“Any way you like. That’s your affair. When I tell a clerk to get me out a statement he does not say ‘how?’ He knows how to do it, and he knows that I don’t.”
I got up to go. “Thanks,” I said. “But I don’t think I care about this kind of thing.”
“Do, for Heaven’s sake, sit down! I am quite serious about this. Look here, I’ll give you all the help I can. Why do you suppose I had a thousand pounds in my pocket this morning? It is not like a millionaire; it is especially not like me. Often and often I have had to borrow my ’bus fare from the conductor, who knows me, because I have no money whatever in my pocket. I had that money with me this morning because I wanted an argument. A thousand pounds is as good an argument as I know, except more thousands. I had been down to Dingleton’s, the private detective’s. I meant to go in there and tell them to buy this girl off. A thousand pounds was to be the first instalment of her price. When I came there I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go inside their beastly office. It was too low down on Charles. Their underbred and under-educated agents would have made some blunder or other, and Charles would never have forgiven me. But I expect the woman is to be bought, and that you will be able to buy her. A discreditable past would be of very little assistance, because Charles is a quixotic fool. The more he learned that she was the last kind of woman a man ought to marry, the more his insensate chivalry would drive him to marry her.”
“Why should one be able to buy her off? I presume your only son is your heir?”
“He is, at present. But I can disinherit him to-morrow. That point might be made clear to Miss Norton. I think a woman of her astuteness will find the simplest little sparrow in the hand worth more than an entire aviary of humming-birds in their native freedom.”
“I don’t know your son, and I don’t know her.”
“You will meet my son at lunch here to-day. You can meet Miss Sibyl Norton whenever you like. For, at present, she is getting a precarious existence as a palmist and manicurist. Pretty combination, isn’t it? Takes the mystery out of your hand first, and then cuts your nails.”
“Very well,” I said. “I am going to see these two people. Afterwards, I will tell you if I can do anything.”
I lunched at the house that day. There were about twenty at the luncheon-party, and my clothes were all wrong for it, and I did not care a bit. I had some talk with Mr. Charles Holding, and found that he answered fairly well to his father’s description. He was noble, but vacuous. A weak chin spoilt a face that would otherwise have been good-looking. I would have trusted him better in temptation than in a street riot. He had a great admiration for Lovelace, and was horrified that I did not even possess a copy of his favourite poems. Would I permit him to send me one? I would. He scribbled my address on his shirt-cuff.
I got away from the house about three in the afternoon. Mr. Wentworth Holding himself came down the steps with me, apologising for not being able to let me have his carriage. “You see,” he said, “you must, of course, go on to Miss Sibyl Norton at once, and she knows my horses and liveries.”