Chapter 20

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_ CHAPTER XX

Josephine was herself again within a few moments of her husband's departure. She stood perfectly still for some time, as though listening to his departing footsteps. Then she crossed the room and pressed the bell twice. Once more she listened. The change in her expression was wonderful. She was expectant, eager, thrilled with the contemplation of some imminent happening. Her vigil came suddenly to an end, as the door was opened and closed again a little abruptly. It was no servant who had obeyed her summons; it was Wingate who entered, unannounced and alone.

"Everything goes well?" he asked, as he advanced rapidly into the room.

"Absolutely!"

"Good! Where is your husband now?"

"Gone to his den to have a drink, I expect," she replied. "He is in a terrible state of nerves already."

"I am afraid he will be worse before we've done with him," Wingate remarked a little grimly. "Josephine, just one moment!"

She was in his arms and forgetfulness enfolded them. He felt the soft cling of her body, the warm sweetness of her lips. It was she who disengaged herself.

"I am terrified of Henry coming back," she admitted, as she moved reluctantly away. "He is in one of his most hateful moods to-night. Better than anything in the world he would love to make a scene."

"He shall have all the opportunity he wants presently," Wingate observed.

The door was opened with the soft abruptness of one who has approached it noiselessly by design. Dredlinton stood upon the threshold, blinking a little as he gazed into the room. He recognized Wingate with a start of amazement.

"Wingate?" he exclaimed. "Why the mischief didn't any one tell me you were here?"

"Mr. Wingate called to see me," Josephine replied.

There was an ugly curl upon Dredlinton's lips. He opened his mouth and closed it again. Then his truculent attitude suddenly vanished without the slightest warning. He became an entirely altered person.

"Look here, Wingate," he confessed, "on thinking it over, I believe I've been making rather an idiot of myself. Josephine," he went on, turning to his wife, "be so kind as to leave us alone for a short time."

He opened the door. Josephine hesitated for a moment, then, in response to a barely noticeable gesture from Wingate, she left the room. Her husband closed the door carefully behind her. His attitude, as he turned once more towards the other man, was distinctly conciliatory.

"Wingate," he invited, "sit down, won't you, and smoke a cigar with me. Let us have a reasonable chat together, I am perfectly convinced that there is nothing for us to quarrel about."

"Since when have you come to that conclusion, Lord Dredlinton?" Wingate asked, without abandoning his somewhat uncompromising attitude.

"Since our interview at the office."

"You mean when you tried to blackmail me into selling my shipping shares?"

Dredlinton frowned.

"'Blackmail' is not a word to be used between gentlemen," he protested. "Look here, can't you behave like a decent fellow--an ordinary human being, you know? You are not exactly my sort, but I am sure you're a man of honour, I haven't any objection to your friendship with my wife--none in the world."

"The sentiments which I entertain for your wife, Lord Dredlinton," Wingate declared, "are not sentiments of friendship."

Dredlinton paused in the act of lighting a cigar.

"What's that?" he exclaimed. "You mean that, after all, you've humbugged me, both of you?"

"Not in the way you seem to imagine. This much, however, is true, and it is just as well that you should know it. I love your wife and I intend to take her from you, in her time and mine."

Dredlinton lit his cigar and threw himself back into his chair.

"Well, you don't mince matters," he muttered.

"I see no reason why I should," was the calm reply.

"After all," Dredlinton observed, with a cynical turn of the lips, "I see no reason why I should object. Josephine's been no wife of mine for years. Perhaps you have a fancy for your love affairs wrapped up in a little ice frosting."

Wingate's eyes flashed.

"That'll do," he advised, with ominous calm.

"Eh?"

"We will not discuss your wife."

Dredlinton shrugged his shoulders.

"As you will. Assist me, then, in my office of host. What or whom shall we discuss? Choose your own subject."

"The disappearance of Stanley Rees, if you like," was the unexpected reply.

Dredlinton stared at his visitor. Symptoms of panic were beginning to reassert themselves.

"You admit, then, that you were concerned in that?"

"Concerned in it?" Wingate repeated. "I think I can venture a little further than that."

"What do you mean?" was the startled query.

"I mean that I was and am entirely responsible for it."

Dredlinton's cigar fell from his fingers. For the moment he forgot to pick it up. Then he stooped and with shaking fingers threw it into the grate. When he confronted Wingate again, his face was deadly pale. He seemed, indeed, on the point of collapse.

"Why have you done this?" he faltered. "Tell me what you mean, man, when you say that you were responsible for his disappearance?"

"You are curious? Perhaps a little superstitious, a little nervous about yourself, eh?"

"What the devil have you done with Stanley Rees?" Dredlinton demanded.

Wingate smiled.

