"Well, there's something in knowing all that, Ambler, my lad," answered Allerdyke. "You can't get to know too much about the folks you're dealing with, you know. Very good—we'll leave that now. What d'ye think o' this?"
He unfolded and held up the reward bill, first looking as fondly at it as a youthful author looks at his first printed performance, and then glancing at his manager to see what effect it had upon him. And he saw Ambler Appleyard's sandy eyebrows go up in a definite arch.
"Fifty thousand!" muttered Appleyard. "Whew! It's a stiff figure, Mr.
Allerdyke. You've put a thick finger in that pie, I'm thinking!"
"One half from the Princess; twenty thousand from me; five thousand from the singing lady," whispered Allerdyke. "That's how it's made up, my lad. And naught'll please me better than to see it paid out—that's a fact!"
"You'll have some triers," said Appleyard, with an emphatic wag of the head. "Make no mistake about that! Fifty thousand! Gosh!—why, anybody that's got the least clue, the slightest idea—and there must be somebody—'ll have a go in for all he or she's worth!"
"Let 'em try!" exclaimed Allerdyke. "The welcome man's the chap that enables us to recover and convict. Here, shove that bill in your pocket, and read it at your leisure—there's something to think about in what it says, I promise you."
Appleyard went away from the club an hour and a half later, thinking hard enough. But he was not thinking about the reward bill. What he was thinking about, had been thinking about from the moment in which Allerdyke had drawn him into the smoking-room window and pointed her out to him, was—Mrs. Marlow. For Appleyard knew Mrs. Marlow well enough, but (always those buts in life, he reflected with a cynical laugh as he threaded his way back to Gresham Street) he knew her by another name—Miss Slade. And now he was wondering why Miss Slade or Mrs. Marlow had two names, and why she appeared to be one person as he knew her in private life, and another as he had seen her that very morning.
On Appleyard's first coming to town in the capacity of sole manager of the London warehouse of Allerdyke and Partners, Limited, he had set himself up in two rooms in a Bloomsbury lodging-house. He knew little of London life at that time, or he would have known that he was thus condemning himself to a drab and dreary existence. As it was, he quickly learnt by experience, and within six months, having picked up a comfortable knowledge of things, he transferred himself to one of those well-equipped boarding establishments in the best part of Bayswater, wherein bachelors, old maids, young women, widowers, and married couples without encumbrance, can live together in as much or as little friendship and intercourse as pleases their individual tastes. Ambler Appleyard took his time and selected the likeliest place he could find after much inspection of many similar places. His salary of a thousand a year (to which was to be added a handsome, if varying commission) enabled him to pick and choose; the house which he did choose, in the immediate neighbourhood of Lancaster Gate, was of the luxurious order; its private rooms were models of the last thing in comfort, its public rooms were equal to those of the best modern hotels. If you wanted male society, you could find it in the smoking-room and the billiard-room; if you desired feminine influences there was a pleasing variety in the drawing-room and the lounges. You could be just as much alone, and just as much in company as you pleased—anyway, the place suited Ambler Appleyard, and there he had lived for two and a half years. And during a good two of them, the young lady whom he knew as Miss Slade had lived there too.
With Miss Slade, Appleyard, as fellow-resident in the same house, was on quite friendly terms. He sometimes talked to her in one of the drawing-rooms. He knew her for a clever, rather brilliant young woman, with ideas, and the power to express them. It was evident to him that she had travelled and had seen a good deal of the world and its men and women; she could talk politics with far more knowledge and insight than most women; she knew more than a little of economic matters, and was inclined, like Appleyard himself, to utilitarianism in all things affecting government and society. But of herself she never spoke directly; all Appleyard knew of her concerns was that she was engaged in business of some nature, and went to it every morning as regularly and punctually as he went to his. He judged that whatever her business was she must be well paid for it, or must possess means of her own; nobody, man or woman, could possibly live at that boarding-house, or private hotel, as its proprietors preferred to call it, for anything less than four guineas a week. Well—here was the explanation of Miss Slade's business; she was evidently private secretary to Mr. Franklin Fullaway, and competent to do business at a place like Rothschild's. And why not?—yet … why did she call herself Miss Slade at the boarding-house and Mrs. Marlow in her business capacity?
"And yet why shouldn't she?" asked Appleyard of himself. "A woman's a right to do what she likes in that way, and she isn't necessarily deceitful because she passes as a single woman in one place and a widow in another. I daresay she could give a very good reason for all this—but who's got any right to ask her for one? Not me, certainly!"