reached out a long arm, the receiver still at its end, and pressed that one of the buttons on his desk which would bring Miss Pagan. When Miss Pagan came he was talking again. He was saying:
‘Well, certainly, we’ve got to get this matter settled. I can’t make you see reason by writing, so I suppose we’d better meet. Now, I’m very busy. I suggest we should meet some evening, as soon as you like. Not tonight. I’ve got a dinner party. Tomorrow night, say. Just a moment, I’ll ask my secretary … All right, keep your shirt in! Keep your shirt in! Keep letting it hang out like that and you’ll be arrested for exhibitionism.’
He looked up from the telephone, clasping the mouthpiece firmly to his waistcoat.
‘Miss Pagan,’ he said, ‘got my book?’
‘Yes, Mr Benedik.’ Miss Pagan’s tone was faintly injured. Of course she had his book.
‘Am I doing anything tomorrow night?’
‘There’s nothing in this book, Mr Benedik.’
‘Well, I don’t know of anything,’ said Benedik; then into the telephone: ‘Marsh, still there? … Look here, Marsh, I’m free tomorrow night. Come along to my house and see me, will you? And I want to assure you that we’re going to settle. You worry the life out of me and you worry the life out of my people and your voice is beastly over the telephone anyhow! Understand what I’m talking about? I’m going to settle! Are you free tomorrow night? … Right, ten o’clock suit you? … Right. Well, come to my place ten o’clock … What’s that? … You great sap, you know damn well where I live. Oh, well, perhaps you’re right, perhaps I never told you; thought you might come round worrying the servants or something. 4 William Pitt Street, West one … No, Mayfair … Yes, come through the market if you’re coming from the Piccadilly side. Four. That’s right … Right, ten o’clock tomorrow night. Good-bye!’
He replaced the receiver with a savage click; set the telephone down upon his desk with a bang. ‘And,’ he said, looking at it, ‘God blast you!’ He looked up at Miss Pagan. ‘Shove that down, will you? Ten p.m., house—for tomorrow this is, you understand—ten p.m., house, Marsh. And put it in big red capital letters. And I’d like to tell you this, Miss Pagan, that if ever that’—he drew a deep breath—‘if ever that person—I can’t say more in front of a gently nurtured English girl—if ever he puts his wart-hog’s nose in this office after tomorrow night, you have my instructions to crown him with the heaviest thing you can lay your hands on. And if he rings up, ring off … Mr Anthony back yet?’
‘Not yet, Mr Benedik. Shall I ask him to come and see you as soon as he gets in?’
‘Please,’ said F. X. ‘And now you might bring me that last lot of composers’ reports from Lisbon, and tell Mr Woolrich to come and see me.’
The Lisbon reports had been brought and read and digested before Woolrich came. Twice F. X., now alone, had looked at his watch before there came a soft tapping upon the door and round its edge Woolrich’s sleek fair head.
F. X. looked up. He said:
‘Enter Secretary and Treasurer with shamefaced look. And you’d better hurry, too.’
Woolrich came in.
‘I’m awfully sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘Afraid I missed my train this morning. I’d been down to … down to … to the country.’
F. X. looked at him. F. X., after one frosty instant, smiled. ‘You’re always,’ he said, ‘going down to the country. You know, Woolrich, you ought to be careful of that country. I’m not sure it’s doing you much good … in fact, if you weren’t such a damned good man I should have a great deal more to say about the country … Sit down!’
Woolrich moved over to the big chair at the far side of the desk. He was a tall and broad-shouldered and exquisitely-dressed person of an age difficult to determine. He might have been anything between twenty-five and forty. Actually he was thirty-six. His tan was as deep almost as F. X.’s own, and his ash-blond hair was bleached by the sun and open air … but under the startlingly blue eyes were dark and lately almost permanent half-moons.
‘Look here, Woolrich!’ F. X. leaned forward. ‘I’ve just been looking over this last lot of reports from Lisbon. I expect you’ve read ’em.’
Woolrich nodded. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘I could say them over by heart.’
‘You mean,’ said F. X., ‘you know you could … Look here, there’s only one thing that worries me, and that’s Montana. You know and I know that Montana’s not square—unless it pays him to be—and is it paying him?’
Woolrich nodded. He said, with emphasis:
‘It is. If he went over to real rubber he’d never get the money. There aren’t any flies on Montana. You know that, sir, and he must realise that if he started any double-crossing he might do well for a bit but in the long run he’d get ditched. I’ve thought it all out.’
‘That,’ said F. X., ‘is my opinion too … All right, we’ll leave that at that. Now …’
They plunged into many and intricate details of business. They did, in ten minutes, so used were they to each other, as much work as most other couples in London, standing in the same relation, would have spent two hours and more upon.
F. X. rose and stretched himself. His big body seemed suddenly to tower. He said:
‘Well, that’s that! Anything else, Woolrich?’
Woolrich pondered a moment. His blue eyes narrowed as he thought and one corner of his well-cut, clean-shaven mouth twitched to a little constricted grin of concentration. At one corner of this mouth there showed a gleam of teeth as white as F. X.’s own. He pulled out a small notebook; flipped over its pages.
‘Nothing today, sir.’
‘You don’t want,’ said F. X., looking at him keenly, ‘to go down to the country this afternoon?’
A dark flush darkened Woolrich’s tan. He shook the blond head. ‘No, sir.’ He stood up. ‘If there’s nothing else I’ll go and have a bite of lunch. Busy afternoon after what we’ve done.’
F. X. nodded. ‘No, there’s nothing else.’
Woolrich walked to the door. With his fingers on its handle he turned. He said:
‘By the way, sir, I hear that fellow Marsh has been ringing up—’
‘Oh, him!’ said F. X. ‘That was before you came … All right, don’t blush. I meant to tell you, Woolrich, I’ve made an appointment with Marsh for tomorrow night. I’m going to meet him after all. And I’m going to settle with him.’
Woolrich came away from the door, back into the centre of the room.
‘Good Lord, sir!’ he said. ‘You don’t mean to say you’re going to—’
F. X. shook his head. ‘No, no, no! Woolrich, I’m not wringing wet—you know that. No, I’m going to tell Mr Marsh that if he likes to take a little douceur he can buzz off; if he doesn’t like to take it, he can buzz off just the same. I’m fed up with him … And if after tomorrow he ever rings up or shoves his face in here again, you can have him buzzed off with my love. Anyhow, we don’t want things like that blocking up the place.’
Woolrich paused on his journey to the door. He said:
‘I’ve never seen him, sir, and I don’t want to. But from what you said I should imagine you’re right.’
‘I am!’ said F. X., with feeling. ‘Anthony here yet?’
‘I’ll send him along, sir,’ said Woolrich, and was gone.
3
Francis Xavier Benedik and Anthony Xavier Benedik stood expectant just within the main doors of the Alsace Restaurant. They were waiting