V
THE silence lasted a full minute before Monkhouse made a brief gesture of introduction.
“Mr. Haig—Miss East, my daughter,” he said tonelessly.
The visitor bowed whilst his eyes, faintly amused, passed from Ray East to the girl beside her. There they rested during another appreciable pause.
“I think we have all met before,” he said, suavely. “Miss East and I were fellow-passengers on the Atlantic and afterwards in a leaky tub they called a lifeboat. You remember, Mr. Monkhouse? Your daughter and I met twice at an Art Ball. But no doubt I have been forgotten.”
Margaret Monkhouse made no answer. Beyond an intense pallor and a certain tensity of expression she betrayed nothing of the recent crisis. Only Ray East knew how close she stood to complete collapse, and with a swift decisiveness she came over and slipped her hand through the girl's arm.
“We'll leave them to their business talk, Margaret. You're tired. Au revoir, Mr. Haig. I hope to have opportunity to thank you for your brave assistance on that memorable occasion.”
He held the door open for them, meeting her open mockery with a veiled insolence.
“I am not accustomed to thanks from you, Miss East. You never used to spoil me in that respect.”
She ignored the retort. The two women went out together, Margaret Monkhouse holding to her strange new companion as though to an old and trusted friend. Haig closed the door softly after them and came back to the center of the room. He did not meet Monkhouse's antagonistic stare, but drawing out a gold cigarette-case made a delicate selection.
“'Pon my word, Monkhouse,” he laughed, “you don't lose much time. I never knew our mutual lady friend knew your daughter. Since when, eh?”
“Since to-day. I owe Miss East my life; she is temporarily stranded, and she is going to make her home here as my daughter's companion. Does that satisfy you?”
“A dozen apologies. I ought not to have asked, of course. I am scarcely an acquaintance. On the other hand, Miss East and I are old friends—she was considerably less stiff at one time, I can assure you—and—”
Something instinctive warned him. He looked up from the lazy contemplation of his cigarette end. “You don't need to glare at me like that, my good friend. I can assure you, also, that I meant nothing derogatory. I merely wished to congratulate you.”
“On what?” came the dangerously composed question.
“Why, on having found such a beautiful companion for your daughter—and on having such a charming daughter.”
Monkhouse shrugged his immense shoulders.
“I prefer that you leave Miss East and my daughter out of the conversation,” he said, tersely. “I presume that you did not come here to talk about them.”
“Not exactly. May I sit down?”
Monkhouse made a brief gesture of assent and took the chair opposite his guest, leaning forward with his square chin supported in the palm of his hand, his curiously brilliant eyes fixed intently on the other's face.
“What do you want with me?” he demanded.
Gilbert Haig crossed one leg over the other and smiled faintly, though without shifting his gaze from his cigarette.
“You are rather surprised that I should have asked for this interview,” he began, “and I don't wonder. We scarcely knew each other before the wreck, and that latter incident did not make our relationship more cordial, I am afraid. The 'each man for himself' maxim did not seem to appeal to you.”
“We'll leave that and get to business,” Monkhouse interrupted brutally. “What do you want with me?”
“In the first instance, I don't want anything. What I may suggest later on is another matter. Just for the present, it will be sufficient to inform you that I know where you get your millions from, Mr. Monkhouse.”
“Go on.”
“I went to America to find out. You know my position. My father is the brain that runs the Great East Dock Syndicate, and consequently it flicked me on the raw when I found that every contract the Syndicate laid before the Government was undercut by a fraction. I tell you it puzzled me a bit. I used to spend nights thinking about it and then by the merest chance I hit on a clue.”
“Well?”
Gilbert Haig shifted his position.
“Let me see, when was it your brother, John Monkhouse, rose to the Cabinet?”
“Why do you ask me? You know well enough.”
