CHAPTER II
SIR PAUL WESTERHAM BUYS THE CRIME SYNDICATE
Captain Melun was a man used to being hard hit. He was steeled againstcunningly and swiftly-dealt blows, such as he himself administered, butthis declaration of Sir Paul Westerham, that he intended to marry theLady Kathleen, took him quite aback.
"Oh!" he exclaimed softly, and his voice had a certain note ofpuzzlement and anxiety in it. "Oh!" he repeated, and again he said "Oh!"
The baronet smiled a little grimly in his red beard, but his duck's-egggreen eyes were as serene and as cold as ever.
The three gently ejaculated "Ohs" of the captain had told him much.His quick brain realised that he had dealt the captain an exceedinglywell-landed blow. Then the baronet's smile died, for, following thetrain of his suspicious thoughts, he instinctively grasped and held onto the idea that just as Melun had been searching his kit-bag for thepurpose of blackmail, so that individual purposed marriage with thePrime Minister's daughter to the same end.
This notion disquieted him greatly.
It disturbed him so much that the hard eyes hardened. Only thebaronet's friends knew that they sometimes hardened because of thesoftness behind their gaze.
Westerham's heart, indeed, rose in revolt against the suggestion thatthis man, spurned of the Army, suspected of the clubs, distrusted byevery honourable man, should for a moment presume to reach out andtouch the hand of Kathleen Carfax. Not for such a man as Melun wasthe girl with the calm yet, at the same time, troubled face, that hadlooked out from the tattered picture and drawn him back to England.
Westerham's brain worked as swiftly as the brain of a woman, as do thebrains of men who, cut off from the electric-lift side of civilisation,day by day face Nature in its true, maternal, and therefore itsfeminine aspect. It was a long guess, but a shrewd guess, and a trueguess, that if Melun had his hopes set on Lady Kathleen, the girl withthe dark hair and steadfast eyes stood in some peril.
The mere thought of it quickened Westerham's blood, and the quickeningof his blood livened his brain still more, so that he watched, almostcat-like, the glance of Melun's eyes as they followed the placing ofthe Lady Kathleen's picture in his pocket.
For a couple of minutes nothing was said. Each man knew instinctivelythat he must move to the attack, but realised that a mistake at theopening of the game might possibly spell disaster.
It was the baronet who broke the silence--it is always the man who hasleast to fear that recovers first.
Westerham had pursued a train of thought as bold as it was unerring. Ithad come home to him that Melun was not merely a blackmailer, but aprince among blackmailers. With infinite speed of thought he followedout his idea, and came to a conclusion which at once suggested andvindicated his next remark.
"I have never realised before, Captain Melun," he said, "what apleasure it was to meet a perfectly-unqualified villain."
Captain Melun raised his black eyebrows a shade more obliquely, and hiseyelids flickered. He was, however, equal to the situation.
"Indeed?" he said coolly, though he passed his tongue along his upperlip beneath his carefully-trimmed moustache. "Indeed? I shall be gladif you will explain."
Westerham took a deep breath and laughed almost gaily. "I shall becharmed," he said.
He paused a little and then continued: "No man, except one with such areputation as yours," he said, "would dream of regarding Lady KathleenCarfax as a possible wife unless he were so equipped with all the artsof blackmail that he had some reason to hope for his success."
By this time Captain Melun had got back his composure.
"You seem," he said casually, "to endow Lord Penshurst with anexceedingly poor character."
"Not exactly," said Westerham. "I endow you with an exceedinglydangerous one."
There was another pause, and the two pairs of eyes sought each other,and the heavy-lidded, slumberous eyes of Melun flickered and falteredbeneath those of the man who had so correctly jumped to a menacingconclusion.
"I am about to present to you an argument," continued the baronet,"which unswervingly follows my present conception of yourself. Longexperience of this wicked world--by which I mean that particularkind of vulture-like humanity which preys upon better men thanitself--enables me to assume that you are without question ablackmailer, a bad blackmailer, and a blackmailer of no common type.
