The Man Who Knew Part 13

"I don't know your humble abode in Bayswater," she laughed. "But why on earth you should elect to live at Bayswater I can't imagine."

He sipped his tea with a twinkle in his eye.

"Guess what income the heir of the Minute millions enjoys?" he asked ironically. "No, I'll save you the agony of guessing. I earn seven pounds a week at the bank, and that is the whole of my income."

"But doesn't uncle--" she began in surprise.

"Not a bob," replied Frank vulgarly; "not half a bob."

"But--"

"I know what you're going to say; he treats you generously, I know. He treats me justly. Between generosity and justice, give me generosity all the time. I will tell you something else. He pays Jasper Cole a thousand a year! It's very curious, isn't it?"

She leaned over and patted his arm.

"Poor boy," she said sympathetically, "that doesn't make it any easier--Jasper, I mean."

Frank indulged in a little grimace, and said:

"By the way, I saw the mysterious Jasper this morning--coming out of the Waterloo Station looking more mysterious than ever. What particular business has he in the country?"

She shook her head and rose.

"I know as little about Jasper as you," she answered.

She turned and looked at him thoughtfully.

"Frank," she said, "I am rather worried about you and Jasper. I am worried because your uncle does not seem to take the same view of Jasper as you take. It is not a very heroic position for either of you, and it is rather hateful for me."

Frank looked at her with a quizzical smile.

"Why hateful for you?"

She shook her head.

"I would like to tell you everything, but that would not be fair."

"To whom?" Frank asked quickly.

"To you, your uncle, or to Jasper."

He came nearer to her.

"Have you so warm a feeling for Jasper?" he asked.

"I have no warm feeling for anybody," she said candidly. "Oh, don't look so glum, Frank! I suppose I am slow to develop, but you cannot expect me to have any very decided views yet a while."

Frank smiled ruefully.

"That is my one big trouble, dear," he said quietly; "bigger than anything else in the world."

She stood with her hand on the door, hesitating, a look of perplexity upon her beautiful face. She was of the tall, slender type, a girl slowly ripening into womanhood. She might have been described as cold and a little repressive, but the truth was that she was as yet untouched by the fires of pa.s.sion, and for all her twenty-one years she was still something of the healthy schoolgirl, with a schoolgirl's impatience of sentiment.

"I am the last to spin a hard-luck yarn," Frank went on, "but I have not had the best of everything, dear. I started wrong with uncle. He never liked my father nor any of my father's family. His treatment of his wife was infamous. My poor governor was one of those easy-going fellows who was always in trouble, and it was always John Minute's job to get him out. I don't like talking about him--" He hesitated.

She nodded.

"I know," she said sympathetically.

"Father was not the rotter that Uncle John thinks he was. He had his good points. He was careless, and he drank much more than was good for him, but all the sc.r.a.pes he fell into were due to this latter failing."

The girl knew the story of Doctor Merrill. It had been sketched briefly but vividly by John Minute. She knew also some of those sc.r.a.pes which had involved Doctor Merrill's ruin, material and moral.

"Frank," she said, "if I can help you in any way I would do it."

"You can help me absolutely," said the young man quietly, "by marrying me."

She gasped.

"When?" she asked, startled.

"Now, next week; at any rate, soon." He smiled, and, crossing to her, caught her hand in his.

"May, dear, you know I love you. You know there is nothing in the world I would not do for you, no sacrifice that I would not make."

She shook her head.

"You must give me some time to think about this, Frank," she said.

"Don't go," he begged. "You cannot know how urgent is my need of you.

Uncle John has told you a great deal about me, but has he told you this--that my only hope of independence--independence of his millions and his influence--you cannot know how widespread or pernicious that influence is," he said, with an unaccustomed pa.s.sion in his voice, "lies in my marriage before my twenty-fourth birthday?"

"Frank!"

"It is true. I cannot tell you any more, but John Minute knows. If I am married within the next ten days"--he snapped his fingers--"that for his millions. I am independent of his legacies, independent of his patronage."

She stared at him, open-eyed.

"You never told me this before."

He shook his head a little despairingly.

"There are some things I can never tell you, May, and some things which you can never know till we are married. I only ask you to trust me."

"But suppose," she faltered, "you are not married within ten days, what will happen?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"'I am John's liege man of life and limb and of earthly regard,'" he quoted flippantly. "I shall wait hopefully for the only release that can come, the release which his death will bring. I hate saying that, for there is something about him that I like enormously, but that is the truth, and, May," he said, still holding her hand and looking earnestly into her face, "I don't want to feel like that about John Minute. I don't want to look forward to his end. I want to meet him without any sense of dependence. I don't want to be looking all the time for signs of decay and decrepitude, and hail each illness he may have with a feeling of pleasant antic.i.p.ation. It is beastly of me to talk like this, I know, but if you were in my position--if you knew all that I know--you would understand."