# The Saturday Evening Post/Winnie O'Wynn and the Silent Player

[Winnie O'Wynn] Extracted from The Saturday Evening Post magazine, 1921 Jan 15, pp. 14–15, 70, 74, 77, 82. Illustrations by Charles D. Mitchell may be omitted.
Winnie O'Wynn and the Silent Player—By Bertram Atkey
LITTLE Miss Winnie O'Wynn was playing all by herself in her flat. It was a new game, and one which she had invented. She had named it Roll Call, and it consisted of looking through the muster roll of the regiment of which she was colonel in chief—twelve hundred stanch and steady and true little soldiers, very trim, very smart and all exactly alike, ready at her lightest word of command to spring on parade from the bank in which they were billeted. Winnie's Own Bright Force, she playfully called them, and she was very proud of them; so proud, indeed, that she was never tired of looking at the roll of them, so nicely written in the book provided by the bankers; never tired of planning for their welfare and their future
There was a tiny frown of concentration on the brows of their lovely colonel to-night, for she had quite recently arrived at a momentous decision in connection with the regiment. She intended to arrange for married quarters at the ban—the barracks—and to get every one of her smart little soldiers wedded,
“That will make you twenty-four hundred strong,” she said. “And if you all become papas in a year's time—why, then you will be thirty-six hundred strong! And that will be much better.”
She smiled at the quaint conceit, sipped her chocolate and put the book away.
“I must go recruiting,” said she, and aided by many cushions, the big couch and the pink tea gown in which she always thought so well, she gave herself up to speculation.
“If only men were not such wolves; if only they would not pounce upon one so savagely,” she mused, “I should have no trouble in making my regiment into quite an army. But nowadays they are so sharp and keen that a lonely, unprotected girl can hardly expect more than the scraps which fall from their table.” She smiled.
“Still one may try. The first duty of an officer is to see to the welfare of his men; the first thought of a colonel must always be of his regiment. Daddy never told me that, but he would have if he had thought of it. Now where shall I go recruiting?”
She relaxed like a Persian kitten, and was already winding her mental way through a maze of speculation when the evening mail arrived. There was only one letter. The envelope was heavily marked “Private,” and—the girl observed—was addressed in the bold and impressive handwriting of a gentleman whom she had already met—the open, frank and breezy Mr. George H. Jay, of Finch Court, Southampton Row, Agent. Indeed, it was Mr. Jay who some time before had selected her from among many applicants for a temporary post at his disposal. Oddly enough, it had cost him a great deal of very excellent money, and though it was that money which now formed a goodly proportion of Winnie's regiment, Mr. Jay did not blame the girl. It was through no fault of hers, he conceived, but rather through his misfortune.
He wrote requesting her, if not otherwise engaged, to call upon him on the following morning. He was, he added, in need of just such assistance as his, he hoped he might say, friend Miss O'Wynn could give him. It was quite a simple matter, would be well paid, and he would send a taxi for her at ten o'clock. Winnie put down the letter with a pensive smile.
“Dear Mr. Jay—he always makes the mistake of being too anxious. But then he is a quick man—he said so before, I think he wants something from me. It is a pity—from his point of view—to let it be so obvious. But I suppose that it is because he is so quick, and perhaps it will help me with my recruiting.”
She laughed, a low musical sound, harmonizing exquisitely with her baby-blue eyes, and settled down with a novel. She had been exploring the Tower of London that day and felt very much in the mood for light fiction.
She had not yet been in London a month, but even in o brief a time she had planned her career.
[Illustration: “It Would be Foolish to Call Her Anything But Beautiful, Only it is a Strange and Bizarre Beauty”]
That the city was full of those whom it amused her to term wolves had become abundantly evident to her, and since she had acquired the beginnings of her fortune, together with raiment befitting a minor capitalist, it was equally evident that it would not be only her slim wild-flower loveliness which attracted the roving eyes of some of the wolves.
She was not the only colonel who wished to increase the size of his regiment. She was not singular in this respect. But she carried under her sunny coronet of curling hair a fixed and even slightly amused confidence in her ability to extend her roll—her muster roll—which many of the aforesaid wolves would have envied. This may have been due to her recollection of certain wise words of that worldly wise man, her late father.
“Remember, when I am gone, Win, old man,” he had once said, “that few men under the age of about fifty can withstand that siren song of which the refrain is 'something for nothing.' Lots can give the impression that the idea doesn't appeal to them, but you will find them on the telephone next morning pretty early. That is what they call the nature of man. There are others, of course. You can easily sum them up. We'll run through the list. There are:
“The men who want something for nothing, and usually get it on the reverse gear.
“The men who will give something to get a good deal more—watch these, Win. Never take your eyes off them.
“The men who are satisfied with what they have. You won't be troubled much by these, for they are mainly in institutions suitable for them.
“The men who throw away what they have never earned, because they don't know the value of it—it goes to those who do.
“The men who have nothing, have had it all their lives, and always will have it.
“That about covers the main headings, Win. Classify them as you come across them, and treat them accordingly.”
Then he would raise himself on his elbow and look closely at her.
“I think you'll be all right when I'm gone,” he would say toward the end. “Child, you will tie them in cat's cradles round your fingers. I'll leave 'em to you, partner.”
Well, he had kept his word. Winnie was alone. But she never forgot his queer philosophies. Now she was testing them.
On the whole she put Mr. Jay in Class Two—the class that had to be watched—but strictly he was eighty-five per cent Class Two, fifteen per cent Class One. And nothing happened on the following morning to justify her taking him out of it. She found him as breezy and decisive as ever. His laugh was as loud as before, and his way was as candid. There was admiration in his hardish eyes as he shook hands and placed a chair for her.
“Good morning, my dear little lady,” he called to her across the three feet between them. “I am glad, very glad, to see that London agrees with you so well. You are like a rose in the city—you really are. It is a pleasure to me—to poor old George Jay to see you looking so bonny. Like a rose”—he let his voice die away—“as bonny as a rose—a rose.”
He settled in his chair.
“I have often wondered whether you had accepted a permanent post, Miss O'Wynn,” he continued.
“Oh, no! I am afraid I haven't enough experience, Mr. Jay.”
“Well, well, never mind. It will come. After all, you did pretty well out of our last little transaction, eh? Ha-ha! Tide you over for a little, eh? Ha-ha!”
Winnie sighed, her eyes downcast:
“I hope so, dear Mr. Jay.”
He smiled.
“Well, well, now to business. It seems that a great friend of mine is in need of the services of just such a little gentlewoman as yourself. Nothing much—merely to do a little light reading for an invalid. But the lady must be a lady, you understand, such as yourself; natural, reliable, charming, young. As I say, such as yourself. He does not want one of these keen, worldly witty ladies with their future somewhere back in the past, but just a nice, sweet, fresh, innocent little country girl.” Here the telephone spurted a metallic jet of sound at him and he turned. “Ah, there's my friend Slite—just a moment. I will tell him you are here.”
He did so briefly, and rang off.
“He is coming round, Miss O'Wynn.”
