Mr. Goble's jaw fell. He had been waving his hands in another spacious gesture, and he remained frozen with outstretched arms, like a semaphore. This evening had been a series of shocks for him, but this was the worst shock of all.
"You--what!" he stammered.
"I own the piece," repeated Jill. "Surely that gives me authority to say what I want done and what I don't want done."
There was a silence, Mr. Goble, who was having difficulty with his vocal chords, swallowed once or twice. Wally and Mr. Pilkington stared dumbly. At the back of the stage, a belated scene-shifter, homeward bound, was whistling as much as he could remember of the refrain of a popular song.
"What do you mean you own the piece?" Mr. Goble at length gurgled.
"I bought it."
"You bought it?"
"I bought Mr. Pilkington's share through a lawyer for ten thousand dollars."
"Ten thousand dollars! Where did you get ten thousand dollars?" Light broke upon Mr. Goble. The thing became clear to him. "Damn it!" he cried. "I might have known you had some man behind you! You'd never have been so darned fresh if you hadn't had some John in the background, paying the bills! Well, of all the...."
He broke off abruptly, not because he had said all that he wished to say, for he had only touched the fringe of his subject, but because at this point Wally's elbow smote him in the parts about the third button of his waistcoat and jarred all the breath out of him.
"Be quiet!" said Wally dangerously. He turned to Jill. "Jill, you don't mind telling me how you got ten thousand dollars, do you?"
"Of course not, Wally. Uncle Chris sent it to me. Do you remember giving me a letter from him at Rochester? The cheque was in that."
Wally stared.
"Your uncle! But he hasn't any money!"
"He must have made it somehow."
"But he couldn't! How could he?"
Otis Pilkington suddenly gave tongue. He broke in on them with a loud noise that was half a snort and half a yell. Stunned by the information that it was Jill who had bought his share in the piece, Mr. Pilkington's mind had recovered slowly and then had begun to work with a quite unusual rapidity. During the preceding conversation he had been doing some tense thinking, and now he saw all.
"It's a swindle! It's a deliberate swindle!" shrilled Mr. Pilkington. The tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles flashed sparks. "I've been made a fool of! I've been swindled! I've been robbed!"
Jill regarded him with wide eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean!"
"I certainly do not! You were perfectly willing to sell the piece."
"I'm not talking about that! You know what I mean! I've been robbed!"
Wally snatched at his arm as it gyrated past him in a gesture of anguish which rivalled the late efforts in that direction of Mr. Goble, who was now leaning against the safety-curtain trying to get his breath back.
"Don't be a fool," said Wally curtly. "Talk sense! You know perfectly well that Miss Mariner wouldn't swindle you."
"She may not have been in it," conceded Mr. Pilkington. "I don't know whether she was or not. But that uncle of hers swindled me out of ten thousand dollars! The smooth old crook!"
"Don't talk like that about Uncle Chris!" said Jill, her eyes flashing. "Tell me what you mean."
"Yes, come on, Pilkington," said Wally grimly. "You've been scattering some pretty serious charges about. Let's hear what you base them on. Be coherent for a couple of seconds."
Mr. Goble filled his depleted lungs.
"If you ask me...." he began.
"We don't," said Wally curtly. "This has nothing to do with you. Well," he went on, "we're waiting to hear what this is all about."
Mr. Pilkington gulped. Like most men of weak intellect who are preyed on by the wolves of the world, he had ever a strong distaste for admitting that he had been deceived. He liked to regard himself as a shrewd young man who knew his way about and could take care of himself.
"Major Selby," he said, adjusting his spectacles, which emotion had caused to slip down his nose, "came to me a few weeks ago with a proposition. He suggested the formation of a company to start Miss Mariner in the motion-pictures."
"What!" cried Jill.
"In the motion-pictures," repeated Mr. Pilkington. "He wished to know if I cared to advance any capital towards the venture. I thought it over carefully and decided that I was favourably disposed towards the scheme. I...." Mr. Pilkington gulped again. "I gave him a cheque for ten thousand dollars!"
"Of all the fools!" said Mr. Goble with a sharp laugh. He caught Wally's eye and subsided once more.
Mr. Pilkington's fingers strayed agitatedly to his spectacles.
