Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “It was the first time that I’d ever talked to a lord, and I found he was quite like a human being. I was never more surprised in my life. He didn’t say ‘Haw!’ or ‘Don’tcherknow!’ like English lords are always supposed to; in fact, he didn’t give himself any airs at all; but he used the most astonishing slang I ever listened to, and I don’t think I understood more than half of it.

  “After dinner we went out and sat together in the lobby — to watch the people, he said — but he was too busy talking to me to see much of what was going on.

  “Of course, I had to be awfully careful what I said to him; and I was so busy puzzling out how to make use of him that I suppose I must have seemed rather absentminded, and after a bit he noticed it and asked me if I wasn’t feeling well. I had to say something, so I told him that I found English surroundings a bit depressing at first.

  He was an awfully nice boy, and he said at once that he knew a way to change all that. He offered to take me driving in his four-in-hand next morning. He said that a drive round the countryside would make me fall in love with the country, ‘and all that kind of thing.’ He said that he wasn’t much of a ‘dabster’ at quoting poetry, but the scenery was ‘simply spiffing,’ and that was about the most intelligible thing he did say about it.

  “He told me that he was down to see his lawyer on business connected with his property in the neighborhood, and that he’d brought his horses with him ‘because that man Lewisohn’s as slow as a hearse, and he’s sure to keep me hangin’ about here for the best part of a month.’

  “When I discovered that Mr. Lewisohn was his lawyer, too, I had to go up to my room. I wanted to be alone, and laugh, and make a fool of myself.

  “Of course, it was a bit early yet to be jubilant, and I still didn’t see how I was going to manage. But I knew that a coincidence like that only happens about once in a lifetime, and I knew I’d have brains enough to make use of it when the right time came. But the difficulty was to wait for the right time.

  “I was in a desperate hurry, and beginning to get excited, and I knew that if I was to play my cards properly I’d have to let off steam at once. So I went upstairs and kicked my pillow all round the room for about ten minutes. After that I felt better and went to bed.

  “Next morning I told Lord Tipperary what I was in England for — at least, I told him as much as I thought necessary. He seemed to be interested; and when I told him I’d been to Lewisohn, and that I was afraid I wouldn’t get the same amount of attention as an old client would have done, he offered to take me round that very afternoon and introduce me to Lewisohn in a proper manner.

  “He said: ‘Why, he’s my lawyer! I’ll take you round and tell him you’re a friend of mine. He’ll look after you, all right. He’s as slow as one of his own horses, and he’s stagy; but he’s honest, and there isn’t a better lawyer in England. I borrow money off him when I get broke — that’s to say pretty often.’

  “So we had lunch together at the hotel, and I took him a little more into my confidence. I didn’t tell him that I had only thirty shillings left, though it was a fact; but I did say that I’d be tickled to death to get my business settled up, because I needed the money very badly.

  “When I said that he looked at me quite sharply, with his eyebrows raised ever such a little, and I saw that I’d made a mistake.

  “They’re not so easy as they look, those English! I suppose that rich English lords have so many people trying to play them for suckers that they get naturally suspicious, anyway. But just as I was thinking that I’d put my foot in it, and had spoiled my only chance, I had an inspiration that was absolutely divine.

  “I asked him if he ever gambled; and he said at once that he did. He said he was always gambling, and nearly always losing — backing horses, for the most part — but that he would gamble on almost anything; and he asked me if I knew of anything to gamble on.

  “Then I knew that I’d won — all but the shouting. The rest was easy.

  “I said that I hadn’t ever gambled, which was perfectly true; but I said I was going to begin. He nodded, and said he would stand in with me, because ‘beginners’ luck always was a good thing to bet on. He said he didn’t care ‘a continental’ what it was that I was going to bet about, he was going to ‘back me to win.’

  “So I told him that that was my reason for being in such a hurry to get some money; I wanted to get the money on before the good thing was a thing of the past. But I wouldn’t tell him what the good thing was. I didn’t know yet myself, for one thing. But I had to tell him something.

