The Profiteers Part 14

"The mischief he is!" Wingate said. "Well?"

"My husband has desired me to intercede with you," Josephine continued, "to beg your acceptance of the apology which he has sent you this morning."

"No further word need be spoken upon the subject," Wingate replied. "Your husband has explained that he was drunk and has tendered his apology. I accept it."

There was a brief pause. Josephine was obviously repeating Wingate's decision to her husband. Then she spoke again.

"My husband desires me to thank you," she said. "He desires me to hope that you will continue to visit at the house, and that you will not allow anything he may have said to interfere between our friendship."

"Nothing that he has said or could say could interfere with that,"

Wingate a.s.sured her,--"at least that is my point of view."

"And mine!"

"Shall I see you to-day?" he asked.

"I hope so," she answered. "Perhaps after luncheon--"

There was a sound as though the receiver had been taken from her fingers.

Dredlinton himself spoke.

"Look here, Wingate, this is Dredlinton speaking," he said. "You won't let this little affair make any difference to your call upon us on Tuesday morning?"

"Certainly not," Wingate replied. "I was thinking of writing you about that, though. I don't see any object in my coming. I think you had better let me off that visit."

"My dear fellow," Dredlinton pleaded, "if you don't come, Phipps will think it is because of last night's affair and I shall get it in the neck. I'm in disgrace enough already. Do, for heaven's sake, oblige me, there's a good chap."

Wingate hesitated for a moment.

"Very well," he a.s.sented, "I will go. Is that all?"

"That's all, thanks."

"I should like to speak to your wife again," Wingate said.

"Sorry, she's just gone out," was the rather malicious reply. "I'd have kept her for you, if I'd known. So long!"

A knocking at the door,--a rather low, suggestive knocking. Wingate knew that it was an impossibility, but he nevertheless hastened to throw it open. Miss Flossie Lane stood there, very becomingly dressed in a tailor-made costume of covert coating. She wore a hat with yellow b.u.t.tercups, and she had shown a certain reticence as regards cosmetics which amounted to a tacit acknowledgment of his prejudices.

"Miss Lane!" he exclaimed.

She looked at him with wide-open eyes.

"But you were expecting me, weren't you?" she asked. "I remembered your inviting me quite well, but I couldn't remember where you said, so I thought I'd better come and fetch you. I haven't done wrong, have I?"

"Most certainly not," Wingate replied. "Come in, please. I'll ring for a c.o.c.ktail and send the man down into the restaurant to engage a table."

She sank into an easy-chair and looked around her, while Wingate did as he had suggested. The sitting room, filled with trophies of curiously mixed characteristics--a Chinese idol squatting in one corner, some West African weapons above it, two very fine moose heads over a quaintly shaped fireplace, and a row of choice j.a.panese prints over the bookcase--was a very masculine but eminently habitable apartment. Miss Lane looked around her and approved.

"This is quite the nicest flat in the Court," she declared, "and I've been in so many of them. How did you find time to furnish it like this? I thought that you'd only just arrived from America."

"I come to London often enough to keep this little suite here," he explained. "I had it even through the war. Sometimes I lend it to a friend. I am one of those domestic people," he added with a smile, "who like to have a home of some sort to come to at the end of a journey."

"You're much too nice to live alone," she ventured.

"Well, you see, your s.e.x has decreed that I shall up to the present," he remarked. "Here come the c.o.c.ktails. I hope that yours won't be too dry.

Where will you lunch--the restaurant or the grillroom?"

"The grillroom," she decided, after a moment's reflection. "We can go and sit out in the foyer afterwards and have our coffee."

The c.o.c.ktails and Wingate's choice of a table were alike approved.

Wingate himself, as soon as he had recovered from the bland a.s.surance with which his guest had manufactured her invitation, devoted himself with a somewhat hard light in his eyes to the task of entertaining her.