“Thank you,” said Winnie. She smiled upon Mr. Jay. “You are very kind to a lonely little person new to London and a tiny bit afraid of it,” she continued. “You know, men are so big and clever and quick, and sometimes they seem so—so fierce that they are almost like wolves, aren't they, Mr. Jay? Don't you find it so too?”
Mr. Jay screwed up his eyes.
“Wolves—wolves, do you say, my dear little lady?” he said. “Believe me, there are men in this city that would make a respectable God-fearin' wolf lie down and howl. That's so.”
He spoke warmly—so warmly that Winnie silently wondered what particular wolf was gnawing at his bank account just then.
“But never mind—they needn't worry you, my dear. Keep clear of them; have nothing to do with any of them. It's fierce, the wolves there are in this town,” urged Mr. Jay.
“I have anything to do with them? Oh, Mr. Jay!” Winnie shivered. He nodded.
“I see you haven't changed. Still the same sweet, unspoiled—-er—fresh outlook on life. That's fine—very fine. It's nice to meet somebody who isn't mistrustful watchful—suspicious of their best friends. You want to keep that way.”
There were quick footsteps in the outer office, and Mr. Jay arose. “Here's Mr. Slite, my friend. You will like him—very nice—polished man of the world. Not wolfy, ha-ha! Certainly not! Charming man.”
Mr. Slite entered—a dark, thin person with extremely bright, cold eyes. He was very pale, and may have been anything from thirty-five to fifty, very well preserved and most neatly clad in a dark gray lounge suit. Mr. Jay introduced Winnie, and he smiled pleasantly as he surveyed her. But his eyes remained cold as ever, and though his glance seemed no more than to waver, to flicker, Winnie knew that he had seen her and appraised her from the crown of her pretty hat to the tips of her trim shoes in that one flicker. He was quick, she saw. Whether he was accurate remained to be seen.
But Winnie had never been slow herself. Behind the impenetrable innocence of her blue eyes, the dainty ingenuousness of her sweet, childlike face, her matchless wits had instantly and unerringly switched Mr. Slite into his correct category.
“Here,” flashed the swift intuition of the girl—“here is no wolf. Mr. Slite is not a member of the great Canis lupus family; by no means. Put him among the rattlers. It's where he belongs. Crotalus horridus—and he's lost his rattle.”
She shook hands and fixed upon Mr. Slite the expectant and slightly admiring gaze which the circumstances seemed to her to call for.
“Mr. Jay has been telling me of the poor invalid for whom you wish to engage a reader, Mr. Slite,” said she. Mr. Slite smiled with his lips.
“And do you think that you would care to accept the position, Miss O'Wynn?” he asked in his slow, soft voice.
Winnie hesitated.
“You see, I don't know very much about it yet. I oughtn't to promise until I know, ought I, do you think?”
“No, indeed—ha-ha! That wouldn't be very business-like, would it, Slite?” said the breezy Mr. Jay very breezily.
“Indeed, no,” agreed Crotalus. “I will explain the position. It is quite simple. A client of mine—a valued client is now growing old, and suffers increasingly from failing sight. He has been ever a great reader, and now that he is no longer able to follow the print for himself he is anxious to engage a sympathetic young lady to read to him. The engagement may be only temporary, as my friend—for so I think I may term him—might go abroad shortly. If you will permit me to say so, dear Miss O'Wynn, you are rather young”—Winnie's face fell—“but fortunately,” he hastened to add, “my friend stipulates for a young lady. He lives not far from London, in a quiet way, and he would not demand more than, let us say, an average of three or four hours' reading a day. For the rest you would be free to do as you choose—to play golf, to ride, to motor with his secretary, what you choose. Indeed, it is, in many respects, an enviable post. Have you many relatives? Friends whose advice you could ask?”
“I am quite alone in the world,” sighed Winnie.
“Ah, then I will take it upon myself to advise you, my dear young lady. Accept the position. It is a good one. The salary will be five pounds a week and—everything found. It is a generous salary.”
Winnie did not appear to hear the last sentence.
“Please, what is his name?”
“Mr. Cairns Bradburn, of Bradburn Manor, near Woking.”
Winnie saw that both men were watching her closely, as though for any indications that the name was familiar. Not a shadow, not a flicker of change appeared on the fair, flowerlike face, and the big blue eyes were as steady and calm as the unclouded sky outside. But Winnie's mind had registered the name. She had watched the financial columns of her newspaper pretty carefully ever since she had decided to become a capitalist herself, and she remembered a paragraph to the effect that Mr. Cairns Bradburn, of the Northern High Speed Tool Steel Company, of the Bradburn Shipbuilding Company (1915), Ltd., and many other similarly comfortable-sounding concerns, had recently retired from active participation in business on account of failing health. She looked at Mr. Slite.
“I would try very hard to please Mr. Bradburn,” she said. “But, please, I would like to ask you if the proposal is quite honorable, open and aboveboard. Don't be angry with me, Mr. Slite, for asking that. You see, I am a novice in these matters, and I well, I have to ask that, don't I?”
Mr. Slite's thin lips registered his medium smile.
“A very sensible and intelligent question to ask, my dear young lady,” he said. “I like frankness. I believe in it. I am a frank man myself, and so, you see, I can appreciate it in others. Well, you may accept the position without trepidation or anxiety. It is an honorable and straightforward business throughout. I guarantee that.”
“And I will add my own personal assurance to Mr Slite's guaranty—ha-ha!" said Mr. Jay, laughing boisterous approval of Winnie's caution.
Winnie smiled her relief.
“I am so glad.”
Mr. Slite cleared his throat
“I am very glad you asked that question, Miss O'Wynn,” he said; “very glad indeed. For I have yet to inform you that there is a curious condition attaching to the post. Nothing that need trouble you, but, to my mind, curious.”
Winnie nodded.
“It is really very simple merely—that you agree never in any circumstances to discuss, with anyone at Bradburn Manor, your parents or your past life. There, that not a difficult or dishonorable condition, is it?”
She fixed her wide eyes on him.
“Why, no, of course not! In any case, I should not discuss my parents. And my past life has been so unexciting that I don't think anyone could possibly be interested in it. I agree, naturally.”
Messrs. Slite and Jay did not trouble to conceal their satisfaction
“You are a very sensible, level-headed young lady,” declared Mr. Slite.
Mr. Jay smiled like a proud uncle.
“I told you she was,” he said.
“And may I have some of my salary in advance, please?” asked Winnie.
Mr. Jay's smile suddenly vanished. He had by no means forgotten the portly little sum Winnie—by sheer chance, of course, he knew that—had collected from him over their last transaction.
“Why, surely I think that could be arranged quite well,” said Mr. Slite. “How much would you like?”
He took out his note case
“Please, I would like six months' salary in advance,” cooed Winnie.
A cold surprise gleamed in the watchful eyes of Mr. Slite
“But, my dear little lady, the engagement may not last for six months,” he explained.
Winnie laughed—the sweetest, naïvest, most innocent laugh in the world. It was like the tinkle of a far-off sheep bell wafted musically on a gentle wind across a pasture knee deep in wild flowers.
“Why, that is just exactly why I asked for six months' salary—just to make the engagement last that long! Don't you see? You see, don't you, Mr. Jay?”