  “Suddenly I remembered a second cousin of mine who used to be secretary, or something like that, in a zinc works at Pittsburgh, and that gave me another idea. Poor old Amos always used to be pestering my cousin at Pittsburgh to give him information so that he could play the market, and the only time he ever did give him any Amos played it and lost. He lost nearly all we had.

  “So what I said was that I had received some private information from a man who used to be a friend of my late husband. Before my husband died he had promised him that he would look after me, and this was his way of doing it. He had told me to raise every cent I could, and buy certain shares and hold them for a rise.

  “Lord Tipperary got awfully excited. He hadn’t ever gambled on the Stock Exchange, and the idea of doing it simply tickled him to death. He wanted to know the name of the shares at once, so that he could ‘go up to town and get the money on.’ He said it was ‘awfully sporting’ of me to want to ‘put all my money on one horse,’ and he didn’t like it in the least when I refused to tell him which shares they were.

  “But I couldn’t tell him, for the simple reason that I didn’t know the name of any shares, and I’d have to look them up first in a newspaper. So I got out of it for the time being by saying that the information had been given to me under a strict pledge of secrecy, and that I couldn’t think of divulging it to anybody.

  “That afternoon he drove me round to Mr. Lewisohn’s office, and he introduced me properly, as he had promised to do. We had a long talk with the lawyer, but nothing much came of it, except that he promised to be as quick as he could about my business.

  “Lord Tipperary asked him at once how long he thought it would be before he had my affairs settled up, and he said: ‘Some weeks.’ Then Lord Tipperary looked at me with the most comical expression of concern, and I had to laugh outright; and Lewisohn seemed awfully surprised that Lord Tipperary should take so much interest in my affairs, but he didn’t say anything — at least, not then.

  “After we left the office that boy did nothing but pester me to let him into the secret; and at dinnertime he said: ‘Look here, Mrs. Crothers, it’s an awful shame your not being able to get any money out of old Lewisohn for a month or two; you’ll probably miss having the flutter through it. Can’t we work it this way. I’ll go up to town and open an account with a firm of brokers that I know of, and arrange it so that you can buy the shares on my account without my knowing the name of them; then we’ll go shares in the profits. How’s that?

  “‘Then, tomorrow morning I’ll go round to old Lewisohn before I go to town, and tell him to be sure and let me have a few thousands at once, so that we sha’n’t be stuck for money. He’s arranging to borrow some money for me, and he can easily let me have a few thousands right away.’

  “Remember, it was pounds he was talking about, and not dollars! And there was poor little me, with only a few shillings in the wide world, and a great, fat hotel bill running up! Do you wonder I began to fed excited? Of course, I agreed to that arrangement, and the next morning I went round to the Public Library to look up Pittsburgh.

  “I read up all about Pittsburgh in a fat sort of encyclopedia; and though reading about it in that book bored me almost to tears, and reminded me in some indescribable way of Monday morning’s breakfast at a boarding house — I can’t tell you why, but it did! — I managed to concentrate my mind on it sufficiently to remember afterward that the Natio
nal Zinc Amalgamation was one of the biggest concerns there.

  “Then I went back to the hotel and sat in the lobby, studying out the financial column of a morning paper. The American papers are bad enough, if you open them at the financial page, and I don’t believe the jargon they put in them really means anything at all; but the English papers are infinitely worse; and I’m sure I nearly cried trying to understand it.

  “There were two different things named in one column that might, either of them, have been the Zinc Amalgamation. They were both called N.Z. Am., but one had the word ‘com.’ after it with a full stop, and the other had the word ‘pref.’ There was a footnote at the bottom of the column which said that the ‘com.’ had been largely dealt in. The ‘com.’ and the ‘pref.’ were quoted at different prices, and I think it was the most confusing mix — up that I ever tried to puzzle out.

