An Amiable Charlatan Part 16

"Theirs was only a flying visit," I explained. "I was lucky to get hold of them for my dinner."

"I'm hanged if I understand this!" Reggie remarked, looking at me suspiciously. "Why, I spent the best part of three weeks with them in that G.o.dforsaken hole out West, and they were as keen as mustard on my taking them round London. How long have they been here?"

"Not long," I answered. "Sure you won't have some coffee?"

Reggie ignored the invitation.

"They've got my address and there are the directories," he continued. "The funny part of it is, too, that I heard from Mrs. Bundercombe a week or so ago, and she never said a word about any of them coming over."

"They seem to have made their minds up all of a sudden," I explained.

"They spoke of it as quite a flying trip."

Reggie coughed and stared for a moment at the end of his boot.

"Can't understand it at all!" he repeated. "Devilish queer thing, anyway!

I say, Paul, you're sure it's all right, I suppose?"

"All right? What do you mean?"

"Between you and me," he went on--"don't give it away outside this room, you know--but there have been rumors going about concerning an American and his pretty daughter over here--regular wrong 'uns! They've been up to all sorts of tricks and only kept out of prison by a fluke."

"You're not a.s.sociating these people, whoever they may be, with Mr. and Miss Bundercombe?" I asked sternly.

Reggie gazed once more at the point of his boot.

"The thing is," he remarked, "are your friends Mr. and Miss Bundercombe at all?"

"Don't talk rot!"

"It may be rot," Reggie admitted slowly, "or it may not. By the by, where did you meet them?"

"If you don't mind," I answered, "we won't discuss them any longer."

"At least," Reggie insisted, "will you tell me this: Where have they been staying in London? I shall go there and see whether they have left any address for letters to be forwarded."

"I shall tell you nothing," I decided. "As a matter of fact I am finding you rather a nuisance."

Reggie picked up his hat.

"There is something more in this," he said didactically, "than meets the eye!"

"Machiavellian!" I scoffed. "Be off, Reggie!"

I had tea with Eve that afternoon and broached the subject of Reggie's visit as delicately as I could.

"You remember Lord Reggie Sidley?" I asked.

"Lord Reggie what!" Eve exclaimed.

"Sidley," I repeated firmly. "He spent three weeks with you out at your home in Okata. His threatened arrival last night was the cause of your father's precipitate retreat, and yours."

"Oh, that young man!" Eve remarked airily. "Well, what about him?"

"He has been round to see me this morning," I told her--"wanted your address."

She sighed.

"London will be getting too hot for us soon!" she murmured. "Am I engaged to him or anything?"

"Eve," I said, "when are you going to let me announce our engagement?"

"Our what?" she demanded.

"Engagement," I repeated. "I have proposed to you two or three times. I will do it again if you like."

"Pray don't!" she begged. "You are not going to tell me, are you," she added, looking at me with wide-open eyes, "that I have accepted you?"

"You haven't refused me," I pointed out.

"If I haven't," she a.s.sured me, "it has been simply to save your feelings."

I gulped down a little rising storm of indignation.

"You must marry sometime. Eve," I said. "There isn't any one in America, is there?"

"There are a great many," she a.s.sured me. "It was to get away from them, as much as anything, that I came over with father on this business trip."

"Business trip!" I groaned.

"Oh! I dare say it all seems very disgraceful to any one like you--you who were born with plenty of money and have never been obliged to earn any, and have mixed with respectable people all your life!" she exclaimed. "All the same, let me tell you there are plenty of charming and delightful people going about the world earning their living by their wits--simply because they are forced to. There is more than one code of morals, you know."

I flatter myself that at this point I was tactful.

"My dear Eve," I reminded her, "you forget that I have joined the gang--I mean," I corrected myself hastily, "that I have offered to a.s.sociate myself with you and your father in any of your enterprises. I am perfectly willing to give up anything in life you may consider too respectable. At the same time I must say there are limits so far as you are concerned."

She pouted a little.

"I hate being out of things," she said.

"No need for you to be, altogether!" I continued.

"Now if I could inst.i.tute a real big affair in the shape of a bucketshop swindle, in which your father and I could play the princ.i.p.al parts and you become merely a subordinate, such as a typist or something--what about that, eh?"

"It doesn't sound very amusing for me," she objected. "How much should we make?"

"Thousands," I a.s.sured her, "if it were properly engineered."

"I think," she said reflectively, "that father would be very glad of a few thousands just now. He says the market over here, for such little trifles as we have come across, is very restricted."