George Fenn - King of the Castle

He took the letters out of his pocket-book, and handed them.

“There you are: Parry Glyddyr, Esq, care of Reuben Gellow, Esq, 209 Cecil Street, Strand.”

“Why, they’ve been opened!”

“Yes, all three – and read.”

“You scoundrel!” roared Glyddyr. “Do you dare to sit there and tell me that you have had the effrontery to open my letters and read them?”

“I didn’t tell you so.”

“But you have read them?”

“Every line.”

“Look here, sir,” cried Glyddyr, rising fiercely, “I found it necessary to have my letters sent to an agent.”

“Reuben Gellow.”

“To be forwarded to me where I might be yachting.”

“So as to throw your creditors off the scent.”

“And you, acting as my agent, have read them.”

“In your interest, dear boy.”

“Curse you! I don’t care what happens now. All is at an end between us, you miserable – ”

“Go it, old fellow, if it does you good; but I didn’t open the letters.”

“Then who did?”

“Denise.”

Glyddyr’s jaw dropped.

“Now, then, you volcanic eruption of a man; who’s your friend, eh? I went down to the office yesterday morning. ‘Lady waiting in your room, sir,’ says my clerk. ‘Who is it?’ says I. ‘Wouldn’t give her name,’ says my clerk. ‘Wants money then,’ says I to myself; and goes up, and there was Madame Denise just finishing reading number three.”

“Good heavens!” muttered Glyddyr, blankly.

“‘I came, sare,’ she says, with one of her pretty, mocking laughs, ‘to ask you for ze address of my hosband, but you are absent, it ees no mattair. I find tree of my hosband’s lettaires, and one say he sup-poz my hosband go to Danmout. Dat is all.’”

“Then she’ll find me out, and come down here and spoil all.”

“Divil a doubt of it, me boy, as Paddy says.”

“But you – you left the letters lying about.”

“Not I. They came by the morning’s post. How the deuce could I tell that she would hunt me up, and then open her ‘hosband’s’ letters.”

“I am not her husband;” cried Glyddyr furiously. “That confounded French marriage does not count.”

“That’s what you’ve got to make her believe, my dear boy.”

“And if it did, I’d sooner smother myself than live with the wretched harpy.”

“Yes; I should say she had a temper Glyddyr. So under the circumstances, dear boy, I thought the best thing I could do was to come down fast as I could and put you on your guard.”

“My dear Gellow.”

“Come, that’s better. Then we are brothers once again,” cried Gellow, with mock melodramatic fervour.

“Curse the woman!”

“Better still; much better than cursing me.”

“Don’t fool, man. Can’t you see that this will be perfect destruction?”

“Quite so, dear boy; and now that this inner man is refreshed with food, so kindly and courteously supplied by you, he is quite ready for action. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Think she will come down?”

“Think? No, I don’t. Ah, Parry Glyddyr, what a pity it is you have been such a wicked young man!”

“Do you want to drive me mad with your foolery?”

“No; only to act. There, don’t make a fuss about it. The first thing is to throw her off the scent. She knows you may be here.”

“Yes.”

“Well, she’ll come down and inquire for you. She is not obliged to know about the people at the Fort; your yacht put in here for victualling or repairs.”

“Well?”

“When she comes, she finds you have sailed, and if we are lucky she will feel that she has missed you, and go back.”

“If she would only die!” muttered Glyddyr, but his visitor caught his words.

“Not likely to. Sort of woman with stuff enough in her to last to a hundred. It strikes me, dear boy, that you are in a fix.”

Glyddyr sat frowning.

“And now you see the value of a friend.”

“Yes,” said Glyddyr thoughtfully. “I must go.”

“And you must take me too. If she sees me, she will smell a rat.”

“Yes, confound you, and one of the worst sort. There, ring that bell.”

“What for – brandy? Plenty here.”

“No, man, for the bill; I must be off at once.”

As Burns said, matters go very awkwardly sometimes for those who plot and plan – as if some malicious genius took delight in thwarting the most carefully-laid designs, and tangling matters up, till the undoing seems hopeless.

Chris Lisle had had a bad time mentally. He was wroth against Gartram and Glyddyr, and far more wroth with himself for letting his anger get the better of him.

“It was as if I had made up my mind to fight against my own interests, for I could not have done that man a greater service than to strike him.”

“That’s it, sure enough,” he said. “This good-looking yachting dandy is the man, and it was enough to make poor Claudie think me a violent ruffian, upon whom she must never look again. But I will not give her up. I’d sooner die; and, bless her, she will never allow herself to be forced into marrying such a man as that, good-looking as he is. Well, we shall see.”

To go up to the Fort and apologise seemed to him impossible, and he spent his time wandering about the shore, the pier, harbour and rocks, everywhere, so that he could keep an eye on Glyddyr’s proceedings.

He told himself that he merely went down to breathe the fresh air, but the air never seemed to be worth breathing if he could not watch the different trimly-rigged yachts lying in the harbour, the smartest and best kept one of all being The Fair Star .

Glyddyr stayed at the hotel while his yacht was in the harbour, and Chris avoided that hotel on principle; but all the same he seemed to be attracted to it, and several times over the young men had met, to pass each other with a scowl, but they had not spoken since the day they had encountered up at the Fort.

There was a lurking hope, though, in Chris’s breast, that sooner or later he would meet Claude, and come to an explanation.

“Just to ask her,” he said, “to wait. I know I’m poor; at least, I suppose I am, but I’ll get over that, and force myself somehow into a position that shall satisfy the old man. He will not be so hard upon me when he sees what I have done. How unlucky in my choice of time. He was in a horrible fit of irritability from his illness, and I spoke to him like a weak boy. I ought to have known better.”

Just then he caught sight of a dress in the distance, and his heart began to beat fast.

“It’s Claude!” he exclaimed, and he increased his pace.

“No, it is not,” he said, slackening directly. “Stranger.”

If he could have seen two hundred yards farther, and round a corner, he would not have checked his pace, but then his were ordinary eyes, and he continued his course, looking half-inquiringly at the figure which had attracted his attention, and gradually grew more curious as he became aware of the fact that the lady was fashionably dressed, and very elegant in her carriage.

The next minute he saw that she was young, and almost directly that she was very handsome, while, to complete his surprise, she smiled, showing her white teeth, and stopped short.

“I demand your pardon, monsieur,” she said, in a particularly rich, sweet voice, and pronouncing the words with a very foreign accent, “but I am so strange at zis place. I want ze small ship yacht Ze Fair Star . You will tell me?”

“Oh, certainly,” said Chris quickly; “one, two, three, four,” he continued pointing to where several graceful-looking yachts swung at their buoys. “That is it, the fourth from the left.”