Chapter Twelve.
Concerning Two Claimants.
“Well, Delia, how much was it?” was Bob’s first greeting.
“A thousand pounds.”
The effect of this announcement was electrical and diverse. Old Calmour dropped his knife and fork—they were at table—and stared. Even Clytie could not repress a gasp; while as for Bob, he hoorayed aloud.
“Then Wagram has stumped up! Did he send it straight to you?”
“Look! There’s the cheque,” holding it up.
“Phew!” whistled Bob. “It ought to have come to you through our people, though.”
“Good thing it didn’t,” said Clytie significantly.
“Rather!” assented Bob briskly. “All the more for us. Now we need only pay for the letter of demand. Well done, Delia. I say, dad, we ought to have a jolly good dinner to-night on the strength of it, and some fizz to drink Delia’s health.”
“So we will, so we will,” snuffled the old man. “It’s like a blessed gift of Providence coming as it does just now, for the devil only knows how we should have managed to get on much longer.”
“Buck up, old girl,” cried Bob, boisterously affectionate on the strength of this sudden accession to wealth. “Buck up. You’re looking sort of white about the gills, and pulling a face as long as a fiddle, instead of hooraying like mad. Why, you’ve got your thousand—a cool thou—and no costs charged, and no delay, and you don’t seem a bit happy.”
Then Delia spoke.
“Happy! I feel as if I could never look anybody in the face again. A mean, extortionate, blackmailing swindle has been perpetrated in my name, and I shall not lose a moment in putting it right, and explaining that I had no part in it. I am going to return this cheque.”
“Wh-at?” bellowed Bob.
“Going to re—” gasped old Calmour, who had fallen back in his chair, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
“Is she mad?” snorted Bob, who had gone as white as the girl herself. “Gets a cool thou, sent her—a cool thou, by the Lord Harry!—and then says ‘No, thanks; I’d rather not. Take it back again.’ It oughtn’t to be allowed.”
“And would rather see her old father starve,” yelped old Calmour. “Here, take it from her, Bob. We’ll keep it for her till she comes to a better frame of mind.”
“You dare to lay a hand on me,” said Delia; and there was that in her livid face and blazing eyes that caused the move Bob had made to rise in his chair to subside again. “Besides, you couldn’t take it from me without tearing it to pieces, nor could you cash it without my endorsement—which you would never get. How’s that, Lawyer Bob?”
“Damnable tommy-rot. Oh, hang it, Clytie, can’t you knock some sense into her silly noddle? You haven’t said anything.”
“How can one when you’re all bellowing at once? Well, I may as well tell you both that you’ve made a thundering silly mess of the whole thing. My beautiful scheme, which was becoming simpler and simpler every day, is now irrevocably knocked on the head—”
“Beautiful scheme! Tommy-rot!” interrupted Bob. “A cool thou, in the hand’s worth twenty ‘beautiful schemes’ in your head.”
”—But as you have knocked it out,” went on Clytie, ignoring the interruption, “I say stick to the thousand.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Bob.
“My mind is quite made up,” replied Delia. “I am going to return it. Why, we could never hold up our heads in the place again.”
“We don’t hold them extra tall as it is,” laughed Clytie, “yet we manage to rub along somehow. A cool thou, doesn’t tumble our way every day, wherefore don’t be in a hurry about the thing, Delia; give it, say, till to-morrow. Think it well over.”
“It won’t bear thinking about, much less thinking over. I am going to Hilversea as fast as my bicycle will carry me; now, immediately.”
Then her father and brother began upon her again. Ingratitude for what they had done for her, callous indifference to her father’s declining old age and increasing wants, general selfishness—these were but few of the crimes laid to her charge. But she was adamant.
“You’ll have to get your bike to carry you first,” snarled Bob, giving up the contest. Hardly had he flung himself from the room than the meaning of his words flashed upon Delia. She flew to the door. Too late. Her bicycle stood in the front hall, and Bob, with a nasty grin on his face, was in the act of replacing a pin in his waistcoat. He had punctured both wheels in two or three places, and, to make assurance doubly sure, had treated Clytie’s machine in like manner.
“You cur!” she gasped. “Never mind; I’ll hire one at Warren’s.”
“Wagram won’t pay the bill this time. Ta-ta! Bong voyadge!” And the abominable cub took himself off.
“How could you do such a thing?” she flashed out, turning on her father. “You have disgraced me for ever. A downright blackmailing fraud!”
“Fraud be damned?” snarled old Calmour. “What are you talking about, girl? That sort of talk is dangerous. A highly respectable firm like Pownall and Skreet don’t deal in frauds.”
“What sort of firm did you say, dad?” said Clytie sweetly.
The old man whirled round upon her.
“What have you got to say to it, I’d like to know? You just mind your own blanked business. Are you backing that idiot up in her lunacy? And look here, my lady Delia. You’ve grown too big for your boots of late. If we’re not good enough for you, and our ways don’t suit your ladyship, you’d better go and look out for yourself. See then how much your swagger friends will do for you.”
“Yes; I will go,” said the girl, “but not until I’ve put this matter right. Your ‘highly respectable firm’ ought to be struck off the rolls for this job. Faugh! it’s scandalous!” she flashed out, as angry as he was.