  “I never would have puzzled it out if it hadn’t been for Bertram, the proprietor. He passed me where I was sitting in the lobby, and smiled. I asked him what he was smiling about, and he said that it was easy to tell my nationality without hearing me speak, because American women were the only women who ever read the financial columns of the papers.

  “I told him I was only reading out of curiosity, and I asked him what ‘com.’ and ‘pref.’ meant. He gave me quite a little lecture, and explained the whole thing; and after that I began to feel ready for the fray.

  “At about twelve o’clock a telephone message came from Mr. Lewisohn, asking me to call round at his office; so I ordered out the carriage again, wondering what it meant. When I got there I was shown right in to his office, and he lost no time in coming to the point.

  “He sat in his usual corner blinking at me, and he made me sit right in the sunlight that was streaming through the window. He watched my face as carefully as a cat watches a mouse, and I hoped I had not put too much powder on — I came away in rather a hurry. His first question completely took my breath away. He said:

  “‘Mrs. Crothers, how much money have you in your possession?’

  “I suppose my face showed that I was taken by surprise, and he must have guessed the rest; for he said at once:

  “‘You needn’t tell me. I think I know sufficient. Now, Mrs. Crothers, Lord Tipperary is a valued client of mine. I have known him since he was a boy. His father was also a client of mine, and his grandfather used to entrust his business to my father. You will perhaps admit that I have a right to be interested in his welfare.

  “‘Now I want you to tell me exactly what is the nature of the business that you have entered into with Lord Tipperary. He called on me this morning, and told me a little, but not enough. There is no sense in a case like this in beating about the bush. I will give you fifty pounds for your information.’

  “I said: ‘I will take your fifty pounds, Mr. Lewisohn, because I need it, but I would have told you the nature of the business at once if you had asked me.’

  “The expression on his face changed a little, as though he didn’t believe me, and were smiling inside himself; but he was too polite to let it appear on the surface; he merely bowed, and motioned to me to proceed. So I told him the same story of the shares that I had told Lord Tipperary.

  “But he seemed to expect something else, and when I had finished he sat with his eyebrows raised a little, waiting for me to continue.

  “When I said nothing, he asked me: ‘And the name of the shares?’

  “I said: ‘No, Mr. Lewisohn, that was not in the bargain. If I tell you the name of the shares, the secret will be out!’

  “He said: ‘Madam, it was distinctly in the bargain. I must insist on knowing the name of the shares. So far as the secret is concerned, there is no safer depository for a secret of any kind than within the four walls of a lawyer’s private office. I can assure you — in fact, I promise you faithfully — that what you may tell me will remain an absolute secret.’

  “‘But even Lord Tipperary doesn’t know,’ I objected.

  “‘I am aware of that, madam. In fact, that is precisely why I insist on knowing myself.’

  “He pulled a lovely crinkly Bank of England note for fifty pounds out of his waistcoat pocket, and made it crackle absentmindedly between his fingers; and all at once I blurted out that the shares were called National Zinc Amalgamation, Common.

  “He passed me over the fifty pounds at once; and I think I never saw a man look so utterly surprised in all my life.

  “He said: ‘Madam, I have to apologize. We are all liable to make mistakes, and I have made one. Your secret is, of course, safe in my keeping; and in return for it I will tell you one of mine. I am myself a heavy buyer of National Zinc, Common, and I believe it will eventually reach par or somewhere near it.

  “‘I made the great mistake of supposing that you were an adventuress, and that you were trying to work off some worthless securities on my client. Believe me, such a thing is quite common, and in every case that has come under my notice it has been done through the agency of a woman. I suppose your idea is to take the shares off the market, and hold for a rise?’

  “I hadn’t the least idea what he meant by taking them off the market, but I know that poor old Amos lost all his money by speculating on margin — whatever that means. So I told him that I had a horror of margins. That seemed to tickle him to death.

