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those who were sitting on either side of the third man from the end of
the second row noticed that he started as though something had stung him.
“So,” continued Mr. Bingleton, “the corespondent took advantage of your
unprotected state and kissed you, and you, in defence of your outraged
modesty, punched him in the eye.”
Geraldine looked miserable, but made no reply.
“Well,” he continued, “now we know all about the famous black eye, and
some more of the character of the corespondent. Thank you, Miss Brand,
that will do.”
The look Geraldine turned on Mr. Bingleton as she left the witness box,
convinced that gentleman that she was in a mood to serve out another
black eye, and that he could easily be its recipient.
It was late that day, that Mr. Justice Mainwaring observed, among other
things, that the only fact that emerged from the evidence was that all
the witnesses were lying.
He utterly refused to believe any statement made by any one of them. The
witness Cranston was viciously malicious. His two detectives were men
whose characters forbade credence. He held his own opinion on the
reluctance of both sides to call in the witness from the lesser court,
Tydvil Jones, who might have thrown some light on the slimy morass of
evasion and falsehood. Brewer might be innocent, but if so, he did not
behave as an innocent man. The silence of the respondent was a notable
feature of the case.
The court, he observed in conclusion, though willing to give every
consideration to fact, would not attempt to discriminate among
falsehoods. For that reason he dismissed the petition. Each side should
pay its own costs.
As Geraldine left the court, still boiling with fury, she overtook
Nicholas. “Devil!” she hissed in his ear.
“At your service, my dear young lady; now and always,” he smiled
serenely.
It was little consolation to Geraldine that in both the evening and
morning papers the press photographers had done her ample justice. The
caption beneath the pictures of herself that conspicuously decorated
every account of the case, were flattering but facetious. She did not
like to see herself described as “Geraldine Brand, the lovely girl with
the lively left.” Beneath another she read, “Who wouldn’t risk a black
eye?” But her sense of humour came to the rescue as she and Billy
discussed the events of the afternoon.
Billy was fighting mad when he heard of Nicholas’s share in her
tribulations, and it was only with difficulty that she made him recognise
the utter futility of any attempt at reprisals.
Geraldine’s own sentiments towards Mr. Senior were actually less friendly
than those of Billy. To her, it was clear that in the Court, she alone,
saw him as the tall, distinguished stranger. To the others he must have
appeared as the bent and bearded septuagenarian. The exhibition she had
made of herself in her attempt at retaliation made her boil when she
thought of it. What perturbed her most was her own unquestioning
acceptance of Tydvil’s explanation of Nicholas’s identity, preposterous
as it was.
Despite that knowledge, she wondered at her lack of fear. During her
brief interview with Nicholas in Tydvil’s room she had experienced a
fascination she could not resist. Again, as on her first encounter, she
had felt the impact of power that radiated from him. Behind the banter of
his words, and the sardonic humour of his eyes, she sensed something
terrible that was beyond her comprehension. Whatever it was it did not
affect her as being evil, nor had it frightened her. Her feeling was more
of awe than anything else.
Nevertheless, intuition warned her that there was peril in the
fascination he exercised. A shudder went through her at the thought of
the possibilities that might be masked by the almost irresistibly
attractive humanity he had assumed. Tydvil, she recognised, had taken him
at his face value. Geraldine was not deeply religious. Her wholesome
conscience was her chief guide and guardian. Her common sense rejected
the principle of evil as being embodied in horns, hooves and barbed tail
as ludicrous. She felt that the Nicholas Senior she had met could be more
dangerous than any composite zoological creation of mediaeval
ecclesiastical imagination.
Since knowledge of the truth regarding Tydvil had come to her, she had
turned over in her mind the incongruousness of Nicholas busying himself
with Tydvil’s petty affairs and escapades. It seemed like using, a
mountain to crush a gnat, until she reflected that Tydvil would be but
one among millions who were being affected by the same influence, unseen
and unknown to her.
But there had gradually grown up in her a fierce determination to save
Tydvil in spite of himself. It was more a desperate resolve to match
herself against the unseen force than to protect Tydvil from the
consequences of his folly. Her animosity against Nicholas Senior had
become violently personal. He had roused a dauntless spirit that nested
under her flaming helmet. Taking Nicholas on his own valuation she argued
to herself that he must be vulnerable. Nothing was invulnerable in the
Universe but the will of its Creator. Therefore, somewhere, Nicholas had
a spot through which he could be struck.
But her first obstacles were in Billy, who looked askance at her taking
the risk of fighting Nicholas, and in Tydvil himself, who was either
blind or indifferent to her peril.
Though Billy was deeply impressed by Nicholas’s activities, his
antagonism was very human and natural. He urged on Gerry that Nicholas
was a nasty bit of work with which she had no need to become involved.
“Look, Gerry!” he said when they discussed the question, “if Tyddie is
mug enough to get himself mixed up with all the devils in Hades, why
should you risk getting singed fighting his battles?”
“Tell me,” she demanded, “what I looked like yesterday when I pointed out
the tall, dark stranger to that old savage, Mainwaring?”
