“Of course, you can afford to,” the secretary replied, leaning both his elbows on the table and looking straight into his master’s face. “Few men could do as you do. It would be against their interests.”
“It may be even against my interests,” the old man said thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair, “for I might get a good deal of fun out of watching them trying to squeeze a little money out of me, or worm from me what men call ‘tips’ regarding investments. Why, my dear Rolfe, once my door is opened to them, my life would no longer be worth living. Instead of one secretary I’d want a dozen, and Levi would be at the door all day long answering callers. Other men who live in this street on either side of me have done it to their cost.”
“I’ve heard it said in the clubs that you, with your vast means and huge interests, owe a duty to Society,” Rolfe remarked.
“I owe no duty to Society,” the old fellow declared angrily. “Society owes nothing to me, and I owe nothing to it. You know, Rolfe, how—well—how I hate women—and I won’t have a pack of chatterboxes about my place. If I was a man with five hundred a year they wouldn’t want to know me.”
“That’s very true,” Rolfe remarked with a slight sigh. “Nowadays, when a man has money he is at once called a gentleman. A lady is the wife of a man with money, whatever may have been her past—or her present.”
The old man laughed.
“And there is the ‘perfect lady,’” he said. “A genus usually associated with the police-court. But you are quite right, Rolfe, nowadays, according to our modern code, a poor man cannot be a gentleman. No, as long as I live, the needy aristocracy which calls itself Society shall never my threshold. I will remain independent of them, for I have no womankind, and no fish to fry. I don’t want a baronetcy, or a peerage. I don’t want shooting, or deer-stalking, or yachting, or hunting, or any of those pastimes. I merely want to be left alone here in peace—if it is possible.” And he drew a long breath as the ugly recollection of the shabby stranger crossed his mind.
Rolfe knew well that the old man’s objections were because he dare not throw open the mansion. Some secret was hidden there which he could not reveal. What was it? Why were those brilliant lights sometimes at night in the upper windows? He had seen them himself sometimes as he passed along near midnight on his way to his chambers in Jermyn Street, and had been sorely puzzled. More than once he had been convinced that somebody lived in the upper floors—somebody who was never seen. Yet if that were so, why should there be such secrecy regarding it. The occupant, whoever it was, could easily vacate the place while a reception was held.
As he sat there listening to the old man’s tirade against the West-End and its ways he felt that there must be some far greater mystery than an unseen tenant.
That old Sam knew quite well the rumour concerning the house, was evident. Keeping secret agents in every capital as he was forced to do—agents, male and female, who knew everything and reported exactly what he wished to know—it was certain that public opinion concerning him was well-known to him. Yet, as in a scandal, the man most concerned is always the last to get wind of it. Perhaps after all he might be in ignorance of what people were saying, although it was hardly credible that Ben, his brother, would not tell him.