The young man clinched his hands in a feeble gesture of preparation for resolute resistance.
“I’ve got to go West the middle of the month. I want you and Beatrice to marry before I go—say, on the twentieth. You have to be in London early in the second week in June?”
“Yes,” said Peter reluctantly—the yes of a man lacking the moral courage to say no.
“I’ll not be in the East again before the middle of June—maybe July.”
“Can’t do it,” said Peter with a sudden scowl at the back of the chauffeur separated from them by thick glass.
“Why not?” inquired Richmond in the animal trainer’s tone and with the animal trainer’s eye upon the unhappy Peter. “Why not?”
“I’m not sure I shall marry at all,” said Peter, and his fright distorted his bluff at resoluteness into a sort of nervous impudence, like that of the schoolboy braving the teacher’s uplifted ferule because the rest of the school is waiting with ears that long to hear him howl and beg.
Richmond twisted his small, wiry body round in the seat that he might bring the various batteries in and behind his face full upon Vanderkief. “Is this a joke?” he demanded.
“I wish it were,” replied Peter diplomatically. “I’ve made some discoveries that will compel me to—to relieve your daughter of—of the engagement which—which is so distasteful to her.”
Richmond’s policy in dealing with his fellow-men was to strike his heaviest blow first—that is, he blew up the intrenchments before he charged the intrenched. He laughed in that gentle, light way which is as the soft tap of the nettle leaf that instantly produces a swelling and a smarting. “So, this is why you’ve been sneaking round these last three days, trying to dispose of the stocks I let you in on.”