Chapter XXIV: Miss Guyner Intervenes

Carsdale, interviewing his guest over the breakfast table on the morning following their chance meeting in the Strand, found Mr. Sydney Werrick extraordinarily amenable to reason. It appeared that at that moment he wanted nothing that was out of the way, beyond the immediate advancing of a sum of money which would re-attire his person in garments suited to his new environment, and leave something over to jingle in his pockets. He had no desire to interfere with Carsdale or with Mrs. Walsingham just then; let them play whatever game they were after, so long as they remembered him in connection with it.

“I may want you to take a hand in it,” said Carsdale. “It’s very probable I shall want you. But you shan’t be left, Sydney.”

“I don’t propose to be left,” remarked Mr. Werrick, helping himself to another of the excellent lamb cutlets, which adorned Carsdale’s breakfast table. “I didn’t come across to be left.”

Carsdale took no notice of this quiet intimation. He drew out a pocket-book. It was a characteristic of his that he always carried a considerable amount of money about him in cash. He began to count some bank-notes, and finally tossed a wad of them over to Werrick.

“You’ll want some money to be going on with, Sydney,” he observed. “There’s a hundred.”

Werrick cast a careless glance at the present.

“Pounds or dollars?” he asked lazily.

“Pounds, of course!” answered Carsdale. “You want a new fit-out. Do you know where you can get what you need, ready for wear?”

“If I don’t, I’ll soon find the place,” said Werrick, picking up and pocketing the notes. “All right. Then--you don’t want me for anything, just yet, at all events?”

“No,” replied Carsdale. “What I want you to do is to keep quiet. You’re not to bother Sylvie, you understand. You’re to abstain from any interference. I’ll see you’re all right at the proper moment. You can look round the town, and you can put up here. Of course, you don’t know where my office is?”

“That,” answered Werrick, “is just what I was going to find out--if you had one--this very morning.”

“Well, there’ll be no necessity,” said Carsdale. “My office is in Abbotsbury House, Norfolk Street, Strand. And, you’re not to come there, remember. What transactions you and I have can be done here. But if you ever want to ring me up, you can do so. There’s the telephone number.”

Werrick took the letter-heading which Carsdale threw him and put it in his waistcoat pocket with a nod. And Carsdale presently went off to business, leaving his guest alone, with an intimation to him to take care of himself. Werrick lighted a cigar, put his feet on a chair, and read the newspaper. The woman who attended to Carsdale’s rooms appeared, removed the breakfast things, made the beds, tidied and dusted, and removed her presence. Werrick was alone, with a hundred pounds in his pocket, and the day before him. He smiled grimly as he turned over to the sporting page, and he informed himself, rolling the thought over in his mind as if he extracted much pleasure from its intellectual stimulus, that there was nothing in this life so certain as the unexpected.

Werrick was still considering this thought when a gentle, but decisive knock sounded on the outer door of Mr. John Carsdale’s chambers. The guest paid no attention to the first summons, but when it was repeated he asked himself lazily whether he had not better see who stood without. He was quite certain that no one could want him, but it might be interesting to know who wanted Carsdale. So, newspaper in hand and cigar in mouth, he lounged forth and opened the door to find a slim, neat-figured young lady, heavily veiled, confronting him. Mr. Werrick gazed curiously at her features and could make nothing of them. He felt somewhat astonished, too, at the fact that the visitor did not speak. Accordingly he himself gave voice.

“Mr. Carsdale?” he said, taking it for granted that the caller wanted his host. “Well, he doesn’t happen to be in.”

The only effect of this intimation was that the veiled lady walked into the chambers and that Werrick retreated before her. And as she crossed the threshold, she raised her veil and revealed to Werrick’s astonished eyes the keen, yet pleasing features of Miss Sophie Guyner. Werrick, in sheer surprise, dropped his cigar.

“Great Scott!” he exclaimed. “So, it’s you?”

Miss Guyner, with characteristic presence of mind, pointed to the outer door, and her host made haste to shut it. He looked at his visitor a little doubtfully.

“I say,” he said. “Carsdale might come back any minute, you know.”

“No!” said Miss Guyner. “He won’t. I know his habits--I ought to. And it wouldn’t matter if he did. I’m equal to any Carsdales. Sit down. No--give me a drink, for I’m thirsty with the heat. Something with a fizz in it. But not champagne, though I dare say there’s plenty in that cupboard. See what else there is.”

Werrick opened the cupboard door in silence, wondering all the time what Sophie wanted. At her command he mixed her a tumbler of light wine and mineral water; he refreshed himself, having the consciousness of a solid breakfast behind him, with something a little stronger. And then, perched on the edge of the table, he looked at Miss Guyner, who had installed herself in Carsdale’s easiest chair, and his look was full of inquiry. Nevertheless, Miss Guyner’s first remark was also of inquiry.

“So you’re here, are you?” she said.

“I’m here,” answered Werrick. “Right here.”

Miss Guyner looked him carefully up and down, from tip to toe.

“Well,” she observed, reflectively. “You look like as if it was time you’d got somewhere. I’ve seen you much worse, but still, you do look as if it would soon be time you went where they keep things ready to put on as soon as you lay down the cash.”

“If you’d only looked in this afternoon,” remarked Mr. Werrick, slapping his trousers pocket, “you’d have found me in purple and fine linen.”

“A nice tweed suit--grey or brown--and a coloured shirt would look better,” said Miss Guyner. “Quiet patterns, of course.”

Mr. Werrick took another pull at his tumbler, and mentally congratulated Carsdale on his taste in whiskey and his make of soda-water.

“And how did you find me, Sophie?” he inquired, almost affectionately.

