A Traitor's Wooing Part 3

NUGENT MOVES A p.a.w.n

Mr. Nugent did not seek further private speech with Leslie Chermside while he remained at the Manor House. He acted in every respect as though he accepted the young man's renunciation as final, and after a saunter through the exquisite gardens with his host, asked that his car might be brought round. Having only reached Ottermouth the previous evening, he explained there were many things that claimed his attention at home.

"All right, dear boy," said Montague Maynard in his loud jolly voice.

"Run out and see us whenever you can tear yourself away from golf and the delights of the Ottermouth Club. Old Sarah Dymmock hates you like the devil, but she don't bite so long as people don't want to hurt my little Violet, and she's a good sportswoman. And you're too good a sportsman yourself to mind an old woman's whims."

"I thoroughly understand Miss Dymmock, and I have the most profound regard for her," responded Nugent cordially. "There is never likely to be any serious matter at issue between us, but if there were I should be very sorry to have to cross swords with her."

Yet his thin lips curled in a dreamy smile as he was whirled away in the serviceable little Darracq which had been presented to him by a t.i.tled idiot in grat.i.tude for an introduction that had eventually ruined him.

"I hardly think that Miss Sarah Dymmock, useful as she has proved this morning, will loom on the horizon of present interests," he murmured softly to himself when he had directed his chauffeur to drive him home.

During the six minutes which it took to cover the distance from the Manor House into the town Nugent closed his eyes and leaned back, indifferent to the autumn glories of the fair Devon landscape. The fern-girt lanes, with occasional peeps of the blue sea and the red point at the mouth of the river, the golden harvest-fields, the lush orchards with their drooping loads of cider apples, the old cob-built farmsteads--all these flashed past him unheeded as he sat with folded arms wrapped in deepest reverie.

But when the car took the steep dip at the eastern end of the parade, and the road, first on one side only and then on both, became flanked with houses, he braced himself for social amenities. People were about in plenty, mostly known to him, and many of them eager for recognition by the cool-looking gentleman in the car who had the reputation of being a personage in London society. Nearly all the ladies of Ottermouth, at any rate, were proud of their Travers Nugent, and rejoiced greatly that for a month or two in the year he deigned to sojourn in their midst. And the dowdier the ladies and the less he had to do with them the prouder were they.

But the dowdy ladies at Ottermouth were an insignificant minority.

Certainly not to be cla.s.sed in that category was the winsome maiden, dressed in immaculate white flannel and carrying a tennis racquet, to whom Nugent raised his soft grey hat as the car struck into the main street. A vision of dainty, if very youthful, loveliness, Enid Mallory was smart from the crown of her well-poised little head to the soles of her natty shoes. She returned Nugent's bow with a trace of brusqueness, and immediately turned and made a grimace at the clean-shaven young fellow who was with her. Nugent, though not intending to do so, saw the grimace out of the tail of his eye, and frowned slightly when the car had pa.s.sed.

"Old Mallory's daughter," he murmured. "She has done her hair up and lengthened her dress since last year, and she appears to have been infected with the paternal antipathy. I must not forget that Mr. Vincent Mallory, formerly of the Foreign Office, is a resident in this Arcadian spot. He might, under certain circ.u.mstances, become a factor to be reckoned with."

Aloud he said to his chauffeur, who had come down with the car some days in advance: "Dixon, do you know who that young gentleman was who was walking with Miss Mallory?"

"It's Mr. Beauchamp, sir," was the reply. "Son of Mrs. Beauchamp, who lives in Lorne Villas. He's a lieutenant in the Navy, I've heard, commanding a torpedo-boat at Plymouth. He is at home on leave just at present, sir."

"Thank you, Dixon; you are always a mine of information," Nugent said with the suave urbanity he always used towards inferiors.

But under his breath he added, "A curious combination, and one that may be worth watching."

The house in which Mr. Travers Nugent enjoyed his summer leisure lay on the hill beyond the western limits of the town. Though he spoke of it as a cottage, it was really a luxurious bachelor abode, standing in a secluded garden and removed from the main road to Exmouth by a serpentine drive, not, of course, to be compared with the n.o.ble avenue at the Manor House, but long enough to separate the owner of The Hut from the madding crowd by quite a respectable distance.

Descending at his front door, Mr. Nugent pa.s.sed through a porch smothered in purple clematis into a small, square hall, deliciously cool and shaded. Here he was met by a quiet-looking man of middle age, with a face like a sphinx, and wearing a black cutaway coat. Nugent was not one to make his confidential servant the receptacle of more secrets than he could help, but he knew that if he chose to do so this personification of reticence and discretion would never betray them.

"Well, Sinnett?" he said. They neither of them wasted words at any time in their communications.

"I heard the car, sir," was the reply. "I know you like to be prepared for visitors. Mr. Levison is waiting to see you in the smoke-room."

"Good! I will see him directly," said Nugent, glancing at the closed door of the room indicated. Then, dropping his voice, he added, "Come out into the porch a moment."

