“What about?” asked Gimblet.
“I,” Sidney hesitated again, and then continued with a plunge, “I have been losing a great deal of money lately; I am ashamed to say that I have lost it on race-courses, and that it is a sum far larger than I can afford. I went to my aunt to ask for help. I asked her, in fact, to lend me some money to tide over my difficulties for the present. She was very irate about it. She can’t stand betting; and as soon as I told her she got in a fearful rage and threw me out of the house. That is all the conversation I had with her on Monday. You can understand I don’t much like owning up to it, as it’s not precisely to my credit.” Sidney ended with a rueful laugh.
“Mrs. Vanderstein absolutely refused to help you in any way?”
“Said she’d see me damned first. Well, you know, she mayn’t have put it exactly like that.”
“Hardly, I should think. I’d rather have her own words, if you can remember them, please.”
Sidney searched his memory. “As far as I can recollect, what she actually said was, ‘I will have nothing whatever to do with a gambler like you. Not only will I not give you money now, but you shall never have a penny that is mine to use for that degrading vice. I shall alter my will,’ she said, ‘and that to-morrow. And never let me see you again. I’ll not have you in my house.’ That’s what she said, and I had nothing to do but to go out of the house like a whipped dog. And I went.” Sidney’s voice was bitter as he recalled his humiliation, but when he spoke again he had recovered his normal good temper. “Poor Aunt Ruth,” he said, “there’s a good deal to be said on her side, you know, and just about nothing at all on mine. However, I didn’t come to talk about my own rotten affairs. I wonder where she can have got to? There’s something uncommon fishy about her vanishing this way, don’t you think? Hope to goodness she’s not been knocked on the head for the sake of her diamonds, you know.”
His tone was light, but Gimblet seemed to perceive a note of genuine anxiety underlying it.
“I hope not, indeed,” he agreed gravely.
“I really feel a bit worried about her—her and Miss Turner,” went on the young man. “Hang it all, since I’ve begun confiding in you I think I may as well make a clean breast of the whole show. The fact is I’ve got a beastly guilty conscience sort of feeling, because I was on the verge, a day or two ago, of playing the dickens of a shabby trick on Aunt Ruth. You can see how badly I want this money, as I told you, to pay my debts next week. Well, I as near as makes no difference tried to get it out of my aunt by what I suppose you’d call false pretences—which sounds a nice blackguardly thing to do, don’t it? I don’t suppose anyone’s told you that she had a craze for Royalty in any shape? Well, I didn’t know it myself till lately, but it seems there’s nothing she wouldn’t do to get in contact with great people. A friend of mine suggested that we should get another of my pals to impersonate some royal prince, and that I should introduce him to my aunt. The idea was that he should rather make up to her, and then intercede on my behalf, or get the money out of her in some way. I don’t think I should have done it when it came to the point, because I saw very plainly the next day what an impossible thing it was to do. And if I’d gone as far as to ask my friend to help, I haven’t the slightest doubt he would have told me not to be an ass. But there you are—I did think of it, and it sticks on my conscience now. I shall never get the taste out of my mouth, I believe, and if there’s anything you think I could do to be of any use, now that she’s gone and mislaid herself, you can understand that I’d do it all the more gladly since I feel I owe her a good turn.”