The Fighting Chance

“I missed him,” repeated Mortimer.

“Can’t you see him to-morrow?” she asked.

“I suppose so,” said Mortimer slowly. “Oh, Lord! how I hate this business!”

“Hasn’t he misused your confidence? Hasn’t he taken your money?” she asked. “It may be unpleasant for you to make him unbelt, but you’re a coward if you don’t!”

“Easy! easy, now!” muttered Mortimer; “I’m going to shake it out of him. I said I would, and I will.”

“I should hope so; it’s yours.”

“Certainly it’s mine. I wish I’d held fast now. I never supposed Plank would take hold. It was that drivelling old Belwether who scared me stiff! The minute I saw him scurrying to cover like a singed cat I was fool enough to climb the first tree. I’ve had my lesson, little girl.”

“I hope you’ll give Howard his. Somebody ought to,” she said quietly.

Then gathering up her hat and coat she went into her own apartments. Mortimer picked up a cheap magazine, looked over the portraits of the actresses, then, hunching up into a comfortable position, settled himself to read the theatrical comment.

Later, Lydia not appearing, and his own valet arriving to turn on the electricity, bring him his White Rock and Irish and the Evening Telegraph, he hoisted his legs into another chair and sprawled there luxuriously over his paper until it was time to dress.

About half past eight they dined in a white and pink dining-room furnished in dull gray walnut, and served by a stealthy, white-haired, pink-skinned butler, chiefly remarkable because it seemed utterly impossible to get a glimpse of his eyes. Nobody could tell whether there was anything the matter with them or not—and whether they were only very deep set or were weak, like an albino’s, or were slightly crossed, the guests of the house never knew. Lydia herself didn’t know, and had given up trying to find out.

They had planned to go for a spin in Mortimer’s motor after dinner, but in view of the Quarrier fiasco neither was in the mood for anything.

Mortimer, as usual, ate and drank heavily. He was a carnivorous man, and liked plenty of thick, fat, underdone meat. As for Lydia, her appetite was as erratic as her own impulses. Her table, always wastefully elaborate, no doubt furnished subsistence for all the relatives of her household below stairs, and left sufficient for any ambitious butler to make a decent profit on.

“Do you know, Leroy,” she observed, as they left the table and sauntered back into the pale blue drawing-room, “do you know that the servants haven’t been paid for three months?”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” he expostulated, “don’t begin that sort of thing! I get enough of that at home; I get it every time I show my nose!”

“I only mentioned it,” she said carelessly.

“I heard you all right. It isn’t any pleasanter for me than for you. In fact, I’m sick of it; I’m dead tired of being up against it every day of my life. When a man has anything somebody gets it before he can sidestep. When a man’s dead broke there’s nobody in sight to touch.”

“You had an opportunity to make Howard pay you back.”

“Didn’t I tell you I missed him?”

“Yes. What are you going to do?”

“Do?”

“Of course. You are going to do something, I suppose.”

They had reached the gold and green room above. Lydia began pacing the length of a beautiful Kermanshah rug—a pale, delicate marvel of rose and green on a ground of ivory—lovely, but doomed to fade sooner than the pretty woman who trod it with restless, silk-shod feet.

Mortimer had not responded to her last question. She said presently: “You have never told me how you intend to make him pay you back.”

“What?” inquired Mortimer, turning very red.

“I said that you haven’t yet told me how you intend to make Howard return the money you lost through his juggling with your stock.”

“I don’t exactly know myself,” admitted Mortimer, still overflushed. “I mean to put it to him squarely, as a debt of honour that he owes. I asked him whether to invest. Damn him! he never warned me not to. He is morally responsible. Any man who would sit there and nod monotonously like a mandarin, knowing all the while what he was doing to wreck the company, and let a friend put into a rotten concern all the cash he could scrape together, is a swindler!”

“I think so too,” she said, studying the rose arabesques in the rug.

There was a little click of her teeth when she ended her inspection and looked across at Mortimer. Something in her expressionless gaze seemed to reassure him, and give him a confidence he may have lacked.

“I want him to understand that I won’t swallow that sort of contemptible treatment,” asserted Mortimer, lighting a thick, dark cigar.

“I hope you’ll make him understand,” she said, seating herself and resting her clasped, brilliantly ringed hands in her lap.

“Oh, I will—never fear! He has abused my confidence abominably; he has practically swindled me, Lydia. Don’t you think so?”

She nodded.

“I’ll tell him so, too,” blustered Mortimer, shaking himself into an upright posture, and laying a pudgy, clinched fist on the table. “I’m not afraid of him! He’ll find that out, too. I know enough to stagger him. Not that I mean to use it. I’m not going to have him think that my demands on him for my own property resemble extortion.”

“Extortion?” she repeated.

“Yes. I don’t want him to think I’m trying to intimidate him. I won’t have him think I’m a grafter; but I’ve half a mind to shake that money out of him, in one way or another.”

He struck the table and looked at her for further sign of approval.

“I’m not afraid of him,” he repeated. “I wish to God he were here, and I’d tell him so!”

She said coolly: “I was wishing that too.”

For a while they sat silent, preoccupied, avoiding each other’s direct gaze. When she rose he started, watching her in a dazed way as she walked to the telephone.

“Shall I?” she asked quietly, turning to him, her hand on the receiver.

“Wait. W-what are you going to do?” he stammered.

“Call him up. Shall I?”

A dull throb of fright pulsed through him.

“You say you are not afraid of him, Leroy.”

“No!” he said with an oath, “I am not. Go ahead!”

She unhooked the receiver. After a second or two her low, even voice sounded. There came a pause. She rested one elbow on the walnut shelf, the receiver tight to her ear. Then:

“Mr. Quarrier, please.... Yes, Mr. Howard Quarrier.... No, no name. Say it is on business of immediate importance.... Very well, then; you may say that Miss Vyse insists on speaking to him.... Yes, I’ll hold the wire.”

She turned, the receiver at her ear, and looked narrowly at Mortimer.

“Won’t he speak to you?” he demanded.