Mr. Raymond de Costa put down his paper, and looked thoughtfully at his son who sat opposite to him at the breakfast-table.
Gregory de Costa favoured his father in that he was below the medium height and somewhat stout for a man of twenty-four. His complexion had a tinge of bronze-red, which is to be found in those families which trace back to “colour,” and, indeed, there was a history of a mésalliance which brought wealth but an undesirable Eurasian strain into the De Costa family. They referred to themselves as a Portuguese house, and Portuguese they may have been originally; but generations of De Costas had lived and died in the Madras presidency, illustrious amongst the chee-chee folk, but unquestionably of them.
Raymond, the elder, was the richest of the De Costa clan. He was fat and wheezy; his face was swollen with good living and self-indulgence--for he denied himself none of the excellencies of life. It was not an attractive face, though the two black eyes that burned all the time as though with fever, were fascinating. They were “seeing” eyes; they watched and absorbed all things within their radius. They were terribly alive and eager. They seemed to denote and indicate a separate existence to that which the gross, unshapely body of the man enjoyed.
The elder man--he must have been sixty--raised his be-ringed hand and gently caressed the stubble of grey moustache on his upper lip.
He was contemplating this dreadful son of his, from his sleek, shiny head, to his sleek, shiny boots.
“Gregory,” he said after a while, “have you seen the papers this morning?”
The younger man shook his head.
“No,” he admitted, though in the admission he knew he might earn a reproof, for he was undergoing a course of education which included a knowledge of the daily happenings of life.
To his surprise the inevitable lecture was not forthcoming. Instead----
“The Chinese Ambassador was murdered last night,” said his father softly.
Gregory stared.
There was something in the very gentleness of Raymond de Costa’s voice which made the younger man feel uncomfortable.
“Murdered--poor devil!” he said. “Was that where you went last night? I suppose they sent for you?”
Raymond sat upright suddenly.
“Where I went! What do you mean?” he demanded harshly. “I went nowhere.”
“I thought I heard you come in at one o’clock,” said the youth, reaching for an apple from the table. “I didn’t sleep too well.”
The other frowned.
“I did not come in for an excellent reason,” he said with asperity; “I was in bed at eleven o’clock and I did not stir out of my bed until Thomas brought my coffee this morning.”
The young man was unconvinced.
“But, governor,” he protested, “I saw Thomas with your boots, and they were all covered with mud.”
The old man thumped the table with a snarl of anger.
“I wasn’t out of the house last night, I tell you!”
Gregory de Costa was alarmed at the storm he had brought down upon his head.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled apologetically. “I must have dreamt it.”
“What is this about you’re not sleeping well?” demanded the other, changing the conversation abruptly. “Are you ill?”
“Ill? No; it’s nothing! I’m just feeling a bit rotten.”
He got up from the table and walked disconsolately to the window, gazing gloomily into the street.
“Is it that girl of yours?” asked his father with a slight smile.
“Which girl?” asked the other resentfully “Do you mean Miss Yale?”
“Who else?”
The youth was silent for a while.
“She’s not my girl by any means, governor,” he said despairingly. “I wish to heaven she was! She treats me like dirt--absolutely like dirt!”
Raymond de Costa smiled.
“Pretty people to treat a son of mine like dirt,” he said disdainfully. “The mother is head over heels in debt; the girl only looks presentable because she does a little writing. Why don’t you make up to the mother?”
The young man turned round, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets, discontent eloquently written on his face.
“The mother’s all right,” he grumbled. “I can twist Mrs. Yale round that.” He held up a stodgy little finger. “If it was only the mother there would be no trouble. It’s the girl.”
“Give her presents; women like that sort of thing!” suggested his father, but the young man shook his head.
“I’ve given her----” He stopped.
“What?”
“Oh, lots of things!” said the youth vaguely. His conscience was troubling him a little. Something was very much on his mind.
There is an intense sympathy between some fathers and some sons which is generally all to the good. It sometimes, however, works out to the embarrassment of one of the partners. De Costa père had a trick of catching mind impressions; and now there came to him the recollections of something he wished to say.
“By the way,” he said carelessly, “Miss Yale has something which I should very much like to possess.”
