Where had the boy obtained money? And how had he got it? Geraldine and Mrs. Wells knew his former methods. The ordinary relaxed figure of the boy suggested a mind without a scheme, but on the trail of money he could summon wonderful powers of cunning. Like a paranoiac under examination who is quite aware of every symptom that might betray him, and conceals them, Walter could temporarily throw off the look of the idiot, the hanging jaw, the lurch. And his begging stories were strikingly plausible.
Money had to be kept from him, of course, and also any article of value—ring or watch. To give him so much as a shilling would mean neat brandy and the beginning of a debauch. That explains the presence of so much money in the possession of Geraldine. She was helping to guard it from Walter.
In London Walter had got a five-pound note from the Bishop of Clewes. Mrs. Wells was taking advantage of a letter of introduction for the sole purpose, as she admitted to Geraldine, of comparing reality with Trollope’s Barchester Towers. Having listened to a conversation aimed to draw a contribution to the Relic Society’s monument fund, Walter had deftly taken the Bishop aside to announce that Mrs. Wells wished to present five pounds to the secretary of the society on her way to the station; that it was not wise to let her interest cool until she went through all the red-tape of banks in London; and that the safest thing to do was to permit Walter to take the money, preferably in gold, from the Bishop. Of course no trouble of banks, etc., would keep Mrs. Wells from paying the Bishop within the week.
The plot worked well in many ways. It gave the Bishop a certain sense of actually contributing himself, it forced Mrs. Wells to forward a P.O. order to the Relic Society, and it gave Walter his chance for a riotous rebellion.
Then the mother took command. Somehow, whether it was hypnotic or not, Walter was unable again to summon courage to beg, although he had many opportunities. On the point of beginning a tale fear, chattering fear, would seize his very voice and throttle the story into extinction. For months he had lived his daily animal round without once giving the suspicion of an attempt to break away. Mother and daughter had begun to feel secure.
And now it had happened again. Somewhere on that steamer a passenger had been gulled into giving money to a well-dressed tramp. Walter was no more than that. Geraldine pondered over each name on the steamer-list and came to a conclusion. Walter never approached strangers. He hadn’t the courage to pose on his own recommendation; his game was invariably to strike the most recent acquaintance of one of the family. There were many good reasons for this procedure, one of which was the fact that everyone else had been warned. On the list before her there were only five names of possible persons whom Walter could know, and all of these—except one—had been strictly enjoined from helping a wrecked boy to further ruin. That one, “Mr. Richard,” she felt sure had been the mark of Walter’s latest story. There was something comical in the thought that to give money to Walter Mr. Richard had been compelled to part with his sole five-dollar bill.
Mrs. Wells and Geraldine had been two days below decks before Walter’s ugliness wore off into weak illness. They had taken turns watching him and were spent for sleep; so, naturally, they gave their first hours of relief to bed. The steamer had passed Gibraltar before either woman emerged to the upper deck. With a steward on guard in the corridor—handsomely tipped in advance and with the promise of a definite daily wage—they came up one late afternoon in time to join the deck promenade before dinner.
“Ah!” Mr. Richard popped suddenly out of a steamer-chair. “I’ve been looking for you——” He was about to say “Jerry,” when he caught both the frightened look on Geraldine’s face and the imposing figure of the mother. Then he swiftly changed to “Miss——” but paused before the “Wells,” for to him that was as much a pseudonym as “Richard.”
“I want you to know my mother,” Geraldine put in. “This is the gentleman, mother, who was good enough to play escort in Naples that hot day we were tied up there.”
“Mr. Richard-without-the-‘s’?” Mrs. Wells inquired, and then went on, “Mr. Richard, I am indebted to you for looking out for my daughter.” She was examining him with care. “She says you are a friend of that villainous-looking Captain. I am glad to see you such a peaceful-looking person. Please get back into your comfortable steamer-chair. We have been below deck ever since Naples and just must tramp a little.”