"Rees," he said, "as I reminded you, is the youngest of the British and Imperial directors. Let me see, next to him would come Phipps, I suppose. Martin, as you may have heard, left for Paris this morning--ostensibly. I have an idea myself that his destination is South America."

"Martin gone?" the other gasped.

"Without a doubt. I think he saw trouble ahead. By the by, have you heard anything of Phipps lately? Why not ring up and enquire about his health?"

Dredlinton stared a little wildly at the speaker. Then he hurried to the telephone, snatched up the receiver and talked into it, his eyes all the time fixed upon Wingate in a sort of frightened stare.

"Mayfair 365," he demanded. "Quick, please! An urgent call! Yes? Who's that? Yes, yes! Browning--Mr. Phipps' secretary. I understand. Where's Mr. Phipps?--_What_?"

Dredlinton drew away from the telephone for a moment. He dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief. He looked like a man on the verge of collapse.

"Something unusual seems to have happened," Wingate remarked softly.

Dredlinton was listening once more to the voice at the other end of the telephone.

"You've tried his club? Eh? And the restaurant where he was to have dined? What do you say? Kept them waiting and never turned up? You've rung up the police?--What do they say?--Doing their best?--My God!"

The receiver slipped from his nerveless fingers. He turned around to face Wingate, crouching over the table, his arms resting upon it, his eyes blood-shot, a slave to abject fear.

"Peter Phipps has disappeared!" he gasped weakly.

The atmosphere of the room seemed to have completely changed during the last few minutes. Wingate was no longer the conventional and casual caller. His face had hardened, his eyes were brighter, his manner ominous. He was the modern figure of Fate, playing for a desperate stake with cold and deadly earnestness. Dredlinton was simply panic-stricken. He was white to the lips; his eyes were filled with the frightened gleam of the trapped animal; he shook and twitched in a paroxysm of nervous collapse. He seemed terrified yet fascinated by the strange metamorphosis in his visitor.

"This is your doing?" he cried.

"It is my doing," Wingate admitted, with his eyes still fixed upon the other's face.

Dredlinton stumbled to the fireplace, found the bell and pressed it violently. A gleam of reassurance came to him.

"My servants shall hear you repeat that!" he exclaimed. "I will have them all in to witness your confession. You are pleading guilty to a crime! I shall send out for the police! I shall hand you over from here!"

"Not a bad idea," Wingate acknowledged. "By the by, though," he added, a moment or two later, "your servants don't seem in a great hurry to answer that bell."

Dredlinton pressed it more violently than ever. By listening intently both men could hear its faraway summons. But nothing happened. The house itself seemed empty. There was not even the sound of a footfall.

"You will really have to change your servants," Wingate continued. "Fancy not answering a bell! They must hear it pealing away. Still, you have the telephone. Why not ring up Scotland Yard direct?"

Dredlinton, dazed now with terror, took his fingers from the bell and snatched up the telephone receiver. All the time his eyes were riveted upon his companion's, their weak depths filled with a nameless horror.

"Quick!" he shouted down the receiver. "Scotland Yard! Put me straight through to Scotland Yard!--Can you hear me, Exchange? I am Lord Dredlinton, 1887 Mayfair. If I am cut off, ring through to Scotland Yard yourself. Tell them I am in danger of my life! Tell them to rush here at once!"

"Yes, they had better hurry," Wingate said tersely.

Dredlinton pulled down the hook of the receiver desperately.

"Can't you hear me, Exchange?" he shouted. "Quick! This is urgent!"

"Really," Wingate remarked, "the telephone people seem almost as negligent as your servants."

The receiver slipped from the hysterical man's fingers. He collapsed into a chair and leaned across the table.

"What does it mean?" he demanded hoarsely. "No one will answer the bell. I seem to be speaking through the telephone to a dead world."

"If you really want some one, I dare say I can help you," Wingate replied. "The telephone was disconnected by my orders, as soon as you had spoken to Phipps' rooms. But--now you are only wasting your time."

Dredlinton had rushed to the door, shaken the handle violently, only to find it locked. He pommelled with his fists upon the panels.

"Come, come," his companion expostulated, "there is really no need for such extremes. You want something, perhaps? Allow me."

Wingate crossed the room, rang the bell three times quickly, and stood in an easy attitude upon the hearth rug, with his hands behind his back.

"Let us see," he said, "whether that has any effect or not."

"Is this your house or mine?" Dredlinton demanded.

"Your house," was the laconic reply, "but my servants."

From outside was heard the sound of a turning key. The door was opened. Grant, the new butler, made his appearance,--a thin, determined-looking man, with white hair and keen dark eyes, who bore a striking resemblance to Mr. Andrew Slate.

"His lordship wants the whisky and soda brought in here, Grant," Wingate told him, "and--wait just a moment.--You seem very much distressed about the disappearance of your friends, Lord Dredlinton. Would you like to see them?"

