A Double Knot Part 91

As he spun round, which, evidently being the result of practice, he did very cleverly, he wrinkled his face up in a way that with him indicated pleasure, the whole performance giving him the aspect of some gigantic grotesque j.a.panese top.

Then he would stop short, puff at the great cigar, and stare with his prominent lobster eyes at the slip of paper, examining the date and turning it over and over.

"Old cat!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; and the slip of paper was laid aside, and a heavy paperweight banged down upon it.

There were half a dozen of these heavy paperweights, and every now and then one was lifted and a fresh slip of paper placed beneath it.

"Old cat!" he exclaimed again. Then there was another chuckle. "Let's have another dive in the lucky bag!" he exclaimed, and a fresh slip was brought out.

He did not laugh now, but glowered at the paper savagely.

"Only wait; I'll make him curl his black moustache to a pretty tune this time! He'll have to sell out, and what will he do then? I wonder what a Major's commission will fetch. Oh, hang it! they don't sell 'em now.

What the deuce do they do? I don't care; I'll ruin the beast, and then he may go to Clo to comfort him."

He did not spin round this time as he did when he came upon slips of paper bearing the signature of Lady Littletown, and of which he now had a tiny heap, but sat glancing at the bold, striking autograph evidently written with a soft quill pen, and resembling a pair of thin Siamese twins with their heads together, and the word "Malpas" after them, the said twins evidently doing duty for the letter A.

"Curse him! I'll ruin him, and then she'll cut him like a shot. Doosid glad I got the jewels! Bet sixpence he made sure of them, and now he's got her without a fifty pound in her pocket."

Elbraham sat glaring at the bill, the big signature seeming to fascinate him, and for the moment it was so suggestive of the swarthy Major that unconsciously he took up an ivory-handled penknife, and, holding it dagger fashion, began to stab the paper through and through.

The holes reminded him that the slip of paper was valuable, so he threw the penknife aside with an oath, smoothed the bill, and, laying it by itself, he thumped a heavy paperweight upon it, and seemed in his act as if he meant to crush Major Malpas as flat.

Several more acceptances followed, all representing heavy sums of money; but they had no special interest for the financier, who went steadily on till, in succession, he found half a dozen accepted by one John Huish, and over these he frowned and snarled.

"Repudiated 'em all," he said--"swore he never accepted one; and his lawyer set me at defiance. But I'll keep 'em. He'll buy 'em some day to keep the affair quiet. Rum start that! I could not have told t'other from which, if it hadn't been for the voice."

He replaced these in his pocket-book, and at last came upon five accepted by Arthur Litton, the effect being to make Elbraham roar with laughter.

"Puppy!" he exclaimed, bringing his fist down bang upon the slips of paper, "puppy! Fine gentleman. Haughty aristocrat. My dear Arthur, what a fix you are in, and how this will diminish dear Anna Maria's money!"

"Here's another, and there are more to come!" he cried, roaring with laughter; and then he had a spin till he felt giddy, after which he spun back in the other direction to counteract the dizziness, chuckled, rubbed his hands, found his cigar was out, and paused to light it before going through a less heavy batch of bills, the result being that he had beneath these paperweights a goodly show of the acceptances of Lady Littletown, Major Malpas, and Arthur Litton, over which he sat and gloated, smoking the while.

"What a beautiful thing a bill is!" exclaimed Elbraham at last. "It's a blessing to an honest man: helps him out of his difficulties; gives such a nice discount to the holder; and shows him how to punish wicked people like these."

He had another chuckle and a spin here, his feelings carrying him away to such an extent that he rather over-spun himself, and felt so giddy that he had to refresh himself from a silver flask that he kept in a drawer.

"How I shall come down upon 'em!" he said at last, as he puffed away reflectively at his cigar, which now grew rather short. "A thousand of bricks is nothing to it. My dear Lady Littletown will go down upon her knees to me, and ask me to dinner. Ha! ha! ha! she'll want to find me another wife, perhaps, curse her! What a bad lot they are! I only wish I'd a few bills of the old cats' at the private apartments--our dear aunts."

He seemed to reflect here.

"I don't think Marie's a bad sort, after all," he said at last. "Old Moorpark had a deal the best of the bargain. I haven't anything to say against them: they cut Clo long enough ago, and quite right too. She's a devil! What that gal has cost me!"

There was another fit of reflection here, during which Mr Elbraham threw the end of his cigar into the waste-paper basket, and lit another, longer and stouter than the last, after taking a band of white and gold paper from around its middle.

"Then there's Master Arthur Litton," he said. "Pitched me over as soon as he'd married his rich wife. Called me an Israelitish humbug. Yes, conceited fool. Forgot all about his paper, and how I had helped him.

