Mrs. Graves at home?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any one with her?”
“Mr. Benton, sir. They’re upstairs in the library, sir.”
“Did Mr. Benton’s brokers call up from the city?”
“Yes sir.”
“Did they get him?”
“No, sir. He sent word from upstairs there was no hurry—he would call up the office later himself.”
“Put some Scotch and carbonic on the table, and let Mrs. Graves know I’m here.”
He went into the drawing-room. With a critical eye he regarded a tapestry panel over the door. Placing himself in a good position for light, he surveyed the paintings on the wall. Then he furrowed the rug with the point of his shoe, and watched the play of colour in the soft, deep pile.
He passed into the dining-room. The butler had put the Scotch and carbonic and a silver bowl with cracked ice on the table. But Graves first looked around here, as he had in the drawing-room. The panelling was English oak, intact from an Elizabethan mansion in one of the shires, with furniture and everything complete. The bowl and the rest of the silver on the serving table were of the same period. The room, like the one from which he had come, was in admirable taste.
He was very deliberate. Pouring out his Scotch, he added a squirt from the siphon, and listened to the tinkle of the ice as it floated against the sides of the thin glass, before he drank. Through the large, oblong window, with its heavy yet clear pane, he saw his garage and, in front of it, the handsome limousine, in which he had just driven up from the station. The lawn, with it’s flower-beds and trees, made a fine expanse, as it sloped down to the river, where his yacht lay at his private landing.
Pausing again at the drawing-room, for a final and apparently satisfied look at the apartment, he stepped into the hall and took the lift upstairs.
“How’s Archie Graves—‘the coming man of Wall Street’?” asked Benton, with the supercilious drawl that was one of the things Graves hated about him.
No two men could have offered a sharper contrast to each other than Graves and the man who was dawdling about his wife. Benton was spare, tall and rather languid-looking, an impression confirmed by his fair, longish hair, blue eyes, and weak mouth; whereas from every line of Graves’ strongly marked features, as well as from his vigorous frame, spoke the determination of the man who goes ahead and doesn’t bother about complications till he’s gotten what he wants.
“Well?” he asked in a comprehensive way that included them both, yet ignored Benton’s effort.
“We’ve been up the river in the yacht,” said his wife. “After luncheon on the island we shot at a target. I hit it twice!”
“I thought you hated shooting. You always said you were afraid of the noise.”
“Arthur—Mr. Benton, I mean—has a pistol with a silencer attachment. It’s fine! You’d never know there was shooting going on. It isn’t any louder than the snap of a whip.”
“Yes,” said Graves with a dry laugh, “that’s it—the snap of a whip! You can blow out your own brains, or some one else’s, without being heard.”
Benton looked up.
“I’ve never known you to talk like that, Graves.”
“Oh. I’ve had a strenuous day. By the way, haven’t you had any word from your brokers?”
“I’d forgotten all about it,” drawled Benton. “Chalmers called up. I was reading poetry to Mrs. Graves. Meant to get Chalmers on the ’phone when I’d finished. It went clean out of my mind.”
“Better get him right away. There’s been something like a panic in the street—a break in a whole lot of stocks.”
Benton rose rather reluctantly.
“I had the usual margin with Chalmers. What’s the use of a broker if he can’t look after your business without bothering you?”
He said this petulantly, as he left the room.
“I hope nothing has happened to his ‘Silencer’ stock,” said the woman. “He’s awfully proud of his invention. Says England wants it for the army. He’s going to give you a look-in on it.”
“His invention?” Graves said this with a sneer. “He must have gotten that out of the poetry-book he’s been reading to you. His father bought the ‘Silencer’ patent from the inventor and organised the company.”
“Well, you know I don’t understand anything about business,” she said in rather a bored tone.
“Perhaps you can understand, when I tell you that I’ve come home worth half again as many millions as I was when I said good-bye to you this morning.”
There was nothing bored about her expression now. She was thinking of how much more money he would give her to spend on herself, and that made her look softer and prettier than ever. She smiled as she looked up at him.
“I thought that would fetch you,” he said.
“You’re a wonder, Archie. How did you do it?”
“Broke the market on ‘Silencer.’ Watched it tumble till it dropped far enough to suit me. Then grabbed up the whole lot—mine and his. While he was reading poetry to you I was wiping up the street with him. Couldn’t go to the phone, eh? He’s there now all right, hearing that he hasn’t a dollar to his name, and to whom he’s indebted for his haircut.”
She didn’t seem to grasp the full meaning of what he said. She was still smiling up at him, and looking her prettiest, when, from the hall below, there came a sound that resembled nothing so much as the snap of a whip.
The smile vanished. Her expression was that of a person who does not yet grasp the full significance of a sudden thing that has happened. She started to rise. Her husband closed the door and turned toward her.
“You can’t go downstairs,” he said, “In a few moments the hall will be full of servants. A scene before them would be fatal.”
In a dull, hopless way she pulled at a tassel that hung from an arm of the chair.
“The butler,” he continued, “being English, and the best-trained specimen of his kind that has come under my observation, will be here shortly to tell me, quietly, what has happened. I’ll step out into the hall, so that you won’t have to hear any disagreeable details, if there are any.”
When he came back, she was crying softly. He pretended not to notice it.
“Before I left town this afternoon the Duveens called up. Isuppose they’d already heard of the killing I’d made on the street. (Wonderful how they keep track of things, isn’t it?) Anyhow, they wanted to tell me that the war has thrown the Thorpe Manor tapestries on the market, and there is a Reynolds they want me to see. The tapestries will go perfectly with everything in the drawing-room and we really need an English old master over the dining-room mantel. Some day next week we’ll go in to see the picture and talk over the tapestries. After that, you might as well get your clothes for the summer—carte blanche—anything and everything you want.”
The little hand, so delicate, so slender, that he held in his, while with his other he stroked her hair, still trembled. Every now and then her tears came in a flood, but he could feel that she was gradually quieting down.
“Couldn’t I—get the—clothes—sooner?”
She still spoke between sobs. But when he said, “Sure, little girl,” he felt her creeping into his arms to be petted.