Chapter 16

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_ CHAPTER XVI

Roger Kendrick was in and disengaged when Wingate called upon him, a few minutes later. He welcomed his visitor cordially.

"That was a pretty good list you gave me the other day, Wingate," he remarked, "You've made money. You're making it still."

"Good!" Wingate commented, with a nod of satisfaction. "I dare say I shall need it all. Close up everything, Kendrick."

"The devil! One or two of your things are going strong, you know."

"Take profits and close up," Wingate directed. "I've another commission for you."

"One moment, then."

Kendrick hurried into the outer office and gave some brief instructions. His client picked up the tape and studied it until his return.

"How are things in the House?" Wingate enquired, as he resumed his seat.

"Uneasy," Kendrick replied. "B. & I.'s are the chief feature. They show signs of weakness, owing to the questions in the House of Commons last night."

"I'm a bear on B. & I.'s," Wingate declared. "What are they to-day?"

"They opened at five and a quarter. Half-an-hour ago they were being offered at five and an eighth."

"Very well," Wingate replied, "sell."

"How many?"

"No limit. Simply sell."

The broker was a little startled.

"Do you know anything?" he asked.

"Nothing definite. I've been studying their methods for some time. What they've been trying to do practically is to corner wheat. No one has ever succeeded in doing it yet. I don't think they will. My belief is that they are coming to the end of their tether, and there is still a large shipment of wheat which will be afloat next week."

Kendrick answered an enquiry through the telephone and leaned back in his chair.

"Wingate," he said, "I'm not sure that I actually agree with you about the B. & I. They have a wonderful system of subsidiary companies, and their holdings of wheat throughout the country are enormous,--all bought, mind you, at much below to-day's price. If they were to realise to-day, they'd realise an enormous profit. Personally, it seems to me that they've made their money and they can realise practically when they like. The price of wheat can't slump sufficiently to put them in Queer Street."

"The price of wheat is coming down, though, and coming down within the next ten days," Wingate pronounced.

Kendrick stretched out his hand towards the cigarettes and passed the box across to his friend.

"Why do you think so?" he asked bluntly. "According to accounts, the harvests all over the world are disastrous. There is less wheat being shipped here than ever before in the world's history. I can conceive that we may have reached the top, and that the price may decline a few points from now onwards, but even that would make very little difference. I can't see the slightest chance of any material fall in wheat."

"I can," Wingate replied. "Don't worry, Ken. No need to dash into the business like a Chicago booster. Just go at it quietly but unwaveringly. I suppose a good many of the B. & I. commissions are still open, and there's bound to be a little buying elsewhere, but I'm a seller of wheat, too, wherever there's any business doing. Wheat's coming down; so are the B. & I. shares. I'm not giving you verbal orders. Here's your warrant."

He drew a sheet of note paper towards him and wrote a few lines upon it. Kendrick blotted and laid a paper weight upon it.

"That's one of the biggest things I've ever taken on for a client, Wingate," he said. "You won't mind if I venture upon one last word?"

"Not I," was the cheerful reply. "Go right ahead."

"You're sure that Phipps hasn't drawn you into this? He's a perfect devil for cunning, that man, and he's simply been waiting for your coming. I think it was the disappointment of his life when you first came down to the City and left him alone. You've shown wonderful restraint, old chap. You're sure you haven't been goaded into this?"

Wingate smiled.

"Don't you worry about me, Ken," he begged. "Of course, in a manner of speaking, this is a duel between Phipps and myself, and if you were to ask my advice which to back, I don't know that I should care to take the responsibility of giving it. At the same time, I'm out to break Phipps and I rather think this time I'm going to do it.--Come along to the Milan, later on, and lunch. Lady Amesbury and Sarah Baldwin and a few others are coming."

"Lady Dredlinton, by any chance?" Kendrick asked.

"Lady Dredlinton, certainly."

"I'll turn up soon after one. And, Wingate."

"Well?"