“Oh, yes, I see—ha-ha! Certainly, I see,” said Mr. Jay rather hollowly.
The two gentlemen exchanged glances. What Mr. Slite read in his friend's was evident, for he dug reluctant fingers into his note case.
[Illustration: “If I Let You Buy My Self-Respect—My Pride, With Your Terrible Money, I—I Shalt Never Have it Again”]
“Well, well, I will do it. I feel, after our talk, that you will keep the post for that length of time quite easily.”
He counted out a hundred and thirty pounds with an air of some melancholy and handed the money to the girl
There you are, then. Forgive me if I suggest that you take care of all that money. Put it in the bank, my dear Miss O'Wynn. You may not know it, but there are men in this city who would not hesitate to rob you of that if they could.”
“Oh, how wicked!” cried Winnie
Mr. Slite then arranged to call for her on following morning and personally to escort her to Bradburn Manor and, having thanked both men with a very pretty air of profound and even slightly excited gratitude, Winnie went—bankward.
“Will you please let them put this money with my other money?” she purred to the cashier in a voice that penetrated through all the layers of horn and thick armorlike callosities which his work had built up ind his heart clear down to his inmost being. He smiled at the lovely face that suddenly blossomed so suddenly before him.
“Why, of course, Miss O'Wynn!”
“Thank you so much. You are so kind.”
One of the rosebuds she was wearing broke off and fell on the counter.
She pushed it across with a delicious faint flush
“Would you like it?” she said. “It's for being kind to a little girl who doesn't understand very well about money matters.”
He took it almost simpering—and slipped it in his buttonhole
After all, he needn't wear it home—where, if his wife did not notice it, one of his six children certainly would. Winnie had made another friend for life.
She spent the greater part of the afternoon in her kimono, thinking things over
“Well, it is perfectly clear that Mr. Jay and Mr. Slite need me very badly,” mused gayly, “or they would never have agreed to pay so well and so heavily in advance. They are such wolves and so clever. I'm sure they mean to take some advantage of me.”
She worked over the interview step by step, and finally arrived at the conclusion that as the wolves were willing to pay her heavily in excess of the market rates for readers, then they needed her in preference to anyone else.
“That is because I am so ingenuous,” she said
But she was to refrain from discussing her past or her parents.
“That is obviously because they do not wish Mr. Bradburn to know who I am, which may mean that they want him to believe me somebody I am not,” she told herself rather intricately.
“And they are in a very great hurry,” she noted further. “So, to sum up, here is the position: Two wolves are in very urgent need of a nice, demure, ingenuous girl to read to a very rich business man in failing health. They seem to desire him to believe that she is a certain person. What person? And why?” She knitted her pretty brows, then relaxed them. She had her problem, but without further knowledge it was impossible to solve it. She decided to wait.
II
THERE was nothing about the approach to Bradburn Manor which indicated that Mr. Bradburn was other than a very wealthy man indeed. The wonderful antique, wrought-iron gates, the long avenue of vast oaks, the huge, cattle-dotted park, the lake, the great gardens and finally the mansion, a perfect specimen of Jacobean architecture, all had their message for Winnie. It was not deep, nor was it subtle—just a simple, sound, sterling, genuinely hall-marked, milled-edge message which said to her: “Come along, my dear, come along. Here, and not elsewhere, are waiting the bonny little brides for those gay little soldiers of your battalion in the bank. Come right along and meet them!”
She did not linger. With the cold-eyed Mr. Slite she entered the big house, and there was introduced to a thinnish gentleman, who, though all his features were good, was absolutely expressionless. This was Alexander Boyde, confidential secretary to Mr. Bradburn. He and Slite greeted each other quietly, but like old friends—old friends with a mutual understanding, Winnie fancied, and card-indexed the fancy for future consideration. Mr. Boyde advanced a welcome, and Winnie, switching on her full voltage of wireless charm, cooed civilities back to him. A certain faint interest dawned in the lidless gaze of Mr. Boyde.
“You would like to go to your room, I expect,” he said then. “Your things are already there, and your maid——”
Winnie's wide blue eyes dropped swiftly—“Your maid”—card-indexed, heavily underlined and with a great big black question mark next to it.
“Thank you. That is so thoughtful—kind,” she murmured, and shook hands with Mr. Slite.
[Illustration: “Your Engagement is Terminated, Miss O'Wynn,” He Whispered in Such Urgent Haste That it Had Almost a Touch of Fury]
Boyde moved to touch the bell, and Mr. Slite bent toward her.
“You are going to make a great hit here, child,” he whispered, a quiver of excitement in his low voice. “Boyde thinks you will suit Mr. Bradburn grandly. Tell me, how are you off for clothes? Have you plenty?
“Can you be smart always? You must be, you understand.”
“I have one nice frock and two that I can patch up somehow. I will try, though they are so shabby and dowdy.”
“Tchk! Tchk!” went Mr. Slite softly, and crammed a big wad of notes into her hand. “Here, take this! It's for expenses. Dress yourself well—well, you understand. Quiet, ladylike, demure, but well. Do you see? Well, mind!”
“Very well,” said Winnie submissively.
Boyde turned to the footman, who answered his ring, with instructions that the housekeeper be required to show Miss O'Wynn to her rooms, and this was done. She was a dear old lady—Mrs. Beaton, these many years housekeeper to Mr. Bradburn, and she took Winnie under an ample wing at once. “You're tired, child, my dear,” she said, smiling at the girl. “You would like your lunch. I will have it sent up to you when I have made you comfortable.”
They went out together. Mr. Slite, with a tinge of apology in his voice, called her back.
“Oh, pardon me, Miss O'Wynn—one moment!” He steered her out of earshot and whispered: “Remember, my dear girl—nothing about your past or your parents, and when you receive a telegram from me, 'Return at once,' act on it instantly. Tell no one—not even Mr. Bradburn—you are going. That is all provided for. Do you understand?”
“Oh, yes, perfectly, Mr. Slite!”
“That's fine—fine! Good-by.”
Winnie spent twenty-four hours in Bradburn Manor before she met her employer, but during that time her wits put in a forty-eight-hour shift. She perceived that Mr. Alexander Boyde appeared to be very much the grand vizier of the establishment; and further, that he evidently desired her to be treated rather more like an honored and distinguished guest than a nice but unimportant little girl hired to read to Mr. Bradburn.
She rode with Boyde in the morning, and listened carefully to the advice and information he gave her as to Mr. Bradburn's tastes and fancies. It occurred to her that, like Messrs. Jay and Slite, he was desperately anxious that she should succeed in pleasing the old millionaire. A few naïve questions soon made it clear to her that Mr. Bradburn was not an unreasonably difficult man to please. She recalled the intuition that had warned her of a possible secret understanding between Boyde and Mr. Slite, and as she did not for a half second imagine that either was anxious for her sake, the obvious solution was that their anxiety was on their own behalf.
“And as daddy would have said if it had occurred to him, one rarely sees men anxious except on account of their children, their health, their wives and their money—most often their money,” she told her reflection in the mirror before which she presently changed from riding kit to a demure house frock. She stood regarding herself, holding a wispy silk stocking in her hand.
