A Man of Means Page 3

“Now, look here, Bleke, my boy, as a general rule I don’t give tips—But I’ve taken a great fancy to you, Bleke, and I’m going to break my rule. Put your money—” he sank his voice to a compelling whisper, “put every penny you can afford into Wildcat Reefs.”

  He leaned back with the benign air of the Alchemist who has just imparted to a favorite disciple the recently discovered secret of the philosopher’s stone.

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Windlebird,” said Roland gratefully. “I will.”

  The Napoleonic features were lightened by that rare, indulgent smile.

  “Not so fast, young man,” laughed Mr. Windlebird. “Getting into Wildcat Reefs isn’t quite so easy as you seem to think. Shall we say that you propose to invest thirty thousand pounds? Yes? Very well, then. Thirty thousand pounds! Why, if it got about that you were going to buy Wildcat Reefs on that scale the market would be convulsed.”

  Which was perfectly true. If it had got about that any one was going to invest thirty thousand pounds—or pence—in Wildcat Reefs, the market would certainly have been convulsed. The House would have rocked with laughter. Wildcat Reefs were a standing joke—except to the unfortunate few who still held any of the shares.

  “The thing will have to be done very cautiously. No one must know. But I think—I say I think—I can manage it for you.”

  “You’re awfully kind, Mr. Windlebird.”

  “Not at all, my dear boy, not at all. As a matter of fact, I shall be doing a very good turn to another pal of mine at the same time.” He filled his glass. “This—” he paused to sip—”this pal of mine has a large holding of Wildcats. He wants to realize in order to put the money into something else, in which he is more personally interested.” Mr. Windlebird paused. His mind dwelt for a moment on his overdrawn current account at the bank. “In which he is more personally interested,” he repeated dreamily. “But of course you couldn’t unload thirty pounds’ worth of Wildcats in the public market.”

  “I quite see that,” assented Roland.

  “It might, however, be done by private negotiation,” he said. “I must act very cautiously. Give me your check for the thirty thousand to-night, and I will run up to town to-morrow morning, and see what I can do.”

  He did it. What hidden strings he pulled, what levers he used, Roland did not know. All Roland knew was that somehow, by some subtle means, Mr. Windlebird brought it off. Two days later his host handed him twenty thousand one-pound shares in the Wildcat Reef Gold-mine.

  “There, my boy,” he said.

  “It’s awfully kind of you, Mr. Windlebird.”

  “My dear boy, don’t mention it. If you’re satisfied, I’m sure I am.”

  Mr. Windlebird always spoke the truth when he could. He spoke it now.

  It seemed to Roland, as the days went by, that nothing could mar the pleasant, easy course of life at the Windlebirds. The fine weather, the beautiful garden, the pleasant company—all these things combined to make this sojourn an epoch in his life.

  He discovered his mistake one lovely afternoon as he sat smoking idly on the terrace. Mrs. Windlebird came to him, and a glance was enough to show Roland that something was seriously wrong. Her face was drawn and tired.

  A moment before, Roland had been thinking life perfect. The only crumpled rose-leaf had been the absence of an evening paper. Mr. Windlebird would bring one back with him when he returned from the city, but Roland wanted one now. He was a great follower of county cricket, and he wanted to know how Surrey was faring against Yorkshire. But even this crumpled rose-leaf had been smoothed out, for Johnson, the groom, who happened to be riding into the nearest town on an errand, had promised to bring one back with him. He might appear at any moment now.

  The sight of his hostess drove all thoughts of sport out of his mind. She was looking terribly troubled.

  It flashed across Roland that both his host and hostess had been unusually silent at dinner the night before; and later, passing Mr. Windlebird’s room on his way to bed, he had heard their voices, low and agitated. Could they have had some bad news?

  “Mr. Bleke, I want to speak to you.”

  Roland moved like a sympathetic cow, and waited to hear more.

  “You were not up when my husband left for the city this morning, or he would have told you himself. Mr. Bleke, I hardly know how to break it to you.”

  “Break it to me!”

  “My husband advised you to put a very large sum of money in a mine called Wildcat Reefs.”

  “Yes. Thirty thousand pounds.”

  “As much as that! Oh, Mr. Bleke!”