"Don't think I'm a croaker, but I know Peter Phipps. There isn't a man on this earth I'd fear more as an enemy. He's unscrupulous, untrustworthy, and an unflinching hater. You and he are hard up against one another, I know, and I suppose you realise that your growing friendship with Josephine Dredlinton is simply hell for him."

"I imagine you know that his attentions to her have been entirely unwelcome," Wingate said calmly.

"I will answer for it that she has never encouraged him for a moment," Kendrick assented, "yet Phipps is one of those men who never take 'no' for an answer, who simply don't know what it is to despair of a thing. I've been watching that menage for the last twelve months, and I've watched Peter Phipps fighting his grim battle. I think I was one of the party when he first met her. Since then, though the fellow has any amount of tact, his pursuit of her must have been a persecution. He put Dredlinton on the Board of the B. & I., solely to buy his way into the household. He sent him home one day in a new car--a present to his wife. She has never ridden in it and she made her husband return it."

"I know," Wingate muttered. "I've heard a little of this, and seen it, too."

"Well, there you are," Kendrick concluded. "You know Phipps. You know what it must seem like to him to have another man step in, just as he may have been flattering himself that he was gaining ground. He hated you before. He'd give his soul, if he had one to break you now."

"He'll do what he can, Ken," said Wingate, with a smile, as he left the office, "but you may take it that the odds are a trifle on us.--Not later than one-thirty, then."

"There is no doubt," he remarked a moment later, as he stepped into his car, where Josephine was waiting for him, "that we are at war."

She laughed quietly. The excitement of those last few minutes in the offices of the British and Imperial Granaries had acted like a stimulant. She had lost entirely her tense and depressed air. The colour of her eyes was newly discovered in the light that played there.

"You couldn't have fired the first shot in more dramatic fashion," she declared. "Even Mr. Phipps lost his nerve for a moment, and I thought that Henry was going to collapse altogether. I wonder what they are doing now."

"Ringing up Scotland Yard, or on their way there, I should think," Wingate replied.

She shivered for a moment.

"You are not afraid of the police, are you?" she asked.

"I don't think we need be," he replied cheerfully, "unless we have bad luck. Of course, I have had professional advice as to all the details. The thing has been thought out step by step, almost scientifically. Slate is a marvellous fellow, and I think he has gathered up every loose end. Makes one realise how easy crime would be if one went into it unflurried and with a clear conscience.--Tell me, by the by, was it by accident that you opened that cable this morning?"

"Not entirely," she confessed. "I was in the library this morning talking to Grant, my new butler."

"Satisfactory, I trust?" Wingate murmured.

"A paragon," she replied, with a little gleam in her eyes. "Well, on Henry's desk was the rough draft of a cable, torn into pieces, and on one of them, larger than the rest, I couldn't help seeing your name. It looked as though Henry had been sending a cable in which you were somehow concerned. While I was there, the reply came, so I decided to open and decode it. Directly I realised what it was about, I brought it straight to the office, hoping to catch you there."

"You are a most amazing woman," he declared.

She leaned a little towards him.

"And you are a most likable man," she murmured.

Wingate's luncheon party had been arranged for some days, and was being given, in fact, at the suggestion of Lady Amesbury herself.

"I am a perfectly shameless person," she declared, as she took her seat by Wingate's side at the round table in the middle of the restaurant. "I invited myself to this party. I always do. The last three times our dear host has been over to England, as soon as I have enquired after his health and his business, and whether the right woman has turned up yet, I ask him when he's going to take me to lunch at the Milan. I do love lunching in a restaurant," she confided to Kendrick, who sat at her other side, "and nearly all my friends prefer their stodgy dining rooms."

"Have you heard the news, aunt?" Sarah asked across the table.

"About that silly little Mrs. Liddiard Green, do you mean, and Jack Fulton? I hear they were seen in Paris together last week."

"Pooh! Who cares about Mrs. Liddiard Green!" Sarah scoffed. "I mean the news about Jimmy. The dear boy's gone into the City."