“It is clearly worth a lot of money to them if I make a good impression on Mr. Bradburn. Why? That is what you have to find out, Winnie mine.”
She was still revolving this simple problem in her mind when presently she was presented to Mr. Cairns Bradburn, who was lying upon a couch in his big, comfortable study.
“The lady I have engaged to read to you, sir—Miss O'Wynn,” said Mr. Boyde.
Winnie found herself looking into a pair of gray eyes from which increasing years and ill health as yet had been powerless to delete the keenness.
As she took in the worn face she realized that Mr. Bradburn was a handsome old man, and if not one who was prone to overleniency nevertheless a just and reasonable man. But it was evident that he was ill—even clear that he had fought his last big fight in the world of business and finance.
She felt sorry for him. Winnie admired ability more than anything else in the world, and a child could have seen that here was an able man. With his thick, rather long gray hair, his short gray beard, his square, competent face, he was rather like an old lion enfeebled—with a ring of hungry wolves closing in upon him. Perhaps her real sympathy showed in her deep blue eyes, or upon her face. At any rate the old man's eyes softened as he looked at the trim, quiet little gray figure standing so demurely before him. He welcomed her, asked a few little questions about her comfort, wanted to know if she had had any exercise that morning, and finally indicated a volume lying upon a table near his couch.
“Do you think you are man enough to read through Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Miss O'Wynn?” he asked. “In my very young days my opportunities for reading this monumental work were limited, but now I have time and to spare. I am very interested in what Gibbon has to say about that great ruin. He uses very sound arguments. He was a very wonderful mind. I look round me and see other empires making the same terrible mistakes, heading along the same fatal path, so surely and swiftly that one might almost believe they were deliberately modeling themselves upon ancient Rome. I am very much interested in Gibbon. I have reached the part dealing with the exactions of Constantius.”
He showed her the place, and the girl began.
“'With the view of sharing that species of wealth which is derived from art or labour, and which exists in money or in merchandise, the emperors imposed a distinct and personal tribute on the trading part of their subjects. Some exemptions, very strictly confined both in time and place, were allowed to the proprietors who disposed of the produce of their own estates. Some indulgence was granted to the profession of the liberal arts; but every other branch of commercial industry was affected by the severity of the law. The honourable merchant of Alexandria who imported the gems and spices of India for the use of the western world; the usurer who derived from the interest of money a silent and ignominious profit; the ingenious manufacturer, the diligent mechanic, and even the most obscure retailer of a sequestered village were obliged to admit the officers of the revenue into the partnership of their gain.'”
Already the old financier was sorrowfully shaking his head at the only too familiar picture conjured up by the soft, rather slow, distinct voice of the girl; but he did not interrupt. She, too, fell quickly under the spell of the great historian, and read on steadily.
It had its charm, that little scene in the big and luxurious study. A long shaft of sunlight dropping through the deep mullioned window caught her beautiful pile of hair so that it looked like spun gold, and her sweet face was hardly less serious and perturbed than that of the old steel master as, together, they lost themselves in mazy politics of ancient Rome:
“'A people elated by pride or soured by discontent is seldom qualified to form a just estimate of their actual situation. The subjects of Constantius were incapable of discerning the decline of genius and manly virtue which so far degraded them below the dignity of their ancestors; but they could feel and lament the rage of tyranny, the relaxation of discipline, and the increase of taxes——'”
The millionaire moved.
“'The relaxation of discipline and the increase of taxes,'” he repeated. “That will do for to-day, Miss O'Wynn.
He smiled at the girl's look of surprise.
“Too little, eh?” he said. “We shall read much more usually, but to-day's reading was only a test. I don't want to depress you with a long installment on the first day.”
“Do you think you will like my reading, Mr. Bradburn?” asked Winnie a little anxiously.
“You read perfectly, child. I look forward to many enjoyable afternoons.”
The old financier looked at her with a great kindness in his eyes. She flushed a little, delightfully conscious of a sensation of genuine pleasure. Her quick intuition had almost instantly told her that deep down under the armor of chill, hard reserve which the rich man had been driven to assume by the envious, grasping and rapacious swarms that for years had eddied round his knees, like waves round a lighthouse base, there was a mine of sheer selfless kindliness and good will, and she had been really anxious to please him. She could see by his eyes that he was lonely, with the terrible loneliness of a very rich but childless man, and she knew that he was ill.
“I am so glad you like my reading,” she said. “I will do my very best.”
“I know, I know!” He looked out at the sunshine.
“Now, Boyde shall play you a game of golf,” he said. “There's a course in the park, and some nice people come to play there. You will meet them.”
He hesitated a little.
“If you think you would care for a lonely meal with an old man I should like you to dine with me to-night. It will not be very amusing.”
“I have not come here to be amused, you know,” she said simply. “You are the master, I am the reader. But I would like to dine with you.”
She saw that he was lonely in the sense that her father had often been lonely during her school days; lonely for lack of a woman about him whom he liked and trusted. She saw a slow light burn in his eyes.
“Thank you, child, thank you,” he said quietly. “Now go and play. Tell me if everything is not as you would like it.”
She went slowly to her rooms, thinking.
And this was the man upon whose trail that pack of wolves—Jay, Slite and, she suspected, Alexander Boyde—were running with their muzzles to the ground, mute, dangerous, famished for plunder. And they had selected her with the intention of using her in some deeply hidden, subterrene fashion as the decoy. She stopped in the big hall she was crossing, staring absently at a fine oil painting.
“I, too, want money—lots and lots of it,” she told herself. “But I wouldn't manipulate it from a man who is ill and yet so kind as Mr. Bradburn. Only a hyena will linger round a dying lion that has often fed him royally. No. He is the only man who has looked at me quite like that since—since poor daddy.
“What is their scheme?”
The soft sound of house slippers crossing a space of oak flooring between the great rugs of the hall caught her ear, and she turned. It was Mrs. Beaton.
“So you are studying the paintings, my dear?” said that comfortable lady, smiling. “Do you think her beautiful?”
Winnie looked again at the portrait. She had not noticed it before. As she looked at the lady on the canvas—quite obviously the work of a master—she was aware of an odd, vague feeling of familiarity with it. She had never seen the portrait or the lady before.
“She is wonderful, of course, Mrs. Beaton, with that unusual hair, and so pale, and those odd almond eyes.”
She smiled upon Mrs. Beaton.
“It would be foolish to call her anything but beautiful, only it is a strange and bizarre beauty,” she said.
The old housekeeper nodded.
“You see her right, my dear,” she told the girl, and dropped her voice: “She was Mrs. Raymond Cleves, his only child.”
“Was? Do you mean she is dead?” asked Winnie.
“She is dead, yes. But she was dead to Mr. Bradburn many years ago. They quarreled, and she left home. Neither she nor her child—her daughter—ever returned. Her temper was terrible. It was a tragedy.”
Winnie wondered if that tragedy had anything to do with the curious conditions of her engagement.
“I shall come to your room for tea presently, if you will have me, dear Mrs. Beaton,” she purred, “and if you like I would love to hear about her.”
