Bones in London Part 37

CHAPTER X

THE BRANCH LINE

Not all the investments of Bones paid dividends. Some cost him money.

Some cost him time. Some--and they were few--cost him both.

Somewhere in a marine store in London lie the battered wrecks of what were once electro-plated motor-lamps of a peculiar and, to Bones, sinister design. They were all that was left of a great commercial scheme, based upon the flotation of a lamp that never went out.

On a day of crisis in Bones's life they had gone out, which was bad.

They had come on at an inconvenient moment, which was worse, since they had revealed him and his secretary in tender att.i.tudes. And Bones had gone gaily to right the wrong, and had been received with cold politeness by the lady concerned.

There was a week of gloom, when Bones adopted towards his invaluable a.s.sistant the air and manner of one who was in the last stages of a wasting disease. Miss Marguerite Whitland never came into Bones's office without finding him sitting at his desk with his head in his hands, except once, when she came in without knocking and Bones hadn't the time to strike that picturesque att.i.tude.

Indeed, throughout that week she never saw him but he was swaying, or standing with his hand before his eyes, or clutching on to the edge of a chair, or walking with feeble footsteps; and she never spoke to him but he replied with a tired, wan smile, until she became seriously alarmed, thinking his brain was affected, and consulted Captain Hamilton, his partner.

"Look here, Bones, you miserable devil," said Hamilton, "you're scaring that poor girl. What the d.i.c.kens do you mean by it?"

"Scaring who?" said Bones, obviously pleased. "Am I really? Is she fearfully cut up, dear old thing?"

"She is," said Hamilton truthfully. "She thinks you're going dotty."

"Vulgarity, vulgarity, dear old officer," said Bones, much annoyed.

"I told her you were often like that," Hamilton went on wilfully. "I said that you were a little worse, if anything, after your last love affair----"

"Heavens!" nearly screamed Bones. "You didn't tell her anything about your lovely old sister Patricia?"

"I did not," said Hamilton. "I merely pointed out to her the fact that when you were in love you were not to be distinguished from one whom is the grip of measles."

"Then you're a naughty old fellow," said Bones. "You're a wicked old rascal. I'm surprised at you! Can't a fellow have a little heart trouble----"

"Heart? Bah!" said Hamilton scornfully.

"Heart trouble," repeated Bones sternly. "I've always had a weak heart."

"And a weak head, too," said Hamilton. "Now, just behave yourself, Bones, and stop frightening the lady. I'm perfectly sure she's fond of you--in a motherly kind of way," he added, as he saw Bones's face light up. "And, really, she is such an excellent typist that it would be a sin and a shame to frighten her from the office."

This possibility had not occurred to Bones, and it is likely it had more effect than any other argument which Hamilton could use. That day he began to take an interest in life, stepped gaily into the office and as blithely into his secretary's room. He even made jokes, and dared invite her to tea--an invitation which was declined so curtly that Bones decided that tea was an unnecessary meal, and cut it out forthwith.

All this time the business of Schemes Limited was going forward, if not by leaps and bounds, yet by steady progression. Perhaps it was the restraining influence that Hamilton exercised which prevented the leaps being too p.r.o.nounced and kept the bounds within bounds, so to speak.

It was Schemes Limited which bought the theatrical property of the late Mr. Liggeinstein and re-sold those theatres in forty-eight hours at a handsome profit. It was Bones who did the buying, and it was Hamilton who did the selling--in this case, to the intense annoyance of Bones, who had sat up the greater part of one night writing a four-act play in blank verse, and arriving at the office late, had discovered that his chance of acting as his own producer had pa.s.sed for ever.

"And I'd written a most wonderful part for you, dear old mademoiselle,"

he said sadly to his secretary. "The part where you die in the third act--well, really, it brought tears to my jolly old eyes."

"I think Captain Hamilton was very wise to accept the offer of the Colydrome Syndicate," said the girl coldly.

In his leisure moments Bones had other relaxations than the writing of poetry--now never mentioned--or four-act tragedies. What Hamilton had said of him was true. He had an extraordinary nose for a bargain, and found his profits in unexpected places.

People got to know him--quite important people, men who handled millions carelessly, like Julius Bohea, and Important Persons whose faces are familiar to the people of Britain, such as the Right Hon.