The effect of this manoeuvre was to place them beyond all chance of being overheard from the smoking-room, though the conversation was nevertheless continued with all precaution.

"I want you to go into Exmouth at once," said Nugent. "Dixon will take you in the car. At the quay you will find one of those French luggers which come over laden with onions to be peddled about the country by the crew. Inquire for a man named Pierre Legros, and tell him that I will buy as many strings of onions as he can carry if he will bring them over during the evening."

"Very good, sir," replied the manservant, who had absorbed the lucid but inexplicable instructions without the quiver of an eyelash. "Does Legros know you, sir?"

"He has never heard of me, nor I of him till this morning. I imagine, though, that the prospect of a good sale will bring him here. If, however, he demurs at all you might say that I have news to his advantage in connection with the Manor House. You understand, of course, Sinnett, that I am not really in need of onions?"

"You want the man, sir?"

"I must have the man."

With which the master of The Hut turned away in the certainty that he would get what he wanted, and, recrossing the hall, entered his cosy-smoking-room.

"Ah, Levison! Sorry to have kept you waiting," was his urbanely offhand greeting to the little Jew who rose obsequiously from a big easy-chair.

"I have been lunching at the Manor House, and as I met Mr. Chermside there I am able to forestall your report. He tells me that he intends to kick over the traces."

"Prethithely what he told me, Mr. Nugent, sir," replied the Hebrew. "And I reckon he means it. Though I'm only in the p.a.w.nbroking line, and an a.s.sistant at that, I flatter mythelf I played the blooming financier up to the nines, but he was as stubborn as Balaam's talking moke. He ain't given me his final answer, yet, though. I'm to meet him to-morrow night for that."

"So he said, and you must keep the appointment and do your level best to make him change his mind," Nugent went on. "You are a clever little chap, and I shouldn't be surprised if you succeeded. Mr. Leslie Chermside is suffering from a qualm of conscience which may be only transitory if you paint the alternative in sufficiently lurid colours."

"S'elp me, sir, but you can rely on me to rub it in thick."

"I am sure of that, though, by the way, I heard to-day that you have not been without your relaxations here while acting as my spy-gla.s.s,"

rejoined Nugent with an amused laugh. "How about the pretty lady's-maid at the Manor House, eh?"

Mr. Levison gazed at the speaker in blind consternation, but, finding nothing but playful tolerance in his employer's manner, he admitted the soft impeachment--boastfully, as is the way of such vulgar lady-killers.

"You're a fair caution, sir," he sn.i.g.g.e.red. "It licks me how you got hold of that; but there! you get hold of most things. The time was 'anging a bit 'eavy, you see, sir, and she's a dressy little bit of French goods. No 'arm done, I spothe, as it didn't interfere with business?"

"No harm whatever, Levison," said Nugent kindly. "I only mentioned it to show you what a paternal interest I take in your doings. Those who serve me well have no cause to be dissatisfied with the rewards they earn, and you will be no exception to the rule. Only don't relax your efforts with Chermside. Keep the appointment with him to-morrow night, and turn the screw till he squirms. Maybe he'll see reason yet."

And having fortified his visitor with whisky and a good cigar, Mr.

Nugent put a graceful finish to his hospitality by conducting him to a side gate that led from the garden on to the moor.

"You came in this way?" he said carelessly as he opened the gate. "That is right. I want you to be particular about that whenever you have occasion to see me. It might complicate matters if your connection with me got to be talked of in this gossipy place."

"Dull little 'ole, I call it," commented Mr. Levison as he prepared to cross the purple heather. "Couldn't have stuck it for a week, I don't think, if it hadn't have been for Louise Aubin. A gent must amuse himself, and one misses the music-'alls. Well, so long, sir; I'll let Chermside 'ave it 'ot to-morrow night."

Nugent watched the mean-looking figure go stumbling along the moorland track on a detour towards the town, and then, the acid smile on his lips in curious contrast with the thoughtful frown on his brows, he turned back into the house. He was the most abstemious of men, but on reaching his den he poured out a fairly strong brandy and soda and drank it at a draught.

"It's a big stake for reclaiming the rebel," he muttered. "But I think it will work out right if Sinnett's mission pans out properly."

But presently, when the laconic manservant returned with his report that Pierre Legros would deliver several strings of onions during the evening, there was nothing in the manner of the master to denote whether he was satisfied or not.

"Thank you, Sinnett. Take care that he does not go away without my seeing him," was all that Mr. Travers Nugent vouchsafed in reply.

CHAPTER V

UNDER THE SEARCHLIGHT

"So that is Nugent, the London chap who lives at The Hut?" said Lieutenant Beauchamp, when the car had flashed past. "Why do you accentuate the information by making such disgustingly ugly faces, p.u.s.s.y?"

Miss Enid Mallory tossed her dainty head in mock indignation. "You are perfectly horrid, Mr. Beauchamp," she snapped at him. "As if I could make an ugly face if I tried ever so. And I won't have you calling me p.u.s.s.y--now that I'm grown up."