"But I have also learnt this, that no blackmailer can stand alone. Hisoffence is the most cowardly offence in the world. A blackmailer isalways a coward, and a coward is invariably afraid of isolated action.I am therefore very certain that you do not stand alone in this attemptto blackmail me."
Captain Melun's eyes left those of Westerham and studied thewhite-painted panel behind the baronet's head.
Sir Paul went steadily on with his pitiless and logical argument.
"I am persuaded," he said, "that your only motive in leaving New Yorkwas to sail on the same ship as myself, and, if possible, find anopportunity of buying my silence on some point.
"Possibly you think that in the discovery which we have mutually madein the past few minutes you have unearthed a fact which may be much toyour advantage. You are wrong.
"On the contrary," Sir Paul continued, "it is I who have unearthed afact which may be much to my benefit, and with your permission I willproceed to explain to you why."
Captain Melun slowly shrugged his shoulders and slightly bowed hishead. He realised that it was the baronet's move, and did not proposeto hinder him in the making of it, inasmuch as until he could correctlygrasp Westerham's intention he could make no counter move himself.
"Following therefore," continued Westerham, "my original line ofthought, I should say that you were the headpiece, the brain-piece, ofa well-planned scheme of crime."
The faint colour in Melun's face became fainter still. Westerham knewhe was pursuing the right trail.
"Now with such men as yourself--mind, I am not speaking so much fromknowledge as from an intuition as to what I should do myself wereI placed in similar circumstances--it is probable that you havesufficient intelligence, not only to rob your victims, but to rob yourfriends.
"Another piece of life's philosophy that roughing it has taught meis that the robber is always poor. I come, therefore, to the naturaldeduction that you are hard up."
Westerham's whole expression of face changed suddenly. The coldnessleft it. The sea-green eyes smiled with a smile that invited confidencefrom the man before him.
"Well?" said Melun. "And what of it?"
Westerham knew that the battle was won.
"Then," Westerham continued coolly, "such a sum as a hundred thousandpounds would not come amiss to you. Such a sum I am prepared to payyou--under certain conditions."
He paused suddenly in his speech with the intention of catchingthe very slightest exclamation on the part of Melun; nor was hedisappointed. A quick indrawing of Melun's breath told Westerham thathe was hitting him hard.
All the pleasantness in Westerham's face vanished again, and he lookedat the captain with narrowed eyes.
"I realise that in offering you such a sum," he said, "it will, ofcourse, cost you something to earn it. A man who speculates must spendhis own money to gain other people's. A criminal--you must forgivethe word, but it is necessary--who seeks to make a great coup at theexpense of others must put up a certain amount of money to bring it off.
"I think, however, that I am offering you quite enough to enable you tobuy either the silence or the inactivity of your fellow criminals. Ahundred thousand pounds is a good deal of money, and your gang cannotbe so large that you will not be able to afford a sufficient sum torender them your servants."
"Exactly," said Captain Melun.
"Ah!" exclaimed Westerham. "Then you acknowledge what I say to be true?"
"Sir Paul," answered Melun, "you may take my word at what you judgeit is worth, but none the less I, for my part, am prepared to takethe word of a gentleman. Do you give me your word of honour that theoffer--I take it such i
s meant--is in all sincerity?"
"It is meant in all sincerity," said the baronet, "because I amfollowing out my own particular ideas, and I know that you have neitherthe capacity nor yet the opportunity of saying me nay."
No man was quicker than Melun to seize an advantage. He saw thatWesterham read him through and through, and that acknowledgment of hisown baseness would be the surest way of obtaining some small measure ofthe baronet's confidence.
No man lies to his doctor, and at the moment Melun stood in thepresence of a pitiless diagnosis of his soul.
"Yes, Captain Melun," the baronet proceeded, "I admit that you have hadbad luck, but your bad luck places you in my hands. In short, you canbe delivered up to the captain of this ship as a common thief, or youcan do as I tell you."
For a moment Melun hesitated, then he laughed.
"I never realised before," he said steadily, almost with insolence,"that the blackmailer could be blackmailed."
"Nevertheless," said Westerham, "such is the case."
