Jacob's Ladder - Бесплатная аудиокнига

CHAPTER XIV

Jacob, on the following morning, received a pencilled epistle from Sybil which brought him little satisfaction. There was no orthodox commencement, and it was written on sheets of paper torn apparently from a block:

I have been asking myself, on my way into exile—where I am going to stay with some pestilential relatives in Devonshire—exactly why I dislike you more and more every time we come into contact with one another, and I have come to the conclusion that it is because in our controversies you are nearly always right and I am nearly always wrong. I suppose, as a matter of fact, I haven’t the slightest reason in harbouring ill-will against you for refusing to put your money into the business which my father had allowed to become derelict. I am quite sure that you gave me good advice when you told me to keep away from those men who tried to rob you. In short, you are always right and I am always wrong, and I hate you all the more for it.

I shall not return to London for at least a good many months. During that time I do beg that you will sit down and forget all about me. Have an affair with Grace, if you like, flirt with any one you want to, or, better still, get married. But I tell you honestly that it absolutely irritates and angers me to be made conscious of your—shall I call it devotion? There is something antagonistic between us. I don’t know what it is, but I do know that I shall never change. And I beg you, therefore, to do as I ask you—forget that such a person exists.

You may think that because I have admitted as much as I have admitted, that it has changed my feelings towards you. It has not. It never could. I am boiling over with passion at the present moment when I think how you treated our plot with contempt and walked out of it with the air of a conqueror. I am going to bury myself in Devonshire, partly because I have nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, but partly so that I may not have the misfortune to see anything more of you. By the time we meet again, if ever we do, I hope that you will be cured.

Sybil Bultiwell.

Jacob read the letter twice, until every phrase and syllable seemed burned into his memory. Then he tore it into small pieces, gave Dauncey a power of attorney, and started for Monte Carlo. He lingered a little on the way there, exploring the country round Hyères and Costebelle. Almost the first person he met at Monte Carlo was Lord Felixstowe. He was coming out of Ciro’s bar, his shoulders a little hunched, a cigarette dropping from his lips. He would have passed Jacob, if the latter had not accosted him.

“Forgotten me, Lord Felixstowe?”

His young lordship recognised Jacob and cheered up.

“Oil in the wilderness, manna in the desert!” he exclaimed. “A man with a banking account! Come right in, and Henry shall mix you a morning tot that will make you feel as pink as the sunrise.”

“I’ll try this wonderful drink,” Jacob consented, “but I don’t need it. By the bye, were you to have had your share of that five thousand pounds?”

“Just one degree too thick that was for me,” the young man confided, after he had given mysterious orders to his white-linened friend behind the bar. “I am not putting on frills, mind. I was willing to come in on any scheme to induce you to part with a bit, but I didn’t fancy the medieval touch and the black gentleman. Gad, you’re a little terror, though, Pratt! I’d have given something to have seen you knock those two about! I went to visit Mason in hospital. You couldn’t see his face for bandages.”...

On Jacob’s proposition, they strolled out on to the terrace.

“Are you going into the Rooms this morning?” he enquired.

Lord Felixstowe shook his head gloomily.

“They’ve skinned me,” he confessed. “I got a fifty-pound note from an old aunt, to bring her out as far as Bordighera. She don’t speak the lingo, and I am rather a nut at it. I landed her, all right, day before yesterday, dropped off here on my way home, and lost the lot.”

“What are you going to do, then?”

“Borrow a pony from you, old top,” was the prompt reply.

Jacob counted out the notes, which the young man received with enthusiasm.

“I like a chap who parts like a sportsman,” he declared. “Now I wonder if there is anything I can do for you. Would you like me to look you up about dinner time at your hotel? If you are alone, I dare say I could find you a pal or two.”

“Come and dine with me, by all means,” Jacob invited, “but I have a few acquaintances here, and if I want any more no doubt I shall be able to pick them up.”

The young man looked at his watch.

“I have an appointment at table number five and a louis to go on number fourteen, in a few minutes,” he declared. “So long.”

Jacob took out his card for the Rooms and the Sporting Club, lunched leisurely with an acquaintance whom he had met on the train coming down, made a few purchases, gambled mildly, with some success, and had just changed and descended for his cocktail before dinner at the Paris when Felixstowe strolled in. He smote Jacob on the back and ordered delectable drinks.

“Your money has the right touch, old bean,” he declared. “It’s the sort that worms its way to glory. I can assure you my little bit went through the croupier’s hands like water. Yours—God bless you, old dear! We’ll drink fizz to-night. To think that if I hadn’t met you I might have been trying the vin ordinaire on my way back!”

“Do I gather that you won?” Jacob asked.

“Thirteen hundred of the best, my pocket Crœsus,” was the jubilant reply. “To-morrow you shall have your pony back—not to-night. Your money brings me luck, Jacob. It’s the stuff I’ve been looking for.”

They made their way into the dining-room, where Felixstowe was greeted by many acquaintances. A bewildering confection in black and white claimed his attention. He rejoined Jacob a moment later with a proposition.

