T. W. Speight - In the Dead of Night (Vol. 1-3)

By the end of a fortnight, thanks to the assistance given by Lionel, Mrs. Garside's legal difficulties were at an end. After a few last lingering days in Lutetia the Beautiful, they went back to London together. Lionel saw the two ladies safely housed in Roehampton Terrace, and then bade them farewell for a little while. The marriage was to take place in June, and there was much to be done before that time.

Having some purchases to make, Lionel stopped in London for a few hours, after leaving Edith, before continuing his journey home. He had kept telling himself, as he came along in the train, that he must not fail to call on Kester before going back to Park Newton. He wanted his cousin to fix a date for his promised visit. But when London was reached and his business done, he still felt unaccountably reluctant to pay the call. He shrank from making any inquiry of himself as to the origin of this strange reluctance, but its existence he could not dispute. Was it possible that some half-formed and unacknowledged doubt was at work in his mind as to whether the man who had so brutally struck him down was any other than Kester St. George? If so, it was a doubt that never clothed itself with words even to himself. But, be that as it may, four o'clock was reached; his train started at five, and Great Carrington Street was still as far away as ever.

His irresolution was brought to a sudden end at last. He was gazing absently into Colnaghi's window, when a hand was laid lightly on his shoulder, and his cousin's musical voice fell on his ear.

"What! in town again, old fellow? You might have let one know that you were coming."

All Lionel's half-shaped doubts vanished in a moment under the influence of his cousin's genial smile and hearty grasp of the hand. As he stood there his conscience pricked him that he should have wronged Kester for a moment even in thought.

"I have only just got back from Paris," he said. "I am glad to have met you, because I want you to fix a date for your promised visit to Park Newton."

Kester was not alone. His arm was linked in that of another man. "Before fixing anything," he said, "I must introduce to you my particular friend, Mr. Percy Osmond.--Osmond, my cousin, Li Dering, of whom you have frequently heard me speak."

The two men bowed.

"Is it possible," asked Lionel, "that you are a brother of the Mr. Kenneth Osmond whom I met when in America?"

"Kenneth Osmond and I are certainly brothers," answered the other.

"Then I am very pleased to make your acquaintance. Your brother and I travelled together for six months through some of the wildest parts of North America. I never met with a man in my life whom I esteemed more or liked better."

"Look here," said Kester. "We can't stand jawing in the street for ever. My club's not three minutes away. Let us go there and wet the talk with a bottle of fiz."

Mr. Percy Osmond was about eight-and-twenty years old. He was of medium height and slender build, and of a somewhat effeminate appearance. He had good features, and had rather fine black eyes, of which he was particularly proud. But there was a shiftiness about them, a restlessly suspicious look, as though the man at one time had been haunted by some terrible fear, and had never been able to forget it.

His face was closely shaven, except for a thin, silky, black moustache, which he wore with long waxed ends. He was foppishly dressed in the latest fashion, and displayed a profusion of jewellery. But there was something about him so arrogant and self-opinionated, something so coldly contemptuous of other men's feelings and opinions whenever they chanced to clash with his own, that Lionel had not been ten minutes in his company before he said to himself that Mr. Percy Osmond was very different from Mr. Percy Osmond's brother, and could never be included by him among the few men he numbered as his friends.

"So you want to pin me down to a date, do you?" said Kester as they sat down in the smoking-room at the club.

"I should certainly like, to fix you, now that I am here," answered Lionel.

"How would this day fortnight suit you?"

"No time could suit me better. And if Mr. Osmond will honour me by coming down to Park Newton at the same time, I need hardly say how pleased I shall be to see him there."

"Very kind of you, I'm sure," said Osmond. "Glad to run down to your place, especially as St. George is going. Am thinking of buying a quiet little country roost myself. Town life is awfully wearing, you know."

Kester laughed aloud. "Osmond would commit suicide before he had been in the country a month," he said. "He is one of those unhappy mortals who cannot live away from bricks and mortar. The shady side of Pall Mall is dearer to him than all the county lanes and hayfields in the world."

"You do me an injustice--really," said Osmond. "Some of my tastes are quite idyllic. No one, for instance, could be fonder of clotted cream than I am. I never shoot, myself--haven't muscle enough for it, you know--yet I have a weakness for grouse pie that almost verges on the sublime."

"Or the ridiculous," interposed Kester.

"By-the-by, I hope you are not without a billiard-table at your place," said Osmond, with that affected little cough which was peculiar to him.

"We have a table on which you shall play all day long if you choose," said Lionel.

"Then I'll come. Country air and billiards charming combination! Yes, you may expect to see me at the same time that you see St. George."

He made a memorandum of the date in his tablets; and after a little further talk, he shook hands with Lionel and went, leaving the two cousins together.

Kester looked after him with a sneer. "There goes another gilded fool," he said.

"I thought you introduced him to me as your particular friend," said Lionel.

"I called him my particular friend because he is rich. I can't afford to call any poor man my friend."

"My reason for inviting him to Park Newton was partly because I thought it would please you to have him there at the same time as yourself, and partly out of compliment to his brother, whom I respect and like exceedingly."

"Don't mistake me. I am glad you have asked him down to the old place. As I said before, he is rich, and some day or other he may be useful to me. All the same, he's an awful screw, and thinks as much of one sovereign as I do of five."

"How long have you known him?" asked Lionel.

"For a dozen years at the least. When he was twenty-one he came in for a fortune of twelve thousand pounds. This he contrived to get through very comfortably in the course of a couple of seasons. Then came the climax. For two years longer he managed to pick up a precarious crust among the different friends and acquaintances whom he had made during his more prosperous days. Then, when everybody had become thoroughly tired of him, he crossed the Atlantic. For the next four years he was lost sight of utterly. When heard of again, he had sunk to the position of marker in a billiard-saloon at New Orleans. After that, he was heard of in several places, but always in dreadfully low water. Then came the story of a murder in which he was said to be somehow mixed up, but nobody on this side seemed ever to get at the truth about it; and the next thing we heard about him was something altogether different. An old maiden aunt had died and had left the scapegrace eighty thousand pounds. Such as you saw him to-day, he turned up in London three months ago. Bitter experience has taught him the value of money. Still he has his weaknesses. What those weaknesses are it is my business just now to find out."

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"Shall I shut the window, sir? The evening is rather cold."

It was Pierre Janvard, the body-servant of Mr. Kester St. George, who spoke. The place was a room at Park Newton, for Kester had come there on his promised visit. The same suite of rooms had been allotted to him that had been his during his uncle's lifetime--the same furniture was still in them: everything seemed unchanged. "Do you hear the bells, sir?" continued Pierre. "The village ringers are having their Wednesday evening practice. They always used to practise on Wednesday evenings, sir, if you remember. It seems only like yesterday since you left Park Newton."