  She began to cry softly. She pressed his hand. Roland gaped at her.

  “Mr. Bleke, there has been a terrible slump in Wildcat Reefs. To-day, they may be absolutely worthless.”

  Roland felt as if a cold hand had been laid on his spine.

  “Wor-worthless!” he stammered.

  Mrs. Windlebird looked at him with moist eyes.

  “You can imagine how my husband feels about this. It was on his advice that you invested your money. He holds himself directly responsible. He is in a terrible state of mind. He is frantic. He has grown so fond of you, Mr. Bleke, that he can hardly face the thought that he has been the innocent instrument of your trouble.”

  Roland felt that it was an admirable comparison. His sensations were precisely those of a leading actor in an earthquake. The solid earth seemed to melt under him.

  “We talked it over last night after you had gone to bed, and we came to the conclusion that there was only one honorable step to take. We must make good your losses. We must buy back those shares.”

  A ray of hope began to steal over Roland’s horizon.

  “But–-” he began.

  “There are no buts, really, Mr. Bleke. We should neither of us know a minute’s peace if we didn’t do it. Now, you paid thirty thousand pounds for the shares, you said? Well”—she held out a pink slip of paper to him—”this will make everything all right.”

  Roland looked at the check.

  “But—but this is signed by you,” he said.

  “Yes. You see, if Geoffrey had to sign a check for that amount, it would mean selling out some of his stock, and in his position, with every movement watched by enemies, he can not afford to do it. It might ruin the plans of years. But I have some money of my own. My selling out stock doesn’t matter, you see. I have post-dated the check a week, to give me time to realize on the securities in which my money is invested.”

  Roland’s whole nature rose in revolt at this sacrifice. If it had been his host who had made this offer, he would have accepted it. But chivalry forbade his taking this money from a woman. A glow of self-sacrifice warmed him. After all, what was this money of his? He had never had any fun out of it. He had had so little acquaintance with it that for all practical purposes it might never have been his.

  With a gesture which had once impressed him very favorably when exhibited on the stage by the hero of the number two company of “The Price of Honor,” which had paid a six days’ visit to Bury St. Edwards a few months before, he tore the check into little pieces.

  “I couldn’t accept it, Mrs. Windlebird,” he said. “I can’t tell you how deeply I appreciate your wonderful kindness, but I really couldn’t. I bought the shares with my eyes open. The whole thing is nobody’s fault, and I can’t let you suffer for it. After the way you have treated me here, it would be impossible. I can’t take your money. It’s noble and generous of you in the extreme, but I can’t accept it. I’ve still got a little money left, and I’ve always been used to working for my living, anyway, so—so it’s all right.”

  “Mr. Bleke, I implore you.”

  Roland was hideously embarrassed. He looked right and left for a way of escape. He could hardly take to his heels, and yet there seemed no other way of ending the interview. Then, with a start of relief, he perceived Johnson the groom coming toward him with the evening paper.

  “Johnson said he was going into the town,” said Ro
land apologetically, “so I asked him to get me an evening paper. I wanted to see the lunch scores.”

  If he had been looking at his hostess then, an action which he was strenuously avoiding, he might have seen a curious spasm pass over her face. Mrs. Windlebird turned very pale and sat down suddenly in the chair which Roland had vacated at the beginning of their conversation. She lay back in it with her eyes closed. She looked tired and defeated.

  Roland took the paper mechanically. He wanted it as a diversion to the conversation merely, for his interest in the doings of Surrey and Yorkshire had waned to the point of complete indifference in competition with Mrs. Windlebird’s news.

  Equally mechanically he unfolded it and glanced at front page; and, as he did do, a flaring explosion of headlines smote his eye.

  Out of the explosion emerged the word “WILD-CATS”.

  “Why!” he exclaimed. “There’s columns about Wildcats on the front page here!”

  “Yes?” Mrs. Windlebird’s voice sounded strangely dull and toneless. Her eyes were still closed.

  Roland took in the headlines with starting eyes.

