The Essential Edgar Wallace Collection. Edgar Wallace

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      "Business, dear old Fred," he said gently. "Bear up an' play the man, as dear old Francis Drake said when they stopped him playin' cricket. Business, old friend. I'd like to oblige you, but----"

      He shook his head rapidly

      Mr. Fred slowly produced his cheque-book and laid it on the desk with the sigh of one who was about to indite his last wishes.

      "You shall not be the loser," he said, with a catch in his voice, for he was genuinely grieved. "I must pay for my weakness. What is five hundred pounds?"

      "What is a thousand, if it comes to that, Freddy?" said Bones. "Gracious goodness, I shall be awfully disappointed if you back out--I shall be so vexed, really."

      "Seven hundred and fifty?" asked Fred, with pleading in his eye.

      "Make it a thousand, dear old Fred," said Bones; "I can't add up fifties."

      So "in consideration" (as Fred wrote rapidly and Bones signed more rapidly) "of the sum of one thousand pounds (say 1,000), the contract as between &c., &c.," was cancelled, and Fred became again the practical man of affairs.

      "Dear old Fred," said Bones, folding the cheque and sticking it in his pocket, "I'm goin' to own up--frankness is a vice with me--that I don't understand much about the shippin' business. But tell me, my jolly old merchant, why do fellers sell you ships in the mornin' an' buy 'em back in the afternoon?"

      "Business, Mr. Tibbetts," said Fred, smiling, "just big business."

      Bones sucked an inky finger.

      "Dinky business for me, dear old thing," he said. "I've got a thousand from you an' a thousand from the other Johnny who sold me two ships. Bless my life an' soul----"

      "The other fellow," said Fred faintly--"a fellow from the United Merchant Shippers?"

      "That was the dear lad," said Bones.

      "And has he cried off his bargain, too?"

      "Positively!" said Bones. "A very, very nice, fellow. He told me I could call him Joe--jolly old Joe!"

      "Jolly old Joe!" repeated Fred mechanically, as he left the office, and all the way home he was saying "Jolly old Joe!"

      CHAPTER II

      HIDDEN TREASURE

      Mrs. Staleyborn's first husband was a dreamy Fellow of a Learned University.

      Her second husband had begun life at the bottom of the ladder as a three-card trickster, and by strict attention to business and the exercise of his natural genius, had attained to the proprietorship of a bucket-shop.

      When Mrs. Staleyborn was Miss Clara Smith, she had been housekeeper to Professor Whitland, a biologist who discovered her indispensability, and was only vaguely aware of the social gulf which yawned between the youngest son of the late Lord Bortledyne and the only daughter of Albert Edward Smith, mechanic. To the Professor she was Miss _H. Sapiens_--an agreeable, featherless plantigrade biped of the genus _Homo_. She was also thoroughly domesticated and cooked like an angel, a nice woman who apparently never knew that her husband had a Christian name, for she called him "Mr. Whitland" to the day of his death.

      The strain and embarrassment of the new relationship with her master were intensified by the arrival of a daughter, and doubled when that daughter came to a knowledgeable age. Marguerite Whitland had the inherent culture of her father and the grace and delicate beauty which had ever distinguished the women of the house of Bortledyne.

      When the Professor died, Mrs. Whitland mourned him in all sincerity. She was also relieved. One-half of the burden which lay upon her had been lifted; the second half was wrestling with the binomial theorem at Cheltenham College.

      She had been a widow twelve months when she met Mr. Cresta Morris, and, if the truth be told, Mr. Cresta Morris more fulfilled her conception as to what a gentleman should look like than had the Professor. Mr. Cresta Morris wore white collars and beautiful ties, had a large gold watch-chain over what the French call poetically a _gilet de fantasie_, but which he, in his own homely fashion, described as a "fancy weskit." He smoked large cigars, was bluff and hearty, spoke to the widow--he was staying at Harrogate at the time in a hydropathic establishment--in a language which she could understand. Dimly she began to realize that the Professor had hardly spoken to her at all.

      Mr. Cresta Morris was one of those individuals who employed a vocabulary of a thousand words, with all of which Mrs. Whitland was well acquainted; he was also a man of means and possessions, he explained to her. She, giving confidence for confidence, told of the house at Cambridge, the furniture, the library, the annuity of three hundred pounds, earmarked for his daughter's education, but mistakenly left to his wife for that purpose, also the four thousand three hundred pounds invested in War Stock, which was wholly her own.

      Mr. Cresta Morris became more agreeable than ever. In three months they were married, in six months the old house at Cambridge had been disposed of, the library dispersed, as much of the furniture as Mr. Morris regarded as old-fashioned sold, and the relict of Professor Whitland was installed in a house in Brockley.

      It was a nice house--in many ways nicer than the rambling old building in Cambridge, from Mrs. Morris's point of view. And she was happy in a tolerable, comfortable kind of fashion, and though she was wholly ignorant as to the method by which her husband made his livelihood, she managed to get along very well without enlightenment.

      Marguerite was brought back from Cheltenham to grace the new establishment and assist in its management. She shared none of her mother's illusions as to the character of Mr. Cresta Morris, as that gentleman explained to a very select audience one January night.

      Mr. Morris and his two guests sat before a roaring fire in the dining-room, drinking hot brandies-and-waters. Mrs. Morris had gone to bed; Marguerite was washing up, for Mrs. Morris had the "servant's mind," which means that she could never keep a servant.

      The sound of crashing plates had come to the dining-room and interrupted Mr. Morris at a most important point of his narrative. He jerked his head round.

      "That's the girl," he said; "she's going to be a handful."

      "Get her married," said Job Martin wisely.

      He was a hatchet-faced man with a reputation for common-sense. He had another reputation which need not be particularized at the moment.

      "Married?" scoffed Mr. Morris. "Not likely!"

      He puffed at his cigar thoughtfully for a moment, then:

      "She wouldn't come in to dinner--did you notice that? We are not good enough for her. She's fly! Fly ain't the word for it. We always find her nosing and sneaking around."

      "Send her back to school," said the third guest.

      He was a man of fifty-five, broad-shouldered, clean-shaven, who had literally played many parts, for he had been acting in a touring company when Morris first met him--Mr. Timothy Webber, a man not unknown to the Criminal Investigation Department.

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