The Black Abbot
some other bookmaker would have done so. When you won you were
paid--have you any complaints?”
“My money!” muttered Arthur.
Gilder replaced the book in his pocket.
“You remember five years ago complaining to me that you couldn’t find
bookmakers who would take big bets by telegram within a few minutes of
the race? That little talk gave me an idea. I knew you lost steadily,
that you were one of those--unfortunate people----”
“Say ‘fools’--that was the word on your lips.”
“‘Mug’ was the word,” said Mr. Gilder, with great calmness. “I knew
you were one of those people who couldn’t stop betting. So Truman’s
came into existence. Their book of rules was sent to you, featuring
the important concession that you could wire big sums of money up to
within a few minutes of a race. Do you know how much you’ve lost in
the last five years?”
Arthur was pale with fury, but, mastering himself, shook his head.
“You have lost sixty-three thousand pounds to Truman alone,” said the
other slowly. “And I have won it!”
The colour came and went in Arthur Gwyn’s face. He knew all the time
that his rage and resentment were unreasonable. Hitherto Truman had
been a name on a telegraph form, an address somewhere in the West End
to which his unprofitable telegrams were sent. Who they were he
neither knew nor cared; they might have been people infinitely more
objectionable than Gilder.
But there was a suggestion of duplicity in the man’s confession.
Arthur Gwyn felt that he had been tricked by a servant he trusted, and
he was helpless in face of sixty-three thousand facts, all of which
balanced on the side of the hard-faced man before him.
“You are not Rathburn & Co., I suppose?” he asked, mentioning another
bookmaking firm that had drawn heavily upon his resources.
To his amazement, Gilder nodded.
“I am Rathburn & Company. I am also Burton & Smith. I am, in fact, the
three bookmakers to whom you have been losing money at the rate of
thirty thousand a year for the past five years. There is no sense in
looking like that, Gwyn. I have been guilty of no crime. On the few
occasions when you have won money, you have been paid. Your losses
would not have been so distasteful if they had been made to an unknown
man. I took the risk--my luck against yours. When I started, I staked
my little fortune--three thousand pounds, won through the years by
scrimping and saving. If you had been lucky, I should have been
ruined.”
“Instead of which you were lucky--and I am ruined,” said Arthur Gwyn
huskily. He was shaken from his accustomed calm. “You are quite right,
though it is a little--bewildering.”
He looked curiously at the inscrutable face of his managing clerk,
striving to readjust his estimate of a man whom he had looked upon as
little more than a superior servant. Then the humour of the position
struck him and he laughed.
“If I’m not careful I shall be sorry for myself, and I should hate
that, Gilder! So you’re a rich man, eh? What are you going to do with
your money?”
Gilder’s eyes did not leave his face.
“I am going to settle down in the country,” he said, “and I am going
to marry.”
“Splendid!” There was a note of irony in Arthur Gwyn’s tone. “And who
is the fortunate lady?”
It was a long time before the other replied. He stared open-eyed at
his sometime master, and then, very deliberately and slowly:
“It is my desire and intention to marry Miss Leslie Gwyn,” he said.
Not a muscle of Arthur Gwyn’s face moved; his colour did not change.
But into his eyes came a glare which was malign and devilish. For a
second the imperturbable Gilder was scared. Had he gone too far? Both
men were learning something that day. Gilder had a momentary view of
something that was very ugly and menacing, and then the curtains were
drawn and the inner self of Arthur Gwyn vanished in an enigmatic
smile.
“That is very interesting and very--enterprising of you, Gilder!
Unfortunately, I have other plans.”
He rose leisurely from his chair, walked round the desk and confronted
the other, his hands thrust into his pockets.
“What are you prepared to pay for the privilege of being my
brother-in-law?” he bantered.
Fabrian Gilder took up the challenge.
“The return of half your betting losses for the past five years,” he
said.
Arthur shook his head.
“Not enough,” he smiled.
“The cancellation of four bills,” said Gilder deliberately, “drawn and
accepted by Lord Chelford, the acceptance in each case being forged by
you.”
Arthur Gwyn staggered back to his desk, his face white and drawn, and
Gilder pursued the advantage.
“You didn’t think it was an accident that I suggested you should get
Chelford to back a bill for you, did you? Seventy-five thousand pounds
isn’t enough for you, eh? I’ll give you this alternative: five years
in Dartmoor!”
XIII
Leslie had spent rather a boring afternoon, and not once but many
times she regretted that she had promised to return to Arthur’s
office. He was driving her down to Willow House, and, but for this
arrangement, she would have returned to Chelfordbury by an early
train, for her shopping did not occupy more than an hour.
She rang up her brother to suggest this plan, never doubting that he
would agree, but, to her surprise:
“I think you’d better return with me, girl. Come along to the office
about half-past four instead of five. By the way, Gilder wants us to
go home to his flat to tea. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Mr. Gilder?” she said, in surprise, and he went on hastily:
“We ought to be civil to him. He’s going to be a neighbour of ours,
and he--he’s not a bad sort of fellow.”
Her inclination was to plead a headache and be excused an experience
which, to state the matter mildly, was not wholly to her taste. But
Arthur seldom asked a favour of her, and it was apparent from his tone
that he was anxious she should show this act of civility to his head
clerk; somewhat unwillingly she agreed.
