"Come back, Mr. Trent," he called out. "I have decided. I accept. I join with you."
Trent slowly returned. His manner showed no exultation.
"You have the money here?" he asked.
Da Souza laid down a heap of notes and gold upon the table. Trent counted them carefully and thrust them into his pocket. Then he took up a pen and wrote his name at the foot of the a.s.signment which the Jew had prepared.
"Have a drink?" he asked.
Da Souza shook his head.
"The less we drink in this country," he said, "the better. I guess out here, spirits come next to poison. I"ll smoke with you, if you have a cigar handy."
Trent drew a handful of cigars from his pocket. "They"re beastly," he said, "but it"s a beastly country. I"ll be glad to turn my back on it."
"There is a good deal," Da Souza said, "which we must now talk about."
"To-morrow," Trent said curtly. "No more now! I haven"t got over my miserable journey yet. I"m going to try and get some sleep."
He swung out into the heavy darkness. The air was thick with unwholesome odours rising from the lake-like swamp beyond the drooping circle of trees. He walked a little way towards the sea, and sat down upon a log.
A faint land-breeze was blowing, a melancholy soughing came from the edge of the forest only a few hundred yards back, sullen, black, impenetrable. He turned his face inland unwillingly, with a superst.i.tious little thrill of fear. Was it a coyote calling, or had he indeed heard the moan of a dying man, somewhere back amongst that dark, gloomy jungle? He scoffed at himself! Was he becoming as a girl, weak and timid? Yet a moment later he closed his eyes, and pressed his hands tightly over his hot eyeb.a.l.l.s. He was a man of little imaginative force, yet the white face of a dying man seemed suddenly to have floated up out of the darkness, to have come to him like a will-o"-the-wisp from the swamp, and the hollow, lifeless eyes seemed ever to be seeking his, mournful and eloquent with dull reproach. Trent rose to his feet with an oath and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He was trembling, and he cursed himself heartily.
"Another fool"s hour like this," he muttered, "and the fever will have me. Come out of the shadows, you white-faced, skulking reptile, you--bah! what a blithering fool I am! There is no one there! How could there be any one?"
He listened intently. From afar off came the faint moaning of the wind in the forest and the night sounds of restless animals. Nearer there was no one--nothing stirred. He laughed out loud and moved away to spend his last night in his little wooden home. On the threshold he paused, and faced once more that black, mysterious line of forest.
"Well, I"ve done with you now," he cried, a note of coa.r.s.e exultation in his tone. "I"ve gambled for my life and I"ve won. To-morrow I"ll begin to spend the stakes."
CHAPTER VII
In a handsomely appointed room of one of the largest hotels in London a man was sitting at the head of a table strewn with blotting-paper and writing materials of every description. Half a dozen chairs had been carelessly pushed back, there were empty champagne bottles upon the sideboard, the air was faintly odorous of tobacco smoke--blue wreaths were still curling upwards towards the frescoed ceiling. Yet the gathering had not been altogether a festive one. There were sheets of paper still lying about covered with figures, a bra.s.s-bound ledger lay open at the further end of the table, In the background a young man, slim, pale, ill-dressed in sober black, was filling a large tin box with doc.u.ments and letters.
It had been a meeting of giants. Men whose names were great in the world of finance had occupied those elaborately decorated leather chairs.
There had been cynicism, criticism, and finally enthusiasm. For the man who remained it had been a triumph. He had appeared to do but little in the way of persuasion. His manners had been brusque, and his words had been few. Yet he remained the master of the situation. He had gained a victory not only financial but moral, over men whose experience and knowledge were far greater than his. He was no City magnate, nor had he ever received any training in those arts and practices which go to the making of one. For his earlier life had been spent in a wilder country where the gambling was for life and not merely for gold. It was Scarlett Trent who sat there in thoughtful and absorbed silence. He was leaning a little back in a comfortably upholstered chair, with his eyes fixed on a certain empty spot upon the table. The few inches of polished mahogany seemed to him--empty of all significance in themselves--to be reflecting in some mysterious manner certain scenes in his life which were now very rarely brought back to him. The event of to-day he knew to be the culmination of a success as rapid as it had been surprising. He was a millionaire. This deal to-day, in which he had held his own against the shrewdest and most astute men of the great city, had more than doubled his already large fortune. A few years ago he had landed in England friendless and unknown, to-day he had stepped out from even amongst the chosen few and had planted his feet in the higher lands whither the faces of all men are turned. With a grim smile upon his lips, he recalled one by one the various enterprises into which he had entered, the courage with which he had forced them through, the solid strength with which he had thrust weaker men to the wall and had risen a little higher towards his goal upon the wreck of their fortunes. Where other men had failed he had succeeded. To-day the triumph was his alone. He was a millionaire--one of the princes of the world!