"God bless my soul!" Lady Amesbury exclaimed. "How much has he got to lose?"

"He isn't going to lose anything," Sarah replied. "Mr. Maurice White has taken him into his office, and he's going to have a commission on the business he does. This is his first morning. He must be busy or he'd have been here before now. Jimmy's never late for meals."

"Hm!" Lady Amesbury grunted. "I expect he has to stay and mind the office while Mr. White gets his lunch."

"Considering," Sarah rejoined with dignity, "that there are seventeen other clerks, besides office boys and typists, and Jimmy has a room to himself, that doesn't seem likely. I expect he's doing a big deal for somebody or other."

"Thank God it isn't me!" her aunt declared. "I love Jimmy--every one does--but he wasn't born for business."

"We shall see," Sarah observed. "My own opinion of Jimmy is that his mental gifts are generally underrated."

"You're not prejudiced, by any chance, are you?" Kendrick asked, smiling.

"That is my dispassionate opinion," Sarah pronounced, "and I don't want any peevish remarks from you, Roger Kendrick. You're jealous because you let Mr. White get in ahead of you and secure Jimmy. It was only three days ago that we agreed he should go into the City. He was perfectly sweet about it, too. He was playing for the M.C.C. to-morrow, and polo at Ranelagh on Saturday."

"Is he giving them both up?" Kendrick enquired.

"He's giving up the cricket, of course, unless he finds that it happens to be a slack day in the City," Sarah replied. "As for the polo, well, no one works on Saturday afternoon, do they?"

"How is my friend, Mr. Peter Phipps?" Lady Amesbury demanded. "The big man who looked like a professional millionaire? Is he making a man of that bad husband of yours, Josephine?"

"They spend a good deal of time together," Josephine replied. "I don't think he'll ever succeed in making a business man out of Henry, though, any more than Mr. White will out of Jimmy."

A familiar form approached the table. Sarah welcomed him with a wave of her hand. The Honourable Jimmy greeted Lady Amesbury and his host, nodded to every one else, and took the vacant place which had been left for him. He seemed fatigued.

"Can I have a cocktail, Mr. Wingate?" he begged, summoning a waiter. "A double Martini, please. Big things doing in the City," he confided.

"Have you had to work very hard, dear?" Sarah asked sympathetically.

"Absolutely feverish rush ever since I got there," he declared. "Don't know how long my nerves will stand it. Telephones ringing, men rushing out of the office without their hats, and bumping into you without saying 'by your leave' or 'beg your pardon,' or any little civility of that sort, and good old Maurice, with his hair standing up on end, shouting into two telephones at the same time, and dictating a letter to one of the peachiest little bits of fluff I've seen outside the front rows for I don't know how long."

"Jimmy," Sarah said sternly, "I'm not sure that the City is going to suit you. You don't have to dictate letters to her, do you?"

"No such luck," Jimmy sighed. "She is the Chief's own particular property. Does a thousand words a minute and knits a jumper at the same time."

"Whom do you dictate your letters to?" Sarah demanded.

"To tell you the truth," Jimmy answered, falling on his cocktail, "I haven't had any to write yet."

"What has your work been?" Lady Amesbury asked.

"Kind of superintending," the young man explained, "looking on at everything--getting the hang of it, you know."

"Are the other men there nice?" Sarah enquired.

"Well, we don't seem to have had much time for conversation yet," Jimmy replied, attacking his caviar like a man anxious to make up for lost time. "I heard one chap tell another that I'd come to give tone to the establishment, which seemed to me a pleasant and friendly way of looking at it."

"You didn't have any commissions yourself?" Sarah went on.

"Well, not exactly," Jimmy confessed. "About half an hour before I left, a lunatic with perspiration streaming down his face, and no hat, threw himself into my room. 'I'll buy B. & I.'s,' he shouted. 'I'll buy B. & I.'s!'"

"What did you do?" Wingate enquired with interest.

