Elegant Edward - ebook

I. PAPINICO FOR THE SCOT

MR. EDWARD FARTHINDALE (we may take his latest name as his best) descended from a taxi in the courtyard at King’s Cross Station, and, for a man of his magnificent raiment, it appeared strange, indeed remarkable, that he should carry his own luggage, and that a battered brown Gladstone bag.

“Here, what’s this?” asked the cabman ferociously.

Edward screwed a nearly-gold-rimmed monocle into his eye and surveyed the coin that was exposed in the centre of a large and grimy palm.

“That is a shilling, old thing. In the argot of your class and breeding you would describe it as a ‘bob.’ It is not only a shilling, my lamb, but it is also your legal fare. Hush! Not before the porters!”

He raised his gloved hand in solemn reproach to check the electric torrent of protest, and walked into the booking-hall. He was a man of middle height, slightly thin. His features, unevenly disposed, had a somewhat worn appearance. Beneath a small and shapeless nose he wore a jet-black moustache, waxed at both ends to needle points. His clothes were of the latest model, the morning coat fitting perfectly, the striped trousers as perfectly creased. On his head, as proof of his exclusiveness and respectability, was a shiny silk hat.

“Elegant Edward, or I’m a Dutchman,” said the amazed Inspector Bright, travelling detective of the Great Northern Railway.

Edward saw the burly form out of the tail of his eye and became instantly absorbed in the display of a book-stall.

“Good morning, Elegance!” said a voice in his ear, and he turned with an affected start.

“My Gad, dear old Bright!” he said; but his astonishment did not deceive the man of law.

“You rumbled me,” he accused. “I saw you giving me the ‘once.’”

“I saw you, but I didn’t see you,” said Edward. “You were, as it were, part of the landscape. You were, as it were–”

“As you were!” said the detective good-humouredly. “And where are you going, Elegance?”

“I thought,” said Elegant Edward carefully, “of running up to York for a few days. I’ve got a brother there–he’s ill, Bright. Funny thing about our family is that we’re devoted, so to speak, to one another–”

“Let’s have a screw at your brief,” said the officer inelegantly.

Reluctantly, Mr. Farthindale produced his railway ticket.

“Glasgow!” grunted the officer.

“When I said ‘York’ I meant ‘Glasgow,’” said Edward hastily. “Queer how I always mix those places.”

Bright handed back the ticket with a thoughtful frown.

“New hunting ground for you, isn’t it, Edward?”

Edward looked pained.

“I don’t follow you, Mr. Bright. I’m merely running up to see my sister–”

“You said ‘brother’ just now.”

“My sister is looking after my brother –what a nurse that girl is,” said Edward ecstatically. “She ought to get the Red Cross–she ought. really. Never leaves my brother day or night–”

“Cut out your relations,” interrupted the other, “and take a word of advice. You haven’t been too successful with your swindles in England–if I remember rightly, you’ve got five convictions behind you–but if you try ‘em on the Scotch, they’ll skin you. You haven’t a chance, Edward.”

Elegant Edward listened, an indulgent smile lifting the corners of his thin lips.

“There are people up there„–the earnest inspector pointed in the direction of Camden Town, but indicated the free citizens of Glasgow–“there are people up there who know the Scotch and talk their language, and even they can’t get a living. There are only three solvent crooks in Scotland–two of ‘em’s in Perth gaol and the other’s a lady, Aberdeen Annie. And she’s only solvent because she works the south nine months in the year and waits for the shooting season to take the English mugs north.”

“The lady I know, or, to speak the truth, Bright, I’ve heard about,” said Elegant Edward wearily; “but what you’ve got to get into your nut is that I’m going up on pleasure.”

Inspector Bright signified by a gesture that he left his hearer to his fate.

“Have your own way, Edward. I’ve nothing against you, because you’re not in my orbit, so to speak. You belong to the real police. But I’ll look for you coming back and have a blanket ready to put round you–you’ll want it.”

Elegant Edward had no fear. In the inside pocket of his morning coat were four bank-notes, each for a hundred pounds. Within the recesses of his Gladstone was the prospectus of the Papinico Oil Well Syndicate, with photographs showing long vistas of gushers. That the Papinico oil-fields had existence there is no doubt. They were floated immediately after the war by an enterprising American promoter, who raised enough money to sink bores, and on this to raise a beautiful home at Palm Beach, and motor cars of great power. He failed, however, to raise oil in marketable quantities; and the five-dollar shares were, at the moment, about as valuable as the Russian rouble and only a little more than the German mark.

Elegant Edward bought a hundred thousand for a pound, and the man who sold them to him felt that he had made a good bargain.

There was not, in all the land, a more ingenious man than Edward. He admitted this with great frequency. More reliable was the tribute paid by divers magistrates, who had told him on various occasions that if he only employed his undoubted talents to honest ends he would be a rich man.

