"My name"s Tembarom. T. Tembarom." And he grinned his splendid grin from sheer sense of relief. "I"m a New Yorker--Brooklyn. I was just forked in here anyhow. Don"t you waste time thinking over me. You sit down here and do your durndest with Miles Hugo."
CHAPTER x.x.xIII
Tembarom did not look as though he had slept particularly well, Miss Alicia thought, when they met the next morning; but when she asked him whether he had been disappointed in his last night"s experiment, he answered that he had not. The experiment had come out all right, but Strangeways had been a good deal worked up, and had not been able to sleep until daylight. Sir Ormsby Galloway was to arrive in the afternoon, and he"d probably give him some- thing quieting. Had the coming downstairs seemed to help him to recall anything? Miss Alicia naturally inquired. Tembarom thought it had. He drove to Stone Hover and spent the morning with the duke; he even lunched with him. He returned in time to receive Sir Ormsby Galloway, however, and until that great personage left, they were together in Mr. Strangeways"
rooms.
"I guess I shall get him up to London to the place where Sir Ormsby wants him," he said rather nervously, after dinner. "I"m not going to miss any chances. If he"ll go, I can get him away quietly some time when I can fix it so there"s no one about to worry him."
She felt that he had no inclination to go much into detail. He had never had the habit of entering into the details connected with his strange charge. She believed it was because he felt the subject too abnormal not to seem a little awesome to her sympathetic timidity. She did not ask questions because she was afraid she could not ask them intelligently. In fact, the knowledge that this unknown man was living through his struggle with his lost past in the remote rooms of the west wing, almost as though he were a secret prisoner, did seem a little awesome when one awoke in the middle of the dark night and thought of it.
During the pa.s.sage of the next few weeks, Tembarom went up to London several times. Once he seemed called there suddenly, as it was only during dinner that he told her he was going to take a late train, and should leave the house after she had gone to bed. She felt as though something important must have happened, and hoped it was nothing disturbing.
When he had said that Captain Palliser would return to visit them, her private impression, despite his laugh, had been that it must surely be some time before this would occur. But a little more than three weeks later he appeared, preceded only half an hour by a telegram asking whether he might not spend a night with them on his way farther north.
He could not at all understand why the telegram, which he said he had sent the day before, had been delayed.
A certain fatigued haggardness in his countenance caused Miss Alicia to ask whether he had been ill, and he admitted that he had at least not been well, as a result of long and too hurried journeys, and the strenuousness of extended and profoundly serious interviews with his capitalist and magnates.
"No man can engineer gigantic schemes to success without feeling the reaction when his load drops from his shoulders," he remarked.
"You"ve carried it quite through?" inquired Tembarom.
"We have set on foot one of the largest, most substantially capitalized companies in the European business world," Palliser replied, with the composure which is almost indifference.
"Good!" said Tembarom cheerfully.
He watched his guest a good deal during the day. He was a bad color for a man who had just steered clear of all shoals and reached the highest point of success. He had a haggard eye as well as a haggard face. It was a terrified eye when its desperate determination to hide its terrors dropped from it for an instant, as a veil might drop. A certain restlessness was manifest in him, and he talked more than usual. He was going to make a visit in Northumberland to an elderly lady of great possessions. It was to be vaguely gathered that she was somewhat interested in the great company--the Cedric. She was a remarkable old person who found a certain agreeable excitement in dabbling in stocks. She was rich enough to be in a position to regard it as a sort of game, and he had been able on several occasions to afford her entertainment. He would remain a few days, and spend his time chiefly in telling her the details of the great scheme and the manner in which they were to be developed.
"If she can play with things that way, she"ll be sure to want stock in it," Tembarom remarked.
"If she does, she must make up her mind quickly," Palliser smiled, "or she will not be able to get it. It is not easy to lay one"s hands on even now."
Tembarom thought of certain speculators of entirely insignificant standing of whom he had chanced to see and hear anecdotes in New York.
Most of them were youths of obscure origin who sold newspapers or blacked boots, or "swapped" articles the value of which lay in the desire they could excite in other persons to possess them. A popular method known as "bluff" was their most trusted weapon, and even at twelve and fifteen years of age Tembarom had always regarded it as singularly obvious. He always detested "bluff," whatsoever its disguise, and was rather mystified by its ingenious faith in itself.
"He"s got badly stung," was his internal comment as he sucked at his pipe and smiled urbanely at Palliser across the room as they sat together. "He"s come here with some sort of deal on that he knows he couldn"t work with any one but just such a fool as he thinks I am. I guess," he added in composed reflectiveness, "I don"t really know how big a fool I do look."
Whatsoever the deal was, he would be likely to let it be known in time.
