Part 7 (1/2)

'What in the world is papa doing?' asked Clarice.

'Exchanging cards with Drake,' replied Fielding. Mallinson turned his head round quickly and beheld the two gentlemen affably shaking hands again. Conway bent into the carriage.

'Do you like him?' he asked.

'Oh yes,' she replied indifferently.

'Then I am glad I introduced him to you,' and some emphasis was laid upon the 'I.'

Mr. Le Mesurier came out to the brougham and the coachman drove off.

'I like that young fellow, Drake,' he said, with a wave of the hand. 'I have asked him to call.'

Clarice did not inform her diplomatic father that unless she had foreseen his intention she would have undertaken the discharge of that act of courtesy herself.

Mallinson took a hansom and drove straight from the theatre to his chambers in South Kensington, Conway walked off in the opposite direction, so that Drake and Fielding were left to stroll away together.

They walked across Leicester Square towards St. James's Street, each occupied with his own thoughts. Fielding's were of an unusually stimulating kind; he foresaw the possibility of a very diverting comedy, to be played chiefly for his amus.e.m.e.nt and partly for Miss Le Mesurier's, by Clarice herself, Drake, and Mallinson. From the clash of two natures so thoroughly different as those of the two men, played off against one another with all the delicate manipulation of Miss Le Mesurier's experienced hand, there was much enjoyment to be antic.i.p.ated for the purely disinterested spectator which he intended to be. Of the probable _denouement_ he formed no conception, and in fact avoided purposely any temptation to do so. He preferred that the play should unroll itself in a series of delightful surprises. The one question which he asked himself at this time was whether Drake might not decline to act his proper and a.s.signed part. He glanced at him as they walked along. Drake looked thoughtful, and was certainly silent; both thought and silence were propitious signs. On the other hand, Drake had interests in the City, had them at heart too, and, worse still, had the City itself at heart.

Fielding recollected an answer he had made to Mallinson. The word 'heart'

brought it to his mind. Mallinson was jeering at the journalist's metaphor of the 'throbbing heart' as applied to London. 'The phrase,'

Drake had said, 'to me is significant of something more than cheap phraseology. I know that half a throb could create an earthquake in Matanga.' What if the man's established interest in this direction were to suppress his nascent interest in Clarice! Fielding immediately asked Drake what he thought of Miss Le Mesurier.

'Oh!' said the latter, palpably waking from reflections of quite another order, 'I liked her,' and he spoke of her looks.

'She has the art of dressing well,' corrected Fielding, disappointment spurring him to provoke advocacy of the lady. Drake, however, was indifferent to the correction.

'I like her eyes,' he said.

'She is skilled in the use of them.'

'I didn't notice that. They seemed of the quiet kind.'

'At need she can swing a wrecker's light behind them.'

'I like her hand too. It has the grip of a friend.'

'A friend! Yes. There's the pitfall.'

Drake only laughed. He was not to be persuaded to any strenuous defence, and Fielding felt inclined to harbour a grudge against him as needlessly a spoil-sport. Later on, however, when he was in bed it occurred to him that the play might still be performed, though upon different lines, and with a plot rather different from what he had imagined--his plot inverted, in fact. Clarice Le Mesurier, he remembered, had made the first advance to Drake. What if she for once in a while were to figure as the pursuer! That alternative would, perhaps, be the more diverting of the two. He must consult Mrs. Willoughby as to the effect which Drake's bearing would produce on women--consult her cautiously, prudence warned him. Mrs. Willoughby, a cousin and friend of Miss Le Mesurier's, was not of the sort to lend a helping hand in the game if the girl was to provide the sport--or indeed in the other event. The one essential thing, however, was that there should be a comedy, and he must see to it that there was one, with which reflection he drew the bed-clothes comfortably about him and went to sleep.

There was, however, one other condition equally essential to his enjoyment, but so apparently inevitable that he did not stop to consider it, namely, that Hugh Fielding should be a mere spectator. It did not occur to him at all that he might be drawn into an unwilling a.s.sumption of a part in his own play.

CHAPTER IV

Mallinson on reaching home unlocked a little oak cabinet which hung against the wall beside his writing-table, and searched amongst a litter of newspaper cuttings and incomplete ma.n.u.scripts. He unearthed at last a copy of the _Meteor_, bought between the Grand Hotel and Beaufort Gardens on the night of Drake's dinner, and, drawing up a chair to the fire, he read through the interview again. The something to be known was gradually, he felt, shaping into a definite form; it had acquired locality this very evening, as he was a.s.sured by the recollection of a certain repressed movement upon Mr. Le Mesurier's part at the mention of Boruwimi. Could he add to the knowledge by the help of the interview? Mr.

Le Mesurier had not known of its publication until to-night, and so clearly had not read it; his knowledge was antedated. But on the other hand it was immediately after the perusal of the article that Clarice had sent through him her invitation to Drake.