Billy strove manfully, but failed to hide his mirth at the recollection.
Geraldine reached for, and obtained, a firm handful of hair, and shook
her finger in a face that was incapable of evasion. “Yes, Billy, laugh!
Go on, laugh! I know I looked like a prize idiot. Just as I did when I
called that pompous ass Bingleton a brute. He was, too. But who caused it
all? Tell me that!”
“Crikey, Gerry!” gurgled Billy. “I didn’t…Leggo my hair! Do you
want a bald husband?”
But Gerry, disregarding his protests, went on. “Nicholas Senior He did
it. He’s the man I’m after. Do you think I’m letting him get away with
that?”
“Poor Devil!” grinned Billy as she relinquished her hold. “He’ll wish
himself home again if you do get a strangle hold on him.”
“Oh, if only I knew how!” Her voice was deep in its sincerity of purpose.
“Some of those evangelical parsons talk of wrestling with the Devil,”
Billy ventured. “You might engage one to train you.”
“Idiot!” murmured Geraldine. “Can’t you think of anything?”
“Come here!” He held out his arms and Gerry responded. As she settled
herself comfortably, he said, “How about trying to persuade him to swap
Tyddie for Amy? Then everyone would be happy.”
“Except Mr. Nicholas Senior. Do you think he’s that sort of fool?” she
said disdainfully. “Would you swap Tyddie for Amy?”
“Lord forbid!” replied Billy piously.
“Well, why should he? Although,” she added, “I should think Amy would be
a far greater asset for his purposes.”
“What I can’t understand about Tyddie is why, if he did want to go on the
binge, he didn’t come to me, instead of going to the Devil.” Billy’s
voice sounded as though he felt Tydvil’s judgment was at fault.
Smothered by the lapel of his coat, he heard a chuckle. “What’s so funny
about that?” he demanded.
“Nothing, dearest,” came from his lapel. “I was just thinking it might
have amounted to the same thing.”
“What you deserve is…” he began.
She raised her face to him.
There was a long pause, and then as he looked down into the laughing eyes
again, he said, “You didn’t deserve that, anyway. What you really
deserve, is to be married to Nicholas Senior—you’d make a fine pair.”
“If he got what he deserved, he would be married to Amy.”
“I didn’t think you were so vindictive, Gerry.”
“When I think of those two I could bite them both,” she said. “That cat,
Amy, is just as much to blame for everything as Nicholas is.”
“Urn! Maybe you’re right. Poor old Tyddie didn’t have much chance between
them.”
“And,” she went on, “don’t forget that clear Amy is under the happy
impression, that you, William Brewer, are her guilty partner in her
flaming romance!”
“Makes me scared stiff to think of it,” Billy admitted. “Lord! Who’d have
thought that Tyddie would put that across dear Amy?”
“I’m not worrying about her,” Geraldine replied. “But if Tyddie lets you
in for any more trouble, I’m going to make him wish he’d never been
born.”
“Yes, and if Amy gets hold of me in mistake for Tyddie, I’ll be wishing
the same wish.”
“Then, there will be three of you with but a single thought,” Geraldine
released herself. “Because, when I’m finished with Amy, her outlook on
life is going to be very bleak.”
“There was a time,” Billy observed as his eyes took in the picture made
by Gerry as she straightened her disordered hair before the Tydvil’s
mirror, “when I had a reputation for enjoying a scrap. But I was the dove
of peace compared with you, darlint.”
“It’s not fighting I love, Billy,” she assured him.
He caught sight of the reflection of her face in the mirror. A minute
later he was shooed out of the room by a Geraldine who demanded to be
informed if he thought she had nothing to do but comb her hair every five
minutes.
When Tydvil arrived at the office that morning, his humour was joyous and
mischievous. He came in with the morning papers under his arm, and placed
them on the table without a word, but with provocative intent. Each
upturned page displayed a portrait of his secretary. He left them there,
an incitement to warfare during the whole of their morning routine. As a
challenge to Geraldine’s refusal to notice them, he paused now and again
in his dictation to admire his picture exhibition, and to compare the
portraits with the original.
Said Geraldine, as she began to collect her papers, “If you had been a
badly brought-up schoolboy, your behaviour might be excusable; as the
head of C. B. & D., it’s disgraceful.”
“You’re certainly in a position to criticise my behaviour.” His laugh was
derisive. “Who was it used abusive language to an eminent counsel? Who
was it who tried to pull the leg of the Supreme Court judge? Who was it
nearly had herself run in for contempt of court? You, to talk of
disgraceful behaviour!”
“I suppose,” her voice was full of menace, “you, and your very
distinguished and noble friend, Mr. Senior, have been enjoying the
ridicule I underwent.”
“Well, yes,” Tydvil responded. “To be honest, I think enjoying is the
correct word.”
“It’s refreshing to find you honest about anything these days.”
“The injury was apparently inflected by a blunt weapon; probably a girl’s
tongue,” said Tydvil to his blotting pad. “Injury!” She sniffed
disdainfully.
He leaned forward on his folded arms on his table. “You might have
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