A Master of Deception

CHAPTER III

RODNEY ELMORE THE FIRST

That was a curious dinner party. Elmore quite expected that when he had rid himself of his daughter his uncle would come and tell him that he was not to regard the invitation as having been seriously intended, and that he was not to present himself in Russell Square. But nothing of the sort occurred. He saw and heard no more of Mr. Patterson until he quitted the office, and just before a quarter to eight he entered the drawing-room at No. 90. Miss Patterson, who was its sole occupant, rose as he entered.

"It's very good of you," she said, while she continued to allow her hand to remain in his, "to take the hint, and come early. Dad never shows till dinner's served, so that I shall have a chance of finding out before he comes what is the meaning of the extraordinary attitude he is taking up towards you. He simply poses as the father who has got to be obeyed, and as that sort of thing appears to be ridiculous, as I ventured to tell him, I expect you to tell me all about it."

He told her all he had to tell, which was very little, in such fashion that inside fifteen minutes they were on terms almost of intimacy. He was one of those men who have a natural attraction for contrasting types of women; emphatically for that type of which Gladys Patterson was an example. The master of the house did not enter till dinner was served, and by the time they were seated at table Elmore was already aware that his cousin offered a pleasant and promising field for such experiments as he might choose to devise.

Conversation was almost entirely confined to the two younger members of the party, the initiative being taken by Gladys, Elmore acting as a sort of chorus. The meal was of the solid, plentiful, well-cooked order, which one felt would appeal to the host. Beyond replying shortly to an occasional inquiry addressed to him by his daughter, Mr. Patterson's whole attention was given to his food, and wine. When dessert was on the table his daughter asked him:

"Going out to-night, dad-as usual?"

"No," he responded briefly, "I'm not."

The young woman looked at her cousin with a twinkle in her eyes.

"Dad follows the good old-fashioned custom of sitting over his wine. He thinks that a glass of port gives a proper finish to a meal. If you don't think so you can come into the drawing-room with me."

"He'll stay here," observed the sire succinctly.

But the damsel was equal to the occasion.

"Very well, dad; then I'll stay too. And since this table really is too big for three, I think, Rodney, it would be more comfy if I were to bring my chair closer to yours. Are you fond of the theatre?"

Having brought her chair to within a foot of Elmore's she entered with him into an animated discussion on the subject of favourite plays and players, while the host, practically speechless, sat at the head of his board drinking more port than was good for him. Elmore, who could be abstemious enough when he liked, had followed his cousin's lead, and drank nothing but mineral water. At last the young lady used his self-denial as a pivot to gain her own ends.

"Really, dad, as Rodney won't join you in drinking, it's absurd our stopping here, especially as I want some music, so please, sir, will you come with me at once into the drawing-room?"

Before the slow-witted host, whose brains had not been rendered more active by his libations, had awoke to the meaning of his daughter's proposition, she had borne the guest with her from the room. They were alone together in the drawing-room for more than half an hour. If the music of which Gladys had spoken was not much in evidence, their acquaintance moved at a rate which was only possible in the case of a young man who was willing-nay, eager-to take advantage of the peculiarities of a young woman's temperament. So that when his uncle did appear, with eyes a little dulled and feet a little unsteady, Rodney was quite ready to make his adieux and his cousin to excuse him. The acquaintance, thus commenced, not only continued, but advanced by leaps and bounds. Mr. Patterson's habits being those of a bachelor of a not too strait-laced kind rather than those of a family man, he did not find his daughter's society so congenial and satisfying as he might have done. Being desirous of doing as he liked, he left her with more freedom than he himself was perhaps aware of. She would even have not been without justification had she chosen to regard herself as neglected. But for what seemed to her to be sufficient reasons, she was content that her parent should amuse himself as he liked, though his doing so resulted in his practically overlooking her altogether.

