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The Profiteers, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Chapter 11 |
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_ CHAPTER XI "My dears," Lady Amesbury said, as she stood surrounded by her guests on the hearth rug of her drawing-room, "you know what my Sunday night dinner parties are--all sorts and plenty of them, and never a dull man or a plain woman if I can help it. To-night I've got a new man. He's not much to look at, but they tell me he's a multimillionaire and making all the poor people of the country miserable. He's doing something about making bread dearer. I never did understand these things." "Heavens, you don't mean Peter Phipps!" Sarah exclaimed. "His very name," her aunt declared. "How did you guess it, my dear? Here he is. Be quiet, all of you, and watch Grover announce him. He's such a snob--Grover. He hates a Mister, anyhow, and 'Peter Phipps' will dislocate his tongue." Lady Amesbury was disappointed. Grover had marched with the times, and the presence of a millionaire made itself felt. His announcement was sonorous and respectful. Mr. Peter Phipps made his bow to his hostess under completely auspicious circumstances. "So kind of you not to forget, Mr. Phipps," she murmured. "My Sunday parties are always _viva voce_ invitations, and what between not remembering whom I've asked, and not knowing whether those I've asked will remember, I generally find it horribly difficult to arrange the places. We are all right tonight, though. Only two missing. Who are they, Sarah?" "Josephine and Mr. Wingate," Sarah replied, with a covert glance at Phipps. "Of course! And thank goodness, here they are! Together, too! If there's anything I love, it's to start one of my dinners with a scandal. Josephine, did you bring Mr. Wingate or did he bring you?" Josephine laughed. Then she saw Phipps standing in the background and she raised her voice a little. "Mr. Wingate called for me," she explained. "Taxis are so scarce in our part of the world on Sunday nights, and when one does happen to know a man who makes enough money on Friday to buy a fleet of motor-cars on Saturday--" "My doing," Kendrick interrupted. "I'm his broker. Did you buy the Rolls-Royce, Wingate?" "I brought it away with me, chauffeur and all." "The most delightful car I ever rode in," Josephine pronounced. Phipps manoeuvred his way to her side. There was a frown on his forehead as he leaned towards her. "So a Rolls-Royce is your favourite make of car, Lady Dredlinton," he remarked. "Absolutely! I can't conceive of anything more comfortable. Mr. Wingate has promised to let me try it in the country next week." "So my Wolseley is to be scrapped?" Phipps asked, under his breath. She looked at him pleasantly enough but with a dangerous light in her eyes. "Have you a Wolseley?" she murmured. "Oh, yes, I remember! You offered to send it around to take me shopping." "I sent it around three mornings," he replied. "You did not use it once. You did not even open the note I left inside." "I am not very fond of using other people's cars," she said. "It need not be another person's car unless you like," he muttered. She looked at him for a moment thoughtfully. Phipps was a man of brass, without sensitiveness or sensibility. Nevertheless, he flushed a little. Just then dinner was announced and Lady Amesbury bustled once more into the midst of her guests. "My dears," she told them all, "I've forgotten who takes anybody down! Scrap along as you are, and you'll find the cards in your places downstairs. Pick up any one you like. Not you, sir," she added, turning to Wingate. "You're going to take me. I want to hear all the latest New York gossip. And--lean down, please--are you really trying to flirt with Josephine Dredlinton? Don't disturb her unless you're in earnest. She's got a horrible husband." "I admire Lady Dredlinton more than any woman I know," Wingate answered. "One does not flirt with the woman one really cares for." "Hoity-toity!" Lady Amesbury exclaimed. "That's the real divorce-court tone. There was a young man---I don't know how many years ago--who used to talk like that to me at the time Amesbury was Ambassador at Madrid and took up with that Lola de Mendoza woman. Neither affair came to anything, though. Amesbury got tired of Spain, and my young man married a rich grocer's daughter. Still, I recognise the tone. Here we all are. Now you play a sort of hunt-the-slipper game, looking for your places, all of you. I know mine, thank God! Now let's pray to Heaven the soup's hot! And don't any one talk to me while I'm eating it. The present generation are shocking soup eaters." Wingate found Josephine on his other side and was happy. Phipps was just across the table. His hostess proceeded to give the latter some of her attention. "Mr. Phipps," she said, "they tell me you've taken that scoundrel of a nephew of mine--Dredlinton--into your business, whatever it is. He won't do you any good, you know." "I'm very sorry to hear that," Phipps replied. "He seemed to me rather a brainy person for his order." "One for me," Lady Amesbury chuckled. "I don't care. If I chose to come on the Stock Exchange, I've got brains enough to ruin most of you. But I don't choose. I like to hear of the rest of you tearing yourselves to pieces, though. If you could keep Dredlinton out of mischief for a year, Mr. Phipps, I'd think you were the most wonderful man I ever met. He's a bad lot, but I tolerate him because I love his wife." Phipps scowled across the table to where Wingate's head was nearly touching Josephine's. "Lady Dredlinton seems to be achieving great popularity in every direction," he said sourly. "And a jolly good thing, too," Lady Amesbury declared. "If ever a woman earned the right to kick the traces away for a bit, Josephine has. Don't you mind anything I say, my dear," she added, as Josephine looked up at the sound of her name. "You settle down to a nice comfortable flirtation, if you want to. You owe it to yourself, all right, and then there's some coming to you. And I'm your husband's aunt who tells you that." "I'm not at all sure," Phipps