Regularly cut me dead. Nice bit of money he had with Lady Anna Maria Morton, but he has made it fly, and all he could finger has gone. Wait a bit! I'll have him on his knees. He'll talk about Shylock then, eh?

Only wait! I'll have something better than a pound of flesh."

He chuckled and smoked for some minutes, and then the smoke began to come in longer puffs, the lines marked by his triumph and mirth disappeared, and he glared and rolled his unpleasantly prominent eyes.

"Curse him!" he cried at length hoa.r.s.ely. "He hasn't a clear hundred to bless himself with, and I hold his paper for thousands. I believe it was with my money he carried off Clo. Well, let him have her. I've had enough of the wicked devil. Let him have her. Ha! ha! ha! My grand Major Malpas in the sheriffs hands, and Clo in lodgings without a penny!

I needn't want to trouble myself any more."

The picture he mentally drew was so satisfactory that he indulged in another hoa.r.s.e hollow laugh that was ugly upon the ear.

Then he carefully gathered together the three little batches of bills and secured each lot with an elastic band, before placing them in the pocket-book he carried in his breast, b.u.t.toned them up tightly, as if they were the greatest treasures he possessed, and ended by locking up the bulky case.

"Ha!" he said, rising, "I'm sorry for poor Major Malpas. I wonder whether that chap Glen will get the step up. What a lovely invention a piece of paper is!"

Volume 3, Chapter XIX.

LAST WORDS.

The result of Elbraham's consideration of the acceptances can be briefly told. There were sale bills out before long at Lady Littletown's bijou residence at Hampton, and also at Lady Anna Maria Morton's house in Bryanston Square.

The former lady had been in her carriage, and called upon Elbraham at his City office, and he laughed and asked her to take wine and biscuits, which she did, feeling sure that she could persuade him to make some arrangement to give her time; but as soon as this was demanded, Elbraham, who had a tight hold upon her ladyship's property, politely told her, but in coa.r.s.er language, that he would see her condemned first.

Mr Arthur Litton also, seeing that he had been going too fast, called upon the financier, who seemed delighted to see him, and offered him a very choice cigar; but as to leniency, Elbraham was as immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar, so Mr Arthur Litton left, saying strange things, and went and placed his affairs in a solicitor's hands.

Major Malpas fared worst, for if ever man was socially ruined it was he.

Elbraham seemed to spare no pains to weave a strong network round him, in which he buzzed till he got free, but only to skulk about the Continent, save when he paid a stolen visit to his native sh.o.r.e.

In company with Clotilde?

By no means, for their intimacy soon came to an end, and news reached the private apartments at Hampton Court that the dove which had left that dovecote had further besmirched her beautiful plumage. The honourable ladies, however, spoke of her in the future as dead, and by degrees became quite reconciled to Ruth's marriage to Captain Glen, princ.i.p.ally through the constant dropping of the water that is said to wear a stone.

The water dropped from the Honourable Isabella's eyes, and the stone was her sister, who invited the happy pair down to Hampton Court to spend a few days at the Palace, where the Honourable Isabella's heart would flutter and her hands shake, but all in a very innocent way, for her love for Marcus Glen had become subdued to one of a very motherly kind, even as another love was dead and buried in the past.

There was a change at the house in Wimpole Street. First one window used to have the shutters unclosed, then another and another; and at last it was noticed that the windows were cleaned. By the time John Huish had quite recovered from his injury, the place, though still suffering greatly from the want of paint, was so altered that, when the cab which had brought the convalescent and his young wife from the Waterloo Station, stopped, Huish had stared and told the driver to go on.

"This here's the number, sir," said the man st.u.r.dily; and so it proved, for just then Vidler opened the door, and they entered a house they hardly seemed to know.

There were voices, too, as well as an abundance of light in the house; and when the young couple, whose coming was expected, entered the drawing-room, it was to find quite a party a.s.sembled.

John Huish stopped short to gaze in wonderment, as Gertrude left his side, and ran forward to embrace a little thin old man, so grey and blanched that he looked almost ghostly as his white hands trembled over Gertrude and then were placed upon her head as she laid it against his breast.

The young man's eyes turned sharply then to the panel in the wall, to see that it was closed and painted over.

"I'm very glad to see you, John Huish," said a familiar voice, though, the next moment, as Gertrude rose to embrace her father, and the little white, bent old man stood up to limp painfully two or three steps to grasp both his hands.

John Huish could not speak, knowing what he did; and, pale and flushed by turns, he stood grasping the old man's hands and thinking of how his father had robbed him of his love, almost of his life.

"My dear John," he said, "you have taken my darling, and, as I have looked upon her always as my child, why, you must be my son. G.o.d bless you! The past is dead."

The End.