Rodney Elmore never went again to the house in Russell Square as his uncle's guest, but he went there more than once as his daughter's, and that sometimes at hours and under circumstances which were, to say the least, unconventional. More frequently their meetings were not in the neighbourhood of Bloomsbury. Mr. Patterson had a fondness for week-ending, without informing his daughter with whom he spent his time or where. It was not strange if, during such absences, his daughter did her best to avoid being too much alone. More than one such Sunday she and Rodney spent together from quite an early hour to quite a late one. Before long they were on terms which certainly could not have been more intimate had they been an engaged couple. But they were not, on that point they supposed that they understood each other thoroughly. Gladys had less than two hundred a year of her own, left her by her mother; and Rodney was pretty sure that if she married him her means would not be materially increased for many a day to come-if ever. He was by no means sure that he cared for her enough to marry her if all he got with her in marriage was her person; no one could be clearer than he was that she would not make the sort of wife who would be likely to be in any way whatever of assistance to a struggling husband. Her attitude was almost equally practical. That she liked him much more than he liked her was sure; there was hardly anything he could ask of her which she would not be willing to give. She believed in him much more than he believed in her; in her eyes he was nearly a hero. But, not being quite blind, she realised that, as things were, marriage for them was out of the question. She knew her father, and was aware that while up to a certain point she could do with him as she liked, if on a matter of capital importance he bade her not to do such and such a thing, and she did it, he would cut her as completely out of his life as if she had not been in it, and never miss her. She was conscious that she was as unfitted for love in a cottage as Elmore was; was, perhaps, even dimly alive to the fact that in such a position her plight would be worse than his was. So that their association was based on that quite up-to-date article of faith which sets forth that though a young man and a young woman can never be husband and wife, they may still be "pals."

Elmore's position in the office was not improved by the incident of his having been a guest in Russell Square. Though his uncle never spoke to him upon the subject-nor, indeed, if he could help it, on any other-his nephew's acute perception realised that he had not grown to like him any more. As time went on a doubt began to grow up within him as to whether his uncle had not some inkling of the relations which existed between him and his daughter. That his doubt was well founded he was ultimately to learn. One morning, soon after his uncle's arrival, a request came to him to go to him at once in his room. When he went in he was struck, not by any means for the first time, by certain points about his uncle's appearance. He felt convinced that his relative's was not, from the insurance point of view, a good life. Rodney Elmore knew little of medicine, yet he hazarded a private opinion that Graham Patterson was a promising subject for an apoplectic stroke-the kind of man who, at any moment of undue stress, might have cerebral trouble from which he might not find it easy to recover. He caught himself wondering whether if, by any mischance, his uncle became the victim of such a catastrophe, it might not be worth his while to marry his cousin, if, indeed, that would not be the lady's own point of view. Were Graham Patterson to have such a stroke, it was at least within the range of possibility that he might never again be in a condition to manage his own affairs; in which case who would be so likely to be appointed administrator as the husband of his only child?

While such gruesome imaginings occupied his mind, the subject of them continued to regard him with a stolid silence which at last struck him as singular.

"I was told, sir, that you wished to speak to me."

He said this with the little air of pleasant deference of which he was such a master and which became him so well. His uncle still said nothing, but continued to glare at him with his bloodshot eyes as if he were some strange object in an exhibition. He really looked so odd that Rodney began to wonder if that stroke was already in the air. He tried again to move him to speech.

"I trust, sir, that nothing disagreeable has happened."

Yet some seconds passed before his uncle did speak. When he did it was with a hard sort of ferocity which his listener felt accorded well with the singularity of his appearance.

"You took my daughter to the Palace Theatre last night."

Rodney wondered from whom he had learned the fact, being convinced that it was not from his daughter. However, since he could scarcely ask, he tried another line, one which he was conscious went close to the verge of insolence.

"I hope, sir, that the Palace is not a theatre to which you object. Just now it has one of the best entertainments in London."

Only in a very narrow sense could his uncle's response be regarded as a reply to his words.

"You're an infernal young scoundrel!"

Rodney did not attempt to feign resentment he did not feel. His quickly-moving wits told him that he was at last brought face to face with a position which he had for some time foreseen, and that for him the best attitude would probably be one of modest humility-at least, to begin with.

"I don't think, sir, you are entitled to use such language to me on such slight grounds."

"Don't you? You-you-beauty!"

Obviously Mr. Patterson had substituted a different word for the one he had intended to use. Taking a slip of paper out of the drawer of the writing-table at which he was seated, he held it out towards Rodney.

"You see that?"

"I do, sir."

"You know what it is?"

"It appears to be a cheque."

"You know what cheque it is."

"If you will allow me to examine it more closely I shall perhaps be able to say."