  THE WILD-CAT REEF GOLD-MINE

  ANOTHER KLONDIKE

  FRENZIED SCENES ON THE STOCK EXCHANGE

  BROKERS FIGHT FOR SHARES

  RECORD BOOM

  UNPRECEDENTED RISE IN PRICES

  Shorn of all superfluous adjectives and general journalistic exuberance, what the paper had to announce to its readers was this:

  The “special commissioner” sent out by The Financial Argus to make an exhaustive examination of the Wildcat Reef Mine—with the amiable view, no doubt, of exploding Mr. Geoffrey Windlebird once and for all with the confiding British public—has found, to his unbounded astonishment, that there are vast quantities of gold in the mine.

  The discovery of the new reef, the largest and richest, it is stated, since the famous Mount Morgan, occurred with dramatic appropriateness on the very day of his arrival. We need scarcely remind our readers that, until that moment, Wildcat Reef shares had reached a very low figure, and only a few optimists retained their faith in the mine. As the largest holder, Mr. Windlebird is to be heartily congratulated on this new addition to his fortune.

  The publication of the expert’s report in The Financial Argus has resulted in a boom in Wildcats, the like of which can seldom have been seen on the Stock Exchange. From something like one shilling and sixpence per bundle the one pound shares have gone up to nearly ten pounds a share, and even at this latter figure people were literally fighting to secure them.

  The world swam about Roland. He was stupefied and even terrified. The very atmosphere seemed foggy. So far as his reeling brain was capable of thought, he figured that he was now worth about two hundred thousand pounds.

  “Oh, Mrs. Windlebird,” he cried, “It’s all right after all.”

  Mrs. Windlebird sat back in her chair without answering.

  “It’s all right for every one,” screamed Roland joyfully. “Why, if I’ve made a couple of hundred thousand, what must Mr. Windlebird have netted. It says here that he is the largest holder. He must have pulled off the biggest thing of his life.”

  He thought for a moment.

  “The chap I’m sorry for,” he said meditatively, “is Mr. Windlebird’s pal. You know. The fellow whom Mr. Windlebird persuaded to sell all his shares to me.”

  A faint moan escaped from his hostess’s pale lips. Roland did not hear it. He was reading the cricket news.

  THE EPISODE OF THE THEATRICAL VENTURE

  Third of a Series of Six Stories [First published in Pictorial Review, July 1916]

  It was one of those hard, nubbly rolls. The best restaurants charge you sixpence for having the good sense not to eat them. It hit Roland Bleke with considerable vehemence on the bridge of the nose. For the moment Roland fancied that the roof of the Regent Grill-room must have fallen in; and, as this would automatically put an end to the party, he was not altogether sorry. He had never been to a theatrical supper-party before, and within five minutes of his arrival at the present one he had become afflicted with an intense desire never to go to a theatrical supper-party again. To be a success at these gay gatherings one must possess dash; and Roland, whatever his other sterling qualities, was a little short of dash.

  The young man on the other side of the table was quite nice about it. While not actually apologizing, he went so far as to explain that it was “old Gerry” whom he had had in his mind when he started the roll on its course. After a glance at old Gerry—a chinless child of about nineteen—Roland felt that it would be churlish to be angry with a young man whose intentions had been so wholly admirable. Old Gerry had one of those faces in which any alteration, even the comparatively limited one which a roll would be capable of producing, was bound to be for the better. He smiled a sickly smile and said that it didn’t matter.

  The charming creature who sat on his assailant’s left, however, took a more serious view of the situation.

  “Sidney, you make me tired,” she said severely. “If I had thought you didn’t know how to act like a gentleman I wouldn’t have come here with you. Go away somewhere and throw bread at yourself, and ask Mr. Bleke to come and sit by me. I want to talk to him.”

  That was Roland’s first introduction to Miss Billy Verepoint.

  “I’ve been wanting to have a chat with you all the evening, Mr. Bleke,” she said, as Roland blushingly sank into the empty chair. “I’ve heard such a lot about you.”

  What Miss Verepoint had heard about Roland was that he had two hundred thousand pounds and apparently did not know what to do with it.

  “In fact, if I hadn’t been told that you would be here, I shouldn’t have come to this party. Can’t stand these gatherings of nuts in May as a general rule. They bore me stiff.”

