The Pursuit Part 9

Miller shook his head.

"They have been strengthened since," he said diffidently. "But the weak spot in them is the child himself. He has never had, if you will pardon the remark, proper control. He is frankly disobedient of the precautions with which they surround him."

Landon grinned.

"There's my blood in him," he chuckled. "And, by G.o.d, I'm fond of the little toad, too. It's not only to spite her, Miller, or for the money that's in it. I never took the trouble to whop him; I believe he'd come to me of his own accord, if he had the chance."

"It's a large if," suggested Mr. Miller, politely.

Landon made no retort. His face had a.s.sumed a meditative mask; his lips were firmly pressed together; he had the effect of one who calculates pro against con.

"That's why I think it's time I took a hand," he said suddenly. "We'll knock off three of your six, Miller. I am prepared to be a host in myself."

For the moment the other said nothing. They had swung out of the Waterport Street and turned the sharp corner which brought them to the entrance of the hotel. He listened quietly as his companion demanded the number of the room engaged for him, received his letters, and entered the lift. He accompanied him silently. It was not till they were left alone that he pulled a pocket-book out, tranquilly turned the leaves, and consulted an entry.

"I note that I have had no remittance from you, Lord Landon," he announced, "since November."

"Six weeks ago," agreed Landon, languidly. "Six times twenty is a hundred and twenty. You reinforce my argument, my good Miller. A hundred and twenty pounds gone and you show me--nothing."

The other coughed a dry, perfunctory little cough.

"As far as I am concerned, the money is, as you say, gone," he allowed, "but you have just come by one hundred and sixty sovereigns owing to the complacence of these Southern gentlemen on board your boat. That puts us right and safeguards another fortnight."

Landon nodded and answered in a voice as dry as his own.

"That is a matter for discussion," he intimated. "I should like to hear these expenses justified to some appreciable extent. What was the chance which failed?"

"Though it failed," rejoined Miller, "it proved the advantage of constant vigilance. The child separated himself from his guardians in the very midst of the late afternoon traffic and got into the hands of one of our men. They reached the pier together; they were within an ace of success. Then Fate interfered--it must have been Fate," he interpolated with the ghost of a grin--"because her instrument was of your own house."

Landon came to a sudden halt in the opening of an envelope.

"What's that?" he cried quickly. "A relation of mine?"

"Captain John Aylmer, R.A., a.s.sistant Secretary to the new Military Works Commission," answered Miller, sedately.

Landon swore. Then suddenly he began to laugh.

"It's quaint," he conceded. "It's d.a.m.ned quaint, Miller. And he did--what?"

Miller shrugged his shoulders.

"Interested himself in the situation, caused a delay which was fatal, for the moment, to our success. He cross-questioned the child and our man had to save himself, alone."

Landon laughed again.

"And he knew, this cousin of mine? He knew whose child it was?"

"Not then, but now, I imagine. He has met him since, at the Tent Club.

He has also met your late father-in-law."

"What? The Kite--old Jacob--he's there?"

"Personally superintending a situation which gets daily more impenetrable, for us. Each fright we give them adds another palisade to the defence."

Landon took up the letters which he had laid down and went on opening and glancing through them. He pursed up his lips into an obstinately set expression; he a.s.sumed the air of a bargainer who has reached the limit of his purpose. For he fully understood the drift of Mr. Miller's remarks.

"We had better be plain with each other," he said at last. "My little expedition to the States has been a failure. As a matrimonial proposition I am, for the present, out of the running. They told me to come again in a year's time. t.i.tle-hunting American women have short memories, but some beastly reporter recognized me and ran two columns of reminiscences of the trial. That queered me, and after all the decree is not made absolute for another six months."

"Is this antic.i.p.atory of the announcement that those eight hundred dollars are the only support between you and bed-rock after all?"

"You jump at my meaning. I'm going to take over the duties of your six, or of some of them, at any rate."

The other's gray eyes reviewed his companion with a keenly calculating glance. There was no irritation in it, rather there was satisfaction.

Mr. Miller did not present the aspect of a man whose chances of receiving a debt of one hundred and twenty pounds had been made doubtful. He had more the look of a bull speculator watching a tape as the eighths and sixteenths are added every few minutes to the stock which he commands.

"You will fail," he said drily. "Without funds you must fail. One poor man, in spite of the story books, can do nothing against a hundred and wealth."

"Possibly," said Landon. "But one may be permitted to try."

"No," said the other, stolidly. "One may not be permitted, in Tangier."

Landon looked up and for a moment silence hung heavily between the two men. The one who stood was the picture of heavy, imperturbable resolution. Landon, sitting back in his chair, was animate with energy, with a sort of tenseness which was almost magnetic. It was as if a panther faced a rhinoceros.

Then Landon shrugged his shoulders.

"Am I being threatened, my dear Miller?" he asked quietly.

"You are being informed," said the other. "The Syndicate which I represent is willing to finance you, for an adequate return. Without that it proposes to make Tangier an impossible residence for you."

Landon stared his surprise and his obvious relief.

"They are going to speculate in me?" He pondered for a moment. "I don't promise, or I haven't promised, that I shall allow old Jacob to buy the child back, if we get him, at all."

Miller nodded weightily.

"That does not matter to us," he announced. "That is as you like."

Landon's eyes were still wide and debating.

"Then your return comes--where?" he asked.

"We are willing to wait for it," said the other. "The first service we require from you is that you will renew your acquaintance with your cousin, Captain Aylmer, and endeavor to remove the distaste which I regret to think he feels for your company."

Landon bent forward, leaned his elbows on the table and his chin on his closed fists. He stared at his companion with a concentrated, dispa.s.sionate examination which seemed to probe and fathom through the depths of the other's impenetrability.

Miller met the scrutiny with no other manifestation than an, if possible, increase of apathy.

Landon dropped his hands slowly upon the table and gave his head a tiny shake.