Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927

THE ADJUSTERS NEATLY SETTLE ON THEIR NEXT “VICTIM,” AND THE JAWS OF CIRCUMSTANCE CLOSE DOWN WITH A MERCILESS POWER

I

Many and varied now were the cases that were brought to Daphne Wrayne in her luxurious offices at 179 Conduit Street, W. For the recovery of the Duchess of Hardington’s famous pearl necklace had impressed the public not a little.

In addition to which the interview with Daphne herself as published in the Monitor had intrigued them vastly. A mysterious detective agency that not only suggested that it might succeed where the police failed, but did as well — with a pretty society girl at the head of it, an unlimited capital behind it, and avowedly disinterested aims in front of it — held a direct appeal for the man in the street, which became stronger still when the Monitor added some interesting details of Daphne Wrayne’s history.

She was, it seemed, the only daughter of Colonel Wrayne, V.C., D.S.O., deceased, had inherited his entire fortune, and had lived most of her life in India. Now, she was well-known in Society, with a flat in Brook Street and a house at Maidenhead. Her recreations were hunting, shooting, tennis and golf.

The writer of the article touched upon the originality of modern girlhood, speculated vaguely on who her colleagues could be, and finished up with a pretty reference to the Knights of the Round Table and the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

The public of course devoured the article with avidity — and argued hotly over it. Though on one point nearly every one was agreed, and that was that more than one master mind was at the back of this enterprise. Furthermore that whoever those master minds were, they were managing to keep their identities amazingly well hidden.

Daphne Wrayne looked up from her writing as, after a knock, the door opened and Carlton, the stalwart commissionaire, came in.

“Well, Carlton?”

“A Captain Marriner, Miss — particularly wants to see you.”

Daphne nodded, leaned back in her chair. From her attitude and appearance she was expecting something more — from her eyes, fixed on Carlton, some procedure to which she was accustomed.

“Sea captain, Miss — coaster or tramp. Roughly dressed — seems a bit worried. Speaks slow, but looks you straight in the face.”

“Show him in, Carlton.”

Captain Marriner came in hesitatingly. He was a thick-set man of medium height dressed in a loose suit of blue serge. He had a tanned, weatherbeaten face, a little pointed beard, a mass of silvery hair and a pair of blue eyes that seemed to wander round the room divided between amazement, awe, and suspicion.

Certainly it was hardly like an office with its snow-white walls, on which hung rare watercolors, its big easy chairs, its softly curtained, mullioned windows, its heavy carpet that declined to repeat your footsteps, its wonderful oriental bowls of hot-house flowers.

Least of all was it like an office with that slender, fair-haired girl sitting behind that massive, paper-covered oak table with its telephones, electric bells, and nothing at all that suggested feminine interest. That girl sat now with an elbow resting on the table and one slim, white, ringless hand supporting her chin as she studied her visitor with thoughtful interest.

“Sit down, Captain.”

“Thank ’ee, Miss.”

He seated himself on the extreme edge of one of the easy chairs, eyes anywhere but on Daphne — twirling his peaked cap uneasily — a man obviously worried.

“So the police have turned you down, Captain?” queried Daphne quietly.

“Yes, they wouldn’t — how did you know?” looking up suddenly.

A smile flitted over her face.

“No black magic, Captain. No one comes to us — at present — except as a last resource. Now perhaps,” encouragingly, “if you were to put on a pipe it might help a bit.”

He brightened up in a moment.

“If you don’t mind, Miss—” he began, but Daphne picked up a cigarette herself, and lighted it.

“Just tell me everything,” she said as she leaned back in her chair.

“It’s about two years ago,” he began, “that I first ’eard of the Lightning Returns Company—”

“Run by a man called Horatio Merryweather, wasn’t it?” put in Daphne quietly.

“It was. Fancy you knowin’ that!”

He pressed the tobacco in his pipe down with his thumb, and went on.

“They sent me a circular and a letter ’bout the company. Goodness knows what it wasn’t goin’ to do. Goin’ to turn us into millionaires quick — all of us. And I was mug enough to fall for it—” ruefully.

“For much, Captain?”

“Every blinkin’ penny I ’ad in the world, Miss. One thousand and four pounds, seven shillings and sixpence. All my life’s savings.”

Daphne nodded sympathetically. But she was puzzled as to exactly what was coming.

“It all went — every penny,” he went on, gazing forlornly at the carpet, as if he were still looking at his money that had vanished. “The Company went into bankruptcy and the Official Receiver ’e was goin’ to do all sorts of things. But the tide seems to run sluggish in them channels.”