“I heard Carsdale tell her last night--or, rather, this morning,” answered Miss Guyner. “She thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t. I’m often--very often--awake when she thinks I’m asleep. It pays me to keep my ears open. I didn’t hear all that they said, but I heard plenty to learn that you were here. And so, naturally, I came to see you.”

Mr. Werrick left his seat on the table, took one on the arm of Miss Guyner’s chair, and putting his arm round her shoulders, kissed her.

“You were always a good sort to me, Sophie,” he said. “I’ve thought an awful lot about you.”

“And I’ve thought a good lot about you,” said Miss Guyner. “A good deal more than you deserve. Now, then, that’ll do for the present. What are you up to, Sydney Werrick?--what’ve you come over here for?”

Mr. Werrick re-seated himself on the edge of the table, having first chosen and lighted a fresh cigar.

“What did I come over here for?” he repeated reflectively. “What am I up to? Well, I just guess that I’m going to make John Carsdale and Mrs. Sylvie Werrick do something in the way of compensating me for the trick they played on me over there in New York. And I also guess that Carsdale, at any rate, knows it. So he was with her last night, was he?”

“He was there last night,” answered Miss Guyner, “and I heard enough to know that he impressed it upon her that whatever it is they’re up to, you’d have to come in at it. But----”

She paused abruptly and gave her hearer a nod full of meaning.

“Yes?” asked Mr. Werrick, interestedly. “Yes? And----”

“You keep your eyes skinned,” said Miss Guyner. “Not so much for him as for her. She gets cunninger and cunninger every day. She’s up to something now, or I’m a Hottentot.”

“Um!” said Mr. Werrick. “About this young dude, now? Was she going to marry him, straight?”

“She was,” affirmed Miss Guyner.

Mr. Werrick looked into his tumbler.

“She can marry him to-morrow, for anything I care,” he remarked carelessly. “But of course, she can’t. Has she had much out of him, now?”

“There hasn’t been time,” replied Miss Guyner.

“Last night I saw her wearing a diamond necklace,” observed Mr. Werrick. “Real, Sophie?”

“Real enough! It’s worth every cent of ten thousand pounds, that necklace,” said Miss Guyner, with enthusiasm. “But--she carried it off to the bank this morning.”

Mr. Werrick emptied his tumbler and set it down with a deep sigh.

“Ah!” he said. “That’s a pity. If that bit of property, Sophie, had come into my hands, and had been converted, as it would have been, into good solid cash, the proceeds would have gone a long way towards advancing a certain little scheme which I have in view, and in hearing of which you would be greatly interested.”

“Why should I be interested?” inquired Miss Guyner, watching him narrowly.

“Because you may be inclined to take a partnership in it,” answered Mr. Werrick. “The fact is, Sophie, I’m sick of knocking about, and I want to settle down. I’ve been right away out West, and I’m returning West--as soon as I’ve collected capital. I came over here to collect capital, and I was highly gratified, when I met Carsdale last night, to find that I was going to have a better time than I’d anticipated. I hadn’t figured on it that Carsdale would be able to command so much money. Now that I know he can, well, I’m just going to have what I want, and then I’m going back--to settle down.”

“At--what?” asked Miss Guyner.

“At fruit farming,” replied Mr. Werrick. “Fruit farming. California. The loveliest climate in the world, and the most dependable. You’ve nothing to do but see your fruit grow, ship it off, and rake in the dollars. That’s what I’m going to do. And you shall come with me, Sophie.”

“We’ll see,” answered Miss Guyner in matter-of-fact tones. “I might, if it seems to promise well. But your present game, Syd, is to watch those two. Both Carsdale and her will do you if you’re not sharp. I tell you she’s up to something now. And I dare say he is.”

Mr. Werrick’s eyes grew sombre and his brow threatening.

“I’ll watch ’em!” he observed.

“You thought to watch ’em in New York, and they were up and out to Europe, leaving you there to face the music, before you as much as knew they were after anything,” said Miss Guyner.

“Yes, that’s so,” agreed Mr. Werrick; “but I believe Carsdale wants to sort of make up for that trip. In fact, I think he’s got something for me to do that’ll be useful to him.”

“Mind you’re paid in advance, then,” said Miss Guyner. “Now, about her. I can keep an eye on her as long as she stops at the flat. And I can post you up. And that’s the real reason why I came down here this morning--we must meet somewhere.”

“Sure,” said Mr. Werrick. “But where? You know best.”

“Yes,” remarked Miss Guyner. “We mustn’t write, and it isn’t safe to telephone, because, after all, I’m never certain when she mayn’t be in. Do you know Tottenham Court Road, Sydney?”

“I know there is such a street, and maybe I’ve been in it,” replied Mr. Werrick. “Off Oxford Street, isn’t it?”

“It is, and a few doors along it, and on the left-hand side, there’s a little restaurant called Cyrano’s,” answered Miss Guyner. “Now, for the present, you drop in there at twelve noon, and at nine in the evening, and meet me there, and I’ll give you the news. Start to do that to-night. And now I’m off, and you’d better do your shopping and smarten up.”

So Miss Guyner returned to Bloomsbury, and Mr. Werrick went out to expend some of his hundred pounds, and he bought himself two good and quiet suits, and a complete furnishing of linen and small articles. He amused himself for the rest of the day in sober and innocent fashion, but he contrived to walk down Norfolk Street and to view Abbotsbury House from the outside. And after dining quietly at an unpretentious café, he set out for Cyrano’s Restaurant, and in Oxford Street was seen by an American-looking person who immediately took such interest in him that he turned and followed him. The interest increased; the American-looking person followed Mr. Werrick to the very trysting-place and, having watched him enter, entered after him.