Mrs. Beaton was only too willing. Winnie gossiped a little, then dutifully found Boyde, played him a quick nine holes, as Mr. Bradburn had wished her to, and then strolled into the town, where she headed at once to the nearest telephone call office and called up a certain youth who used at least fifty per cent of his brains for the purpose of producing quite hopeless dreams exclusively concerned with Winnie—one Mr. Gus Golding, a clerk for Mr. Jay.
“Is that Mr. Golding?” she cooed. “Ah, dear Mr. Golding, I want you to help me with your advice, please. . . . Yes, I knew you would—so kind—always so kind and chivalrous. . . . You are speaking from the office. . . . I was afraid you would be out at tea. Are you alone in the office? How lucky for me. . . . It's only a little thing I wanted your advice about—little to you, but important to me. Do you know—have you ever heard of a lady named Winifred May Cleves? She was the daughter of a Mrs. Raymond Cleves. She might be a client of Mr. Jay or of his friend, Mr. Slite.”
It was quite a shot in the dark, but it found the bull. Mr. Golding did know of the lady. He said so—at length and with emphasis. And when, a little later, Winnie sweetly choked him off she had learned several things from the clerk.
Miss Cleves, it seemed, was a friend of Mr. Jay and a client of Mr. Slite. Gus could not conceive why she was friendly to his employer, and he certainly did not understand how she could permit herself to be a client of Mr. Slite. He spoke with similar definiteness about the lady herself. If Miss O'Wynn would picture a lady exactly different in every respect from herself she would achieve an admirable idea of Miss Cleves.
“She's tall like a Maypole,” said Mr. Golding, “and slender like a long sword. She's twenty-four years old, a rust-red blonde, with a French chalk complexion and geranium lips. She's got a Chinese side slant to her eye corners, and her brows are about the same angle as Bernard Shaw's but there's less of them. Some of the boys call her beautiful. He—Gus Golding—differed. She had a temper that was news to him, and she used it like a Gurkha uses his kukri—handily and frequently. He had heard that even her friends called her the Tiger Cat. She had been on the stage, was a notoriously extravagant spender and had recently married an owner of race horses—groggy ones, quoth Gus with feeling—who had none too good a reputation himself. So she was no longer Miss Cleves, but Mrs. Eustace Tolbar, and he—Gus—wished her joy. In his humble opinion she was a pretty bad lot, like her husband. It was odd that Winnie should be asking about her, he added, as recently she had been several times to the office. She and Mr. Jay and Mr. Slite had some very important private business in hand, he fancied, but nothing of it had ever leaked out into the general office. That was all he could tell her, but it was a great white light to Winnie.
“A rust-red blonde, with a French chalk complexion, geranium lips and almond eyes!” she whispered, smiling at the picturesque description of the gentle Gus.
“Mrs. Eustace Tolbar is the daughter of the lady in the portrait, and granddaughter of Mr. Bradburn.”
She learned more over tea in Mrs. Beaton's room. With infinite tact and patience she gathered the history of the lady of the oil painting. She had possessed all the beauty that the oil painting had reproduced, and more. But she had, too, the temper of a wildcat, and was cursed with a heritage of unconquerable passions that had skipped a generation and passed over her mother, Bradburn's wife. A bitter mania for gambling as wild, reasonless and reckless as that of the professional gambler is the reverse; a deliberate and insolent disregard for conventions to which most people are willing for sake of decency to subscribe; a disdainful selfishness so complete and perfected that it set her apart from the average woman in a haughty and defiant isolation which she nevertheless failed to recognize as isolation at all—these, and others, were the defects that, with her elopement with a trusted but treacherous cashier of Mr. Bradburn's works, had estranged her from her father forever. There had never been any attempt at reconciliation by her, and to those of her father she had responded with a contempt so savage and bitter as to indicate almost a disordered mind.
She had died some years before. Even that Mr. Bradburn had learned by sheer chance.
“But what became of the child?” asked Winnie.
“Mr. Bradburn offered several times during the child's infancy to adopt her, but Mrs. Cleves rejected every offer contemptuously. Mr. Bradburn was not a very wealthy man in those days.”
“What became of her?”
“Nobody knows. Nobody here—not even her grandfather—has ever seen her. But I have heard that she has defrauded Mr. Bradburn in some cunning way of very large sums. He will not have her mentioned in this house, and I don't think he can be blamed.” The old lady shook her head sadly. “I am afraid her mother passed on her wild hatred of Mr. Bradburn to the girl. It is very sad—mother and daughter alike hating him, who is at heart the kindest man. Give me your cup, my dear.
Winnie passed it in silence, too occupied with her thoughts to speak for a moment. For she had now the clew, the very key, to the windings of the labyrinth in the heart of which, busily spinning its web, sat the spider—Jay, Slite, Mrs. Eustace Tolbar; or was it Boyde, the expressionless?
That was what she had to discover.
And she knew how to do so!
III
IT WAS a great week which followed for Winnie. Quietly though the old steel master was living, it was the quietness of a big man, and that is otherwise than the quietness of one who does not matter.
There were dozens of people in and out, coming and going, seen and unseen. Winnie met many of them, made friends with all; among them the doctor, who, after a few days, played a game with her over the nine-hole golf course, confiding presently that Mr. Bradburn's condition of health was such that his faulty heart might miss just one beat too many at almost any moment.
She met also the family solicitor—an important man just then—and he, too, came partly under her spell. But she never got nearer to Boyde. He was ever gentle, quiet, polite, anxious for her comfort; but he lived entirely under a mask, consuming his own smoke.
These and others—urgent-eyed men in responsible positions along the Bradburn chain of enterprises—seemed to her to pass before her watching eyes in a procession, but they meant nothing now. Only Mr. Bradburn mattered to her—he and those silent watchers of whom she alone knew, whom she alone was watching. It was, she realized, a dangerous game, and one which had long since become void of humor. The stakes, she suspected, were gigantic. And she, Winnie O'Wynn, was sitting in that game with a straight flush.
Her excitement sent a wild-rose tint to her face that charmed the old financier as she went in to her reading. They were old friends now, and were perusing with keen interest and, on the whole, approval, the ancient severities of Valentinian.
“You look wonderfully well, child,” said Mr. Bradburn. “It suits you here.”
She stood by the table, looking at him, much as the mouse may have looked at the lion before the nets fell.
h, yes,” she said. “But if you could spare me, please, I want to go to London to-morrow.”
He smiled. “Shopping?”
“Partly that, but something else very important too.”
“The sweetheart, child?”
“There isn't one, Mr. Bradburn.”
He shook his head.
“Where are their eyes? . . . Well, well, I mustn't complain. Some blind man's loss is my gain.”
That evening she found a hundred-pound note in an envelope addressed to her and left in her sitting room. With it was a line—“For my little reader to spend to-morrow.”
She was enormously pleased.
“The nicest money I have ever had,” said, half laughing, half sighing.
Eleven o'clock next day found her facing the breezy Mr. Jay and his cold friend, Mr. Slite Crotalus horridus. She was going to test her theories.
“Why, my dear young lady, this is a pleasant surprise—very pleasant,” shouted Mr. Jay in a voice like the thunder of wind in a great sail. “You look bonny—bonny.”
But Winnie was serious this morning.