He paused a moment, almost as if expecting Daphne to say something. Finding that she didn’t, he went on again.

“Seems to me kinder wrong,” puffing at his pipe, “that blokes like that with the gift o’ the gab should be allowed to swindle workin’ men like me and get away with it.

“The Official Receiver said it was a swindle and ’e reckoned as ’ow the Police ought to take it up. The Police said it was a swindle, but they fancied it was more in the Public Prosecutor’s line than theirs.

“And the Public Prosecutor quite agreed with ’em, but ’e didn’t see ’ow ’e could do nothing. So, between ’em, I ’as to go back to work again and if anything ’appens to me, my missus goes to the work ’us.”

Daphne sat silent for some minutes drawing abstractedly on her blotting pad.

“And I suppose you want us to get your money back for you,” she said presently.

“Well, you said in your advertisement that if the police couldn’t help, you could — so I reckoned you’d ’ave some way o’ handling this bloke — some way of your own.”

Daphne frowned. It was not often that she was at a loss how to answer, but she was now. She wanted to tell this old man that his case was an impossible one, that the whole affair had been wiped out by bankruptcy, and Merryweather himself had received an official whitewash.

Yet she found it at the moment a little difficult. She could see that he had the sublimest, most touching faith in herself and the Adjusters. And she was sorry for him.

“Will you give us a month, Captain?” she queried, frowning a little.

He got up from his chair, a broad, delighted smile on his face.

“I knew it,” he said, “I told my missus you wasn’t frauds!”

“We’re not frauds,” smiled Daphne, still drawing on her pad. “Yet we don’t always succeed, you know.”

But this he seemed to take merely as an excess of modesty.

“I’m quite content, Miss,” he said. “I’ll come up as soon as you’re ready for me!”

Long after he had gone out Daphne sat drumming on the table with her fingers.

“As soon as you’re ready for me,” she murmured for the twentieth time. “Why didn’t I have the pluck to tell him straight out that it’s hopeless. And yet—”

II

In a small, plainly furnished room in the heart of the city, four men and a girl sat round an official-looking table in official-looking chairs. At first sight you might have imagined that this was merely an ordinary office, and that the North Western Trading Syndicate — for such was its name on the outside door — was one of those many small companies with which the metropolis abounds. Certainly it looked like the board room of an ordinary office.

There were the usual pens and ink and white blotting pads on the table, and the usual almanacs on the walls, the usual directories on the marble mantelpiece with the usual solid marble clock in the middle of them.

Yet a second glance would have suggested that perhaps after all this was no ordinary office. For the girl who sat at the head of the table, though simply dressed, just as hundreds of other city girls dress, had an air of distinction about her.

As she leaned forward on the mahogany table talking rapidly, you saw at once that though every one of these men was almost twice her age, yet one and all listened to her not only with interest but with deference.

And they, too, impressed you. You saw at a glance that these were no ordinary city men. The big, loose-limbed giant in the gray flannel suit who sat next to the girl, with his clean-shaven face and merry blue eyes, struck you as an open-air man — public-school, ’varsity, athlete all the time. Debrett would have summed him up prosaically thus:

“Who’s Who” would have been a little more flattering, while Arsden would have spread itself upon young Lord Trewitter’s athletic record.

Now he took his well-worn brier from between his teeth, and shook his head as he gazed at it.

“I’m afraid we’ve hit a snag, Daph,” he said, “and, what’s more, that we’ll have to own it. Bound to come sooner or later, dear,” as he saw a frown gather on the girl’s face.

“It’s no use trying to kid ourselves and the public that we’re infallible. We’re not, and there’s an end to it. You said yourself that you didn’t see how it was to be done. I’ll go further and say that it can’t be done — at least not in accordance with our Rules.”

Daphne gave a laugh that was half smiling, half angry.

“Oh, bother our Rules!” she exclaimed.

“Ah, but that is what we mustn’t do, my dear,” chimed in the thin, bronzed-faced, gold-monocled man who was leaning back in his chair with his hands in his pockets. Any pressman in London would have identified him in a moment as Sir Hugh Williamson, world-famous explorer.

“Personally I wouldn’t care a row of tusks about goin’ and robbin’ Merryweather of that thousand quid. And if I did time for it, I wouldn’t reckon it a slur on my character. But we decided long ago that we wouldn’t do this sort of thing. And I can see, same as Jimmy, that there’s little hope of findin’ another way.

“Ask Martin, here, for the whole bag of tricks in a legal nutshell. He’ll give it to you.”

Martin Everest, the famous K. C., sitting at the other end of the table, nodded sympathetically at Daphne.