observed, "that you don't underrate your nephew's ability." "The only thing I know about his ability," was the blunt reply, "is his ability to borrow a few hundreds from any one fool enough to lend it to him, and then invent excuses for not paying it back. He's good at that, if you like. Still, don't let me set you against him, Mr. Phipps. Every shilling he gets out of you and your company is so much saved to the family." Lady Amesbury, who, notwithstanding her apparent inconsequence, had a keen eye for her guests, directed her conversation for a time into another channel, and finally changed places with Sarah in order to come into closer touch with a spiritualist from Sweden, who was on the lookout for a medium. Sarah turned appealingly toward Wingate. "Jimmy and I want to be taken to the theatre to-morrow night," she announced. "He doesn't get any money till Wednesday, and I haven't earned enough this week to pay my garage bill." "I'll take you both," Wingate promised quickly, "if Lady Dredlinton will make a fourth." "Delightful," Josephine assented. "I have a box at the Opera," Phipps announced, leaning forward. "Give me the pleasure of entertaining you all." Josephine shook her head. "Tannhauser! I am sorry, Mr. Phipps, but I couldn't possibly stand it. Ask us another time, won't you? To-morrow night," she went on, turning to Wingate, "let us be absolutely frivolous. A revue, I think." "And dinner first at the Milan," Wingate insisted. "And supper afterwards and a dance at Ciro's," Sarah put in. "I must tell Jimmy the glad tidings." Peter Phipps made his adieux to Lady Amesbury early and drove in his electric coupe first to Romano's, then to the Milan and finally to Ciro's. Here he found Dredlinton, seated in a corner by himself, a little sulky at the dancing proclivities of the young lady whom he had brought. He greeted Phipps with some surprise. "Hullo, Dreadnought!" he exclaimed. "What's wrong with my garrulous aunt? Has the party broken up early or weren't you a success?" "I wasn't a success," Phipps confessed grimly. "Look here, Dredlinton, are you sober enough to talk horse common sense?" "Sober? My God, can you tell me how any one can get a drink here!" was the injured reply. "I was just off somewhere else. One bottle of champagne, if you please, between two of us, and the liqueur brandies were served with the soup. Call this--a Christian country!" "Then if you're sober, and for once you seem to be," Phipps said, "just listen to me. Listen hard, mind, and don't interrupt. Have you ever wondered why I put you on the Board of the B.& I.?" "My title, I suppose--and social position." "Rot!" Phipps answered scornfully. "Your title and your social position aren't worth a damn to me. I put you on because of your wife." Dredlinton stared at him. "Why, you didn't even know her!" "Never mind. I knew her to look at. I wanted to know her. Now I do know her, and it hasn't done me much good." Dredlinton sat a little more erect in his place. Behind his cynical exterior, his evil brain had begun to work. "Look here, Phipps," he said, "I don't care about this conversation. If a man happens to admire another man's wife, her husband is scarcely the proper confidant." "Oh, yes, I know your theory!" Phipps scoffed. "You're willing enough to hide your head in the sand and take the goods the gods send you. That doesn't suit me. I happen to need your help." "My help?" Dredlinton repeated. "The poor little spider to help the mighty Phipps! You're not finding difficulties in the way of your suit, are you?" "If I do, it will be the worse for you," was the gruff reply. "As you're going on now, Dredlinton, it will be your wife, and your wife alone, who'll keep you out of jail before many weeks are past. How about that cheque to Farnham and Company last week? Farnham's say they never got it, but I hear it's come back through the bank with a queer endorsement upon it." Dredlinton caught at the tablecloth. The malicious gleam in his eyes gave way to a look of positive fear. "I can't remember--anything here--without any books," he muttered. "Tell me what it is you want, Phipps? I am ready to do any thing--you know that." "Your wife's friendship with this fellow Wingate has got to be nipped in the bud," Phipps declared. "Yes, but how?" Dredlinton demanded. "Josephine and I aren't anything to one another any more--you know that. She goes her own way." "She lives in your house," Phipps said. "You remain her husband nominally and you have therefore a certain amount of authority. You must forbid her to receive Wingate." "I'll forbid her, all right," Dredlinton assented, "but I won't guarantee that she'll obey." "Then you must give orders to the servants," Phipps insisted. "I don't need to suggest to you, Dredlinton," he went on, "what means you should use to make your wife obey you, but there are means, and if you're not the man to realise them, I'm very much surprised in you. I will begin with a concrete case. Your wife, together with that fellow Wilshaw and Miss Baldwin, have accepted an invitation from Wingate to dine and go to a theatre to-morrow night. You must see that your wife does not go." "Very well," Dredlinton promised, "I'll manage it somehow." "See that you do," Phipps enjoined earnestly. "Your wife is one of those misguided women with a strong sense of duty. Unless you behave like a damn fool, you can reestablish some measure of control over her. Do so. There are certain circumstances," he went on, his face wrinkled a little with emotion, his voice deep and earnest, "there are certain circumstances, Dredlinton, under which I might be inclined to behave towards you with great generosity. I leave you to guess what those circumstances are. I will show you the way later on." Dredlinton felt hope stir once more through his shocked and terrified senses. He lit a cigarette with fingers which had ceased to tremble, leaned a little back in his place and stared at his companion curiously. "Phipps," he asked, "what the devil do you and this fellow Wingate see in my wife?" "What a man like you would never look for," was the harsh reply. _ |
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