"What? See Stanley Rees and Peter Phipps now?"

"Yes!"

"You are talking nonsense!" Dredlinton shouted. "You may know where they are--I should think it is very likely that you do--but you aren't going to persuade me that you've got them here in my house--that you can turn them loose when you choose to say the word!"

Wingate glanced across at the butler, who nodded understandingly and withdrew. Dredlinton intercepted the look and shook his fist.

"You've been tampering with my servants, damn you!" he exclaimed.

"Well, they haven't been yours very long, have they?" Wingate reminded him.

"So this is all part of a plot!" Dredlinton continued, with increasing apprehension. "They are in your pay, are they? It was only this morning I noticed all these new faces around me.--God help us!"

The words seemed to melt away from his lips. The door had been flung open, and a queer little procession entered. First of all came Grant, followed by a footman leading Peter Phipps by the arm. Phipps' hands were tied together. A gag in the form of a respirator covered his mouth. Cords which had apparently only just been unknotted were around each leg. He had the expression, of a man completely dazed. After him came another of the footmen leading Stanley Rees, who was in similar straits. The latter, however, perhaps by reason of his longer detention, showed none of the passivity of his companion. He struggled violently, even in the few yards between the door and the centre of the room, Wingate motioned to a third footman, who had followed behind.

"Pull out that round table," he directed. "Place three chairs around it.--So!--Sit down, Phipps. Sit down, Rees."

They obeyed, Rees only after a further useless struggle. Dredlinton, who had been speechless for the last few seconds, gazed with horror-stricken eyes at the third chair. Wingate smiled at him grimly.

"That third chair, Dredlinton," he announced, "is for you."

The terrified man made an ineffectual dash for the door.

"You mean to make a prisoner of me in my own house?" he shouted, as he found himself in the clutches of one of the footmen. "What fool's game is this? You know you can't keep it up, Wingate. You'll be transported, man. Come, confess it's a joke. Tell that man to take these damned cords away."

"It is a joke," Wingate assured him gravely, "but it may need a very peculiar sense of humour to appreciate it. However, you need not fear. Your life is not threatened.--Now, Dickenson, the loaf."

The third man stepped back to the door and, from the hands of another servant who was waiting there, took an ordinary cottage loaf of bread. The three men now were seated around the table, bound to their chairs and gagged. In the middle of the table, just beyond their reach, Wingate, leaning over them, placed the loaf of bread.

"I am now," he announced, standing a little back, "going to tell Grant to release your gags. You will probably all try shouting. I can assure you that it is quite hopeless. This room looks out, as you know, upon a courtyard. The street is on the other side of the house. Every person under this roof is in my employ. There is no earthly chance of your being heard by any one. Still, if it pleases you to shout, shout!--Now, Grant!"

The man unfastened the gags,--first Phipps', then Rees', and finally Dredlinton's. Curiously enough, not one of the three men raised their voices. Wingate's words seemed to have impressed them. Phipps drew one or two deep breaths, Stanley Rees rubbed his mouth on his sleeve. Dredlinton was the only one who broke into anything approaching violent speech.

"My God, Wingate," he exclaimed, "if you think I'll ever forget this, you're mistaken! I'll see you in prison for it, whatever it costs me!"

"The after-consequences of this little melodrama," Phipps interposed, with grim fury, "certainly present something of a problem, I have wondered, during the last hour or so, whether you can be perfectly sane, Wingate. What good can you expect to do by this brigandage?"

"The very word 'brigandage'," Wingate observed, with a smile, "suggests my answer--ransom."

"But you can't want money?" Phipps protested.

"You know what I want," was the stern rejoinder. "You and I have already discussed it when you came to see me about that young man."

Phipps laughed uneasily.

"I remember some preposterous suggestion about selling wheat," he admitted. "If you think, however, that you can alter our entire business principles by a piece of foolery like this, you are making the mistake of your life."

"We are wasting time," Wingate declared a little shortly. "It is better that we have a complete understanding. Get this into your head," he went on, drawing a long, ugly-looking pistol from his trousers pocket, and displaying it. "This is the finest automatic pistol in the world, and I am one of the best marksmen in the American Army. I shall leave you, for the present, ungagged, but if rescue comes to you by any efforts of your own, I give you my word of honour as an American gentleman that I shall shoot the three of you and be proud of my night's work."

"And swing for it afterwards," Dredlinton threatened. "The man's mad!"

"The man is in earnest," Phipps growled. "That much, at least, I think we can grant him. What is the meaning of that piece of mummery, Wingate?" he added, pointing to the loaf of bread. "What are your terms? You must state them, sooner or later. Let us have them now."