  Roland hastily revised his first estimate of the theatrical profession. Shallow, empty-headed creatures some of them might be, no doubt, but there were exceptions. Here was a girl of real discernment—a thoughtful student of character—a girl who understood that a man might sit at a supper-party without uttering a word and might still be a man of parts.

  “I’m afraid you’ll think me very outspoken—but that’s me all over. All my friends say, ‘Billy Verepoint’s a funny girl: if she likes any one she just tells them so straight out; and if she doesn’t like any one she tells them straight out, too.’”

  “And a very admirable trait,” said Roland, enthusiastically.

  Miss Verepoint sighed. “P’raps it is,” she said pensively, “but I’m afraid it’s what has kept me back in my profession. Managers don’t like it: they think girls should be seen and not heard.”

  Roland’s blood boiled. Managers were plainly a dastardly crew.

  “But what’s the good of worrying,” went on Miss Verepoint, with a brave but hollow laugh. “Of course, it’s wearing, having to wait when one has got as much ambition as I have; but they all tell me that my chance is bound to come some day.”

  The intense mournfulness of Miss Verepoint’s expression seemed to indicate that she anticipated the arrival of the desired day not less than sixty years hence. Roland was profoundly moved. His chivalrous nature was up in arms. He fell to wondering if he could do anything to help this victim of managerial unfairness. “You don’t mind my going on about my troubles, do you?” asked Miss Verepoint, solicitously. “One so seldom meets anybody really sympathetic.”

  Roland babbled fervent assurances, and she pressed his hand gratefully.

  “I wonder if you would care to come to tea one afternoon,” she said.

  “Oh, rather!” said Roland. He would have liked to put it in a more polished way but he was almost beyond speech.

  “Of course, I know what a busy man you are–-“

  “No, no!”

  “Well, I should be in to-morrow afternoon, if you cared to look in.”

  Roland bleated gratefully.

  “I’ll write down the address for you,” said Miss Verepoint, sudd
enly businesslike.

  Exactly when he committed himself to the purchase of the Windsor Theater, Roland could never say. The idea seemed to come into existence fully-grown, without preliminary discussion. One moment it was not—the next it was. His recollections of the afternoon which he spent drinking lukewarm tea and punctuating Miss Verepoint’s flow of speech with “yes’s” and “no’s” were always so thoroughly confused that he never knew even whose suggestion it was.

  The purchase of a West-end theater, when one has the necessary cash, is not nearly such a complicated business as the layman might imagine. Roland was staggered by the rapidity with which the transaction was carried through. The theater was his before he had time to realize that he had never meant to buy the thing at all. He had gone into the offices of Mr. Montague with the intention of making an offer for the lease for, say, six months; and that wizard, in the space of less than an hour, had not only induced him to sign mysterious documents which made him sole proprietor of the house, but had left him with the feeling that he had done an extremely acute stroke of business. Mr. Montague had dabbled in many professions in his time, from street peddling upward, but what he was really best at was hypnotism.

  Altho he felt, after the spell of Mr. Montague’s magnetism was withdrawn, rather like a nervous man who has been given a large baby to hold by a strange woman who has promptly vanished round the corner, Roland was to some extent consoled by the praise bestowed upon him by Miss Verepoint. She said it was much better to buy a theater than to rent it, because then you escaped the heavy rent. It was specious, but Roland had a dim feeling that there was a flaw somewhere in the reasoning; and it was from this point that a shadow may be said to have fallen upon the brightness of the venture.

  He would have been even less self-congratulatory if he had known the Windsor Theater’s reputation. Being a comparative stranger in the metropolis, he was unaware that its nickname in theatrical circles was “The Mugs’ Graveyard”—a title which had been bestowed upon it not without reason. Built originally by a slightly insane old gentleman, whose principal delusion was that the public was pining for a constant supply of the Higher Drama, and more especially those specimens of the Higher Drama which flowed practically without cessation from the restless pen of the insane old gentleman himself, the Windsor Theater had passed from hand to hand with the agility of a gold watch in a gathering of race-course thieves. The one anxiety of the unhappy man who found himself, by some accident, in possession of the Windsor Theater, was to pass it on to somebody else. The only really permanent tenant it ever had was the representative of the Official Receiver.