Part 43 (2/2)
”Oh, you strange, you wonderful person!” she exclaimed. ”You want to buy an estate and you want to borrow twelve thousand pounds, and you know where Beatrice is and you won't tell me, and you are fully convinced, because you burst into a house through the wall, that you saved poor Pritchard from being poisoned, and you don't possess a dress suit! Never mind, as it happens it doesn't matter about the dress suit. You shall take me out as you are.”
Tavernake felt in his pockets and remembered that he had only thirty s.h.i.+llings with him.
”Here, carry my purse,” she said carelessly. ”We are going downstairs to the smaller restaurant. I have been traveling since six o'clock, and I am starving.”
”But how about my clothes?” Tavernake objected. ”Will they be all right?”
”It doesn't matter where we are going,” she answered. ”You look very well as you are. Come and let me put your tie straight.”
She came close to him and her fingers played for a moment with his tie.
She was very near to him and she laughed deliberately into his face.
Tavernake held himself quite stiff and felt foolish. He also felt absurdly happy.
”There,” she remarked, when she had arranged it to her satisfaction, ”you look all right now. I wonder,” she added, half to herself, ”what you do look like. Something Colonial and forceful, I think. Never mind, help me on with my cloak and come along. You are a most respectable-looking escort, and a very useful one.”
Although Tavernake was nominally the host, it was Elizabeth who selected the table and ordered the supper. There were very few other guests in the room, the majority being down in the larger restaurant, but among these few Tavernake noticed two of the girls from the chorus at the Atlas. Elizabeth had chosen a table from which she had a view of the door, and she took the seat facing it. From the first Tavernake felt certain that she was watching for some one.
”Talk to me now, please, about this speculation,” she insisted. ”I should like to know all about it, and whether you are sure that I shall get ten per cent for my money.”
Tavernake was in no way reluctant. It was a safe topic for conversation, and one concerning which he had plenty to say. But after a time she stopped him.
”Well,” she said, ”I have discovered at any rate one subject on which you can be fluent. Now I have had enough of building properties, please, and house building. I should like to hear a little about Beatrice.”
Tavernake was dumb.
”I do not wish to talk about Beatrice,” he declared, ”until I understand the cause of this estrangement between you.”
Her eyes flashed angrily and her laugh sounded forced.
”Not even talk of her! My dear friend,” she protested, ”you scarcely repay the confidence I am placing in you!”
”You mean the money?”
”Precisely,” she continued. ”I trust you, why I do not know--I suppose because I am something of a physiognomist--with twelve thousand pounds of my hard-earned savings. You refuse to trust me with even a few simple particulars about the life of my own sister. Come, I don't think that things are quite as they should be between us.”
”Do you know where I first met your sister?” Tavernake asked.
She shook her head pettishly.
”How should I? You told me nothing.”
”She was staying in a boarding-house where I lived,” Tavernake went on.
”I think I told you that but nothing else. It was a cheap boarding-house but she had not enough money to pay for her meals. She was tired of life. She was in a desperate state altogether.”
”Are you trying to tell me, or rather trying not to tell me, that Beatrice was mad enough to think of committing suicide?” Elizabeth inquired.
”She was in the frame of mind when such a step was possible,” he answered, gravely. ”You remember that night when I first saw you in the chemist's shop across the street? She had been very ill that evening, very ill indeed. You could see for yourself the effect meeting you had upon her.”
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