George Parkinson Chenney. Bones met that most influential member of the Cabinet at a very superior dinner-party, where everybody ate plovers' eggs as though it were a usual everyday occurrence.

And Mr. Parkinson Chenney talked on his favourite subject with great ease and charm, and his favourite subject was the question of the Chinese Concession. Apparently everybody had got concessions in China except the British, until one of our cleverest diplomatists stepped in and procured for us the most amazingly rich coalfield of Wei-hai-tai.

The genius and foresight of this diplomatist--who had actually gone to China in the Long Vacation, and of his own initiative and out of his own head had evolved these concessions, which were soon to be ratified by a special commission which was coming from China--was a theme on which Mr. Parkinson Chenney spoke with the greatest eloquence. And everybody listened respectfully, because he was a great man.

"It is not for me," said Mr. Parkinson Chenney, toying with the stem of his champagne gla.s.s and closing his eyes modestly, "I say it is not for me--thank you, Perkins, I will have just as much as will come up to the brim; thank you, that will do very nicely--to speak boastfully or to enlarge unduly upon what I regard as a patriotic effort, and one which every citizen of these islands would in the circ.u.mstances have made, but I certainly plume myself upon the ac.u.men and knowledge of the situation which I showed."

"Hear, hear!" said Bones in the pause that followed, and Mr. Parkinson Chenney beamed.

When the dinner was over, and the guests retired to the smoking-room, Bones b.u.t.tonholed the minister.

"Dear old right honourable," said Bones, "may I just have a few words in _re_ Chinese coal?"

The right honourable gentleman listened, or appeared to listen. Then Mr. Parkinson Chenney smiled a recognition to another great man, and moved off, leaving Bones talking.

Bones that night was the guest of a Mr. Harold Pyeburt, a City acquaintance--almost, it seemed, a disinterested City acquaintance.

When Bones joined his host, Mr. Pyeburt patted him on the back.

"My dear Tibbetts," he said in admiration, "you've made a hit with Chenney. What the d.i.c.kens did you talk about?"

"Oh, coal," said Bones vaguely.

He wasn't quite certain what he had talked about, only he knew that in his mind at dinner there had dawned a great idea. Was Mr. Pyeburt a thought-reader? Possibly he was. Or possibly some chance word of his had planted the seed which was now germinating so favourably.

"Chenney is a man to know," he said. "He's one of the most powerful fellows in the Cabinet. Get right with him, and you can have a knighthood for the asking."

Bones blushed.

"A knighthood, dear old broker's man?" he said, with an elaborate shrug. "No use to me, my rare old athlete. Lord Bones--Lord Tibbetts I mean--may sound beastly good, but what good is it, eh? Answer me that."

"Oh, I don't know," said Mr. Pyeburt. "It may be nothing to you, but your wife----"

"Haven't a wife, haven't a wife," said Bones rapidly, "haven't a wife!"

"Oh, well, then," said Mr. Pyeburt, "it isn't an attractive proposition to you, and, after all, you needn't take a knighthood--which, by the way, doesn't carry the t.i.tle of lordship--unless you want to.

"I've often thought," he said, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his forehead, as though in the process of profound cogitation, "that one of these days some lucky fellow will take the Lynhaven Railway off Chenney's hands and earn his everlasting grat.i.tude."

"Lynhaven? Where's that?" asked Bones. "Is there a railway?"

Mr. Pyeburt nodded.

"Come out on to the balcony, and I'll tell you about it," said Pyeburt; and Bones, who always wanted telling about things, and could no more resist information than a dipsomaniac could refuse drink, followed obediently.

It appeared that Mr. Parkinson Chenney's father was a rich but eccentric man, who had a grudge against a certain popular seaside resort for some obscure reason, and had initiated a movement to found a rival town. So he had started Lynhaven, and had built houses and villas and beautiful a.s.sembly rooms; and then, to complete the independence of Lynhaven, he had connected that town with the main traffic line by railway, which he built across eight miles of marshland. By all the rules of the game, no man can create successfully in a spirit of vengeance, and Lynhaven should have been a failure. It was, indeed, a great success, and repaid Mr. Chenney, Senior, handsomely.