"I may have been a fool," he cried shrilly, "though I was perfectly willing to risk the money had it been applied to the object for which I gave it. But when it comes to giving ten thousand dollars just to have it paid back to me in exchange for a very valuable piece of theatrical property ... my own money ... handed back to me...!"
Words failed Mr. Pilkington.
"I've been deliberately swindled!" he added, after a moment, harking back to the main motive.
Jill's heart was like lead. She could not doubt for an instant the truth of what the victim had said. Woven into every inch of the fabric, plainly hall-marked on its surface, she could perceive the signature of Uncle Chris. If he had come and confessed to her himself, she could not have been more certain that he had acted precisely as Mr. Pilkington had charged. There was that same impishness, that same bland unscrupulousness, that same pathetic desire to do her a good turn however it might affect anybody else which, if she might compare the two things, had caused him to pass her off on unfortunate Mr. Mariner of Brookport as a girl of wealth with tastes in the direction of real estate.
Wally was not so easily satisfied.
"You've no proof whatever...."
Jill shook her head.
"It's true, Wally. I know Uncle Chris. It must be true."
"But, Jill...!"
"It must be. How else could Uncle Chris have got the money?"
Mr. Pilkington, much encouraged by this ready acquiescence in his theories, got under way once more.
"The man's a swindler! A swindler! He's robbed me! I have been robbed! He never had any intention of starting a motion-picture company. He planned it all out...!"
Jill cut into the babble of his denunciations. She was sick at heart, and she spoke almost listlessly.
"Mr. Pilkington!" The victim stopped. "Mr. Pilkington, if what you say is true, and I'm afraid there is no doubt that it is, the only thing I can do is to give you back your property. So will you please try to understand that everything is just as it was before you gave my uncle the money. You've got back your ten thousand dollars and you've got back your piece, so there's nothing more to talk about."
Mr. Pilkington, dimly realizing that the financial aspect of the affair had been more or less satisfactorily adjusted, was nevertheless conscious of a feeling that he was being thwarted. He had much more to say about Uncle Chris and his methods of doing business, and it irked him to be cut short like this.
"Yes, but I do not think.... That's all very well, but I have by no means finished...."
"Yes, you have," said Wally.
"There's nothing more to talk about," repeated Jill. "I'm sorry this should have happened, but you've nothing to complain about now, have you? Good night."
And she turned quickly away, and walked towards the door.
"But I hadn't finished!" wailed Mr. Pilkington, clutching at Wally. He was feeling profoundly aggrieved. If it is bad to be all dressed up and no place to go, it is almost worse to be full of talk and to have no one to talk it to. Otis Pilkington had at least another twenty minutes of speech inside him on the topic of Uncle Chris, and Wally was the nearest human being with a pair of ears.
Wally was in no mood to play the part of confidant. He pushed Mr. Pilkington earnestly in the chest and raced after Jill. Mr. Pilkington, with the feeling that the world was against him, tottered back into the arms of Mr. Goble, who had now recovered his breath and was ready to talk business.
"Have a good cigar," said Mr. Goble, producing one. "Now, see here, let's get right down to it. If you'd care to sell out for twenty thousand...."
"I would not care to sell out for twenty thousand!" yelled the overwrought Mr. Pilkington. "I wouldn't sell out for a million! You're a swindler! You want to rob me! You're a crook!"
"Yes, yes," assented Mr. Goble gently. "But, all joking aside, suppose I was to go up to twenty-five thousand...?" He twined his fingers lovingly in the slack of Mr. Pilkington's coat. "Come now! You're a good kid I Shall we say twenty-five thousand?"
"We will not say twenty-five thousand! Let me go!"
"Now, now, now!" pleaded Mr. Goble. "Be sensible! Don't get all worked up! Say, do have a good cigar!"
"I won't have a good cigar!" shouted Mr. Pilkington.
He detached himself with a jerk, and stalked with long strides up the stage. Mr. Goble watched him go with a lowering gaze. A heavy sense of the unkindness of fate was oppressing Mr. Goble. If you couldn't gyp a bone-headed amateur out of a piece of property, whom could you gyp? Mr. Goble sighed. It hardly seemed to him worth while going on.
