Swirling Waters Part 12

"Quickly?"

"Yes, I expect so. But has Clifford approved this scheme?"

"Of course."

"Have you it with you?"

"Have I what?"

"I mean the agreement Clifford signed."

Sir Francis, without knowing it, had stumbled upon the crucial weakness of Larssen's daring scheme. But it would have taken a far shrewder man than he to realize the vital import of the point from Larssen's easy, almost causal answer:

"There's no signed agreement. We agreed the scheme in principle at the interview in Clifford's office, and he left details to you and me. His last words were: 'Tell my father-in-law to go ahead as quickly as he can manage.'"

"But when I put this before St Aubyn and Carleton-Wingate, they'll be expecting me to--I mean to say, isn't it deuced irregular, you know?"

Larssen did not answer this for a moment. He had a keen appreciation of the value of silence in business negotiations. He poured himself out another gla.s.s of cognac and drank it off. His att.i.tude conveyed a contempt for Letchmere's cautiousness which he would be too polite to put into words.

"If you'd sooner write to Clifford and have his agreement to the scheme in black and white ..." was his studiously, chilly reply.

Olive put in a word: "I dislike all those niggling formalities."

"Business is business," quoted her father sententiously.

"Besides, Clifford will be back before the prospectus goes to the public."

"Probably," agreed Larssen. "But in case he is not back in time, we're to go ahead just as if he were here. That's what he told me before he left Paris. Didn't he write you to that effect, Sir Francis?"

"I heard nothing from him."

"But I showed you my telegram," answered Olive. "Clifford said to refer to Mr Larssen for all details."

"I must think matters over," said the baronet obstinately.

Lars Larssen had been studying his man through half-closed eyelids, and he now summed him up with penetrating accuracy. It was not suspicion that made Sir Francis hesitate, but petty dignity. He had become huffed.

He felt that his dignity had not been sufficiently studied in the transaction. Matters had been arranged over his head without formally consulting him. It was "not the thing"--"not good form."

To attempt to force matters would merely drive him into deeper obstinacy.

And yet it was _vital_ to Larssen's plan that Sir Francis should go ahead with the work of the flotation quickly--should go ahead with it in the full belief that Clifford Matheson had agreed to the scheme and to the use of his name. It was vital that Sir Francis should take the whole responsibility of the flotation on to his own shoulders. He was to make use of his son-in-law's name with the other prospective Directors and on the printed prospectus just as though Matheson were personally sanctioning it.

Larssen himself planned to remain in the background and pull the wires unseen. When the revelation of Matheson's death came to light--as it inevitably must in the course of time--Letchmere would be so far involved that he would be forced to shoulder responsibility for the use of Matheson's name.

To try to rush matters with Sir Francis would perhaps wreck the whole delicate machinery of the scheme. Larssen quickly resolved to get at him in indirect fashion through Olive, and accordingly he answered evenly:

"Think it over by all means. There's plenty to consider. Take the draft scheme and look it through at your leisure.... Now what's the plan of amus.e.m.e.nt for to-night?"

Before going to the Casino, Olive made an excuse to return to her rooms at the Hesperides. Alone in her bedroom, she took out from a locked drawer a hypodermic syringe in silver and gla.s.s, and a phial of colourless liquid. She held the phial in her hands with a curious look of furtive tenderness, fondling it softly. For many months past this had been her cherished secret--the drug that unlocked for her new realms of fancy and exquisite sensation.

To herself she called it by a pet name, as though it were a lover.

In the course of the evening's play at the tables, Larssen was struck with her increasing animation and gaiety. The heavy, listless look had left her eyes, and they now glittered with life and fire. When they left the tables to stroll by the milk-white terraces of the Casino, there was a flush in her cheeks and iridescence in her speech very different from a couple of hours before.

A spirit of caustic, impish brilliance was in her. She turned it upon the people they had rubbed shoulders with at the tables; upon the people walking past them on the terraces; even upon her husband:

"Clifford is a 90 per cent. success. There are men who can never achieve full success in any field whatever. They climb up to 70, 80, 90 per cent., and then the grade is too steep for them."

"They stick."

"Or run backwards downhill. I'm a pa.s.senger in a car of that kind. Near to the top, but not reaching it. So I get out to walk on myself."

"There are mighty few men who have the 100 per cent. in them."

"Tell me this, Mr Larssen. Did you know you were a 100 per cent. man when you started your business life, or did you come to realize it gradually?"

"I knew it from the first," replied the shipowner steadily. "Knew it when I was a mere kiddy. Set myself apart from the other boys. Told myself I was to be their master. Made myself master. Fought for it.

Fought every boy who wouldn't acknowledge it.... When I went to sea as cabin-boy on the "Mary R." of Gloucester, the men on the trawler tried to "lick me into shape," as they called it. They didn't know what they were up against. I used those men as whet-stones--used them to kick fear out of myself. You notice that I limp a little? That's a legacy from the days of the 'Mary R.'"

Olive looked at him with open admiration. "That's epic!" she exclaimed.

"How far are you going to climb?"

Larssen had never revealed to any man or woman--save only to his wife--the great ultimate purpose of his life. He did not tell it to Olive. She was to be used as a p.a.w.n in the great game, just as he was using Sir Francis and the dead Clifford Matheson. It came upon him that she was now a widow. He would fan her open admiration so as to make use of it when she awoke to the fact of her widowhood.

So he answered: "How far I climb depends on the help of my best friends.

I don't hide that. When my dear wife was with me, she was an inspiration to me. No man can drive his car to the summit without a woman to spur him on."

"Did marriage change you much?"

"Strengthened me. Bolted me to my foundations.... But here I'm monopolizing the conversation with talk about myself. Let's switch. What are _your_ ambitions?"

Olive laughed--a laugh with a bitter taste in it. "I wanted to help a man to drive his car to the summit, and the car has stuck. I could inspire, but my inspiring goes to waste. I'm an engine racing without a shaft to take up its energy. Clifford is developing scruples. I don't know where he caught them. I can't stand sick people. That's my temperament--I must have energy and action around me."

"I understand that. Felt it myself at times," he answered sympathetically.

Without apparent reason her thoughts skipped to a woman who had sat near them at the roulette table. "Wasn't she the image of a disappointed vulture? I mean the woman in green. Swooping down from a distance to gorge herself with a tasty feast, and then finding a man with a rake to chase her off. I chuckled to myself as I watched her. Do men and women look to you like animals? They do to me. Monte Carlo's a Zoo, only the animals aren't caged."

"That's right! You're an extraordinarily keen observer, Mrs Matheson."

Sir Francis Letchmere approached them beamingly from the direction of the Casino. He had won money at _trente-et-quarante_, and was feeling very pleased with his own judgment and powers of intellect generally.

"Leave him to me," whispered Olive to Larssen. "I'll see that my father gets busy on the Hudson Bay Scheme. But on one condition."

"What's that?"

"That you stay on at Monte for a few days. I don't want to be left here alone. I hate being alone."

"I'm due back in London. Urgent business matters."