The young man, who had filled his box and also a black bag, was ready to go. He ventured most respectfully to break in upon the reflections of his employer.
"Is there anything more for me to do, sir?"
Trent woke from his day-dream into the present. He looked around the room and saw that no papers had been omitted. Then he glanced keenly into his clerk"s face.
"Nothing more," he said. "You can go."
It was significant of the man that, notwithstanding his hour of triumph, he did not depart in the slightest degree from the cold gruffness of his tone. The little speech which his clerk had prepared seemed to stick in his throat.
"I trust, sir, that you will forgive--that you will pardon the liberty, if I presume to congratulate you upon such a magnificent stroke of business!"
Scarlett Trent faced him coldly. "What do you know about it?" he asked.
"What concern is it of yours, young man, eh?"
The clerk sighed, and became a little confused. He had indulged in some wistful hopes that for once his master might have relaxed, that an opportune word of congratulation might awaken some spark of generosity in the man who had just added a fortune to his great store. He had a girl-wife from whose cheeks the roses were slowly fading, and very soon would come a time when a bank-note, even the smallest, would be a priceless gift. It was for her sake he had spoken. He saw now that he had made a mistake.
"I am very sorry, sir," he said humbly. "Of course I know that these men have paid an immense sum for their shares in the Bekwando Syndicate. At the same time it is not my business, and I am sorry that I spoke."
"It is not your business at any time to remember what I receive for properties," Scarlett Trent said roughly. "Haven"t I told you that before? What did I say when you came to me? You were to hear nothing and see nothing outside your duties! Speak up, man! Don"t stand there like a jay!"
The clerk was pale, and there was an odd sensation in his throat. But he thought of his girl-wife and he pulled himself together.
"You are quite right, sir," he said. "To any one else I should never have mentioned it. But we were alone, and I thought that the circ.u.mstances might make it excusable."
His employer grunted in an ominous manner.
"When I say forget, I mean forget," he declared. "I don"t want to be reminded by you of my own business. D"ye think I don"t know it?"
"I am very sure that you do, sir," the clerk answered humbly. "I quite see that my allusion was an error."
Scarlett Trent had turned round in his chair, and was eying the pale, nervous figure with a certain hard disapproval.
"That"s a beastly coat you"ve got on, d.i.c.kenson," he said. "Why don"t you get a new one?"
"I am standing in a strong light, sir," the young man answered, with a new fear at his heart. "It wants brushing, too. I will endeavour to get a new one--very shortly."
His employer grunted again.
"What"s your salary?" he asked.
"Two pounds fifteen shillings a week, sir."
"And you mean to say that you can"t dress respectably on that? What do you do with your money, eh? How do you spend it? Drink and music-halls, I suppose!"
The young man was able at last to find some spark of dignity. A pink spot burned upon his cheeks.
"I do not attend music-halls, sir, nor have I touched wine or spirits for years. I--I have a wife to keep, and perhaps--I am expecting--"
He stopped abruptly. How could he mention that other matter which, for all its anxieties, still possessed for him a sort of quickening joy in the face of that brutal stare. He did not conclude his sentence, the momentary light died out of his pale commonplace features. He hung his head and was silent.
"A wife," Scarlett Trent repeated with contempt, "and all the rest of it of course. Oh, what poor donkeys you young men are! Here are you, with your way to make in the world, with your foot scarcely upon the bottom rung of the ladder, grubbing along on a few bob a week, and you choose to go and chuck away every chance you ever might have for a moment"s folly. A poor, pretty face I suppose. A moonlight walk on a Bank Holiday, a little maudlin sentiment, and over you throw all your chances in life. No wonder the herd is so great, and the leaders so few," he added, with a sneer.
The young man raised his head. Once more the pink spot was burning. Yet how hard to be dignified with the man from whom comes one"s daily bread.
"You are mistaken, sir," he said. "I am quite happy and quite satisfied."
Scarlett Trent laughed scornfully.
"Then you don"t look it," he exclaimed.