LITMIR.BIZ

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to nourish his reputation for amiability.

      So that when the unexpected Mr. Bishop (whose Christian name was Softly) said to him: "I won't keep you now. Only I was passing and I want you to be kind enough to make an early appointment with me at some time and place entirely convenient to yourself," Mr. Prohack proceeded to persuade Mr. Bishop to stay to lunch, there being no sort of reason in favour of such a course, and various sound reasons against it. Mr. Prohack deceived Mr. Softly Bishop as follows:

      "No time and place like the present. You must stay to lunch. This is your old club and you must stay to lunch."

      "But you've begun your lunch," Bishop protested.

      "I've not. The fact is, I was half expecting you to look in again. The hall-porter told me. … " And Mr. Prohack actually patted Mr. Bishop on the shoulder—a trick he had. "Come now, don't tell me you've got another lunch appointment. It's twenty-five to two." And to himself, leading Mr. Bishop to the strangers' dining-room, he said: "Why should I further my own execution in this way?"

      He ordered a lunch as copious and as costly as he would have ordered for the other, the real Bishop. Powerful and vigorous in some directions, Mr. Prohack's mentality was deplorably weak in at least one other.

      Mr. Softly Bishop was delighted with his reception, and Mr. Prohack began to admit that Mr. Bishop had some personal charm. Nevertheless when the partridge came, Mr. Prohack acidly reflected:

      "I'm offering this fellow a portion of my daughter's new frock on a charger!"

      They talked of the club, Mr. Bishop as a former member being surely entitled to learn all about it, and then they talked about clubs in the United States, where Mr. Bishop had spent recent years. But Mr. Bishop persisted in giving no hint of his business.

      "It must be something rather big and annoying," thought Mr. Prohack, and ordered another portion of his daughter's new frock in the shape of excellent cigars.

      "You don't mean to say we can smoke here," exclaimed Mr. Bishop.

      "Yes," said Mr. Prohack. "Not in the members' coffee-room, but we can here. Stroke of genius on the part of the Committee! You see it tends to keep guests out of the smoking-room, which for a long time has been getting uncomfortably full after lunch."

      "Good God!" murmured Mr. Bishop simply.

IV

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      And he added at once, as he lighted the Corona Corona: "Well, I'd better tell you what I've come to see you about. You remember that chap, Silas Angmering?"

      "Silas Angmering? Of course I do. Used to belong here. He cleared off to America ages ago."

      "He did. And you lent him a hundred pounds to help him to clear off to America."

      "Who told you?"

      "He did," said Mr. Bishop, with a faint, mysterious smile.

      "What's happened to him?"

      "Oh! All sorts of things. He made a lot of money out of the war. He established himself in Cincinnati. And there were opportunities. … "

      "How came he to tell you that I'd lent him anything?" Mr. Prohack interrupted sharply.

      "I had business with him at one time—before the war and also just after the war began. Indeed I was in partnership with him." Mr. Bishop spoke with a measured soothing calmness.

      "And you say he's made a lot of money out of the war. What do you mean—a lot?"

      "Well," said Mr. Bishop, looking at the tablecloth through his glittering spectacles, "I mean a lot."

      His tone was confidential; but then his tone was always confidential. He continued: "He's lost it all since."

      "Pity he didn't pay me back my hundred pounds while he'd got it! How did he lose his money?"

      "In the same way as most rich men lose their money," answered Mr. Bishop. "He died."

      Although Mr. Prohack would have been capable of telling a similar story in a manner very similar to Mr. Bishop's, he didn't quite relish his guest's theatricality. It increased his suspicion of his guest, and checked the growth of friendliness which the lunch had favoured. Still, he perceived that there was a good chance of getting his hundred pounds back, possibly with interest—and the interest would mount up to fifty or sixty pounds. And a hundred and fifty pounds appeared to him to be an enormous sum. Then it occurred to him that probably Mr. Bishop was not indeed "after" anything and that he had been unjust to Mr. Bishop.

      "Married?" he questioned, casually.

      "Angmering? No. He never married. You know as well as anybody, I expect, what sort of a card he was. No relations, either."

      "Then who's come into his money?"

      "Well," said Mr. Bishop, with elaborate ease and smoothness of quiet delivery. "I've come into some of it. And there was a woman—actress sort of young thing—about whom perhaps the less said the better—she's come into some of it. And you've come into some of it. We share it in equal thirds."

      "The deuce we do!"

      "Yes."

      "How long's he been dead?"

      "About five weeks or less. I sailed as soon as I could after he was buried. I'd arranged before to come. I daresay I ought to have stayed a bit longer, as I'm the executor under the will, but I wanted to come, and I've got a very good lawyer over there—and over here too. I landed this morning, and here I am. Strictly speaking I suppose I should have cabled you. But it seemed to me that I could explain better by word of mouth."

      "I wish you would explain," said Mr. Prohack. "You say he's been rich a long time, but he didn't pay his debt to me, and yet he goes and makes a will leaving me a third of his fortune. Wants some explaining, doesn't it?"

      Mr. Bishop replied:

      "It does and it doesn't. You knew he was a champion postponer, poor old chap. Profoundly unbusinesslike. It's astonishing how unbusinesslike successful men are! He was always meaning to come to England to see you; but he never found time. He constantly talked of you—"

      "But do you know," Mr. Prohack intervened, "that from that day to this I've never heard one single word from him? Not even a picture-postcard. And what's more I've never heard a single word of him."

      "Just like Silas, that was! Just! … He died from a motor accident. He was perfectly conscious and knew he'd only a few hours to live. Spine. He made his will in hospital, and died about a couple of hours after he'd made it. I wasn't there myself. I was in New York."

      "Well, well!" muttered Mr. Prohack. "Poor fellow! Well, well! This is the most amazing tale I ever heard in my life."

      "It is rather strange," Mr. Bishop compassionately admitted.

      A silence fell—respectful to the memory of the dead. The members' coffee-room seemed to Mr. Prohack to be a thousand miles off, and the chat with his cronies at the table in the window-embrasure to have happened a thousand years ago. His brain was in anarchy, and waving like a flag above the anarchy was the question: "How much did old Silas leave?" But the deceitful fellow would not permit the question to utter itself—he had dominion over himself at any rate to that extent. He would not break the silence; he would hide his intense curiosity; he would force Softly Bishop to divulge the supreme fact upon his own initiative.

      And at length Mr. Bishop remarked, musingly:

      "Yes. Thanks to the exchange being so low, you stand to receive at the very least a hundred thousand pounds clear—after all deductions have been made."

      "Do I really?" said Mr. Prohack, also musingly.

CHAPTER

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