The youth made no attempt to discover what that something was. He glanced a little apprehensively at his parent and waited.
“Miss Yale,” the other went on, “has a bangle, which, from the description I have had of it, must be the very companion of one which I have been scouring the world to secure, and which that thief Song-lu of Nanping swore he had dispatched to me by registered post.”
He rose from the table too, a scowl on his unpleasant face.
“It cost me over a thousand pounds to find, and another thousand to buy,” he said; “and Song-lu expects me to believe that he entrusted it to the registered post!”
“When ought it to have arrived?” stammered Gregory, very red in the face and horribly conscious of a desire to bolt.
“During my absence in China,” said his father. Then, sharply: “You saw nothing of a bangle, did you?”
Gregory de Costa cleared his throat.
“I wanted to say--I’ve had an uncomfortable feeling,” he said incoherently, “that a bangle came to me--at least I thought it was for me--some old curio that you’d picked up, governor. I hadn’t any idea it was for you; it was just addressed ‘Mister de Costa’.”
“Ah, you’ve got it!” There was relief and pleasure in Raymond de Costa’s face.
The son hesitated.
“Well,” he said, “I haven’t exactly got it. As a matter of fact I thought you meant me to give it away--so I gave it!”
De Costa stared at his son open-mouthed. His face went paler and paler with almost unconquerable rage.
“Gave it away?” he said at last, restraining himself with the greatest effort. “And to whom did you give it, you precious fool?”
“I gave it to Miss Yale,” said the young man sullenly. “How was I to know?”
“How was he to know?” De Costa, senior, appealed to the ceiling in his exasperation. “How was he to know that I should not waste my time picking up curios for a moon-calf? Oh, Gregory Marcus de Costa, you make me tire!”
It was chee-chee now. All the Eurasian in him was indicated in his voice and his manner. Tears of rage stood in his eyes.
Only a man of iron will could have overcome his natural disabilities as did old De Costa, because of a sudden he became very calm.
“You must go at once to Miss Yale, and on any excuse whatever you must regain possession of that bracelet. Tell her,” he bent his brows in thought, “tell her that you have learnt that it came from somebody who was suffering with the plague. Tell her anything--but get the bangle. She shall have diamonds in its stead. Go!”
“I’m awfully sorry, governor,” began Gregory.
The old man bared his teeth.
“Get out!” he said savagely.
Gregory de Costa went to his room with a grievance and a fear. Suppose Yvonne Yale would not surrender this precious circle of jade? Suppose she were hurt--no such luck! The worst and the most likely thing that could happen would be that she would seize an excellent and providential opportunity for ridding herself of an undesirable suitor.
He dressed himself with care, swearing at his reflection in the glass as at his worst enemy. He counted his money mechanically before transferring it from one pocket to the other--a frugal soul was Gregory de Costa!--and examined with care the interior of his pocket-book. He would avail himself of his father’s offer. It would be a diamond bracelet which he would offer as a substitute, and no girl in her senses could refuse that. He found consolation in the prospect, and finished his dressing carefully.
The Yales, mother and daughter, lived in a tiny house in Upper Curzon Street--a little house which had managed to squeeze itself between two more imposing façades and strove unsuccessfully to pretend that it had been there all the time.
Miss Yale was alone, the servant informed him, and added with the garrulous familiarity of a servant from whom her mistress had no secrets, that she had gone to the bank.
In the little drawing-room on the first floor Mr. de Costa junior found a lady who was coldly polite and undisguisedly surprised to see him at that hour in the morning.
He blundered to his fate.
“Fact is, Miss Yvonne----” he began.
“Miss Yale,” she corrected him with a little smile.
“Sorry. Fact is, there’s been a plague.”
“A plague?”
He nodded vigorously, satisfied with the sensation he had created.
“But I’m afraid that I don’t understand,” she said. “Where is the plague, and what has it to do with me?”
“In China,” he lied glibly. “Thousands of fellows dead. My governor is awfully upset; that bracelet, you know.”
She began to comprehend, and nodded.
“You see,” he went on eagerly, “the man that owned it has the plague, and the governor’s awfully concerned about you. So if you’ll let me have it, we’ll just put it where it can do no harm.”