"You can examine it as closely as you please so long as it is in my hands. I wouldn't trust it in your hands for a good deal."

"Why do you say that?"

"You impudent young blackguard!"

"And that, sir?"

"I say it, you brazen young hypocrite, because that cheque happens to be a forgery, and you are the man who forged it."

"Sir! I know that you are used to allow yourself a large license in the way of language, but this time, although you are my uncle, you go too far."

"I intend to go much farther before I've done-and don't you throw the fact that I'm your uncle in my face, the most decent men have blackguards for relatives. This cheque was originally made out for eight pounds. I told you to ask young Metcalf to get cash for it. Between this room and Metcalf's desk you altered it to eighty pounds. It was easily done-especially by an expert like you. He brought you eighty pounds; you gave me eight, and kept seventy-two. You were aware that Metcalf was leaving the office that day to join his brother in Canada; you calculated that probably before the thing was discovered he would be on the high seas, and that, therefore, since everyone knew how much he was in want of cash, I should lay the guilt at his door-you dirty cur! But I didn't, never for one instant; the instant I saw the cheque I recognised your hand."

"You recognised my hand? What do you mean by that, sir?"

Mr. Patterson took something else out of his writing-table drawer, which, this time, he handed to his nephew.

"Look at that."

It was a portrait-the photograph of a man in the early prime of life.

"Don't you think it might be yours?"

Rodney felt that, allowing for the changes made by a few superimposed years, the resemblance to himself was striking, so striking that it was startling. The eyes looked at him out of the portrait with an expression which he recognised as so like his own that it bewildered him.

"That's the portrait of your father. You don't remember him?"

"Not at all."

"I knew him all his life. You are so like what he was at your age that more than once when I have looked at you I have had an uncomfortable feeling that he had come back again to haunt me. Never was son more like his father, in all things."

Rodney winced, scarcely knowing why. His uncle went on.

"Your mother never spoke to you of him?"

"Never."

"She had what she supposed to be sufficient reasons for her reticence; she wished to hide from you, if possible, the knowledge of what manner of man your father was, thinking that the knowledge of the heritage of shame which he had left behind might drive you to walk in his footsteps. I was of a different opinion. I held that if you had in you any of the makings of a decent man, the knowledge of the sort of man your father was would serve you as a warning to keep off the path he'd followed. However, you were your mother's child, not mine, thank God; she had her way, though I warned her that the time would probably come when I should have to tell you the story she would rather have bitten off her tongue than tell."

Mr. Patterson paused, keeping his eyes fixed on the young man in front of him. There was a quality in his gaze which made Rodney conscious of a sense of discomfort to which he had been hitherto a stranger.

"You are so like your father that you even have his Christian name. Rodney Elmore the first was one of those creatures who sometimes come into the world, who could not run straight if they tried-and they never try. He was one of Nature's thieves; a born scamp; a lifelong blackguard. Your mother was my only sister; the only relative I had. I did not understand him so well before she married him as I did afterwards, but I understood him well enough to have kept her from marrying him if I could. But he was one of those hounds who, if they cannot get what they want by fair means, will not hesitate to get it by foul; he even won his wife by foul means, taking advantage of her girlish innocence so that she had to become his wife to save her good name. She lived for six years with him in hell. Then he was detected in a series of frauds which would probably have resulted in his being sent to penal servitude for life. Rather than face the music, he committed suicide."

Again Mr. Patterson paused, and his nephew, on his side, kept still. It seemed to him that his uncle's voice was the voice of doom; he was aware of a sensation of actual physical pain as he listened, as if sentence had not only been pronounced, but punishment also begun. He had wondered vaguely more than once what manner of man his father was, and, since she had volunteered no information, had put questions on the subject to his mother. But she had staved them off in a fashion which suggested-since even in the days of his boyhood his mental processes were sufficiently acute-that there was not much to be told about him which redounded to his credit. So, as years brought wisdom, his curiosity became less and less; a feeling grew up in his bosom that perhaps the less he knew about his father the better it might be. Never, however, had his most pessimistic imaginings come near the reality as portrayed by his uncle. He, the son of a lifelong rogue, who had only escaped the penalty of his misdeeds by self-destruction! He began to apprehend the meaning of the attitude his uncle had taken up towards him. His uncle did his best to assist him to a clearer comprehension.