“I’m afraid they’re both right, Daph,” he said. “It’s one of those cases that will only get us into trouble.” He sat forward now, hands clasped, his handsome, clean-cut face definitely serious.

“You’re confusing the man you believe to be a criminal with the man who is actually one. A great difference in law, my dear!”

“But the whole world knows Merryweather to be a scoundrel, Martin,” urged the girl.

“And is unable to prove it,” he answered. “I can tell you, as a lawyer, that no indictment can be found that will touch him over the Lightning Returns Company. That’s why I’m going to urge you to drop this case. The men we’ve handled hitherto have been criminals, or engaged in the commission of a crime.

“By a knowledge of both facts we have been able to trick them out of their ill-got gains — our security being that they couldn’t lift a linger against us without disclosing their own crimes.”

“Here, unfortunately, we have no such security. We call the Lightning Returns Company a swindle, and the authorities will agree with us. But bankruptcy has closed it and the public prosecutor has tacitly whitewashed its founder. Touch one penny of Merryweather’s and he’ll appeal to the law — and the law will uphold him!”

He lighted a cigarette in the silence that followed. All eyes were on Daphne. It was obvious that she, as much as the others, realized the truth of what he had said — but she, at any rate, seemed half reluctant to admit it.

“Oh, bother your legal mind, Martin,” she said with a little half vexed laugh. “To have to acknowledge on a simple, straightforward case like this, that we’re beaten at the start—”

“That’s the trouble,” put in Alan Sylvester, the actor-manager, stroking his cheery, rubicund face, “Daphne hates having to own that we’re beaten and—”

“What I say is, Alan,” interrupted the girl, “that we’ve got no business to sit down and admit it without an effort. You’re all probably right in what you say, but until a month’s passed and no solution’s forthcoming, I won’t believe it’s helpless, so there!

“And even if there is no solution,” she went on, as if an afterthought had suddenly struck her, “I don’t really see why—”

She stopped suddenly. She saw they were all smiling at her.

“Well, why shouldn’t we?” with a little impatient gesture. “We can afford it!”

“Bad precedent, my dear,” suggested Everest. “If we start paying clients out of our own pockets — nevertheless, we’ll have a go at it — and see what we can do for you.”

The girl nodded, but her eyes held a worried look.

“It isn’t for myself,” she said, “it’s that poor dear old man. I hate to think of him, seventy-five years of age — just going to retire — his wife waiting for him — Darby and Joan for the rest of their days. Oh, there must be a solution!”

All the same, after the lapse of a week, during which she had thought of a hundred schemes and had rejected each one of them, it began to dawn upon her that what her colleagues had told her was right.

Yet she refused to give in, though by now the thing had well-nigh become an obsession with her. For hours together she would sit in her room puzzling to find a solution, unconsciously drawing figures on her blotting pad — but always the same figures — £10,004 7s 6d.

III

She had been doing it one afternoon and was sitting staring abstractedly at the pad before her, covered as it was with those eternal figures which now never seemed to leave her.

“You know,” she murmured to herself, “I shall have to stop this. It’s getting on my nerves. If I go on like this, that infernal thousand and four pounds, seven and sixpence will drive me into a lunatic—”

And then suddenly she stopped — stopped with a little quick cry wherein amazement, incredulity, hope, delight were all blended.

“Oh!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “I believe — I do believe—”

Her hand flashed out to the electric bell on her table and in a minute Carlton appeared.

“Carlton!” Daphne’s eyes were sparkling like an excited schoolgirl’s. “Carlton! I can’t see any one this afternoon? Not a soul of any sort — no callers — telephones — or anything! Don’t come near me for at least an hour. I’ve got—”

She stopped abruptly, flushing up in pretty confusion. Then, with equally pretty demureness, “I believe I’ve got a brain-wave, Carlton.”

“Very good, miss.”

As he closed the door and walked back to his table, there was something resembling a twinkle in the stalwart commissionaire’s eye.

Yet on the next afternoon the Daphne Wrayne who faced her four colleagues once again in that plainly furnished office whose outer door bore the inscription “The North Western Trading Syndicate,” showed not the slightest trace of excitement.

That something unexpected was coming those four men knew well enough — for they knew Daphne. Daphne never summoned them at a moment’s notice like this, without good and sufficient reason. Besides, her nicely assumed air of indifference, her airy nonchalance, even though it was amusing them, was certainly not deceiving them.

So, as if by tacit consent, they all waited interestedly for her to begin.

“Well, have any of you found the solution to the Merryweather case?” she queried with a fine assumption of carelessness.

