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“You’re wrong there, Mr. Eldrick,” he said. “But of course, you don’t
know. I didn’t know myself, nor did Mrs. Mallathorpe, until lately. But
I have a claim—and a good one—to get a business lift from Mrs.
Mallathorpe. I’m a relation.”
“What—of the Mallathorpe family?” exclaimed Eldrick, whose legal mind
was at once bitten by notion of kinship and succession, and who knew
that Harper Mallathorpe was supposed to have no male relatives at all,
of any degree. “You don’t mean it?”
“No!—but of hers, Mrs. Mallathorpe,” answered Pratt. “My mother was her
cousin. I found that out by mere chance, and when I’d found it, I worked
out the facts from our parish church register. They’re all here—fairly
copied—Mrs. Mallathorpe has seen them. So I have some claim—even if
it’s only that of a poor relation.”
Eldrick took the sheets of foolscap which Pratt handed to him, and
looked them over with interest and curiosity. He was something of an
expert in such matters, and had helped to edit a print more than once of
the local parish registers. He soon saw from a hasty examination of the
various entries of marriages and births that Pratt was quite right in
what he said.
“I call it a poor—and a mean—game,” remarked Pratt, while his old
master was thus occupied, “a very mean game indeed, of well-to-do folk
like Mr. Collingwood and Mr. Robson to want to injure me in a matter
which is no business of theirs. I shall do my duty by Mrs.
Mallathorpe—you yourself know I’m fully competent to do it—and I shall
fully earn the percentage that she’ll pay me. What right have these
people—what right has her daughter—to come between me and my living?”
“Oh, well, well!” said Eldrick, as he handed back the papers and rose.
“It’s one of those matters that hasn’t been understood. You made a
mistake, you know, Pratt, when you went to see Mrs. Mallathorpe yesterday
in her daughter’s absence. You shouldn’t have done that.”
Pratt pulled open a drawer and, after turning over some loose papers,
picked out a letter.
“Do you know Mrs. Mallathorpe’s handwriting?” he asked. “Very
well—there it is! Isn’t that a request from her that I should call on
her yesterday afternoon? Very well then!”
Eldrick looked at the letter with some surprise. He had a good memory,
and he remembered that Collingwood had told him that Nesta had said that
Pratt had gone to Normandale Grange, seen Esther Mawson, and told her
that it was absolutely necessary for him to see Mrs. Mallathorpe. And
though Eldrick was naturally unsuspicious, an idea flashed across his
mind—had Pratt got Mrs. Mallathorpe to write that letter while he was
there—yesterday—and brought it away with him?
“I think there’s a good deal of misunderstanding,” he said. “Mr.
Collingwood says that you went there and told her maid that it was
absolutely necessary for you to see her mistress—sort of forced
yourself in, you see, Pratt.”
“Nothing of the sort!” retorted Pratt. He flourished the letter in his
hand. “Doesn’t it say there, in Mrs. Mallathorpe’s own handwriting, that
she particularly desires to see me at three o’clock? It does! Then it
was absolutely necessary for me to see her. Come, now! And Mr.
Collingwood had best attend to his own business. What’s he got to do
with all this? After Miss Mallathorpe and her money, I should
think!—that’s about it!”
Eldrick said another soothing word or two, and went back to his own
office. He was considerably mystified by certain things, but inclined to
be satisfied about others, and in giving an account of what had just
taken place he unconsciously seemed to take Pratt’s side—much to
Robson’s disgust, and to Collingwood’s astonishment.
“You can’t get over this, you know, Robson,” said Eldrick. “Pratt went
there yesterday by appointment—went at Mrs. Mallathorpe’s own express
desire, made in her own handwriting. And it’s quite certain that what he
says about the relationship is true–I examined the proof myself. It’s
not unnatural that Mrs. Mallathorpe should desire to do something for
her own cousin’s son.”
“To that extent?” sneered Robson. “Bless me, you talk as if it were no
more than presenting him with a twenty pound note, instead of its being
what it is—giving him the practical control of many a thousand pounds
every year. There’ll be more heard of this—yet!”
He went away angrier than when he came, and Eldrick looked at
Collingwood and shook his head.
“I don’t see what more there is to do,” he said. “So far as I can make
out, or see, Pratt is within his rights. If Mrs. Mallathorpe liked to
entrust her business to him, what is to prevent it? I see nothing at all
strange in that. But there is a fact which does seem uncommonly strange
to me! It’s this—how is it that Mrs. Mallathorpe doesn’t consult,
hasn’t consulted—doesn’t inform, hasn’t informed—her daughter about
all this?”
“That,” answered Collingwood, “is precisely what strikes me—and I can’t
give any explanation. Nor, I believe, can Miss Mallathorpe.”
He felt obliged to go back to Normandale, and tell Nesta the result of
the afternoon’s proceedings. And having seen during his previous visit
how angry she could be, he was not surprised to see her become angrier
and more determined than ever.
“I will not have Mr. Pratt coming here!” she exclaimed. “He shall not
see my mother—under my roof, at any rate. I don’t believe she sent for
him.”
“Mr. Eldrick saw her letter!” interrupted Collingwood quietly.
“Then that man made her write it while he was here!” exclaimed Nesta.