"I told him I hadn't got any," was the injured reply. "He went cut like a streak of damp lightning. I heard him kicking up an awful hullaballoo in the next office."

"Jimmy," Sarah said reproachfully, "that might have been your first client. You ought to have made a business of finding him some B. & I.'s."

"There might have been some in a drawer or somewhere," Lady Amesbury suggested.

"Distinct lack of enterprise," Kendrick put in. "You should have thrown yourself on the telephone and asked me if I'd got a few."

"Never thought of it," Jimmy confessed. "Live and learn. First day and all that sort of thing, you know. I tell you what," he went on, "all the excitement and that gives you an appetite for your food."

The manager of the restaurant, on his way through the room, recognised Wingate and came to pay his respects.

"Did you hear about the little trouble over in the Court, Mr. Wingate?" he enquired.

"No, I haven't heard anything," Wingate replied.

They all leaned a little forward. The manager included them in his confidence.

"The young gentleman you probably know, Mr. Wingate," he said,--"has the suite just underneath yours--Mr. Stanley Rees, his name is--disappeared last night."

"Disappeared?" Lady Amesbury repeated.

"Stanley Rees?" Kendrick exclaimed.

The manager nodded.

"A very pleasant young gentleman," he continued, "wealthy, too. He is a nephew of Mr. Peter Phipps, Chairman of the Directors of the British and Imperial Granaries. It seems he dressed for dinner, came down to the bar to have a cocktail, leaving his coat and hat and scarf up in his room, and telling his valet that he would return for them in ten minutes. He hasn't been seen or heard of since."

"Sounds like the 'Arabian Nights,'" Jimmy declared. "Probably found he was a bit late for his grub and went on without his coat and hat."

"What about not coming back all night, sir?" the manager asked.

"Lads will be lads," Jimmy answered sententiously.

The manager showed an entire lack of sympathy with his attitude.

"Mr. Stanley Rees," he said, "is a remarkably well-conducted, quiet young gentleman, very popular here amongst the domestics, and noted for keeping very early hours. He was engaged to dine out at Hampstead with some friends, who telephoned for him several times during the evening. He was also supping here with a gentleman who arrived and waited an hour for him."

"Was he in good health?" Wingate enquired casually.

"Excellent, I should say, sir," the manager replied. "He was a young gentleman who took remarkably good care of himself."

"I know the sort," Jimmy said complacently, watching his glass being filled. "A whisky and soda when the doctor orders it, and ginger ale with his luncheon."

The manager was called away. Kendrick had become thoughtful.

"Queer thing," he remarked, "that young Rees should have disappeared just as the B. & I. have become a feature on 'Change. He was Phipps' right-hand man in financial matters."

"Disappearances in London seem a little out of date," Wingate remarked, as he scrutinised the dish which the _maitre d'hotel_ had brought for his inspection. "The missing person generally turns up and curses the scaremongers.--Lady Amesbury, this Maryland chicken is one of our favourite New York dishes. Kendrick, have some more wine. Wilshaw, your appetite has soon flagged."

"All the same," Kendrick mused, "it's a dashed queer thing about Stanley Rees."

After his guests had departed, Wingate had a few minutes alone with Josephine.

"I hate letting you go back to that house," he admitted.

She laughed softly.

"Why, my dear," she said, "think how necessary it is. For the first time, in my life I am absolutely looking forward to it. I never thought that I should live to associate romance with that ugly, brown-stone building."

"If there's the slightest hitch, you'll let me hear, won't you?" he begged. "The telephone is on to my room, and anything that happens unforeseen--remember this, Josephine--is a complete surprise to you. Everything is arranged so that you are not implicated in any way."

"Pooh!" she scoffed. "Nothing will happen. You are invincible, John. You will conquer with these men as you have with poor me."

"You have no regrets?" he asked, as they moved through the hall on the way out.

"I regret nothing," she answered fervently. "I never shall." _

Read next: Chapter 17

Read previous: Chapter 15

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