Martin Everest, leaning forward on the table, answered:

“One of us has, Daph.”

“Which one?” quickly.

“You, my dear.”

Her pretty lips quivered.

“How do you know?”

“We know you! Let’s have it.”

Daphne lighted a cigarette, smiled at them all now. She saw they had guessed.

“Let me put a hypothetical case to you all,” she began. “Each one of you try to imagine that you are liable to some one — in equity, not law — for the sum, let’s say, of £1,004 7s 6d.

“Each of you is a wealthy man, but an unscrupulous one — and because you know the law can’t touch you, you tell your creditor to go to the devil” — she paused fractionally — “same as Horatio Merryweather did!”

The smile had gone from the faces of the four men. She was interesting them now and they were waiting for her to continue.

“Now, supposing,” she went on, gaining confidence as she noticed how they were hanging on her words, “that suddenly those figures began to descend on you like autumn leaves. Supposing that wherever you went, whatever you did, you found them confronting you at every turn? Stretch your imagination a little, and suppose — for the sake of argument — that you couldn’t get out of bed in the morning — couldn’t come down to breakfast — couldn’t go to your office, your club — couldn’t open a letter, a book, a newspaper — couldn’t move hand or foot from morning till night without those hideous figures rising up from somewhere and confronting you!

“And to add to the torture of it all, though you knew well enough who was engineering it, yet so cleverly was it done that you hadn’t a hope of proving it. What would you, wealthy men to whom a thousand pounds was nothing, do in order to rid yourselves of that insidious torture that was well-nigh driving you crazy — as it would drive you crazy if properly carried out? Wouldn’t you pay — and be darned glad to be quit of it all?”

At the sheer, undisguised admiration that was on the faces of her four colleagues she flushed up in obvious delight.

“Well,” she said smiling, “is it any good?”

“By Heavens, Daph,” exclaimed Trewitter, “it’s marvelous — it’s absolutely it!”

“And the law can’t touch us,” murmured Everest.

“Gee, but we’ll give him hell!” chuckled Williamson.

“How on earth did you hit it, dear?” queried Sylvester.

But the girl shook her head.

“I don’t think I did, Alan, it just hit me. You see, I’d got to the stage where those figures had become such a nightmare to me that I was really prepared to put down a thousand pounds out of my pocket in order to get rid of them. To apply the idea to Merryweather was a natural transition, I fancy!”

Martin Everest lay back in his chair, eyes on the ceiling, chuckling broadly.

“It was Schopenhauer who said,” he remarked, “that when in doubt consult a woman. She invariably sees what lies in front of her nose, while a man misses it because he is looking ten miles beyond. We’ve all been busy constructing the most elaborate and ingenious financial schemes to— Daph, I congratulate you! Once more you’ve put us right.”

“Just a bit of luck, Martin. Still, I knew you’d jump at it, and in order not to waste any time I’ve made a start.”

“How?”

“I went straight up and saw Horatio.” Surprise now — obvious surprise on every face. Almost a shade of anxiety, too, as they gazed at her.

“Whatever for, Daph?” asked Trewitter.

“It seemed to me that it was the first thing to be done.” She leaned forward on the table, slim hands clasped. A minute before she had been a laughing, blushing little girl — now she was a serious-eyed young woman who was almost laying down the law to these four men.

“In order that whatever we do shall carry real weight with Merryweather,” she said, “it is necessary to fix those figures in his brain. Everything we do from now onward is going to haunt him a million times more if he knows who is engineering this and why it is done.”

“Daphne’s right there,” nodded Sylvester. “If you’re warned of something that’s going to happen, it impresses you far more when it does happen than if you could assign no reason for it. That was your idea, wasn’t it, Daph?”

“Exactly, Alan. Therefore I got an interview with him and told him straight out who I was and why I had come.”

“And what did he say?”

“What I expected he’d say. I could see that he wanted to tell me that I was a silly little girl; first, for coming up at all and putting my cards so plainly on the table; and, secondly, for being stupid enough to imagine that merely at my request he would dream of paying Captain Marriner his thousand and four pounds, seven and sixpence.

“However, being a smooth, suave sort of a beast, who treats anything in the way of a pretty girl with a kind of good-natured tolerance, he merely said: ‘I’m afraid you’re a bit out of your depth, little lady. I admire your nerve, but there’s nothing doing.’ ”

“And what did you say?”

“Oh, I smiled sweetly at him and told him that there would be a good deal doing — though I’d come up to offer him the easiest way, despite the fact that I never expected he’d be wise enough to accept it.”

“You were askin’ for it, Daph,” murmured Williamson.