“I am not feeling very bonny, Mr. Jay,” she said. 'Not very happy.”
They caught at that very swiftly, even with a touch of alarm.
“What's the matter?” They said it together.
“You see, I have grown to like Mr. Bradburn——”
“Yes, yes!”
“And I feel—do forgive me—I feel that I can't quite go on as I am at present.
The blue, troubled eyes caught both the real anxiety on the big face of Mr. Jay and the hint of a snarl on the thin, wide lips of Mr. Slite.
“But why?”
“You see, I feel somehow that I am sailing under false colors. He often asks about my people, and somehow I want to tell him, for he is so kind. I feel I cannot endure the secrecy—oh, I know it is honorable enough, just as you told me before, but I want to be released from my promise not to tell him about my parents. Please do agree with that. It's only quite a little unimportant matter.
The two men looked at each other. Both shook their heads. Mr. Jay came to the girl, dropped one hand on the back of her chair and spoke very quietly, very persuasively, even paternally.
“Dear little lady, I am sorry—ever so sorry. But it's impossible,” he crooned. “Look here—you know me—Jay, old George Jay. We've had business together, and I've treated you as well as I could fair and square—generous, eh? I'm a tender-hearted old fellow, little Miss Winnie, and I would do it for you if it were possible. But”—his voice changed unconsciously to a harder note—“it's impossible! Quite! Absolutely!”
“Utterly impossible!” said Slite in a curious, low voice.
Winnie's eyes dropped sharply, like a scolded child's.
“Oh!” She fumbled with her bag. “I must pay you back the money, after all,” she said sadly.
“Why on earth?” demanded Mr. Jay.
“Please don't be angry with me, only I can't go on—under false colors. I must give up the position.”
There was a singular keen silence in that office for a moment. Then Mr. Slite did an odd thing. He stepped nearer the girl and stared into her eyes as no man had stared before, except perhaps Mr. Jay on the occasion when he doubted for a fleeting moment whether such innocence as Winnie's was possible.
But that deadly stare was no more effective than the stabbing of a great blue lake with two daggers. Cleverer men than Crotalus Slite were to try to plumb those serene and tranquil blue depths—and fail. Winnie was more than a match for him, with his friend Mr. Jay thrown in.
“You really mean it?” asked the breezy one, very agitated.
“Oh, I am so sorry, but I must.”
They looked at each other again, and moved to the window, where they conversed softly. Winnie could not hear what they were saying, but she knew.
“Buy her. It's her innocence, It's just sheer innocence. We've got to pay for that. She's a freak, but you've got to pay a price for it. She'll leave too soon if you don't—just for a qualm. That's how they are, these innocent ones. I'm telling you—pay! The whole thing is going up in the air if she leaves too soon!
That was what Mr. Jay was saying in effect, and Winnie knew it.
They came at her again.
“Don't do it, Miss Winnie,” said Mr. Jay. “We understand how you are feeling about it, and we admire your feeling. If only we were free to divulge the affairs of our clients we could explain all the silly mystery of it at once. But we can't do that. You must take our word that it is honorable—more, it is almost noble. That's it! You are unconsciously helping to do a noble act by staying on. Now, we don't want you to worry for nothing, and we are going to offer you a—a—little solatium. Nothing much—ten pounds. Just a little gift for trying to help us.”
“Oh, how kind you always are to me, Mr. Jay!” said Winnie in distress. “But I cannot do it. No, really I cannot. Not even for ten—no, not even a hundred pounds, though I'm not very well off.”
A bead of perspiration started on Mr. Jay's forehead.
“Come, come, be human, my dear!” he implored. “You know—you know not what you say when you say not for a hundred pounds, child!”
“But I do—indeed I do! I could not go on any longer for hundreds of pounds! It's not the money—no——”
Mr. Jay hesitated a second, then plunged.
“Listen, Miss O'Wynn!” he said. “I am going to speak very seriously. I will give you the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds to continue as you are, under the same strict promise, until you get a wire recalling you to London, and I may say that it probably will be within a week. There!”
Winnie thought. Was this his last word? In her heart she hesitated, then steeled herself.
“Oh, you tempt me so, Mr. Jay!” She turned wide eyes of alarm on them. “I—I almost agreed. But I mustn't. No, I must not. I will not!”
Mr. Slite, eying her like a coiled snake, spoke with a quiet and crushing decision.
“The last word! You shall have five hundred pounds!”
The blood went humming to her brain. It burned pinkly in her face, but resolutely she guarded her wits against the siren rustle of the bank notes fluttering nearer and nearer. She caught herself up, thinking swiftly. She must be careful. These men were not principals; they were agents, crooked ones too. How far would they go? How much would their principals stand? She fluttered like a bird struggling in a child's hand,
“No, no, no—please not—not thousand pounds! I won't give way! I know—it is my self-respect——”
“Is it?” sneered Slite, his face pale.
Mr. Jay jumped at that.
“It is, man! I tell you, know her! She is the most ingenuous little girl in town. She feels that way. I know it! I admire her! She shall have a thousand!” But there was agony in his voice.
Slite threw out his arms, glaring. Then a new voice broke in from behind—a woman's voice.
“Let me see her! I will tell you if she is really ingenuous.”
Winnie turned to this far more dangerous attack, and was face to face with that rust-red, French chalk, geranium blonde, Mrs. Eustace Tolbar, the Tiger Cat! Winnie sighed with relief as she looked at her. This was, indeed, the daughter of the painted lady in the hall—granddaughter of Cairns Bradburn.
Tall, graceful, superbly gowned, she was beautiful, with exactly the strange and sinister beauty that had been her mother's. And she was looking at the girl with an easy, insolent confidence that would have cowed many girls. Unerringly, instinctively, Winnie selected her weapon.
“Oh, but I cannot fight against you all!” she cried softly, and sat down.
Mrs. Eustace Tolbar shrugged a shoulder.
“Then you'll take the thousand?”
“No, please,” said Winnie in the tone of one who yields.
“Then, my dear child, what in heaven's name do you want?”
She faced them, permitting her lips to quiver and a hint of tears to dim her eyes.
“Oh, don't you see—don't you see, please?” she cried. “If I let you buy my self-respect—my pride, with your terrible money, I—I shall never have it again. I'm sure I shall never be quite as happy as I used to be. I have been taught to work very hard for two things—to keep my self-respect and to earn a dependence—and a dependence is two thousand pounds!” She stood up.
“I am sorry to seem so unkind—you must think I am hateful—but I'm all alone in the world, and quite unprotected; and if my self-respect is taken from me I must have a dependence in return.”
Mr. Slite writhed a little.
“Unprotected? You don't need any protection, child!” he snarled.
Mr. Jay moved his hands rather feebly.
“It's her innocence—her ignorance,” he said. “She doesn't know the value of money!”
“Let me understand,” said Mr. Slite. “You want two thousand pounds down for remaining with Mr. Bradburn and answering no questions about your parents until such time as your engagement is terminated by telegram from me. Is that it?”
“Yes, please,” said Winnie quite simply.
Mr. Jay raised his hands to his jaws like one suffering from toothache, and the almond eyes of Mrs. Eustace Tolbar glowed greenly.
