Part 27 (1/2)
”The motor-car accident at Putney, you know.”
”Ah!”
”Yes.”
”Just so. Just so. You are the owner-driver of the other car.”
”Yes.”
”I think you ought to have seen my wife. It is really she who is the owner of this car. As you are aware, I wasn't in the accident myself, and I don't know anything about it. Besides, it's entirely in the hands of the insurance company and the solicitors. You are employing a solicitor, aren't you?”
”Oh, yes.”
”Then I suppose it's by his advice that you've come to see me.”
”Well, I'm afraid it isn't.”
”What!” cried Mr. Prohack. ”If it isn't by his advice you may well be afraid. Do you know you've done a most improper thing? Most improper. I can't possibly listen to you. _You_ may go behind your lawyer's back.
But I can't. And also there's the insurance company.” Mr. Prohack lifted the rug which had fallen away from her short skirts.
”I think solicitors and companies and things are so silly,” said Miss Winstock, whose eyes had not moved from the floor-mat. ”Thank you.” The 'thank you' was in respect to the rug.
”So they are,” Mr. Prohack agreed.
”That was why I thought it would be better to come straight to you.” For the first time she glanced at him; a baffling glance, a glance that somehow had the effect of transferring some of the apprehension in her own breast to that of Mr. Prohack.
”Well,” said he, in a departmental tone recalling Whitehall. ”Will you kindly say what you have to say?”
”Can I speak confidentially?”
Mr. Prohack raised his hands and laughed in what he hoped was a sardonic manner.
”I give you young women up,” he murmured. ”Yes, I give you up. You're my enemy. We're at law. And you want to talk confidentially! How can I tell whether I can let you talk confidentially until I've heard what you're going to say?”
”Oh! I was only going to say that I'm not really the owner-driver of the car. I'm personal secretary to Mr. Carrel Quire, and it's really his car. You see he has three cars, but as there's been such a fuss about waste lately and he's so prominent in the anti-squandermania campaign, he prefers to keep only one car in his own name.”
”You don't mean to sit there and tell me you're talking about the Secretary for Foreign Affairs!”
”Yes, of course. Who else? You know he's on the continent at present. He wouldn't take me with him because he wanted to create an effect of austerity in Paris--that's what he said; and I must get this accident affair settled up before he comes back, or he _may_ dismiss me. I don't think he will, because I'm a cousin of the late Lady Queenie Paulle--that's how I got the place--but he may. And then where should I be? I was told you were so kind and nice--that's why I came.”
”I am not kind and I am not nice,” remarked Mr. Prohack, in an acid tone, but laughing to himself because the celebrated young statesman, Mr. Carrel Quire (bald at thirty-five) was precisely one of the ministers who, during the war, had defied and trampled upon the Treasury. He now almost demoniacally contemplated the ruin of Mr. Carrel Quire.
”You have made a serious mistake in coming to me. Unfortunately you cannot undo it. Be good enough to understand that you have not been talking confidentially.”
Miss Winstock ought to have been intimidated and paralysed by the menacing manner of the former Terror of the Departments. But she was not.
”Please, please, Mr. Prohack,” she said calmly, ”don't talk in that strain. I distinctly told you I was talking confidentially, and I'm sure I can rely on you--unless all that I've heard about you is untrue; which it can't be. I only want matters to be settled quietly, and when Mr.
Quire returns he will pay anything that has to be paid--if it isn't too much.”
”My chauffeur a.s.serts that you have told a most naughty untruth about the accident. You say that he ran into you, whereas the fact is that he was nearly standing still while you were going too fast and you skidded badly into him off the tramlines. And he's found witnesses to prove what he says.”