"He"ll get it off his chest if he"s going away to-morrow," decided Tembarom. "If there"s anything he"s found out, he"ll use it. If it doesn"t pan out as he thinks it will he"ll just float away to his old lady."
He gave Palliser every chance, talking to him and encouraging him to talk, even asking him to let him look over the prospectus of the new company and explain details to him, as he was going to explain them to the old lady in Northumberland. He opened up avenues; but for a time Palliser made no attempt to stroll down them. His walk would be a stroll, Tembarom knew, being familiar with his methods. His aspect would be that of a man but little concerned. He would be capable of a slightly rude coldness if he felt that concern on his part was in any degree counted as a factor. Tembarom was aware, among other things, that innocent persons would feel that it was inc.u.mbent upon them to be very careful in their treatment of him. He seemed to be thinking things over before he decided upon the psychological moment at which he would begin, if he began. When a man had a good deal to lose or to win, Tembarom realized that he would be likely to hold back until he felt something like solid ground under him.
After Miss Alicia had left them for the night, perhaps he felt, as a result of thinking the matter over, that he had reached a foothold of a firmness at least somewhat to be depended upon.
"What a change you have made in that poor woman"s life!" he said, walking to the side-table and helping himself to a brandy and soda.
"What a change!"
"It struck me that a change was needed just about the time I dropped in," answered his host.
"All the same," suggested Palliser, tolerantly, "you were immensely generous. She wasn"t ent.i.tled to expect it, you know."
"She didn"t expect anything, not a darned thing," said Tembarom. "That was what hit me."
Palliser smiled a cold, amiable smile. His slim, neatly fitted person looked a little shrunken and less straight than was its habit, and its slackness suggested itself as being part of the harry and fatigue which made his face and eyes haggard under his pale, smooth hair.
"Do you purpose to provide for the future of all your indigent relatives even to the third and fourth generation, my dear chap?" he inquired.
"I won"t refuse till I"m asked, anyhow," was the answer.
"Asked!" Palliser repeated. "I"m one of them, you know, and Lady Mallowe is another. There are lots of us, when we come out of our holes. If it"s only a matter of asking, we might all descend on you."
Tembarom, smiling, wondered whether they hadn"t descended already, and whether the descent had so far been all that they had antic.i.p.ated.
Palliser strolled down his opened avenue with an incidental air which was entirely creditable to his training of himself. T. Tembarom acknowledged that much.
"You are too generous," said Palliser. "You are the sort of fellow who will always need all he has, and more. The way you go among the villagers! You think you merely slouch about and keep it quiet, but you don"t. You"ve set an example no other landowner can expect to live up to, or intends to. It"s too lavish. It"s pernicious, dear chap. I have heard all about the cottage you are doing over for Pearson and his bride. You had better invest in the Cedric."
Tembarom wanted him to go on, if there was anything in it. He made his face look as he knew Palliser hoped it would look when the psychological moment came. Its expression was not a deterrent; in fact, it had a character not unlikely to lead an eager man, or one who was not as wholly experienced as he believed he was, to rush down a steep hill into the sea, after the manner of the swine in the parable.
Heaven knew Palliser did not mean to rush, and was not aware when the rush began; but he had reason to be so much more eager than he professed to be that momentarily he swerved, despite himself, and ceased to be casual.
"It is an enormous opportunity," he said--"timber lands in Mexico, you know. If you had spent your life in England, you would realize that timber has become a desperate necessity, and that the difficulties which exist in the way of supplying the demand are almost insuperable.
These forests are virtually boundless, and the company which controls them--"
"That"s a good spiel!" broke in Tembarom.
It sounded like the crudely artless interruption of a person whose perceptions left much to be desired. T. Tembarom knew what it sounded like. If Palliser lost his temper, he would get over the ground faster, and he wanted him to get over the ground.
"I"m afraid I don"t understand," he replied rather stiffly.
"There was a fellow I knew in New York who used to sell type-writers, and he had a thing to say he used to reel off when any one looked like a customer. He used to call it his "spiel.""
Palliser"s quick glance at him asked questions, and his stiffness did not relax itself.
"Is this New York chaff?" he inquired coldly.
"No," Tembarom said. "You"re not doing it for ten per. He was"
"No, not exactly," said Palliser. "Neither would you be doing it for ten per if you went into it." His voice changed. He became slightly haughty. "Perhaps it was a mistake on my part to think you might care to connect yourself with it. You have not, of course, been in the position to comprehend such matters."
"If I was what I look like, that"d stir me up and make me feel bad,"
thought T. Tembarom, with cheerful comprehension of this, at least.
"I"d have to rush in and try to prove to him that I was as accustomed to big business as he is, and that it didn"t rattle me. The way to do it that would come most natural would be to show I was ready to buy as big a block of stock as any other fellow."