“Deliberately!” retorted the girl. “I wanted to make him angry and fix the whole thing in his brain. And what’s more, I did. He turned nasty then — said that the adjusters thought themselves damn clever, but they warn’t as clever as they thought they were.

“I merely smiled and said that I hoped to be able to show him that they were far cleverer than he’d ever imagined. And that finished the interview. Incidentally, he’s appearing at Bow Street to-morrow and we must get busy.”

“What’s he up for this time, Daph?”

A curious little smile played round the corners of the girl’s mouth.

“The police have summoned him,” she said, “for having a false number on the back of his Rolls. The defense will be that he knew nothing about it — but I’m afraid the magistrate will fine him all the same.”

In the little pause that followed, the four men exchanged glances. Then Martin Everest spoke:

“Can you — by any chance, Daph — tell us what was — the false number?” he asked.

Daphne looked up, hazel eyes twinkling mischievously.

“Sure thing, Martin. It was 1004—7–6. Rayte, my chauffeur, and I did it together. His car was drawn up in the yard in front of mine. I’d brought a number plate with me — specially made. It was quite easy.”

IV

Horatio Merryweather was in a furious temper. He came down the steps of Bow Street police court growling and swearing under his breath, for the magistrate had fined him five guineas and costs.

“Curse that infernal girl,” he muttered. “If only I could prove—”

“Pyper, guv-nor? All the winners.”

He took it mechanically from the seedy newsvendor with the tattered bowler and threw him a copper. At the curb stood his offending car, with the chauffeur at the open door.

“The Century,” snapped Merryweather.

“Very good, sir.”

The financier lighted a cigar and lay back on the cushions, smoking moodily. Then he unfolded his paper, but as he did so he uttered a fierce imprecation. Right across the center page were branded in thick, black, glowing type the figures 1004—7—6.

He snatched at the speaking tube and the car slid to the pavement.

“Back to Bow Street at once!” he shouted, as the chauffeur opened the door.

So furious was he when he alighted that he could hardly speak. All the same, standing there on the pavement, a sense of his own helplessness came to him as he glanced up and down and round about, seeing not a sign of the individual who had sold him the paper. To complain to the police would be to have to make explanations. And to have to do that—

“Oh, drive me back to the club,” he flung out, and got into his car again. Then suddenly: “Did you see the man who sold me my paper?” he demanded.

“Me, sir? No, sir. Did you wish—”

“Oh, get on!” snapped his master furiously.

In the reading room of his club, after two stiff brandies and sodas, his courage began to filter back once more. After all, he was safe here. Out in the street, perhaps, he told himself — but not in here in one of the biggest and most expensive clubs in London!

All the same, as he walked upstairs to the billiard room he found himself glancing suspiciously at every man he met.

“Hello, Merryweather!” exclaimed a well known politician, as he entered the room.

“Here’s a victim for you — Williamson!” to a man who was knocking the balls about carelessly. “Here’s an opponent who’ll make you run.”

The other straightened himself up, adjusting his gold-rimmed monocle.

“Delighted, I’m sure,” he said.

Deep in the game the financier soon forgot his disturbing thoughts. He was a keen and skilled billiard player, and his opponent was worthy of his steel. Several men drifted in and settled down to watch.

“What Williamson’s this?” queried Merryweather in an undertone to one of his friends, while his opponent was building up a break. “I know him by sight.”

“Sir Hugh Williamson, the explorer. Devilish good chap, too.”

“Seems it.”

The game came to an end with Merryweather the winner.

“Jolly good game, Sir Hugh. Like another?”

“Mustn’t now. Another time — certainly.”

“Have a drink?”

“Many thanks.”

Sir Hugh Williamson, still in his shirt sleeves, dropped into a chair by the side of two or three other men. Merryweather walked across the room, took his cigar case from his coat, which was hanging on the rack — came back to the table.

“Cigar, Sir Hugh?”

“You’re very kind.”

Merryweather clicked open the case, but as he did so he leaped back as if he had been shot. And simultaneously a big white card fluttered out on to the floor.

The four men had seen it, they couldn’t help seeing it, but it was Merryweather at whom they were staring now. For Merryweather was livid with rage, and tearing at his collar literally as if he was choking.

Williamson was the first to break that amazed silence. There was grave anxiety in his voice.

“Are you ill, Merryweather?”

It seemed to restore the financier. With a desperate effort he appeared partially to regain his composure.

“N-n-no — it’s n-nothing,” he muttered. “I... I... I’ll be back in a minute.”

He made hurriedly for the door, and they noticed that he was mopping at his face with his handkerchief.