  “He rubbed his hands together, and his eyes sparkled, and he beamed at me over the top of his spectacles for quite a minute before he said anything else. Then he shifted in his chair, and turned right round toward me, leaning forward with one elbow resting on his knee.

  “‘Now, listen to me, Mrs. Crothers,’ he said. ‘I’m going to make you a little confidence. My client, Lord Tipperary, has been spending far too much money. Too much for his own good. He is altogether too fond of borrowing, and still fonder, I am sorry to say, of gambling.

  “‘I have been trying for over a year past to persuade him to pull up, and pay some attention to improving his financial position. You appear to have found the key to the situation, and my proposal to you is this.

  “‘Let me manage the account for you. We will let Lord Tipperary imagine that he is gambling, whereas as a matter of fact I will purchase the shares outright in his name, and hold them for him until the right moment comes to sell them again.

  With the funds belonging to him that I can get together I can purchase a considerable block of shares, and their increase in value within say about six months or a year should help materially toward straightening out his finances.

  “‘Once I have his written permission to buy the shares, and his promise not to sell them before they reach a certain figure, I can manage the rest. One of his pleasant little peculiarities is that he never breaks his promises.

  “‘As for yourself, how would it be if you were to receive ten percent of the net profits on the transaction? I am sure Lord Tipperary would agree to that, and I think you are justly entitled to it for persuading my client to do what I could not talk him into doing myself.

  “‘Of course, I am aware that under the present arrangement existing between you, you would receive half the profits; but knowing Lord Tipperary as I do, and with all due respect to yourself, I would doubt very much there being any profits to divide. When too entirely inexperienced people open an account on the Stock Exchange, there can be only one result — a dead loss. Don’t you think my arrangement would be better?’

  “Well, of course, I thought it was better, and when Lord Tipperary returned from London I made him go round and settle it that way with Mr. Lewisohn. The lawyer agreed to supply me with funds as long as the agreement lasted, and though his idea and mine on what constituted enough money to go on with were slightly divergent, I got enough out of him from time to time to pay my hotel bills.

  “And National Zinc, Common, went up, and up, and up. I’m not going to tell you how much I made out of it!

  “But that isn’t all. Before the agreement came to an end, and while I was still waiting in Southampton, Mr.
Lewisohn discovered that as Amos’s widow I was entitled under somebody or other’s will to a life interest in a small part of the Carruthers estates. So Amos was right, after all! The income isn’t much, but it’s regular and safe, and I needn’t go on the stage again.

  “Lord Tipperary is the nicest boy in the world, but I couldn’t have him falling so violently in love with me that people began to talk about it; so when I had got all the money that was coming to me, I said good-by to him and Mr. Lewisohn, and absconded to Paris. I bought all the clothes I wanted in Paris, at least all the clothes I absolutely couldn’t do without, packed up my belongings, and then came straight back to New York.

  “You can’t think how glad I am to be back! There’s no street like Broadway in the world! Now, where are you going to take me to dinner?”

  I looked at her for some moments, studying her finery, and considering ways and means.

  “The nattiest place in town,” I said at last. “Wait while I put some decent clothes on.”

  “Not a bit of it,” she said firmly. “They won’t allow Ugly in a natty place. Besides, you can’t afford it!”

  So we went to the same place that we used to go to in the old days when she was hard up resting in New York between engagements.

  And we enjoyed ourselves just as much as we used to; even if the restaurant was a cheap one. Afterwards, when I had seen her home, and we were still chattering on the pavement outside her apartment, I said:

  “Well, good night, Kitty. I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re a better actress off the stage than on it!”

  “You’re getting too wise,” she said, laughing. “Good night!”

  KITTY BURNS HER FINGERS

  A KITTY CROTHERS STORY

  KITTY CROTHERS perennially hard up — working at her profession for a few months, doing one-night stands all over the country, and returning to spend her hard-earned savings along Broadway — we all of us knew and understood; but Kitty Crothers with money was something to make the gods on Olympus sit up and take notice.