Mammon and Co Part 18

Kit put down her coffee-cup and leaned back in her chair. The thing had gone wrong; she had meant to have got first innings on the subject of baccarat cheating, and she was rather afraid she was clean bowled. Quick as she was, she could not see her answer. Mr. Alington did not, however, look at her, nor did he pause longer than was necessary to sip his coffee.

"Your tactics were a little open, a little obvious, Lady Conybeare, if you will allow me to say so," he went on. "Delicious coffee! You exchanged so many glances with Lady Haslemere, and then looked up at me, that I could not fail to see you were watching for something. No man, I expect, likes to be suspected of so very paltry a crime as cheating at baccarat--a crime so hopelessly void of any grandeur--and no man, I am sure, likes a trap being laid for him by those whom he is ent.i.tled to consider his friends. And before I go on to the point I have in my mind I should like to say a word about this."

He cleared his throat and sipped his coffee again.

"What you and Lady Haslemere saw," he went on--"did your husband suspect me too? It does not matter--what you saw was this: I had declared a natural, and you saw me, as you thought, push a fifty-pound counter over the line. Was that not so?"

"There is no question of 'thought,'" said Kit, whom a sense of danger made the more incautious; "we saw you do it."

"Quite true. If you had observed a little more closely, you would have seen something else. Now, I ask you, the few times we have played baccarat together, did you ever see me fail to stake?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Quite so. If you had looked at the table a moment before, you would have seen I had nothing staked. What happened was this: I had staked four ten-pound counters and two fives; then, seeing that I had no more smaller ones, I withdrew them to subst.i.tute one fifty for them. At that moment I received my cards, and, taking them up I forgot for the moment to subst.i.tute my fifty. I looked at the cards, declared the natural, and you saw me push forward the fifty-pound counter quite openly, and, so you thought, clumsily. It never occurred to me for a moment there was any need of an explanation."

Kit's anger and alarm was growing on her.

"Very clumsily," she said; "we all saw it."

"It was stupid of me, no doubt, not to have explained at the time," he said, "but really I had no idea the company was so suspicious."

He paused for a moment, and his mild temper was roused at the thought of Kit's behaviour.

"But perhaps people are right to be suspicious," he added, with a raised intonation.

The shot went home, and Kit's face grew a shade paler. But she could not conceivably show that she knew what he meant, for that would be to accuse herself. Instead, she put all the insolence her voice would hold into her reply.

"And what proof have I of the truth of what you say?" she asked, fighting desperately on this battle-ground of her adversary's choosing.

"The fact that I say it," said Mr. Alington. "Also, there is corroborative evidence if I choose to adduce it. I showed you the other night, meaning merely to give you a hint, that, had I wanted, I could have cheated very neatly. Is it credible, then, even supposing that I am one of those people who cheat, that I should have done it so clumsily?"

Kit in her heart believed the man, but her superficial woman's cunning refused to give up the hold she still hoped she might have over him, her only answer to the hold she was afraid he had over her.

"We all make blunders at times," she said, in her most fiendish manner.

"Unfortunately, I don't believe what you say."

Mr. Alington sipped his coffee again. His momentary irritation had quite died down; you could not have found a kinder Christian in all England.

"Fortunately, however, that matters very little," he replied.

"It does not make a man popular among us," observed Kit, "if he is known to cheat at baccarat. I understood you the other night to say that sort of thing was common in Australia. I should advise you to remember that we think differently here."

Kit had lost her temper completely, and did not stop to weigh her words.

Worse than that, she lost her head, and lashed out insults with foolish defiance.

Mr. Alington crossed one leg over the other, his mouth grew a shade more compressed and precise, and his large pale eyes turned suddenly unluminous and stale like a snake's. Kit grew frightened again, and when a woman is frightened as well as angry she is not likely to score off a perfectly cool man. There was a moment's pause.

"Lady Conybeare," said he at length, "you have chosen to treat me as a knave and as a fool. And I dislike very much being treated as a knave or a fool by you. You accuse me of cheating: that I have reason to believe does not seem to you very shocking."

"May I ask why?" interrupted Kit.

Mr. Alington held up his hand, as if to deprecate any reply just now.

"And you accuse me of cheating clumsily, foolishly," he continued. "But can you really think I should be so tragic an a.s.s as to come to you with my mere a.s.sertion that I did not cheat? I have given you your chance to believe me of your own free will; you have, I regret to say, refused it.

I will now force you to believe me--force you," he repeated thoughtfully. "I have a witness, a person then present, who saw me withdraw those smaller counters and replace the larger."

Kit laughed, but uneasily.

"How very convenient!" she said. "What is his name?"

"Lord Abbotsworthy," remarked Alington. "I even took the precaution of calling his attention to what I had done. It was lucky I did. Ask Lord Abbotsworthy."

"One of your directors," said Kit, almost beside herself with anger, and rising from her chair.

"One of my directors, as you say," he replied, "and your friend. I need hardly remind you that your husband is another of my directors."

On the moment Jack came out of the dining-room. He cast one glance at Kit's face, took a cigarette, and strolled discreetly upstairs. When his wife was on the war-path and had not asked his alliance he did not give it.

"I shall be upstairs when you and my wife have finished your talk," he said over his shoulder to Alington. "Come and see me before you go."

The pause sobered Kit.

"Yes," continued Alington, "he had a moment before asked me to change him some money for small counters, and that left me with only a few small ones. Luckily, he will remember seeing me withdraw and subst.i.tute my stake. You and Lady Haslemere would have been wise to consult him before taking this somewhat questionable step of watching me. A fault of judgment--a mere fault of judgment."

Kit, figuratively speaking, threw up her hand. The desperate hope that Alington was lying was no longer tenable.

"And I await your apology," he added.

There was a long silence. Kit was not accustomed to apologize to anybody for anything. Her indifference to this man, except in so far as he could financially serve them, had undergone a startling transformation in the last hour. Indifference had given place first to anger at his insolence, then to fear. His placid, serene face had become to her an image of some infernal Juggernaut, whose car rolled on over bodies of men, yet whose eyelash never quivered. Pride battled with fear in her mind, fury with prudence. And Juggernaut (butler no longer), contrary to his ascetic habit, lit a cigarette.

"Well?" he said, when he judged that the pause was sufficiently prolonged.

Kit had sat down again in her chair, and was conscious only of two things--this inward struggle, and an absorbing hatred of the man seated opposite her.

"Supposing I refuse to apologize?" she asked at length.

"I shall regret it very much," he said; "you probably will regret it more. Come, Lady Conybeare, by what right do you make an enemy of me?"

Again there was silence. Kit knew very well how everyone would talk if this detestable business became public, which she understood to be the threat contained in Alington's words, and knew also that a rupture between Jack and him, which must inevitably follow, would not be likely to lead to their financial success in this business of the mines.

"I shall require you also to tell Lady Haslemere and your husband, if he also has at any time suspected me, into what a deplorable error you have fallen," continued Alington, dropping out his words as you drop some strong drug into a graduated gla.s.s, careful to give neither too much nor too little.

Suddenly Kit made up her mind, and having done that, she determined to act with the best possible grace.

"I apologize, Mr. Alington," she said; "I apologize sincerely. I wronged you abominably. I will do in all points as you suggest."

Mr. Alington did not move a muscle.