“He’s left that card,” said one of the men after an uneasy pause.

“Ask me,” answered another, “and I think he was scared to touch it.”

“Hardly wise to leave it there, is it?” suggested Williamson, as he bent forward and picked it up. The others leaned over eagerly as he turned it. On it was printed in big letters:

V

A week had elapsed. It was rumored at the clubs that something was seriously wrong with Horatio Merryweather, the big financier.

Usually a loud-voiced, thoroughly self-satisfied man with a big laugh and a confident manner, he had all in a week become a mere shadow of his former self — a man who seemed to be on wires, who was always glancing over his shoulder as if in fear of something — moody, irritable, snappish.

And nobody could find out why it was. All that his office could have told you was that he was making the lives of each one of his clerks a burden — always demanding to know who had been in his room — who had been touching his papers, his inkstand, his books, his blotting pad. A thousand questions of that kind, they said — every day! And never any sort of explanation!

And at all his clubs they could have told a similar tale.

Only he himself knew that now, after six days of this, he was almost becoming insane. Only he knew how every moment of his life had suddenly become a nerve-racking, devastating torture. From the moment he left his house in the morning — his house was the only place where nothing ever happened — the spectre of 1004—7—6 gave him no rest.

It rose up before him at every twist and turn. It came in letters, in harmless-looking printed circulars, in registered envelopes, in telegrams. It was left for him in a thousand forms at his clubs by messenger boys, by uniformed commissionaires, by clergymen, clerks — even women. Telephone messages would come while he was at his lunch, apparently bona fide telephone messages from well-known business firms who would start, when he took the phone, by obviously genuine business discussions to which he would listen interestedly and intently.

And then suddenly, after keeping him there for a full ten minutes:

“What we really want, Mr. Merryweather, is — one thousand and four pounds, seven and six please!”

Yet such was the obstinacy of the man that he was still refusing to give in. That the adjusters were doing it he knew full well, but he was preferring to face the endless tortures which he was undergoing, rather than admit defeat to that hazel-eyed girl who had smiled so serenely at him in his office.

Yet he knew well enough that each day was getting worse than its predecessor. Today, it was true, he had a respite. Yet no real respite, before the haunting tension was always upon him again — the perpetual dread that gave him no rest.

And then at twelve o’clock a clerk had brought him in a message — Merryweather refused to go near the telephone now — that Lord Ammington wanted him to come and lunch at the Ritz at one-thirty.

The financier hesitated a few moments. He had another luncheon party already fixed — a luncheon party à deux, that he didn’t want to miss.

But Lord Ammington was rather an important personage to him just now. He was in negotiation with him over a very big deal. This might perhaps clinch the whole matter.

“Tell Lord Ammington I’ll be there,” he said curtly.

One hour and a half later, as he sat in the lounge of the Ritz, a page approached him with a note. Merryweather’s terrors swarmed back in a moment, but one glance at the envelope reassured him.

He knew Lord Ammington’s handwriting, and took the letter with a sigh of relief, and slit it open.

A week ago he would have turned the air blue with fierce fury and bitter invective. He would have withered the page boy, singed the hall porter, consigned the whole staff to regions unnameable.

But now he never said one word. He just stood gazing stupidly at the sheet of paper he held in his hand — Lord Ammington’s note paper, Lord Ammington’s crest. And scrawled across it in a strange hand:

He fell heavily into a chair.

“It’s — it’s — all — right,” he said thickly to the boy.

When he left the restaurant that afternoon one or two people commented on the fact that he seemed to have been drinking heavily.

That night Horatio Merryweather awoke suddenly with a start, and the uneasy consciousness on him that he was not alone in his room.

He had a vague idea that there had been a loud report, and he presently became alive to the fact that he could hear a faint whirring noise over by the window.

He raised himself gently on his elbow. Yes, he could hear it distinctly now — and it sounded like some perfect piece of machinery, growing louder, too, every minute!

He felt the cold, clammy perspiration breaking out over him now as he lay there striving to pierce that black darkness. A hundred sinister thoughts crowded into his mind.

Supposing that this was the last desperate move of the adjusters? Supposing that they had managed to secrete a bomb in his flat, and that in a minute!

He longed to move, to cry out for help, to put out his hand and switch on the light — yet so great was the blind, unreasoning terror on him that he was powerless to stir — terror-stricken at what the light might disclose.

He felt beads of perspiration running down his face, but he couldn’t move from sheer fright. The bedclothes seemed like a ton weight. And still that soft purring noise, like some great animal, seemed to be coming ever nearer.

