The Profiteers Part 7

"I came," Peter Phipps declared, "entirely out of consideration for you.

I came to ask what you wished done, and to do it. I came to a.s.sure you of my sympathy; if you will accept it, my friendship; and if you will further honour me by accepting it, my help."

"Just how do you propose to help me?" Josephine enquired.

"Just in the way," he answered, "that a man to whom money is of no account may sometimes help a woman for whom he has a most profound, a most sincere, a most respectful admiration".

"You came, in fact," Josephine said, "to place your bank account at my disposal?"

"I would never have ventured," he protested, "to have put the matter so crudely. I came to express my admiration for you and my desire to help you."

"And in return?"

"I do not bargain. Lady Dredlinton," Phipps said slowly. "I must confess that if you could regard me with a little more toleration, if you would accept at any rate a measure of my friendship, would endeavour, may I say, to adopt a more sympathetic att.i.tude with regard to me, it would give me the deepest pleasure."

Josephine shook her head.

"Mr. Phipps," she said, "you have the name of being a very hard-headed and shrewd business man. You come here offering my husband's honour and your banking account. I could not possibly accept these things from a person to whom I can make no return. If you will let me know the exact amount of my husband's defalcation, I will try and pay it."

"You cannot believe," he exclaimed almost angrily, "that I came here to take your money?"

"Did you come here believing that I was going to take yours?" she asked.

Peter Phipps, who knew men through and through and had also a profound acquaintance with women of a certain cla.s.s, was face to face for once with a type of which he knew little. The woman who could refuse his millions, offered in such a manner, for him could have no real existence.

Somewhere or other he must have blundered, he told himself. Or perhaps she was clever; she was leading him on to more definite things?

"I came here, Lady Dredlinton," he said, "prepared to offer, if you would accept it, everything I possess in the world in return for a little kindness."

Phipps had not heard the knock at the door, though he saw the change in Josephine's face. She rose to her feet with a transfiguring smile.

"How lucky I am," she exclaimed, "to have a witness to such a wonderful offer!"

Wingate paused for a moment in his pa.s.sage across the room. His outstretched hand fell to his side. The expression of eagerness with which he had approached Josephine disappeared from his face. He confronted Phipps, who had also risen to his feet, as a right-living man should confront his enemy. There was a second or two of tense silence, broken by Phipps, who was the first to recover himself.

"Welcome to London, Mr. Wingate," he said. "I was hoping to see you this morning in the City. This is perhaps a more fortunate meeting."

"You two know each other?" Josephine murmured.

"We are old acquaintances," Wingate replied.

"And business rivals," Phipps put in cheerfully. "A certain wholesome rivalry, Lady Dredlinton, is good for us all. In whatever camp I find myself, I generally find Mr. Wingate in the opposite one. I have an idea, in fact," he went on, "that we are on the point of recommencing our friendly rivalry."

Josephine, who had been standing up for the last few moments, touched the bell.

"You will keep your rivalry for the City, I trust," she said.

It was just then that Phipps surprised a little glance flashed from Josephine to Wingate. He seemed suddenly to increase in size, to become more menacing, portentous. There was thunder upon his forehead. He seemed on the point of pa.s.sionate speech. At that moment the butler opened the door and Josephine held out her hand.

"It was very kind of you to call, Mr. Phipps. I will think over all that you have said, and discuss it--with my husband."

Phipps had regained command of himself. He bowed low over her hand but could not keep the malice from his tone.

"You could not have a better counsellor," he declared.

Neither Josephine nor Wingate spoke a word until the door was finally closed after the unwelcome caller and they heard his heavy tread retreating down the hall. Then she sank back upon the couch and motioned him to sit by her side.

"I suppose I am an idiot," she acknowledged, "but that man terrifies me."

"In what way?"

"He is my husband's a.s.sociate in business." Josephine said, "and apparently desires to take advantage of that fact. My husband is not a reliable person where money is concerned. He seems to have been behaving rather badly."

"I am very sorry," Wingate murmured.

She looked at him curiously.

"Has anything happened?" she asked. "You seem distressed."

Wingate shook his head. The shock of having met his enemy under such circ.u.mstances was beginning to pa.s.s.

"Forgive me," he begged. "The fact of it is, the last person I expected to find here was Peter Phipps. I forgot that your husband was connected with his company."

"You two are not friends?" she suggested.

"We are bitter enemies," Wingate confessed, "and shall be till one of us goes down. We are a very terrible example of the evils of this age of restraint. In more primitive days we should have gone for one another's throats. One would have lived and the other died. It would have been, better."

Josephine shivered.

"Don't!" she implored. "You sound too much in earnest."

"I am in earnest about that man," he replied gravely. "I beg you, Lady Dredlinton, as I hope to call myself your friend, not to trust him, not to encourage him to visit you, to keep him always at arm's length."

"And I," she answered, holding out her hand, "as I hope and mean to be--as I _am_ your friend--promise that I will have no more to do with him than the barest courtesy demands. To tell you the truth, your coming this afternoon was a little inopportune. If you had been a single minute later, I honestly believe that he would have said unforgivable things."

Wingate's eyes flashed.

"If I could have heard him!" he muttered.

"But, dear friend, you could have said nothing nor done anything," she reminded him soothingly. "Remember that although we are a little older friends than many people know of, we still have some distance to go in understanding."

"I want to be your friend, and I want to be your friend quickly," he said doggedly.

"No one in the world needs friends as I do," Josephine answered, "because I do not think that any one is more lonely."

"You have changed," he told her, his eyes full of sympathy.

"Since etaples? Yes! Somehow or other, I was always able to keep cheerful there because there was always so much real misery around, and one felt that one was doing good in the world. Here I seem to be such a useless person, no good to anybody."

"If you say things like that, I shall forget how far we have to travel,"

he declared. "I need your friendship. I have come over here with rather a desperate purpose. I think I can say that I have never known fear, and yet sometimes I flinch when I think of the next few months. I want a real friend, Lady Dredlinton."