"It is with every confidence," the baronet continued, "that I make youmy present offer. You have divined my secret just as I have divinedyours; it would, however, be just as well for both if I explained everymotive of my action."
He paused and looked for a moment almost shyly out of the port-hole,which swung up and down between sea and sky.
"Where I have been," he said, "women are few and far between. I nevercared for any of them--until--until--I saw this picture."
He tapped his breast lightly.
"Do you think," he continued, his voice rising louder again, "that Ishould ever have set out for England if I had not been drawn back bythis?"
He tapped his breast again. Then his eyes grew wider and his nostrilsdistended.
"I suppose," he cried, with a certain tone of irony in his voice,"that I am a poet. But I am a poet of the open air. Do you think thatI care a glass of barbed-wire whisky for all the scented drawing-roomsin the world? I began life, as they call it, in England, when I wasyoung. What do you think I care for polo, for Hurlingham, for a stuffyreception in some great house in town? Nothing--nothing! Give me theopen prairie land, the tall, blue grass, the open sky, the joy of theweary body that has ridden hard after cattle all the day!"
He laughed shortly.
"Do you think," he continued, extending an almost melodramaticallygesticulating hand towards the astonished captain, "that there is anysoft, silk-bound pillow in Mayfair that could appeal to me when I couldsleep under the stars?"
"Heavens!" He reached out his arms and brought them to his sides againwith a strenuous motion, all his muscles contracted. "I have learnt,"he cried, "the lesson that life is not only real and earnest, but thatlife is hard, that life is a battle--a battle to be won!"
His eyes fell upon his strong, sinewy, brown hands, and he clenched hisfists.
"I am not going back to England to make pleasure, but to fight--to winthe girl of the picture--from you!"
But now, to Westerham's surprise, Melun had turned to sneering. Thebaronet was a breed of man the captain did not understand; no manthat he had as yet been acquainted with loosed his heart in this wildmanner. It seemed to him that Westerham was but a romantic child.
But there was no childhood, no romance, in the bitter gaze he liftedhis eyes to meet.
"Listen," said Westerham, quietly, "for a hundred thousand pounds Iexpect you to place yourself at my disposal. For a hundred thousandpounds I expect not only your services, but the services of all thosewhom you employ. And the greatest of these services will be silence.
"I am going back to England as Sir Paul Westerham, Baronet, the richestman in the world. Thanks to the prying of the New York reporters I havehad to sail on this ship in my own name. I did not wish it, and I haveno intention of ever being discovered in London in the same characteras I left New York."
Westerham laughed a little to himself.
"No reporters at the dock-side for me," he said. "No triumphal entryinto London. No account of what I eat and do, and how many hours anight I sleep. I am going back to London to do precisely as I choose."
Melun was very quiet. He knew he had met a stronger spirit than hisown. For all the bleak chilliness of the eyes of the man who talked tohim, he knew that he had to deal with the fierceness of a wild animalwhich feels the cage opening before him, that Westerham was seeking toevade the bars of a social prison.
"In three days' time," Westerham went on, "we shall be in Liverpool.I shall leave the ship in such a dress that no man will recognise me.I shall go straight to London and put up at Walter's Hotel in theStrand. It is a little place, where not even journalists will look fora millionaire."
"You forget," said Melun, "that if you disappear in that manner therewill be an awful outcry over your disappearance."
"That matters nothing," said Westerham. "Disappear I shall, to pursuemy own ends as I choose to follow them. For once I am going to provethat money has the power to hide a man. Do you agree to my bargain?"
Melun nodded his head.
"I agree," he said, "because I must. The day after you land inLiverpool I will meet you at Walter's."
"You tell me," said Westerham, "that you agree. Yet I doubt yourword. There is something which I have not yet fathomed. You are stillthinking of Lady Kathleen?
"Lie to me if you dare!" he added with brutal emphasis.
"I am not such a fool as to lie to you," answered Captain Melun. "I amstill thinking of the Lady Kathleen."
"Then you make a vast mistake," said the baronet.
He rose and opened the door for Melun to pass out.