A woman's debt

by William Le Queux

These men are usually very scrupulous in money matters, pay their bets promptly when they lose and expect to be paid as promptly when they win, are never behindhand in a club subscription, liberal but not ostentatious in their tips to waiters. Many of them, in fact most, have a small annuity which forms the nucleus of their income; how the rest of that income is earned is often a puzzle to even their most intimate friends.

Mr. Sellars was one of a large family, some twelve in all, sons and daughters. His father had left capital bringing in about fifteen hundred a year to be divided amongst this numerous offspring. This brought Reggie in the modest competence of about a hundred odd pounds a year. He dressed very well, and his tailor must have taken more than that. It was obvious, therefore, that he had a knack of picking up money somehow and somewhere, as he belonged to several clubs, frequented fashionable society, and was by no means an anchorite in his tastes.

As a matter of fact, he lived on his wits, using the expression in a perfectly respectable sense. He furnished gossip to a well-known Society newspaper for which he received a liberal remuneration; he was a scientific backer of horses, he played a first-rate hand at bridge, sometimes he got a handsome fee for initiating some nouveau riche into the mysteries of fashionable life. Since his acquaintance with Mr. Gideon Lane, he had often been useful to that gentleman, and had been paid well for his services.

They had met at a Bohemian club to which both men belonged, for Reggie Sellars, although of very good family and an aristocrat by instinct and connection, was by no means exclusive, and was equally at home in Bohemia and Mayfair.

At first Lane had not been attracted to the young man, whom he regarded as the usual type of lounger who led a life of aimless pleasure, a mere idler with whom he was not likely to have anything in common. And, truth to tell, although in a certain way he was one of the shrewdest fellows alive, Sellars’ good-looking countenance did not furnish any striking evidence of mentality or strenuous impulse.

But one night in the smoking-room the two got into a conversation on the subject of criminals and criminology, and Lane found that this seemingly idle, pleasure-loving young man, with apparently no thoughts beyond the race-course and the bridge-table, displayed a keen knowledge and a swift power of deduction that astonished him.

Lane had a considerable clientèle amongst persons high up in the social scale, he frequently wanted to obtain special information about people belonging to or moving in fashionable circles. Into such quarters he was unable to penetrate himself for obvious reasons. Here was a man just fitted for the job, keen, quiet, quick in resource; a man, in short, disguising a considerable mentality under a most deceptive exterior. Lane suggested that there was certain work in which his previous knowledge and facilities of approach could be of material assistance to him. Mr. Reginald Sellars, the good-looking young man-about-town, jumped at the proposal, and Lane had to confess that, in his own line, he had never possessed a more competent lieutenant.

He was just the man for the Morrice job, or at any rate one particular portion of it, and that was why the busy and brainy detective had rung him up to-day.

“Not been very long, eh, Lane?” was the young man’s greeting as he entered the private room. “Always ready for business, you know, for anything that brings grist to the mill. I hope you’ve got something good for me.”

At his fashionable clubs, in the society of his aristocratic friends, he cultivated a rather languid manner. When he talked to practical people like Lane his tone was brisk, his whole manner alert.