And then suddenly he screamed, screamed as a man screams just before his nerves, worked to breaking point, finally snap. For a tiny little beam of light had suddenly shot up from nowhere in the darkness and was now dancing about in the air in front of him, backward and forward like a mad thing.

Another sprang up and joined it — two of them — three of them — four of them — five of them — six of them!

Horror! They were figures, real figures, shining out in that inky darkness, dancing, swaying, this way and that — backward, forward, sideways!

They were becoming steadier now — almost grouping themselves together — he could read them. There was a one — two noughts — there was a four—

Merryweather was clutching the bedclothes in an ecstasy of terror, perspiration streaming from him. He was going mad — he must be mad! It couldn’t possibly be real, it—

And then he screamed again, for suddenly a luminous face, grinning terribly, had shot up and joined those dancing figures. It had a pointed beard and a sailor’s peaked cap.

Merryweather went on screaming.

When his servants eventually broke into his room they found him huddled up on the bed in a dead faint.

VI

Daphne Wrayne dropped into a chair in the secluded corner of the palm-shaded conservatory and Lord Trewitter sat down beside her.

“Give me a cigarette, Jimmy, and tell me all the news. I’m simply dying to hear it.”

“Only one dance the whole evening,” pretending to grumble, “and I’ve got to talk shop.”

“Oh, Jimmy!”

There was a soft note of reproach in her voice as she gave a quick glance round — moved nearer to him. Then:

“There’s... there’s — no one about — darling!”

He bent down quickly.

As a couple came into the conservatory Daphne was fanning herself vigorously. Lord Trewitter was lighting his cigarette, talking calmly, conversationally, in little seemingly disconnected sentences with a pause between each one.

“It’s all been so absurdly easy, Daph — they’ve all entered into it like schoolboys. Our friend’s had it for breakfast, lunch, tea and supper — served hot, too!”

He chuckled softly and went on:

“We’ve spared no expense — sent him letters — specially printed note paper, stamped outside and in, with pukka headings — companies he deals with — all apparently genuine business on the first page. Then — he turns over and finds — the fateful numbers!

“Not only in letters, though — telegrams, registered packets, postcards, express delivery — to his clubs, restaurants, friends’ houses where he’s dined. We detailed off two men to shadow him and keep in touch with us. All so easy, my dear — like picking pennies out of a blind man’s tin!”

He lighted another cigarette — still chuckling.

“And is he getting worried, Jim?” asked the girl.

“Worried, darling? Why he’s plumb crazy! You see he’s never had a moment’s respite. The afternoon he came out of Bow Street, Alan, as a disreputable old paper-seller, was waiting for him — sold him a paper — having previously stamped the jolly old number across the middle page.

“Alan knows that it clicked,” laughing softly, “because his Highness was back again in five minutes and Alan only just got away without being seen.”

“Oh, go on — I’m loving it,” murmured the girl eagerly.

“Hugh was waiting for him at the Century Club,” went on Trewitter, “took him on at billiards and slipped a card into his cigar case. And then there was a shindy! And so on and so forth — we’ve got him into the condition now that he refuses to answer the telephone — and if they bring him up a note he wants to know its life’s history before he’ll even touch it.

“He can’t last much longer — he’s nearly at the end of his tether.”

“What makes you say that, Jim?”

“This morning’s happenings,” lowering his voice. “I’d dropped into Jerry Ammington’s flat — Jerry mentioned he was on a big deal with Horatio. Too good to miss, I thought — pinched a sheet of Jerry’s note paper — rung our friend up to come and lunch at the Ritz.

“When he turned up he received a note — I was there and saw it. It was as good as a play. Suspicion, fear, everything, as the boy comes up — you could see it! Then relief as he examined the envelope — I can forge Jerry’s hand wonderfully,” with a grin, “apart from the crest being outside. Then he opened it, and there’s the dear old number again! He couldn’t even scream, my dear. He just collapsed.”

“I wonder how long he’ll stand it?” mused the girl. “I should fancy, Jim, that he’s a lineal descendant of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. There’ll be plenty of ‘won’t let the people go,’ yet.”

“Maybe, darling, but I’ll take six to four all the same that he’s ringing you up for an appointment within twenty-four hours. Listen! Martin’s been to his house to-night — electric light man, or one of those things — and left a small box behind his dressing-table where it’s a hundred to one against its being found.”

“What’s in it?” queried Daphne.

“Something right off the ice. A clockwork contraption — set for two o’clock — Horatio gets heme early these days — finds it safer,” with a chuckle.