If he detected her reluctance, he made no comment upon it and seemed
in a hurry to hang up. There was no reason in the world why the
projected call should make her uneasy, and yet, for some obscure
reason, this coming experience hung like a cloud over her for the rest
of the afternoon. This time, when she returned to the office, she
entered by Arthur’s private door. He was alone, sitting at his desk in
a familiar attitude, his head between his hands, his gloomy eyes fixed
upon the blotting-pad. She thought his face had less colour than
usual; and in his eyes there was a haggard, hunted expression which
was startling. He forced a smile to greet her, but she was not
deceived.
“Aren’t you well, Arthur?” she asked anxiously.
“Fit as a fiddle,” he laughed; “only I have had a pretty heavy day. I
suppose I look a little washed out.”
He did not seem very anxious to discuss himself, but plunged straight
into the subject of the surprising call they were to make.
“Gilder has a flat off Regent’s Park,” he said. “Be as nice to him as
you can, Leslie. He’s been a pretty useful man. By the way,” he said
awkwardly, “he is a bachelor.”
She smiled at this; in her wildest dreams she would not have imagined
that this statement had any particular interest for herself.
“I had no idea he was such a--that he was so prosperous,” she said.
“No, I don’t mean that bachelorhood is a sign of poverty, but his
estate at Chelfordbury and his flat in Regent’s Park are not exactly
what one would have expected.”
“He isn’t a bad fellow,” repeated Arthur, as he rang the bell. “I
think you’ll like him: he is rather--amusing.”
“Amusing” was not the word he would have used, in all truth, but it
was the only word he could think of at the moment. As though he were
waiting for this summons, Mr. Gilder came in answer to the bell. He
carried a light coat over his arm and a spotless gray felt hat in his
hand. Again she was uncomfortably conscious of the man’s scrutiny.
“You know Mr. Gilder, Leslie?”
His uneasiness and apprehension were communicating themselves to her.
Try as she did, she could not succeed in shaking off her sensation of
disquietude. The atmosphere was electric; she would have been dull
indeed if she had not responded to the strain.
Throughout the journey Mr. Gilder talked almost without interruption.
He had a deep but pleasant voice, and was an easy conversationalist.
Arthur was beginning to know something about the man with whom he had
worked side by side all these years, and to regard him in a new light.
Hitherto, Gilder had been a cipher--a familiar figure that had
appeared from heaven knew where in the morning and had disappeared at
the end of a day’s work into the blue. As though unconscious of his
employer’s wonder and speculation, Gilder chatted on.
Afterward, Leslie catalogued the subjects which were discussed so
one-sidedly in that drive. He talked of aviation, of wireless, of
books he had read--Dumas was his favourite--of the war, of Russia, of
Italy’s renaissance, of American writers, of the weather, polo--of
almost every subject that occupied public attention. She knew that he
was trying to impress her, and saw in this no more than the natural
desire of a man to look well in the eyes of a woman.
The flat was bigger than she had expected, and was in one of many in
the most exclusive apartment house on the Outer Circle. Arthur viewed
its expensive appointments with a glum face. One black week of his at
Ascot must have furnished three such flats as this, he thought, and
the little devil of resentment and loathing grew stronger in his
heart.
Tea was served by two trimly uniformed maids, and Mr. Gilder acted the
part of host to perfection. He had a library of rare old books which
she must see, and he took them to a room the walls of which were
fitted with bookshelves and reminded Leslie, though there was no
resemblance between the two apartments, of the hall wherein her
fiancé spent most of his time.
Gilder was showing the girl a rare first edition when a surprising
thing happened.
“Do you mind if I run out for five minutes, Leslie? I want to see a
fellow who lives on the other side of the Park.”
Arthur Gwyn’s voice was husky, his assumption of ease a miserable
failure. The girl looked at him in astonishment, and then examined the
face of the little watch on her wrist.
“If you want to be back at Willow House in time for dinner----” she
began.
“I sha’n’t be more than a quarter of an hour gone,” he said
desperately. “If you don’t mind…”
Before she could utter a word he had vanished. It was all so
unexpected, so strange, that she could not quite realize what had
happened, and the last thought in the world she could have had was
that Arthur was deliberately leaving her alone with this gray man.
On one point her mind was made up: she did not like Mr. Gilder; and
she was fairly certain that her antipathy was shared by her brother.
His strange manner in the presence of the man, his awkwardness, and,
most convincing proof of all, his silence, puzzled her. Arthur was
intensely selfish, would not go a step out of his way either for
courtesy’s sake or to save the feelings of those whom he regarded as
his dependents. And this sudden desire to oblige his head clerk was
contradictory to her knowledge of him. Yet she felt neither alarm nor
annoyance, finding herself in that little library, alone with this
square-jawed clerk.
As the door closed upon her brother, Fabrian Gilder carefully replaced
on the shelf the book he had been examining.
“I shall be in my new home by the spring,” he said, “and I hope I
shall see more of you, Miss Gwyn.”
She made a conventionally polite reply.
“My ambition has always been to settle in the country and to follow my
two hobbies, which are fishing and reading,” he went on. “Happily, I