idiot.'
'Besides, I want to stay here.'
Lady Vera looked at him searchingly.
'Why? What is the wonderful attraction about this extraordinary place?'
'I like it,' said the Biscuit stoutly. 'It has a quiet charm. I enjoy strolling in my garden of an evening, drinking in the peace of the gloaming and plucking snails off the young lobelias.'
'Are you flirting with some girl down here, Godfrey?' said Lady Vera tensely.
It is possible that at that moment Valley Fields was full of nephews whom an aunt's suggestion had just outraged to the very core. But none of these could have looked half so appalled as the Biscuit.
'Me?' he cried. 'Me?'
'Well, I don't know if you are or not, but I can tell you one thing. If you don't want to lose Ann, you had better leave Valley Fields at once and show yourself again in civilized surroundings.'
The seven-ten train rolled into the station. Lord Biskerton assisted his aunt into a first-class carriage.
'I have it,' he said jubilantly. 'Here is the solution, sizzling from the pan. Tell Ann I haven't got the mumps, but am in reality in the Secret Service of my country, and am away somewhere on a job the nature of which I am not empowered to reveal. That will bring the roses back to her cheeks. That will make her regard her Godfrey with admiration and esteem.'
The seven-ten rolled out of the station. It bore with it an aunt thinking poorly of her nephew. Lady Vera's opinion of Lord Biskerton's mentality, never high, had in the last few minutes sunk to a new, low figure. She supposed that she had done something to cause Providence to afflict her with a nephew like that, but she could not recall any offence of the colossal proportions which would justify the punishment. She sighed deeply, and fell back on Woman's only consolation in times of stress. Opening her bag, she produced her puff and began to powder her nose.
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