"A millionaire maker of screws in Birmingham."
"Then it would be queer if there was a loose screw somewhere about his daughter's admirer," Reggie rejoined, and with a boyish laugh for his own jest he strolled off to the billiard-room in quest of a game.
In the meanwhile Leslie Chermside and his companion had reached the seclusion of the marshland path, at the same time plunging into a more private conversation than was advisable on the frequented sea-front. On their immediate left rose the tree-covered side, almost a miniature cliff, of the ancient river-bed; to the right of them there stretched to the opposite bank a quarter of a mile away the osiers and reeds that carpeted the mud-flats. There was no one to see or hear.
It did not need the presentation of a visiting card with his name on it to disclose Mr. Levi Levison's nationality. The moment he opened his mouth to speak he stood revealed as a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and even before then, for apart from his lisping utterance he had all the bodily peculiarities of his race. The full red lips, the beaky nose, and the large conciliatory eyes that seemed to veil so much, could have belonged to no one but a Jew. His clothes were flashy, but none too clean. In age he was probably about thirty.
"I don't want to be harsh, but s'help me, Mr. Chermside, I ain't got any option in the matter," he was saying. "I've bought up your Indian debts in the ordinary courthe of business, and I can't afford to lose on the transaction. Here are the papers that you wanted to see. You'll find they're all ship-shape enough. And you must pardon my remarking that when you agreed to—er—act for the Maharajah in a certain delicate matter I suppothe you intended to keep faith with him."
Chermside took the proffered papers, glanced through and returned them. "Oh, yes; I intended to keep faith right enough," he replied rather wearily. "And I haven't said that I don't mean to do so, have I?"
"No, you'd hardly be such a juggins as that," Mr. Levison leered, exasperatingly. "But I've been here a week, Mr. Chermside, and kept my eyes and ears open. I can find that things from his Highness's point of view are 'anging fire. What's a poor struggling feller to do? I bought up your little indiscretions in the Shining East, you see, on the understanding that his Highness, who sold them to me, would redeem them at a hundred per cent. advance on what I paid, directly you carried out his wishes; but that if not I was to put the screw on in the ordinary courthe of business. It wouldn't be nice for you to be therved with writs and things—judgment summonses they'd soon blossom into—just when you're enjoying yourself in a pretty place like this."
Mr. Levison rolled his dark eyes over the picturesque landscape as if he had no thought but for the beauties of Nature.
Leslie Chermside made no reply, but paced on with downcast gaze.
"You see, I'm a little bit in the know," Levison went on, after a furtive glance at his tall companion's bronzed face. "Mr. Travers Nugent came down by the late train last night, and I've had a chat with him this morning up at that sweet little place of his—'The Hut,' he calls it. The steamer is lying at Portland, not thirty miles away, only waiting for you to throw your handkerchief to the girl, which, from what I've seen, she'll pick up fast enough. And, though expense is no object, it don't do to keep a crew of fifty toughs in harbour wondering why they don't start on a cruise that's to end in a pile of dollars for all of them."