“Here, Delia, come away,” said Clytie. “We’ve all let off quite enough steam, and we don’t want to go on nagging all day.” And she dragged her sister from the room almost by main force.
The while Bob, heading for the offices of the said “highly respectable firm,” though hugely incensed at his sister’s decision, yet through it discerned a silver lining to that cloud. If Wagram père had been so quick to respond to her claim—or rather to the spurious claim that he and his father had put forth—and that to the uttermost farthing, by parity of reasoning would not Wagram fils be equally ready to meet his own, issued simultaneously with the other? Clearly these people had a horror of litigation, and already he saw himself master of a thousand pounds, all his own, or at any rate of the result of a substantial compromise. Consequently, when he entered the office—incidentally a little late—it was with a jaunty, rakish air, as though, if he chose, he could buy up the whole concern.
“Pownall wants you, Calmour,” said one of the clerks at once.
“Ha, does he? I thought he would,” answered Bob lightly. Already he saw himself in possession. The reply had come. The only thing now to be reckoned with was that Pownall should not make an undue deduction for costs. Yet, somehow, as he knocked and entered, there was something in Pownall’s veined and scrubby-bearded face that was not propitious. And Pownall was not inclined to waste valuable time.
“Look here, Calmour,” he began, “when you brought me this claim of yours I told you I didn’t think there was the slightest chance of your getting anything. Here’s the answer.”
“Do they refuse, sir?”
“Absolutely and uncompromisingly. Here, read it yourself,” chucking an open letter across to his discomfited clerk, who took it and read:
“Hilversea Court,
“23rd June 1897.
“Sirs,—I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of yesterday’s date, demanding from me the sum of a thousand pounds as compensation to one Robert Calmour, for assaulting him. If this person is the blackguard I chastised last week on the Swanton Road for grossly insulting a young lady under my charge, I may mention incidentally that he is very ill-advised in revealing his identity, for the young lady’s father, on learning it, is not only prepared, but eager, to repeat the infliction, and that with very considerable exaggeration of the punishment he received at my hands. To come to the main point, I flatly refuse to pay one farthing; indeed, so impossible is it for me to treat this claim as a serious one that I have not even deemed it worth while to refer the matter to my solicitors.—Yours faithfully,
“Wagram Gerard Wagram.
“Messrs Pownall and Skreet.”
Bob had gone very pale during the perusal of this letter. Not only had his house of cards gone down with a flutter—for he could read no compromise here—but he was threatened with the summary vengeance of an unknown and vindictive parent. The stripes that Wagram had laid upon him, now turned to yellow and red bruises, seemed to tingle afresh.
“Is it no good pressing him further, sir?” he stammered. “This may be bluff.”
“Ours was bluff,” sneered Pownall. “I thought it just worth trying on, but only just. Now I see it isn’t. No jury in England would find for you, and we can’t afford to take up such a case.”
“But they paid my sister, sir, almost by return.”
“What?” shouted Pownall, jumping from his chair. “What? Paid in full?”
“Yes. Sent her a cheque for a thousand.”
“But this ought to have gone through us. It’s irregular, damned irregular.”
“So it is, sir. And what’s more irregular, she’s going to return it.”
“Going to return it?”
“Yes; swears she won’t accept it; calls it blackmail, and so forth.”
“Does she? Well, see here, Calmour, I’m sick of all your family grievances, and am devilish sorry I ever took them up. If it hadn’t been that your father’s a very old friend of mine I wouldn’t have touched them with the tip of the tongs. Now you’d better get back to the office.”
“One minute, sir,” stammered Bob. “Er—who is the person referred to in the letter as—er—threatening me with further violence?”
“I shrewdly conjecture it’s Haldane—and, if so, you’d better give him a wide, wide berth. He just about worships that girl of his, and he has knocked about in rough, wild parts. Hang it! couldn’t you tell the difference between a lady—a thoroughbred—and a village wench if you must get playing the fool by roadsides, you silly young rip? Now get back to your job. I haven’t taken anything by either of you,” added the lawyer disgustedly as he resumed his work.
If ever anybody found himself in an utterly abject state of mind, assuredly that individual was Bob Calmour as he slunk out of his principal’s room, and as he took his place at his own desk he felt as if he could have blown his brains out, only he lacked the courage. He cursed Pownall, he cursed Delia, he cursed everything and everybody, but more than all did he curse Wagram. Should he take his claim to some other solicitor? That would be useless, for he felt pretty sure that nobody but his principal would have touched it. Furthermore, the hint thrown out by Wagram with regard to his identity becoming known commanded his whole-hearted respect, and he grew green with scare at the thought that Haldane might be looking for him even at that moment. Heavens! what if Delia had let drop anything that might give him away when she was spending the day there? Hardly likely; and again he congratulated himself on his sound policy in keeping the thing a fast secret between himself and his principal. One comfort was that Haldane rarely came to Bassingham, his county town being Fulkston, away in the other direction; still, Bob Calmour was destined to expiate his act of Yahooism very fully, in the shape of a chronic apprehension, which rendered life a nightmare to him for some time thenceforward.