might have envied, but arranged in excellent taste. Its walls were panelled with figured teak, a rich carpet made the footfall noiseless, an antique Venus stood upon a marble pedestal in the corner, and over the mantelpiece hung a fine portrait by Gainsborough, that of a certain Miss Aylward, a famous beauty in her day, with whom, be it added, its present owner could boast no connection whatsoever.
Sir Robert was seated at his ebony desk playing with a pencil, and the light from a cheerful fire fell upon his face.
In its own way it was a remarkable face, as he appeared then in his fourth and fortieth year; very pale but with a natural pallor, very well cut and on the whole impressive. His eyes were dark, matching his black hair and pointed beard, and his nose was straight and rather prominent. Perhaps the mouth was his weakest feature, for there was a certain shiftiness about it, also the lips were thick and slightly sensuous. Sir Robert knew this, and therefore he grew a moustache to veil them somewhat. To a careful observer the general impression given by this face was such as is left by the sudden sight of a waxen mask. “How strong! How lifelike!” he would have said, “but of course it isn’t real. There may be a man behind, or there may be wood, but that’s only a mask.” Many people of perception had felt like this about Sir Robert Aylward, namely, that under the mask of his pale countenance dwelt a different being whom they did not know or appreciate.
If these had seen him at this moment of the opening of our story, they might have held that Wisdom was justified of her children. For now in the solitude of his splendid office, of a sudden Sir Robert’s mask seemed to fall from him. His face broke up like ice beneath a thaw. He rose from his table and began to walk up and down the room. He talked to himself aloud.
“Great Heavens!” he muttered, “what a game to have played, and it will go through. I believe that it will go through.”
He stopped at the table, switched on an electric light and made a rapid calculation on the back of a letter with a blue pencil.
“Yes,” he said, “that’s my share, a million and seventeen thousand pounds in cash, and two million in ordinary shares which can be worked off at a discount—let us say another seven hundred and fifty thousand, plus what I have got already—put that at only two hundred and fifty thousand net. Two millions in all, which of course may or may not be added to, probably not, unless the ordinaries boom, for I don’t mean to speculate any more. That’s the end of twenty years’ work, Robert Aylward. And to think of it, eighteen months ago, although I seemed so rich, I was on the verge of bankruptcy—the very verge, not worth five thousand pounds. Now what did the trick? I wonder what did the trick?”
He walked down the room and stopped opposite the ancient marble, staring at it—
“Not Venus, I think,” he said, with a laugh, “Venus never made any man rich.” He turned and retraced his steps to the other end of the room, which was veiled in shadow. Here upon a second marble pedestal stood an object that gleamed dimly through the gloom. It was about ten inches or a foot high, but in that place nothing more could be seen of it, except that it was yellow and had the general appearance of a toad. For some reason it seemed to attract Sir Robert Aylward, for he halted to stare at it, then stretched out his hand and switched on another lamp, in the hard brilliance of which the thing upon the pedestal suddenly declared itself, leaping out of the darkness into light. It was a terrible object, a monstrosity of indeterminate sex and nature, but surmounted by a woman’s head and face of extraordinary, if devilish loveliness, sunk back between high but grotesquely small shoulders, like to those of a lizard, so that it glared upwards. The workmanship of the thing was rude yet strangely powerful. Whatever there is cruel, whatever there is devilish, whatever there is inhuman in the dark places of the world, shone out of the jewelled eyes which were set in that yellow female face, yellow because its substance was of gold, a face which seemed not to belong to the embryonic legs beneath, for body there was none, but to float above them. A hollow, life-sized mask with two tiny frog-like legs, that was the fashion of it.
“You are an ugly brute,” muttered Sir Robert, contemplating this effigy, “but although I believe in nothing in heaven above or earth below, except the abysmal folly of the British public, I am bothered if I don’t believe in you. At any rate from the day when Vernon brought you into my office, my luck turned, and to judge from the smile on your sweet countenance, I don’t think it is done with yet. I wonder what those stones are in your eyes. Opals, I suppose, from the way they change colour. They shine uncommonly to-day, I never remember them so bright. I——”
At this moment a knock came on the door. Sir Robert turned off the lamp and walked back to the fireplace.
“Come in,” he said, and as he spoke once more his pale face grew impassive and expressionless.
The door opened and a clerk entered, an imposing-looking clerk with iron-grey hair, who wore an irreproachable frock coat and patent leather boots. Advancing to his master, he stood respectfully silent, waiting to be addressed. For quite a long while Sir Robert looked over his head as though he did not see him; it was a way of his. Then his eyes rested on the man dreamily and he remarked in his cold, clear voice:
“I don’t think I rang, Jeffreys.”
“No, Sir Robert,” answered the clerk, bowing as though he spoke to Royalty, “but there is a little matter about that article in The Cynic.”
“Press business,” said Sir Robert, lifting his eyebrows; “you should know by this time that I do not attend to such details. See Mr. Champers-Haswell, or Major Vernon.”
“They are both out at the moment, Sir Robert.”
“Go on, then, Jeffreys,” replied the head of the firm with a resigned sigh, “only be brief. I am thinking.”
The clerk bowed again.
“The Cynic people have just telephoned through about that article we sent them. I think you saw it, sir, and you may remember it begins——” and he read from a typewritten copy in his hand which was headed “Sahara Limited”:
“ ‘We are now privileged to announce that this mighty scheme which will turn a desert into a rolling sea bearing the commerce of nations and cause the waste places of the earth to teem with population and to blossom like the rose, has been completed in its necessary if dull financial details and will within a few days be submitted to investors among whom it has already caused so much excitement. These details we will deal with fully in succeeding articles, and therefore now need only pause to say that the basis of capitalization strikes us as wonderfully advantageous to the fortunate public who are asked to participate in its vast prospective prosperity. Our present object is to speak of its national and imperial aspects——’ ”
Sir Robert lifted his eyes in remonstrance:
“How much more of that exceedingly dull and commonplace puff do you propose to read, Jeffreys?” he asked.
“No more, Sir Robert. We are paying The Cynic thirty guineas to insert this article, and the point is that they say that if they have to put in the ‘national and imperial’ business they must have twenty more.”
“Indeed, Jeffreys? Why?”
“Because, Sir Robert—I will tell you, as you always like to hear the truth—their advertisement-editor is of opinion that Sahara Limited is a national and imperial swindle. He says that he won’t drag the nation and the empire into it in an editorial under fifty guineas.”
A faint smile flickered on Sir Robert’s face.
“Does he, indeed?” he asked. “I wonder at his moderation. Had I been in his place I should have asked more, for really the style is a little flamboyant. Well, we don’t want to quarrel with them just now—feed the sharks. But surely, Jeffreys, you didn’t come to disturb me about such a trifle?”
“Not altogether, Sir Robert. There is something more important. The Daily Judge not only declines to put any article whatsoever, but refuses our advertisement, and states that it means to criticize the prospectus trenchantly.”
“Ah!”