Settling himself in the corner of an empty first-class carriage, he contemplated his coming task with the satisfaction of knowing that he was engaged in perfectly honest commerce; for Papinico oil was a reality, and you cannot be pinched for selling realities.

The train was on the point of starting when the door was jerked open violently, and a lady half-fell, half-sprang into the carriage.

“I am awfully sorry,” she said apologetically.

Her voice was low and sweet, and Edward, who was something of a ladies man, took stock of his fellow passenger and approved. She was young, and her prettiness was of that spirituelle type which found most favour with this connoisseur of loveliness.

“Permit me,” he said gallantly, and helped her to put her little case on the rack.

He did not fail to notice the golden coronet stamped on the purple leather, surmounting an intricate monogram which he could not decipher.

She was dressed exquisitely and yet severely, and the shy eyes that met his were of such a lovely blue that the sight of them almost took his breath away.

“Please don’t stop smoking,” she said, as Edward, after an elaborate preparation, lowered the window and prepared to throw away his cigarette. And then: “I suppose I am in the right train?”

“This is the Scottish express, madam,” said Edward politely.

She heaved a sigh and smiled at the same time.

“Thank goodness!” she said. “I have a horrible weakness for catching the wrong train.”

He saw at a glance she was an aristocrat; none but a highly bred young woman with perfect confidence in herself would have spoken to him. The twopenny-halfpenny people (so he told himself) would have raised their noses and sat frigidly in the corner. She, on the contrary, chatted gaily as she opened her little travelling case and took out a book.

“I don’t mind travelling with men if they don’t mind travelling with me,” she said. “The last time I came down from the north I travelled with a woman.” She made a little grimace.

“She wasn’t very pleasant, miss?” suggested Elegant Edward with his most winning smile.

“She wasn’t,” said the girl emphatically. “She was a wretched thief–a girl well-known in Scotland–”

“Not Aberdeen Annie?” Edward was indiscreet enough to ask. “Not that I know anything about her,” he went on hurriedly, “except what one reads in one’s paper.”

“It was Aberdeen Annie,” said the girl emphatically, “and the pleasure of travelling with her cost me a two-hundred pound brooch–the wretched creature.”

“It’s curious,” mused Edward, “how the criminal classes crop up here and there. You never know when you’re safe, upon my word you don’t. It’s a curious coincidence that I was talking to a friend of mine at the station”–he coughed–“a high official of the police force, and we were discussing that young woman. What is she like?”

The girl shook her head.

“I don’t know, except that she has red hair and very bold eyes. The police tried to get me to give a description of her, but I really didn’t notice her; I was asleep most of the time. But there’s no doubt that it was Aberdeen Annie.”

“Curious,” murmured Edward, “very curious.”

A little later, by cleverly leading up to the subject, he discovered that she was Lady Evelyn Landip, the daughter of the Earl of Cheal.

“You’re a soldier, aren’t you?” she asked.

Edward blushed.

“I have been in the service,” he said, “but not in the military service. In fact, it was secret service, if you understand me.”

She opened her eyes wide.

“Really! Were you a secret service officer?”

“I was, until I went into the oil business,” said Elegant Edward, who never lost an opportunity. “And when I think of how I might have been going on, earning a paltry few hundred a year, instead of making what I might term a fortune, as I have done, out of Papinico oil, I can tell you, miss, I’m not half relieved.”

“Not half?” she repeated in a puzzled voice. “What does that mean? You mean you are relieved?”

“I do,” said the abashed Edward. “That’s exactly what I do mean.”

He talked Papinico to her until the train reached York. She was good to practise on, and he had a not unnatural ambition to appear important in her eyes.

“Are the shares very valuable?” she asked, after a long and eloquent dissertation on the fortune that had been made (he did not tell her it was made by the promoter) out of Papinico.

“They are and they’re hot,” said Edward carefully. “Owing to trade depression and competition they are down to ten shillings, but they will see ten pounds.”

“Really!” She was impressed, and pursed her pretty lips thoughtfully as she stared out of the window. “My father is interested in stocks and shares,” she said. “I wonder whether you would like to meet him?”

Elegant Edward didn’t even wonder. A man with a knowledge of stocks and shares would know enough about Papinico oil to have him arrested. The people he most earnestly desired to meet were those who knew nothing about the shares and their value.

“Poor daddy!” she went on with a faint smile. “He is such a stupid old dear about speculations. I don’t think there has been a wild-cat scheme financed but daddy has had a big share in it.”

Instantly, Elegant Edward began to look upon his travelling companion from a new angle. Only for a second did the spell of her beauty hold him to the path of rectitude, and then all there was of Adam in him stepped forth jauntily.

“If there’s one person more than another I’d like to meet, miss,” he said, “it’s your noble parent.”

She laughed.

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