He was flushed with self-satisfaction; already it seemed his task was satisfactorily performed. But her next words sent a flood of ice-water down his back.
“I’m sorry,” she said; “but I haven’t got it.”
“Haven’t? Oh, I say, Miss Yvonne! Oh, come now!” he almost wailed. “You must have it. I shall get into an awful row!”
“I am sorry you will get into trouble,” she said quietly; “but I haven’t got it at the moment.”
“But you must have it, Miss--Miss Yale. You must!” He was violent almost in his terror at facing his father empty-handed. “And I must insist upon your giving it to me.”
A wrong--a fatally wrong--move on the part of Gregory de Costa.
The girl stood up, stiff and uncompromising.
“You insist?” she said scornfully. “You forget that the bracelet is mine, though I assure you I’ve no desire to keep it. In a short time I shall have it, and it will be sent to you. Good morning!”
“If I’ve said anything offensive,” pleaded the young man humbly, yet in his humility mopping his brow with a handkerchief, the gaudiness of which was in itself an offence.
“Good morning!” said Yvonne Yale, with a little inclination of dismissal.
There was a knock at the door, and De Costa checked his flood of apology.
“Captain Talham,” announced the servant, and Captain Talham followed her quickly into the room.
The girl flashed a little smile of welcome, then turned to the young man.
“Captain Talham will give you what you desire,” she said coldly; then, to the tall man: “Will you please give this gentleman the bracelet I gave you yesterday?”
Talham looked from the girl to the youth, and from the youth to the girl. Then, with a sigh in which relief was evident, he drew from his right hand pocket something wrapped in tissue paper and placed it in the outstretched hand of the other.
“Phew!” said Mr. Gregory de Costa, and unwrapped the jade bracelet set about with bands of gold. “Phew!” he said again, and his trembling fingers stowed the precious circlet in an inside pocket.
Captain Talham scrutinised him gravely.
“My friend,” he said, “on what small and seemingly trivial incident does life turn! A petulant word--the hint of offensiveness to this dear lady”--he waved his hand gracefully in the direction of the embarrassed Yvonne--“a sudden revulsion of feeling, which turns penitence to stern and unscrupulous purpose, hardens the shamed heart, and adds lustre to villainy.”
“I beg your pardon?” asked young Mr. de Costa reasonably puzzled.
Talham would have proceeded, but something in the girl’s eyes, some mute entreaty, averted him. He favoured the young man with a bow which effectively dismissed him and turned his attention to the girl.
She waited until the door closed behind him.
“You are always getting me out of scrapes, Captain Talham,” she smiled.
“You’ve got me out of a scrape,” he said solemnly, and seated himself at her gesture.
He had been up all night, he told her without invitation.
He added that he had borrowed a sovereign from a famous detective whom, with unnecessary caution, he described as Signor T----.
“Not that I’ve been to sleep,” he said. “I have been engaged with a Chink”--he saw she was puzzled--“a Chinaman,” he hastened to correct himself. “A very admirable man, who does things.”
An ambiguous but characteristic description, she thought.
He was ill at ease, and remarkably silent through the interview; spoke little, yet several times seemed to be on the point of speaking.
“You seem to have something to confess,” she said at last in gentle raillery.
She had to make conversation at an hour of the day when small talk was a most difficult exercise to assume, and was at her wits’ end for subjects.
Three times he had started with an ominous “I feel that I ought to tell you”; and three times he had stopped and talked rapidly for a minute or two about some subject wholly irrelevant to the matter under discussion.
“I have and I haven’t,” he said slowly. “That is to say, I had, and probably that from a strictly ethical standpoint still have. It is a nice question.”
He rose to go with startling abruptness.
“There is something troubling you, my man,” thought she in an amused way.
“Miss Yale,” he said solemnly. “In war all expedients are justified.”
“I agree,” she smiled. “But exactly what are you thinking about?”
It may be that Captain Talham had no intention of telling her at that precise moment. What is certain, however, is that in his agitation he pulled his handkerchief from an inside pocket and with it something which fell upon the floor.
The girl looked at it in wonder; and well she might, for there was an absolute replica of the ornament she had returned to young De Costa a few moments before.