“I daresay I do, because it is since then that everything we've touched has gone wrong and every firm that has had you on its secret commission list has done business—brilliant business. And it is since then that you have become—well, all this.” He made a careless circular gesture with his gloved hand, and then for the first time he met Monkhouse's eyes. “You see, I am not going to beat about the bush with you, Mr. Monkhouse. I tell you frankly what I suspect.”
“Won't you explain more clearly?”
The man's icy quiet seemed to affect Haig's nerves; but though he wavered an instant, he recovered and went on with a business-like and dispassionate preciseness.
“In the first place, I suspect that the lucky speculation which is the outward and visible source of your wealth has in reality nothing to do with it. In the second, I suspect a connection between your rise and our persistent bad luck. In other words—”
“You accuse me of selling Government secrets given me by my brother.”
An uneasy flush crept into the younger man's cheeks.
“I accuse you of nothing, Mr. Monkhouse.”
The other man laughed shortly and contemptuously.
“I'm much too brutal for you, am I not, Mr. Haig? That comes of being a pariah. I have lost the subtlety and hypocrisy of the true gentleman. I suppose you have overlooked the well-known fact that my honorable brother cuts me in the streets and that I have not spoken to him since—”
“Since Margaret Ashton drowned herself and left another Margaret to your—”
“Take care!” Then the knotted hands on the table slowly unclinched themselves. “Accept my apologies. A pariah has no right to sensitive feelings, but of late the dead seem to have had a restless turn. I find them everywhere. But that's no reason to browbeat you. You're not here to do anything dishonorable. I am the black sheep. Pray take advantage of your position. Continue.”
Haig's palely marked eyebrows met with a moment's earnest consideration.
“I confess that my investigations are not complete,” he said slowly. “The suspicions are as yet no more than suspicions. I have no proof that you and John Monkhouse, M.P., have ever spoken to each other since the time you passed from the social horizon. I may add that I had no desire to hold any definite proof until I saw you.”
“Indeed. And why not?”
“It might have embarrassed me. Proof would have compelled me as an honest business man and loyal citizen to have taken public action. As it is, I am still at liberty to approach you privately.”
Both men sat silent, eyeing each other with the watchfulness of antagonists, Haig alert for the attack, Monkhouse grimly on the defensive. The latter giving no opening, Haig at length added, though more cautiously: “I repeat that I have no proof of what I say, but I believe that proof is obtainable. Whether I get it or not depends on you.”
“Won't you come to your offer?” Monkhouse asked. “For you have one, of course. I am too dangerous a man for you to allow to run loose if you have any means of holding me.”
Haig nodded appreciatively.
“Exactly. You're dangerous. Now there's this affair of the new docks. Our contracts are made out and will soon be in the hands of the Government, but they'll be cut by a certain American Syndicate with whose representative you were in close touch during your health tour in America. That's what I went over to find out. Now comes my proposal.”
“I do not break my business promises,” Monkhouse interjected with a cold smile. “That stands for my code of honor.”
“So I believed. You won't break your treaty with the Americans, and we can't afford to lose another job—unless there are compensations—such as partnership—for me.”
Monkhouse laughed.
“I see—you're playing a lone game, Mr. Haig.”
“I am. The firm's done badly for a long time, and I doubt whether even if we got the job we should be able to pull ourselves out. Well, I don't mean to be left high and dry if I can help it. It's the 'each man for himself' theory applied to business.”
“Yes, I see. There is only one objection to your proposal, Mr. Haig. I can have no partner.” He rose suddenly to his feet, his face dark with pent-up passion. “Mr. Haig, I may be an unmitigated scoundrel in your eyes and in the eyes of the world, but that is nothing to me. I've done with the world. I have made a reckoning with myself and that's all that matters. In that reckoning I have discovered mitigating circumstances—circumstances which you could not produce in extenuation. Life hasn't played the deuce with you—as it has with me. If you were to join me in my damnable career you would be a thorough-paced blackguard—without excuse—”
“And you, Mr. Monkhouse?”
