Part 6 (1/2)

”Not one,” Dominey replied. ”I am afraid that I am not altogether keen about making advances.”

Mr. Mangan coughed. ”You must remember that during the period of your last residence in London,” he said, ”you were in a state of chronic impecuniosity. No doubt that rather affected the att.i.tude of some of those who would otherwise have been more friendly.”

”I should be perfectly content never to see one of them again,” declared Dominey, with perfect truth.

”That, of course, is impossible,” the lawyer protested. ”You must go and see the d.u.c.h.ess, at any rate. She was always your champion.”

”The d.u.c.h.ess was always very kind to me,” Dominey admitted doubtfully, ”but I am afraid she was rather fed up before I left England.”

Mr. Mangan smiled. He was enjoying a very excellent lunch, which it seemed hard to believe was ordered by a man just home from the wilds of Africa, and he thoroughly enjoyed talking about d.u.c.h.esses.

”Her Grace,” he began--

”Well?”

The lawyer had paused, with his eyes glued upon the couple at a neighbouring table. He leaned across towards his companion.

”The d.u.c.h.ess herself, Sir Everard, just behind you, with Lord St. Omar.”

”This place must certainly be the rendezvous of all the world,” Dominey declared, as he held out his hand to a man who had approached their table. ”Seaman, my friend, welcome! Let me introduce you to my friend and legal adviser, Mr. Mangan--Mr. Seaman.”

Mr. Seaman was a short, fat man, immaculately dressed in most conventional morning attire. He was almost bald, except for a little tuft on either side, and a few long, fair hairs carefully brushed back over a s.h.i.+ning scalp. His face was extraordinarily round except towards his chin, where it came to a point; his eyes bright and keen, his mouth the mouth of a professional humourist. He shook hands with the lawyer with an _empress.e.m.e.nt_ which was scarcely English.

”Within the s.p.a.ce of half an hour,” Dominey continued, ”I find a princess who desires to claim my acquaintance; a cousin,” he dropped his voice a little, ”who lunches only a few tables away, and the man of whom I have seen the most during the last ten years amidst scenes a little different from these, eh, Seaman?”

Seaman accepted the chair which the waiter had brought and sat down. The lawyer was immediately interested.

”Do I understand, then,” he asked, addressing the newcomer, ”that you knew Sir Everard in Africa?”

Seaman beamed. ”Knew him?” he repeated, and with the first words of his speech the fact of his foreign nationality was established. ”There was no one of whom I knew so much. We did business together--a great deal of business--and when we were not partners, Sir Everard generally got the best of it.”

Dominey laughed. ”Luck generally comes to a man either early or late in life. My luck came late. I think, Seaman, that you must have been my mascot. Nothing went wrong with me during the years that we did business together.”

Seaman was a little excited. He brushed upright with the palm of his hand one of those little tufts of hair left on the side of his head, and he laid his plump fingers upon the lawyer's shoulder.

”Mr. Mangan,” he said, ”you listen to me. I sell this man the controlling interests in a mine, shares which I have held for four and a half years and never drew a penny dividend. I sell them to him, I say, at par. Well, I need the money and it seems to me that I had given the shares a fair chance. Within five weeks--five weeks, sir,” he repeated, struggling to attune his voice to his civilised surroundings, ”those shares had gone from par to fourteen and a half. To-day they stand at twenty. He gave me five thousand pounds for those shares. To-day he could walk into your stock market and sell them for one hundred thousand. That is the way money is made in Africa, Mr. Mangan, where innocents like me are to be found every day.”

Dominey poured out a gla.s.s of wine and pa.s.sed it to their visitor.

”Come,” he said, ”we all have our ups and downs. Africa owes you nothing, Seaman.”

”I have done well in my small way,” Seaman admitted, fingering the stem of his winegla.s.s, ”but where I have had to plod, Sir Everard here has stood and commanded fate to pour her treasures into his lap.”

The lawyer was listening with a curious interest and pleasure to this half bantering conversation. He found an opportunity now to intervene.

”So you two were really friends in Africa?” he remarked, with a queer and almost inexplicable sense of relief.

”If Sir Everard permits our a.s.sociation to be so called,” Seaman replied. ”We have done business together in the great cities--in Johannesburg and Pretoria, in Kimberley and Cape Town--and we have prospected together in the wild places. We have trekked the veldt and been lost to the world for many months at a time. We have seen the real wonders of Africa together, as well as her tawdry civilisation.”

”And you, too,” Mr. Mangan asked, ”have you retired?”