The Vultures Part 7

"One must do something. We were talking of such things last night, and Monsieur Deulin said that his ideal combination in a man was an infinite patience and a sudden premeditated recklessness."

"Now you have come down to a mere career again," said Cartoner.

"Not necessarily."

The prince came into the room again at this moment.

"What are you people discussing," he asked, "so gravely?"

He spoke in French, which was the language that was easiest to him, for he had been young when it was the fas.h.i.+on in Poland to be French.

"I do not quite know," answered Cartoner, slowly. "The princess was giving me her views."

"I know," retorted the old man, with his rather hollow laugh. "They are long views, those views of hers."

Cartoner was still standing near the window. He turned absently and looked out, down into the busy street. There he saw something which caused him intense surprise, though he did not show it; for, like any man of strong purpose, his face had but one expression, and that of thoughtful attention. He saw Captain Cable, of the _Minnie_, crossing the street, having just quitted the hotel. This was the business acquaintance of Prince Bukaty's, who had come to speak of jettison.

Cartoner knew Captain Cable well, and his specialty in maritime skill.

He had seen war waged before now with material which had pa.s.sed in and out of the _Minnie's_ hatches.

The prince did not refer again to the affairs that had called him away.

The talk naturally turned to the house where they had first met, and Wanda mentioned that her father and she were going to the reception given by the Orlays that evening.

"You're going, of course?" said the prince.

"Yes, I am going."

"You go to many such entertainments?"

"No, I go to very few," replied Cartoner, looking at Wanda in his speculative way.

Then he suddenly rose and took his leave, with a characteristic omission of the usual "Well, I must be off," or any such catch-word. He certainly left a great deal unsaid which this babbling world expects.

He walked along the crowded streets, absorbed in his own thoughts, for some distance. Then he suddenly emerged from that quiet shelter, and accepted the urgent invitation of a hansom-cab driver to get into his vehicle.

"Westminster Bridge," he said.

He quitted the cab at the corner of the bridge, and walked quickly down to the steamboat-landing.

"Where do you want to go to?" inquired the gruff, seafaring ticket-clerk.

"As far as I can," was the reply.

A steamer came almost at once, and Cartoner selected a quiet seat over the rudder. He must have known that the _Minnie_ was so constructed that she could pa.s.s under the bridges, for he began to look for her at once.

It was six o'clock, and a spring tide was running out. All the pa.s.senger traffic was turned to the westward, and a friendly deck-hand, having leisure, came and gave Cartoner his views upon cricket, in which, as was natural in one whose life was pa.s.sed on running water, his whole heart seemed to be absorbed. Cartoner was friendly, but did not take advantage of this affability to make inquiries about the _Minnie_. He knew, perhaps, that there is no more suspicious man on earth than a river-side worker.

The steamer raced under the bridges, and at last shot out into the Pool, where a few belated barges were drifting down stream. A number of steamers lay at anchor, some working cargo, others idle. The majority were foreigners, odd-shaped vessels, with funnels like a steam thres.h.i.+ng-machine, and gayly painted deck-houses.

In one quiet corner, behind a laid-up excursion-boat and a file of North Sea fish-carriers, lay the _Minnie_, painted black, with nothing brighter than a deep brown on her deck-house, her boats painted a shabby green. She might have been an overgrown tug or a superannuated fish-carrier.

Cartoner landed at the Cherry Orchard Pier, and soon found a boatman to take him to the _Minnie_.

"Just took the skipper on board a few minutes ago, sir," he said. "He must have come down by the boat before yours."

A few minutes later Cartoner stood on the deck of the _Minnie_, and banged with his fist on the cover of the cabin gangway, which was tantamount to ringing at Captain Cable's front door.

The sailor's grim face appeared a moment later, emerging like the face of a hermit-crab from its sh.e.l.l. The frown slowly faded, and the deep, unwashed wrinkles took a kindlier curve.

"It's you, Mr. Cartoner," he said. "Glad to see you."

"I was pa.s.sing in a steamer," answered Cartoner, quietly, "and recognized the _Minnie_."

"I take it friendly of you, Mr. Cartoner, remembering the rum time you and me had together. Come below. I've got a drop of wine somewhere stowed away in a locker."

VI

THE VULTURES

"I suppose," Miss Mangles was saying--"I suppose, Joseph, that Lady Orlay has been interested in the work without our knowing it?"

"It is possible, Jooly--it is possible," replied Mr. Joseph P. Mangles, looking with a small, bright, speculative eye out of the window of his private sitting-room in a hotel in Northumberland Avenue.

Miss Mangles was standing behind him, and held in her hand an invitation-card notifying that Lady Orlay would be at home that same evening from nine o'clock till midnight.

"This invitation," said the recipient, "accompanied as it is by a friendly note explaining that the shortness of the invitation lies in the fact that we only arrived the day before yesterday, seems to point to it, Joseph. It seems to indicate that England is prepared to give me a welcome."

"On the face of it, Jooly, it would seem--just that."

Mr. Mangles continued to gaze with a speculative eye into Northumberland Avenue. If, as Cartoner had suggested, the profession of which Mr.

Joseph P. Mangles was a tardy ornament, needed above all things a capacity for leaving things unsaid, the American diplomatist was not ignorant in his art. For he did not inform his sister that the invitation to which she attached so flattering a national importance owed its origin to an accidental encounter between himself and Lord Orlay--a friend of his early senatorial days--in Pall Mall the day before.

Miss Mangles stood with the card in her hand and reflected. No woman and few men would need to be told, moreover, the subject of her thoughts.

Of what, indeed, does every woman think the moment she receives an invitation?

"Jooly," Mr. Mangles had been heard to say behind that lady's back--"Jooly is an impressive dresser when she tries."

But the truth is that Jooly did not always try. She had not tried this morning, but stood in the conventional hotel room dressed in a black cloth garment which had pleats down the front and back and a belt like a Norfolk jacket. Miss Mangles was large and square-shouldered. She was a rhomboid, in fact, and had that depressing square-and-flat waist which so often figures on the platform in a great cause. Her hair was black and s.h.i.+ny and straight; it was drawn back from her rounded temples by hydraulic pressure. Her mouth was large and rather loose; it had grown baggy by much speaking on public platforms--a fearsome thing in a woman.

Her face was large and round and white. Her eyes were dull. Long ago there must have been depressing moments in the life of Julia P.

Mangles--moments spent in front of her mirror. But, like the woman of spirit that she was, she had determined that, if she could not be beautiful, she could at all events be great.

One self-deception leads to another. Miss Mangles sat down and accepted Lady Orlay's invitation in the full and perfect conviction that she owed it to her greatness.

"Are they abstainers?" she asked, reflectively, going back in her mind over the causes she had championed.

"Nay," replied Joseph, winking gravely at a policeman in Northumberland Avenue.