“God! I tell you I have made my reckoning. I believe that a judge not of this world would say 'not guilty.' But you—”
Gilbert Haig drew himself up languidly.
“I did not ask for a business partnership,” he observed. “I have no desire to share your secret—or, to be frank, your risks. But as your son-in-law, your heir—”
“You?”
Haig nodded, untroubled by the flaring eyes which measured him.
“I was afraid it would shock you. As I mentioned before, I have met your daughter twice. I fell in love with her at first sight, but I am not the man to let myself go, and as long as I saw in you nothing but an enemy and an obstacle, I held back. There was also my social position which from every point of view would have suffered. On the way back from America, however, it did occur to me that business and happiness might be combined. I do love your daughter, and for her sake I would accept any social disadvantage—”
“—And my money,” Monkhouse interjected.
“You've put the matter in a nutshell,” Haig assented. He was now perfectly at ease and watched Monkhouse as he paced restlessly across the room with the dispassionate interest of a hunter whose victim is already in the trap. “As to your daughter, I am not overconceited, but I do not think she will refuse me.”
Monkhouse strode back, eying the frail, dandified figure with a brutal contempt.
“What have you to offer her?”
“A name for one thing.” He waited a minute, pressing at his cigarette on the tray with fastidious care. “And then an unassailable position—two valuables with which you have not been able to provide her, my dear Monkhouse. By the way, I suppose she is aware of her—eh—circumstances.”
“Yes—now.”
“In that case, I am sure she will appreciate what little I have to offer.”
Monkhouse was silent. His eyes had lost their fire and now dropped to the ground in moody, bitter contemplation. Haig waited. Possibly he knew that the man was impervious to every argument but reason and that the reason had been given. There was now nothing to be done but to wait. Presently Monkhouse looked up again. His features were now calm, though their ugliness had been intensified by the ravages of conflict.
“I don't like you, Haig,” he said deliberately. “You are not the kind of man to make a woman happy. Your love—I wouldn't give a curse for it. But there's another side to the question—as you know. I've made my money—I may say that I made it for her—though other worse motives may have been at work in me—God only knows—and I didn't care what tools I used to make it. At any rate, what I have is hers—it's my only form of atonement. But I can't give her name or position. That's gone forever. And you—well—what other chance is she likely to have—what chance of anything better than you—fortune-hunters all of them and no decent fellow in the running? And if worse disgrace came on me—why, not even that left her—” He stopped. The bitter self-communing was at an end, bringing him to a grim conclusion. “Very well, then—I consent,” he said at last.
Gilbert Haig got up briskly and took his Homburg from the table.
“Thanks,” he said. “I thought you'd see my idea. I'll call on Miss Margaret as soon as possible. You'll understand—if there's a hitch I shall have to go ahead on the old lines. It'll be the firm or nothing—then.”
“Of course.” Monkhouse had gone over to the window and stood there with his back turned gazing down into the brightly-lit street. Haig glanced curiously at the heavy figure.
“By the way, our contracts go up to the Government on Thursday the twenty-fourth—a week from yesterday. Things will have to be settled by then, Monkhouse.”
“That's for you to manage.”
“Quite so. Well—I think that's all. Good night.”
Monkhouse did not answer. He stood motionless at his post until the lights of a limousine flashed in the street beneath. A minute later the door opened softly.
“The car is there, sir.”
“All right, Andrews. My big coat ”
“It's a hot night, sir.”
“I know. Do as you're told.”
The man obeyed impassively, and Monkhouse took the soft hat held out to him.
“If Mr. Haig calls on Miss Monkhouse in the next day or two, you will admit him.”
“Very good, sir.”
Brian Monkhouse went on down the thickly carpeted corridor. There where it branched off into the right wing of the house, he stopped short, arrested by the low murmur of women's voices. For a full minute he stood there, oblivious to the man waiting at his heels, seeming to listen with a hungry intentness. Then, with a start and a smothered exclamation that might have been one of mere impatience, he hurried on toward the head of the great staircase.