“At two o’clock the box opens with a bang, which is to wake him up and tell him the curtain’s going up. Then up jump all the dear old figures on the ends of wires and do a sort of fox-trot in the air — and a nice little portrait of Captain Marriner! And as they’re all done with luminous paint and our young friend’s been drinking a bit lately, I fancy he’ll have a sticky quarter of an hour.”

Daphne rippled with laughter as she got up from her chair and shook out her skirts daintily. Then, as she put her hand lightly on Lord Trewitter’s arm:

“Oh, Jimmy, if only I could hug you,” she whispered, “just to tell you what I think of you all!”

A couple approached them at that moment. Lord Trewitter’s face was devoid of expression.

“Not a bad idea at all,” he said languidly.

As they strolled on together, the girl who had passed turned to her companion.

“That’s Jimmy Trewitter, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied with a careless laugh. “He and Daphne Wrayne used to be a bit thick, but since the adjusters started, she’s got no time for him.”

VII

Carlton, the stalwart commissionaire, came into Daphne Wrayne’s room the next morning, closing the door quietly.

“Mr. Merryweather to see you, Miss — but I don’t like the look of him.”

A twinkle of merriment came into the girl’s eyes.

“Quite all right, Carlton — really.”

“Then you’ll see him, Miss?” still a little dubious.

“I’ve been expecting him every day, Carlton,” she said with a sweet smile.

A moment later the commissionaire showed him in.

“Mr. Merryweather, Miss.”

Daphne looked up a little languidly from her writing.

“Sit down, Mr. Merryweather,” she said.

But he made no move — just stood there watching her, his fury growing every minute. For though fear and desperation had brought him there, he was beginning once more to harden his heart.

It infuriated him beyond measure to think that he, Horatio Merryweather, should have to humble himself to this girl who was calmly writing while he stood waiting!

“I want to know when this infernal business is going to cease!” he barked out.

Daphne Wrayne laid down her pen and lifting her eyes surveyed him as a puppy surveys a beetle. Then she stretched out her hand, took a cigarette from the silver box on the table, lighted it and, leaning back in her chair, blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling.

“Mr. Merryweather,” she said and there was a dangerous glint in the eyes that she fixed on his, “I don’t particularly wish to see you, though it would seem that you wish to see me. But please understand once and for all that unless you behave yourself properly I shall order my commissionaire to remove you.”

This time he stared at her in sheer amazement. The girl who had come to his office had been a quiet, smiling, seemingly rather hesitating girl, who to all intents and purposes had been anxious to conciliate him. Now he was faced by a young woman who might almost have been a queen about to pass sentence on a rebel. Then, as he made no answer, she went on:

“What is it you want with me?”

His eyes blazed up anew at that. After all he had been through during the past week, and now to be asked by this slip of a girl—

“Oh, don’t come the innocent on me!” he retorted roughly, “because it won’t wash. What I want to know is—”

He stopped abruptly, for one slim hand shot out and was poised over the electric bell on her table.

“If I ring my bell,” she said, and her voice was like steel, “this interview comes to an end. And you will have no chance of another — for a month! Get that clearly into your head, Mr. Merryweather.”

He would have given half his fortune to defy her, but the finger that hung over the bell never trembled.

“I should like to discuss things with you,” he said sullenly.

She inclined her head ever so slightly, and motioned him to a chair.

“You... you... came to me a week ago,” he began, moistening his dry lips, “about — about a certain — Captain Marriner.”

“I did. And I offered you certain terms which you laughed at. If you are prepared to listen to them now—”

“But it’s perfectly preposterous,” angrily, “I’ll give you a check for five hundred pounds—”

“We’ll end this interview,” she said and reached out once more for the bell.

“Stop! I’ll write you a check in full. But it’s a swindle all the same.”

“I should be a little careful,” she answered, her eyes narrowing; “if I have any more of your impertinence you’ll be sorry for it.”

“Who shall I make the check out to?” sullenly.

“To Miss Daphne Wrayne.”

He wrote it out without another word, tore it out viciously with a rasping sound, flung it on the table. Yet even then the arrogance of him couldn’t resist one final attempt at bluff.

“I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you,” he snapped, “that if I chose to do so I could stop that check and run you in for blackmail?”

Daphne gazed at him — gazed at him with that faint smile of compassion with which one regards a puling infant. Then, with the smile deepening, she tilted back her chair and with studied carelessness crossed one slender silk-clad leg over the other — a perfect picture of lovely, insolent, contemptuous girlhood.

Then she held out the check to him.

“I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you,” she said, “that we haven’t really started on you yet? But if you want your check back, we’d love to show you—”

But Horatio Merryweather had grabbed his hat and fled.