“As to the relationship—it may be so. I never heard of it. But I don’t
care what relation he is to my mother—he is not going to interfere with
her affairs!”
“The strange thing,” said Collingwood, as pointedly as was consistent
with kindness, “is that your mother—just now, at any rate—doesn’t seem
to be taking you into her confidence.”
Nesta looked steadily at him for a moment, without speaking. When she
did speak it was with decision.
“Quite so!” she said. “She is keeping something from me! And if she
won’t tell me things—well, I must find them out for myself.”
She would say no more than that, and Collingwood left her. And as he
went back to Barford he cursed Linford Pratt soundly for a deep and
underhand rogue who was most certainly playing some fine game.
But Pratt himself was quite satisfied—up to that point. He had won his
first trick and he had splendid cards still left in his hand. And he was
reckoning his chances on them one morning a little later when a ring at
his bell summoned him to his office door—whereat stood Nesta
Mallathorpe, alone.
CARDS ON THE TABLE
Had any third person been present, closely to observe the meeting of
these two young people, he would have seen that the one to whom it was
unexpected and a surprise was outwardly as calm and self-possessed as if
the other had come there to keep an ordinary business appointment.
Nesta Mallathorpe, looking very dignified and almost stately in her
mourning, was obviously angry, indignant, and agitated. But Pratt was as
cool and as fully at his ease as if he were back in Eldrick’s office,
receiving the everyday ordinary client. He swept his door open and
executed his politest bow—and was clever enough to pretend that he saw
nothing of his visitor’s agitation. Yet deep within himself he felt more
tremors than one, and it needed all his powers of dissimulation to act
and speak as if this were the most usual of occurrences.
“Good morning, Miss Mallathorpe!” he said. “You wish to see me? Come
into my private office, if you please. I haven’t fixed on a clerk yet,”
he went on, as he led his visitor through the outer room, and to the
easy chair by his desk. “I have several applications from promising
aspirants, but I have to be careful, you know, Miss Mallathorpe—it’s a
position of confidence. And now,” he concluded, as he closed the door
upon Nesta and himself, “how is Mrs. Mallathorpe today? Improving, I
hope?”
Nesta made no reply to these remarks, or to the question. And instead of
taking the easy chair which Eldrick had found so comfortable, she went
to one which stood against the wall opposite Pratt’s desk and seated
herself in it in as upright a position as the wall behind her.
“I wish to speak to you—plainly!” she said, as Pratt, who now regarded
her somewhat doubtfully, realizing that he was in for business of a
serious nature, sat down at his desk. “I want to ask you a plain
question—and I expect a plain answer. Why are you blackmailing my
mother?”
Pratt shook his head—as if he felt more sorrow than anger. He glanced
deprecatingly at his visitor.
“I think you’ll be sorry—on reflection—that you said that, Miss
Mallathorpe,” he answered. “You’re a little—shall we say—upset? A
little—shall we say—angry? If you were calmer, you wouldn’t say such
things—you wouldn’t use such a term as—blackmailing. It’s—dear me, I
dare say you don’t know it!—it’s actionable. If I were that sort of
man, Miss Mallathorpe, and you said that of me before witnesses—ah! I
don’t know what mightn’t happen. However—I’m not that sort of man.
But—don’t say it again, if you please!”
“If you don’t answer my question—and at once,” said Nesta, whose cheeks
were pale with angry determination, “I shall say it again in a fashion
you won’t like—not to you, but to the police!”
Pratt smiled—a quiet, strange smile which made his visitor feel a
sudden sense of fear. And again he shook his head, slowly and
deprecatingly.
“Oh, no!” he said gently. “That’s a bigger mistake than the other, Miss
Mallathorpe! The police! Oh, not the police, I think, Miss Mallathorpe.
You see—other people than you might go to the police—about something
else.”
Nesta’s anger cooled down under that scarcely veiled threat. The sight
of Pratt, of his self-assurance, his comfortable offices, his general
atmosphere of almost sleek satisfaction, had roused her temper, already
strained to breaking point. But that smile, and the quiet look which
accompanied his last words, warned her that anger was mere foolishness,
and that she was in the presence of a man who would have to be dealt
with calmly if the dealings were to be successful. Yet—she repeated her
words, but this time in a different tone.
“I shall certainly go to the police authorities,” she said, “unless I
get some proper explanation from you. I shall have no option. You are
forcing—or have forced—my mother to enter into some strange
arrangements with you, and I can’t think it is for anything but what I
say—blackmail. You’ve got—or you think you’ve got—some hold on her.
Now what is it? I mean to know, one way or another!”
“Miss Mallathorpe,” said Pratt. “You’re taking a wrong course—with me.
Now who advised you to come here and speak to me like this, as if I were
a common criminal? Mr. Collingwood, no doubt? Or perhaps Mr. Robson? Now
if either–-”
“Neither Mr. Robson nor Mr. Collingwood know anything whatever about my
coming here!” retorted Nesta. “No one knows! I am quite competent to
manage my own affairs—of this sort. I want to know why my mother has
been forced into that arrangement with you—for I am sure you have
forced her! If you will not tell me why—then I shall do what I said.”
“You’ll go to the police authorities?” asked Pratt. “Ah!—but let us
consider things a little, Miss Mallathorpe. Now, to start
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