“There is nothing else you require?” demanded Slite.
“Only your strict word of honor that there is nothing wrong or dishonorable in the matter, please,” said Winnie.
“Oh, I give you that!”
“Yes, my dear, we all assure you of that,” echoed Mr. Jay.
Winnie gave a long, rather sad sigh.
“Very well-then, and thank you very much,” she said. “Please, may I have the money in one of those checks that they give you the money for immediately?”
“She wants a bearer check.”
With an air of bitter sorrow and extreme reluctance, Mr. Slite wrote it, blotted it and handed it to her, with an appearance of hoping it would burn her hand off. She took it like one catching hold of an eel, and read it.
“Well, is it all right, Miss O'Wynn?” he asked, vainly endeavoring to make his voice sound jovial.
Winnie nodded and put it in her little bag.
“I am sure it is, thank you. But I am not very happy, I assure you.”
“And you're going straight back to Bradburn Manor, my dear?” inquired Mr. Jay.
“Oh, yes!”
She rose.
“Good-by, and thank you. I hope you will succeed in doing the kind action for your client,” she said, and slowly passed out of the door, which Mr. Jay held open for her. She almost smiled at the smitten look upon his big face.
“Well, next time you recommend a girl to me, Jay,” snarled Mr. Slite, “just recommend one with some sense. I admire innocence like any other man, but there's a limit. A girl like that doesn't understand money any more than a doll. Nothing over a few pounds has any meaning for her. I don't believe she's so dashed innocent——”
Mrs. Eustace intervened.
“She's just a baby,” said the rust-red one. “You can't have it both ways, you know. She's innocent, as a baby is innocent.”
Which, coming from one who was certainly a judge, clinched it.
“After all,” Mr. Jay reminded them, “what is two thousand when we're closing in on millions? Boyde says the old man is crazy about her. You want to keep a sense of proportion, Slite.”
“I want to keep my money—that's what I want to keep,” growled Slite, not altogether unreasonably.
IV
WINNIE took the fastest-looking taxi on the rank to Mr. Slite's bank, cashed the check and promptly paid the resultant notes into her own account. She gave the taxi man five shillings, and that journey cost her five millions.
Then she hurried back to Bradburn Manor. She knew better than any that the complex scheme in which she had become involved and which she had solved with her own nimble wits was nearing its end. Things were speeding up. Every instinct told her that. The Slite gang were on the brink of making their coup. It was not for nothing that they had permitted themselves to be detached from two thousand solid pounds instead of a reluctant ten—that little solatium.
“That makes it two battalions in the bank at least. Soon I shall have a brigade, and be a general,” she told herself.
Her smiles faded as the train rushed her into the station. The huge saloon limousine which usually Mr. Bradburn reserved for his own use on the rare occasions when he was well enough to go out had been sent to meet her. It was characteristic of her that she caught the serious expression on the face of Neury, the French chauffeur, immediately she saw him.
“What is the matter, Neury?” she asked. “How is Mr. Bradburn?”
She knew even before he spoke. The old financier was in the throes of another heart attack—a serious one. She caught her breath. There was a player in that great game who held even a stronger hand than a straight flush—a silent player who always wins in the end. She had forgotten him whose name was Death!
“Listen, Neury,” she,said. “I must see Mr. Bradburn at the earliest possible moment. Get me there quickly. You have driven racing cars, haven't you? Well, get me to the manor as quickly as you can. It is imperative. You cannot drive too fast to please me and to render a great service to Mr. Bradburn.”
She got in, and the Frenchman swung her across the four miles from the railway station to the house like a stone from a sling. Mrs. Beaton, in tears, met her in the hall.
“The master is very ill,” she whimpered.
Straight to the sunny study went Winnie. She paused on the threshold for a moment. The big table was drawn up close to the couch on which the steel master lay, his face gray, strangely thinner, heavily lined with pain. But his fierce, indomitable old eyes were still bright, and grew brighter still as they fell on Winnie. Round him were his own doctor and a famous specialist; Carden, his solicitor, and Carden's managing clerk; and Alexander Boyde. It was Boyde who wheeled softly from the group and taking a telegram from the table came swiftly to Winnie, ripping open the envelope and extracting the telegram as he came.
“Your engagement is terminated, Miss O'Wynn,” he whispered in such urgent haste that it had almost a touch of fury. She glanced at the telegram:
   “Engagement terminated. Return at once.
   Slite.”
“You see? It is all in order. Mr. Bradburn is in extremis. The least disturbance—I'm sorry to seem curt, but please leave the room!”
His hand stretched to the door.
“No!” said Winnie very distinctly.
Boyde's fingers flexed with a gripping movement, and a savage and murderous change of expression flashed to his face.
“Ah, Miss O'Wynn! It is Miss Winnie, Mr. Bradburn.” The voice of Carden, the solicitor, broke the sudden half-second tension between the secretary and the girl. Carden rose from the parchments with which he was occupied, came over to Winnie and led her to the steel master's couch.
“Your granddaughter has returned, Mr. Bradburn,” he said. “Miss Winnie, you know, of course, that Mr. Bradburn is your grandfather. Mr. Boyde has just told us your great secret, and if an old friend of the family may say so, everyone will be pleased at this reconciliation.”
Winnie dropped on her knees by the couch, and it seemed that the eyes of the dying man poured upon her in that long last look all the love and tenderness which fate had debarred him throughout almost his whole life from lavishing upon his child or his child's child.
And alone among all these—for Boyde had quietly left the room—Winnie O'Wynn knew that it was not she but Mrs. Eustace Tolbar who was the millionaire's granddaughter.
“All—all to her!” came the dry whisper of the steel master.
“Fill in her name—Winifred May everything to Winifred May Cleves—quickly, quickly!” whispered Carden to the clerk, hovering over the hastily drawn will of the millionaire.
“No! My name is Winifred Constance O'Wynn!” said the girl. “I am not his granddaughter! Her name was Winifred May Cleves. Now she is Mrs. Eustace Tolbar.”
“Then, in God's name, who are you?”
“Just Winifred Constance O'Wynn. I am not related to Mr. Bradburn. There has been a great plot to secure to her this inheritance.”
“To her—to Winnie O'Wynn—all—all everything!” whispered Bradburn in a fading voice.
The clerk scribbled furiously, fluttered his pages and crossed out in many places
But the grip of the dying man's hand tightened feebly on that of the girl, then relaxed. The brightness of his eyes dimmed swiftly. The lids fell heavily.
“He will never sign—it is too late! Mr. Bradburn is dead!” said the specialist slowly. His clear, quiet, cultured voice beat upon the shocked silence like the blows of a hammer.
Winnie leaned over the still face, blind with tears. She had come within an ace of inheriting five millions—and had missed them by a space of seconds. But for a moment there was no thought of money in her mind at all—not one thought. It was as though she had found another father, and he had been taken from her at the very moment when she realized it. He had loved her for her own sake. And she?
She bent low, pressing her lips softly to the forehead of the dead millionaire.
“Good-by,” she whispered. “It was not for the money I loved you. It was only just—because you were so kind.”