"Agreed," Wingate replied. "The costs of that loaf is, I believe, to be exact, one and tenpence ha'penny--one and tenpence ha'penny to poor people whose staple food it is. When you sign an authority to sell wheat in sufficient bulk to bring the cost down to sixpence, you can have the loaf and go as soon as the sale is finished. You will find here," he went on, laying a document upon the table, "a calculation which may help you. Your approximate holdings of wheat may be exaggerated a trifle, although these lists came from some one in your own office, but I think you will find that the figures there will be of assistance to you when you decide to give the word."

"Let me get this clearly into my head," Phipps begged, after a moment's amazed silence, "without the possibility of any mistake. You mean that we are to sell wheat at about sixty per cent, less than the present market value--in many cases sixty per cent. less than we gave for it?"

"That, I imagine, will be about the position," Wingate admitted.

"The man is a fool!" Rees snarled. "It would mean ruin."

Wingate remained impassive.

"The British and Imperial Granaries, Limited," he said, "has been responsible for the ruin of a good many people. It is time now that the pendulum swung the other way.--Come, make up your minds."

"What if we refuse?" Dredlinton asked.

"You will be made a little more secure," Wingate explained, "your gags fastened, and your arms corded to the backs of the chairs."

"But for how long?"

"Until you give the word."

"And supposing we never give the word?" Stanley Rees demanded.

"Then you sit there," Wingate replied, "until you die."

Dredlinton glanced covertly across at Phipps, and, finding no inspiration there, turned to Wingate. The light of an evil imagining shone in his eyes.

"This is a matter which we ought to discuss in private conference," he said slowly. "What do you think, Phipps?"

"I agree--"

"I am afraid," Wingate interrupted suavely, "that Mr. Phipps' views will not affect the situation. You three gentlemen are my treasured and honoured guests. I shall not desert you--as a matter of fact, I shall scarcely leave you, except upon your own business--until your decision is made."

"Guests be damned!" Dredlinton exclaimed. "It's my house--not yours!"

"Mine for a short time by appropriation," Wingate answered, with a faint smile.

"Supposing," Rees suggested, "we were induced to knuckle under, to become the victims of your damned blackmailing scheme, surely then one of us would be allowed to go down to the City on parole, eh?"

Wingate shook his head.

"I regret to say that I should not feel justified in letting one of you out of my sight. In the event of your seeing reason, the telephone will be at your disposal, and a verbal message by its means could be confirmed by all three of you. I imagine that your office would sell on such instructions."

Phipps, who had been sitting during the last few minutes in a state almost of torpor, began to show signs of his old vigorous self. He shook his head firmly.

"This is a matter which need not be discussed," he declared. "You have taken our breath away, Wingate. Your amazing assurance has made it difficult for us to answer you coherently. I am only now beginning to realise that you are in earnest in this idiotic piece of melodrama, but if you are--so are we.--You can starve us or shoot us or suffocate us, but we shall not sell wheat.--By God, we shan't!"

The man seemed for a moment to swell,--his eyes to flash fire. Wingate shrugged his shoulders.

"I accept your defiance," he announced. "Let us commence our tryst."

Dredlinton struck the table with his fist, Phipps' brave words seemed to have struck an alien note of fear in his fellow prisoner.

"I will not submit!" he exclaimed. "My health will not stand it!--Phipps!--Rees!"

There was meaning in his eyes as well as in his tone, a meaning which Phipps put brutally into words.

"It's no good, Dredlinton," he warned him. "We are going to stick it out, and you've got to stick it out with us. But," he added, glaring at Wingate, "remember this. Only half an hour before I was taken, Scotland Yard rang up to tell me that they thought they had a clue as to Stanley's disappearance. You risk five years' penal servitude by this freak."

"I am content," was the cool reply.

"But I am not!" Dredlinton shouted, straining at his cords. "I resign! I resign from the Board! Do you hear that, Wingate? I chuck it! Set me free!"

"The proper moment for your resignation from the Board of the British and Imperial Granaries," Wingate told him sternly, "was a matter of six months ago. You are a little too late, Dredlinton. Better make up your mind to stick it out with your friends."

Dredlinton groaned. There was all the malice of hatred in his eyes, a note of despair in his exclamation.

"They are strong men, those two," he muttered. "They can stand more than I can. I demand my freedom."

Wingate threw himself into an easy-chair.

"Endurance," he observed, "is largely a matter of nerves. You must make this a test. If you fail, well, your release always rests with your two friends. I am sure they will not see you suffer unduly."

Phipps leaned a little across the table.

"We shall suffer," he said hoarsely, "but it will be for hours. With you, Wingate, it will be a matter of years! Our turn will come when we visit you in prison. Damn you!" _

Read next: Chapter 21

Read previous: Chapter 19

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