The whole gamut of her attractions was let loose for his benefit. He represented to her the one desirable thing, difficult of attainment, perhaps, but worth the effort. Soft glances and words hinting at tenderness, sighs and half-spoken appeals were all made to serve their obvious purpose. If Wingate's responses were a little artificial, he still made no attempt to hurry through the meal. He seemed perfectly content to consider the attractions which his companion heaped into the shop window of her being. Once she almost amused him, and he found himself for a few seconds contemplating her with some glimmering of the thought which she was so anxious to instil into his brain. After all, a companion like this was soothing, made no demands, filled a pleasant enough place in the broken ways of life, provided one had no other aspirations. And then the thought pa.s.sed from him,--forever.

They took their coffee and liqueurs in the foyer. Flossie, perfectly satisfied with her companion and her progress with him, chattered gaily away with scarcely a pause, and Wingate, after his first resentment at her coming had pa.s.sed, found a certain relief in sitting and listening to her equable flow of nonsense. By and by, however, she came very near annoying him.

"You know Lady Dredlinton very well, don't you Mr. Wingate?" she asked, a little abruptly.

His answer was marked with a warning note of stiffness.

"Lady Dredlinton," he repeated. "I know her, certainly. I was at her hospital at etaples."

"Every one says that she is charming," the young lady continued, with a side glance at him. "Pity she can't keep that wicked husband of hers a little more under control. You know, Mr. Wingate," she confided, "he has asked me to supper four or five times but I have never cared about going with him quite alone. A girl has to be so careful in my position. Don't you agree with me?"

"I suppose so," he answered indifferently.

"Dear old 'Dredful,' as Lord Fanleighton used to call him, can be very amusing sometimes, but he hasn't the best reputation, and of course he's terrible when he's drunk, as he was last night. I do so like nice men,"

she sighed, "and there are scarcely any left. One seems to have lost all one's friends in the war," she went on reminiscently, her large blue eyes veiled with sadness. "It makes one feel very lonely sometimes."

Wingate scarcely heard her. His eyes were fixed upon the two men walking up the carpeted way from the restaurant. One was Peter Phipps, the other Lord Dredlinton. Flossie Lane, seeking to discover the cause of her companion's abstraction, glanced in the same direction and recognised them at once.

"Why here is Lord Dredlinton!" she exclaimed. "And Mr. Peter Phipps!

He is rather a dear person, Mr. Phipps, you know, although you don't like him."

"Is he!" Wingate observed grimly.

"They are coming to speak to us," the young lady went on, shaking her skirts a little and glancing into the mirror which she had just drawn from her bag. "What a bother!"

Lord Dredlinton, more dignified than usual but if possible still more unpleasant, threaded his way between the chairs and paused before the two, followed, a few s.p.a.ces behind, by Phipps.

"Hullo, Flossie!" the former exclaimed. "How are you, Wingate? You got my letter?"

"I received your letter and also your telephone message," Wingate replied stiffly. "So far as I am concerned, the matter, as I told you, is at an end."

"That's all right, then.--Flossie," Dredlinton continued, looking reproachfully at the young woman whose hand he was still holding, "I told you last night that you ought to know better. You should confine your attentions to the black sheep of the world, like me. Dear me!" he went on, standing a little on one side so as not to conceal Wingate. "My wife, apparently, has been lunching here. Wingate, shall we form a screen in front of you, or are you content to be toppled from your pedestal?"

Wingate met the ill-natured sneer indifferently. He even smiled as Phipps, standing on the outside of the little circle, also altered his position. It was clearly the intention of both that Josephine should realise the situation. Attracted by a gesture from her husband, she glanced across at them. For a single moment she half hesitated. There was a queer look in her eyes, a look of surprise mingled even with pain. Then she flashed a brilliant smile upon Wingate, ignored her husband and Phipps, and pa.s.sed on.

"Cut!" Lord Dredlinton exclaimed, with mock dismay. "Cut, my friend Phipps! Me, her husband, and you, her dear friend! Really, it's a most uncomfortable thing to have a disapproving wife going about to the same restaurants and places. Let us go and sulk in a corner, Phipps, and leave this little comedy here to develop. Farewell, faithless Flossie!