She stood up, went to the window and stared out, unseeing, till she had recovered her self-possession. She knew that the others—save only the specialist, who was going already—were waiting for some explanation, too late to be of any use though it was. In a few moments she turned to them. Carden, poring unhappily over the unsigned will, looked up over his glasses. He liked Winnie, but he disliked mysteries.
“I don't understand, Miss O'Wynn. You are aware that had you arrived ten minutes earlier you would have inherited the whole of Mr. Bradburn's vast estate? I am sorry—very sorry.”
It was the truth, and Winnie knew it. But she was her father's daughter, and like him she could win without hysteria and lose without despair.
“Listen, please,” she said.
Simply, lucidly, quietly, she told them of her engagement as reader to Mr. Bradburn, emphasizing the curious conditions.
“All that was arranged by two men in London acting in concert with Mr. Boyde. I expect Mr. Boyde was the mainspring of the whole scheme. You will find that he has disappeared, I think.” And later they found it even so.
“What, then, was the scheme?”
“I will tell you now. Winifred Bradburn, whose picture hangs in the hall, never made it up with her father. She married a man named Cleves, and before she died she transmitted her hatred to her daughter—Winifred Cleves. Also, she left the daughter a good deal of money. Winifred Cleves, now Mrs. Eustace Tolbar, was Mr. Bradburn's granddaughter. But he never saw her in all his life. Yet he knew of her, just as I think you must have known of her, did you not?”
The lawyer nodded “Yes.”
“She had done something which utterly estranged her grandfather from her, had she not?”
Again the lawyer nodded.
“She had forged his name repeatedly to very heavy checks—checks which he acknowledged to avoid a scandal,” he said. “He protected himself finally from her rapacity by a secret device relating to his signature and an understanding with the bank.”
“I did not know exactly what she had done, but I knew she had utterly ruined her chances of reconciliation. That was before the war, when Mr. Bradburn was not really rich. But with his sudden tremendous leap into the circle of extremely wealthy men, a year or two ago, Winifred Cleves realized that she had thrown away, for a comparative trifle dishonestly secured, a gigantic fortune. When Mr. Bradburn's health failed she contrived to meet and to captivate Boyde, and with his assistance they planned to secure the inheritance by means of a reconciliation, in spite of the forgeries. But she is a woman of peculiar temperament and disposition. Her temper is deadly; so deadly that it is not a weakness but an affliction—a curse. Even her friends call her the Tiger Cat. She hated her grandfather with an inherited and an acquired hatred, and she could not trust herself to ingratiate herself with him under an assumed name.”
The lawyer's lips tightened.
“He would not have forgiven her readily,” he said.
“No—so she and her coterie hit upon the idea of engaging a substitute who would win Mr. Bradburn's liking, even his affection. When this was achieved, and when Mr. Bradburn's health was such that his death was obviously near at hand, the girl was to disappear and Boyde was to inform Mr. Bradburn that the girl was his granddaughter, representing that she had been the unwilling tool of her husband in the matter of the forgeries. They hoped that with Boyde's help Mr. Bradburn would have become so fond of the girl as to make a will in her favor. It was ingenious, and very likely to succeed, for Mr. Bradburn was a lonely man, with few relatives. So they found a girl—a substitute granddaughter—and Boyde arranged for her to become a reader to Mr. Bradburn.”
“That girl was you?”
Winnie nodded “Yes.”
“Did they explain the scheme to you?”
“No; I was engaged simply as reader to a gentleman. But they made some mistakes.”
“Ha! What were they, Miss Winnie?”
“First, they overpaid me”—she was ticking off the points on her fingers. “Second, they were in too much of a hurry, and showed their impatience. Third, they made a curious condition that I should never discuss my parents with anyone here. Fourth, Boyde and Slite, one of the gang, were careless enough to let me suspect that there was some secret collusion between them. Fifth, Boyde made it completely clear that he had set his heart desperately upon Mr. Bradburn liking me. I think anyone would have wondered a little at all that. So I set to work to puzzle it all out. I learned—from Mrs. Beaton—of that tragic quarrel of Mrs. Cleves with her father, and that there was a daughter. It seemed so odd that the granddaughter should remain unknown to so generous and rich and powerful a man as Mr. Bradburn, and I made some inquiries. I was fortunate. I found out who she was—the Tiger Cat—and after that it was easy to guess what was happening. They were all sitting round like birds of prey waiting for me unconsciously to win Mr. Bradburn's affection. Then when I had disappeared, and Boyde had disclosed my wrong identity—as his granddaughter—and the innocent artifice by which he had become reconciled, they hoped that Mr. Bradburn would make his will in favor of his granddaughter, Winifred May Cleves, believing her to be myself.”
The men were staring at her, open-mouthed, making no effort to conceal their admiration.
“Why, that—that is exactly what happened—was happening—when you arrived,” said Carden. “But why did you go away to-day, of all days? Had you been here you would have inherited, after all.”
“I know,” said Winnie calmly. “But I was not able to foresee that poor Mr. Bradburn would have a fatal heart attack to-day. I went to London to test my belief.”
“You met that gang—alone?”
“Oh, yes! I told them I wished to be released from my promise not to say who my parents were. They would not agree. So I felt sure I was right. But I wanted to be quite sure, and so I told them I would give up my post and leave. They were really startled at this, and offered me money to remain. A little solatium, they called it ten pounds. I would not agree to do it for that. I wanted to see just how serious they were. I forced them higher.”
“Ah, that was courageous! Did you force them very high?”
“They paid me two thousand pounds,” said Winnie.
“You took it?”
“Indeed I did!”
“You actually have it?”
“It is in the bank. Then I hurried back with the intention of telling Mr. Bradburn the whole story of this last big fraud. I was just in time to prevent his being swindled on his very deathbed by a most heartless woman and a most dangerous trio of men.”
The lawyer sat down.
“You are an extraordinarily brave and clever girl, Miss Winnie,” he said. “It is a great misfortune that you were too late.”
“Pardon me, I was in time,” said Winnie. “I prevented the fraud.”
“I meant, my dear, that you were too late to benefit as you deserved and Mr. Bradburn intended. His whole fortune goes to found a great college of metallurgy and engineering.”
“Kismet!” said Winnie very quietly.
They stared, each man of them conscious that he could not have taken it so steadily. They seemed almost shocked, and she saw that. Her blue eyes filled suddenly.
“Oh, don't misunderstand!” she cried. “I am not really hard, you know. Only I wanted to do something for Mr. Bradburn just in return for his kindness to me; kindness that was really kindness, because it required nothing in return; because he was a good man and—and not a wolf! Of course, I would have liked all that money. But he tried to give it to me. It was not his fault that he failed. It was just fated to be so.”
She moved to the couch and rested her hand gently upon that of the dead millionaire.
“And the flowers that I shall place upon his grave will not be less white or beautiful because I pay for them with money that I have had to earn instead of money that he has given me,” she said softly, like one speaking to herself.
None of them had any answer to that. Her eyes fell upon the open volume of the Decline and Fall balanced precariously upon a small table at the head of the couch. She caught her breath, recovered herself and reached for the book. Quietly she put the silk bookmark in its place, closed the volume and placed it tidily with its fellows on the shelf.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1952, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 71 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse