CHAPTER IV--THE WOOING OF EVE
I spent a very restless and disturbed night. I rose at six o"clock the following morning, and at ten o"clock I rang up 3771A Gerrard. My inquiry was answered almost at once by Mr. Parker himself.
"Is that you, Walmsley?"
"It is," I replied. "I have been waiting to ring you up since daylight! I want you to understand--"
"You come right round here!" Mr. Parker interrupted soothingly. "No good getting fussy over the telephone!"
"Where to?" I asked. "You forget I don"t know your address. I should have been round hours ago if I had known where to find you."
"Bless my soul, no more you do! We are at Number 17, Banton Street--just off Oxford Street, you know."
"I am coming straightaway," I replied.
I was there within ten minutes. The place seemed to be a sort of private hotel, unostentatious and unprepossessing. A hall porter, whose uniform had seen better days and whose linen had seen cleaner ones, conducted me to the first floor. Mr. Parker himself met me on the landing.
"Come right in!" he invited. "I saw you drive up. Eve is in there."
He ushered me into a large sitting room of the type one would expect to find in such a place, but which, by dint of many cushions, flowers, and feminine knickknacks, had been made to look presentable. Eve was seated in an easy-chair by the fire. She turned round at my entrance and laughed.
"Where"s my necklace, please?" she demanded.
"The necklace," I replied, as severely as I could, "is by this time on its way to Lady Orstline--if it is not actually in her hands."
"You mean to say you have sent it back?" Mr. Parker exclaimed incredulously.
"Certainly!" I replied. "I posted it to her early this morning."
Mr. Parker"s expression was one of blank bewilderment.
"Say, do I understand you rightly?" he continued, coming up and laying his great hand upon my shoulder. "You mean to say that, after all we went through because of that miserable necklace, you"ve gone and chucked it? Do you know it was worth twenty-five thousand pounds?"
"I don"t care whether it was worth twenty-five thousand pounds or twenty- five thousand pennies!" retorted I. "It belonged to Lady Orstline--not to you or your daughter or to me. I know that you are a skillful conjurer and I won"t ask you how it found its way into my pocket. I am only glad I have had an opportunity of returning it to its owner."
Mr. Parker shook his head ponderously. He turned to Eve.
"This," he said solemnly, "is the young man who asked leave to join us!
What do you think of him, Eve?"
"Nothing at all!" she replied flippantly. "He is absolutely useless!"
"If you think," Mr. Parker went on, "we are in this business for our health, I want you to understand right here that you are mistaken. I never deceived you. I told you the first few seconds we met that I was an adventurer. I am. I brought off a coup last night with that necklace, and you"ve gone and queered it! It isn"t for myself I mind so much," he concluded, "but there"s the child there, I was going to have the pearls restrung and let her wear them a bit--until the time came for selling them."
"Look here!" I said. "Let us understand one another. It"s all very well to live by your wits; to make a little out of people not quite so smart as you are; to worry through life owing a little here and there, borrowing a bit where you can and taking good care to be on the right side when there"s a bargain going. That, I take it, is more or less what is meant by being an adventurer. But when it comes to downright thieving I protest!
The penalties are too severe. I beg you, Mr. Parker, to have nothing more to do with it!"
I went on, speaking as earnestly as I could and laying my hand upon his shoulder.
"I ask you now what I asked you yesterday: Give me your daughter! Or if I can"t win her all at once let me at any rate have the opportunity of meeting her and trying to persuade her to be my wife. I promise you you shan"t have to do any of these things for a living--either of you. Be sensible, Miss Parker--Eve!" I begged, turning to her; "and please be a little kind. I am in earnest about this. Come on my side and help me persuade your father. I am not wealthy, perhaps, as you people count money, but I am not a poor man. I"ll buy you some pearls."
Eve threw down the book she had been reading and leaned over the side of her chair, looking at me. She seemed no longer angry. There was, indeed, a touch of that softness in her face which I had noticed once before and which had encouraged me to hope. Her forehead was a little puckered, her dear eyes a little wistful. She looked at me very earnestly; but when I would have moved toward her she held out her hand to keep me back.
"You know," she said, "I think you are quite nice, Mr. Walmsley. I rather like this outspoken sort of love-making. It"s quite out of date, of course; but it reminds me of Mrs. Henry Wood and crinolines and woolwork, and all that sort of thing. Anyhow, I like it and--I rather like you, too.
But, you see, it"s how long?--a matter of thirty-six hours since I met you first! Now I couldn"t make up my mind to settle down for life with a man I"d only known thirty-six hours, even if he is rash enough to offer to pension my father and remove me from a life of crime."
"The circ.u.mstances," I persisted, "are exceptional. You may laugh at it as much as you like; but there are very excellent reasons why you should be taken away from this sort of life."
She shrugged her shoulders a little dubiously.
"There again!" she protested. "I am not so sure that I want to be taken away from it. I like adventures--I adore excitement; in fact I must have it."
"You shall," I promised. "I"ll take you to Paris and Monte Carlo. We"ll go up to Khartum and take a caravan beyond. You shall go big-game shooting with me in Africa. I"ll take you where very few women have been before.
I"ll take you where you can gamble with life and death instead of this sordid business of freedom or prison. We"ll start for Abyssinia in three weeks if you like. I"ll find you excitement--the right sort. I"ll take you into the big places, where one feels--and the empty places, where one suffers."
Her eyes flashed sympathetically for a moment.
"It sounds good," she admitted, "and yet--am I ungrateful, I wonder?-- there"s no excitement for me except where men and women are. I"m afraid I"m a daughter of Babylon."
"Doomed from her infancy to a life of crime, I fear," Mr. Parker declared, pinching a cigar he had just taken out of a box. "She loves the rapier play--the struggle with men and women. Takes risks every moment of the time and thrives on it. All the same, Mr. Walmsley, there"s something very attractive about the way you are talking. I am not going to let my little girl decide too hastily. Our sort of life"s all very well when we are number one and Mr. Cullen"s number two. We can"t have the luck all the time, though."
"I haven"t dared to mention it in plain words," I answered, "because the thought, the mere thought, of what might happen to Miss Eve is too horrible! But the risk is there all the time. One doesn"t deal in forged notes or steal pearl necklaces for nothing; and you"ve an enemy in Cullen if ever any one had. He means to get you both, and if you give him the least chance he"ll have no mercy."
I looked at them anxiously. The whole thing seemed to me so momentous.
Neither of them showed the slightest signs of fear or apprehension. Mr.
Parker, with his newly lit cigar in the corner of his mouth, was smiling a smile of pleasant contentment. Eve, leaning back in her chair, with her hands clasped round the back of her head, was gazing at me with a bewitching little smile on her lips.
"I am not a bit afraid of Mr. Cullen," she declared softly.
"Between you and me," her father remarked, knocking the ash from his cigar, "there"s only one darned thing in this world we are afraid of and that, thank the Lord, isn"t this side of the Atlantic!"
The smile faded from Eve"s lips. For a moment she closed her eyes--a shiver pa.s.sed through her frame.
"Don"t!" she begged weakly.
"I guess I"ll leave it at that," her father agreed. "Now this little proposition of yours, Mr. Walmsley, has just got to lie by for a little time--perhaps only for a very short time. It"s a kind of business for us to make up our minds to part with our liberty or any portion of it.
Meanwhile, if you"d like to take Eve for a motor ride round and meet me for luncheon, why, the car"s outside, and if Eve"s agreeable I can pa.s.s the time all right."
I looked at her eagerly. She rose at once to her feet.
"Why, it would be charming, if you have nothing to do, Mr. Walmsley," she a.s.sented. "I"ll put my hat on at once."
"I have nothing to do at any time now but to respect your wishes," I answered firmly, "and wait until you are sensible enough to say Yes to my little proposition."
She looked back at me from the door with a twinkle in her eyes.
"You know," she said, "before I came over I was told that Englishmen were rather slow. I shall begin to doubt it. You wouldn"t describe yourself exactly as shy, would you, Mr. Walmsley?"