“Couple of little fairies there who’d like to hitch on, Jacob,” he suggested. “Betty Tomlinson’s one, little girl I used to know at the Gaiety. Got a flat in Paris now. The other little thing is an American in the same line of business.”

Jacob shook his head.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d rather not.”

“The hand that pays the reckoning rules the roost,” Felixstowe paraphrased cheerfully. “Wait till I hand ’em the mit. Tell Louis to put a magnum on the ice.”

“Look here, young fellow,” Jacob observed, when his young friend made his joyous return, “just how old are you?”

“Twenty-four,” Lord Felixstowe confided. “And if it’s the wine you are thinking about, don’t you worry. We’ve got it in our blood and we thrive on it. We doubled this little allowance each, the night after we won the regimental polo cup, and I made a hundred and seven against Yorkshire the following day. You should see the governor—a sallow, lean-looking man, without an ounce of colour. He’d drink you under the table before he’d begun to hiccough.... You’re not much of a lad for the fillies, what?”

“I find the variety here a little exotic,” Jacob confessed.

“You like the homemade article, eh? Not sure that you ain’t right. Gad, I’m glad I met you!”

Jacob, who might have been dining alone, reciprocated the sentiment as they solemnly toasted one another.

“Look here, old thing,” the young man insisted, “we’re pals. You’ve crossed the Rubicon, so to speak—tipped up the ready at the right moment and started me on the road to fortune. We’ll drop the ‘Mr.’ and the ‘Lord’-ing. Felix and Jacob, eh? Good! My love, Jacob. Come along with me into the Rooms and see me touch up those Johnnies to-night.”

Jacob shook his head.

“I prefer the Club,” he said, “and if you take my advice, you’ll put a thousand in your pocketbook and have a flutter with the three hundred.”

“Jacob,” the young man declared, “I feel to-night as though Jove had looked down from Olympus and winked the other eye at me. You get me? I feel in luck, steeped in the magic of it; couldn’t do wrong, couldn’t pick a loser if I tried. Seven times in eleven spins of the wheel number fourteen came up this afternoon, and to-night I can see number twenty-nine just the same way. Number five table, Jacob, that I’m going to hit. The croupier who’ll be on at ten o’clock has a sort of double squint. I’ll send him to the vaults, sure as this Pommery is about the best tipple I ever drank.... Aren’t you going to have a flutter yourself?”

“Gambling doesn’t appeal very much to me,” Jacob admitted.

The young man who desired to be called Felix sighed.

“Doesn’t gamble,” he mused, “drinks moderately, and likes his fairies good. Jacob dear, I must introduce you some day to the home circle. You were certainly made for domesticity. Did you tell Cook’s man about yourself when you booked for Monte Carlo?”

“I told him that I’d heard it was a good place for winter golf,” Jacob replied, smiling. “If you’ve finished talking nonsense, perhaps you will bring your mighty intellect to bear upon the question of liqueur brandies.”

“Are you feeling at all festive?” Felixstowe enquired.

“Absolutely,” Jacob answered.

“Then consult Louis and leave it to him. You know what Pierpont Morgan called Monte Carlo?—‘the bleeding place for millionaires.’ Louis will see you through it.”

The dinner came to a close in a little burst of glory, Louis himself bringing them a dust-encrusted bottle, whilst a satellite placed before them two glasses which looked like the insides of chandeliers.

“The right stuff,” Lord Felixstowe declared approvingly. “Trust Louis.”

“Who trusts no one, my lord,” the maître d’hotel jested, with a bow.

“You won’t even leave the bottle?” his youthful client implored.

“Not even for the son of my valued patron, Monsieur le Marquis,” Louis replied, bearing it off, smiling.

“I go like a giant to my task,” the young man declared, as he bade Jacob au revoir. “Prepare for great news.”...

Jacob spent a pleasant and a harmless evening wandering about the Sporting Club, winning and losing a few five-louis plaques, and sitting for a while outside the Café de Paris. He went to bed early, with a view to a golf match on the morrow, and was wakened by a dead weight upon his shins. He sat up and found Felixstowe sitting on the bed, regarding him sorrowfully.

“Hullo!” Jacob exclaimed. “Where are the spoils?”

The young man opened his lips and spoke illuminating words concerning Monte Carlo, gambling generally, number five table in the Rooms, and the squint-eyed croupier particularly. In conclusion, he referred to himself in terms, if possible, even more lurid. By the time he had finished, Jacob was thoroughly awake.

“Lend me ten louis, old chap, for the journey,” his nocturnal visitor begged. “You’ll have to wait for your pony.”

“Take it off the dressing table,” Jacob replied. “What’s the hurry?”

“I’m off in three hours’ time. Catching the early morning train.”

Jacob hesitated for a moment.

“Look here, Felix,” he suggested, “if you’d like to have another go at them—”

Felixstowe shook his head.

“I’m not built that way,” he interrupted. “I’ve given them best this time. You see,” he went on, “it’s a mug’s game, after all, and meant for mugs. I shall wait and pick up my little bit where the grey matter talks, what?”

“I see,” Jacob replied. “Perhaps you are right. Sorry to lose you, though.”

“I’ll look you up in town,” the young man promised.